‘Don’t be a stick,’ Diodorus said. ‘It’ll change cavalry warfare.’
Kineas shrugged. ‘You’re wily Odysseus,’ he said. Then he grinned. ‘Looks good to me.’
Diodorus smiled. ‘If I’m Odysseus,’ he said, ‘I suppose you’re Agamemnon.’
Kineas made a face. ‘Ouch,’ he said.
With Lot’s picked men and his own cavalry, he had almost eight hundred veterans of last year’s campaign. He drilled them, amusing the Sakje and boring the Sauromatae, teaching them a few simple trumpet commands, wedge and rhomboid, how to charge and how to rally quickly, until they were all on the verge of revolt, and then he gave them two days of feast and squandered the remaining grain on feeding the chargers.
Samahe came in with word that Lot’s western scouts had made contact with Coenus. He was far away beyond the Salt Hills, but he was across the desert and he already had an escort of Sauromatae. Word of his approach did more for the Olbians than a hundred speeches, because he brought gold for their pay and wine, as well as news of home.
Samahe was covered with dust and the smell of horse sweat preceded her into Srayanka’s wagon by several heartbeats. Kineas gave her a cup of wine, which she consumed with the satisfaction of a connoisseur.
‘Summer on the plains,’ she said. ‘Stink-fucking desert.’ She tossed off the rest of the wine. ‘Not like home, where grass stays for summer. High grass is gone.’
‘Ataelus will be back soon,’ Kineas said, and she smiled.
‘I stink like dog,’ she said. ‘Bath in roses for him!’
Her pleasure at the imminence of her mate made Kineas feel as if his heart was opening inside his chest. He smiled at her, but his mind called out Srayanka!
He worked to prepare to rescue her. But he didn’t believe in it.
Kineas sacrificed to the gods and prayed, and on the eighth day he was standing in the brutal sun, wearing a straw hat as wide as his shoulders and grooming his horse with a Sakje brush, a marvellous tool woven like rope from horse tail with bristles of a mysterious animal that apparently lived in the far north. He had groomed four horses for thousands of stades and the brush remained as stiff and fresh as the day Urvara had given it to him, in the hours before the great battle at the ford. He treasured it. Now he was thinking of her and Srayanka when he heard voices calling from the main camp. He saw a rider coming out of the sun, with pickets calling for him on either hand, and he ran up the riverbank to his camp, still holding his brush.
Nihmu rode out of the sun. She was exhausted, her eyes set deep in her head with dark smudges under them as if she’d been struck. She was as thin as a stick of tamarisk, and when she dismounted by Kineas she drank all the water he could give her. The water seemed to make her grow a little, and suddenly she grinned like the sun bursting forth from a sky of clouds. ‘Ready your horses, King! Ataelus says, and Philokles says, that they have found a way to rescue the lady.’
Kineas felt his heart begin to pound in his chest, its pressure so great that it might not have beaten for days or even weeks before that moment. ‘How?’ he asked, seizing her hands.
Nihmu flicked the hair from her eyes. Her braids had decayed in hard riding and she had a halo of bronze hair around her face. She gave a weary shake of her head. ‘Not for telling me. Gods, I sound like Ataelus.’ She smiled. ‘Haven’t thought in Greek for many days, lord. I was told that you should bring the people along as quickly as you can to the forks of the Polytimeros. That’s all I know. And I am to tell you that Iskander is in the field, that Craterus is on the Polytimeros, that Spitamenes lays siege to Marakanda.’ She repeated these last in her sing-song voice of rote memorization.
‘Go to bed, girl,’ Kineas ordered. He turned to Diodorus. ‘Send Eumenes to Lot with the news. Tell him we’ll ride in the morning.’
Diodorus nodded. ‘Where exactly are the forks of the Polytimeros?’ he asked quietly.
Kineas rubbed his chin. ‘Best get some guides from Lot, too.’
Then he lay down in his cloak, out under the stars instead of in her wagon, and he waited for the veil of sleep to come over him.
He laughed, because no spray of colour, no cacophony of unreal sounds, no bestiary of dream monsters, could move him as his dreams had once moved him. In fact, he was angry.
Kam Baqca settled on the branch opposite him, her skeletal back nestled against the bark of the tree’s main trunk. ‘You are almost there,’ she said.
Kineas sat with his legs dangling down. Above him, a pair of eagles flew in growing circles around his head and cried. Kineas shouted, ‘You - the gods - have made me into an arrow and shot me from your bow. Any day now I will strike the target and shatter, and my day is over. For you, the arrow will have done its work. For me, there is only Srayanka and life. The honeysuckle is sweet. The briar rose smells like love and the Sakje women roll in the petals and sweet grass to prepare themselves for love, and I will be dead without seeing her again.’
Kam Baqca raised her head, so that he could see that most of the skin had flaked away from her face, leaving the skull. She was hideous, yet somehow comforting. Another part of his mind wondered why Ajax looked uncorrupted by death, while Kam Baqca, who died the same day, had rotted. ‘Are you a boy, to whine to me of how unfair it all is?’ she asked with arch contempt. ‘I am already dead. No lover will take me in his arms.’ She looked at her own arms - bone and withered sinew. ‘How lovely I am! If I roll in rose petals, will it cover the stink of corruption?’
He glared at her. ‘You chose your path.’
She smiled, her jaws hideous. ‘You chose your path too, King. Archon. Hipparch. You came east. Now finish your task like a craftsman. Go and fight the monster ...’
He awoke to the sound of ten thousand strong jaws cropping grass. He lay in the grass and despair rose around him like early morning mist, and settled on him until he choked and wept. But when he fell asleep again, he ... passed his dead friends and jumped into the tree again and climbed without much interest. He saw the top above him and marvelled at how far he had come. He looked down and saw a plain below him, stretching away to mountains that rose like a wall and went on for ever, and he knew awe. And then he stretched forth his hand to climb . . .
‘If you can’t control yourself better than that,’ Phocion said, ‘I will not bother to teach you any more.’
Kineas was standing in the sand of the practice ring, his arm numb and his eyes stinging with tears. ‘It’s not fair!’ he whimpered.
Phocion’s wooden sword slapped him on the side of the head. ‘Beasts fight with rage,’ he said. ‘Greeks fight with science. Any barbarian can out-rage you, boy.’
‘I am not a boy!’ Kineas bellowed. He meant it as a bellow. It came out as more of a squeak. The other young men waiting their turns tittered and giggled, or stood in embarrassed silence.
Kineas’s crime had been to state as a matter of fact that he was the best of Phocion’s pupils. Phocion had responded by disarming him - repeatedly - and beating him with soul-destroying ease, not once but ten times running. He used the same simple move over and over again, moving with lazy elegance, and Kineas’s responses grew more and more foolish with each engagement, until Kineas burst into tears.
Phocion stepped back. ‘If you are a man, then pick up that sword and use your brain.’
Kineas walked across the sand to his fallen sword and retrieved it, his mind hot with the desire for revenge. But he thought of Niceas, and Graccus, and the fight in the alley, and the pain and the blood. And how much he owed Phocion. He stood straight despite ten new bruises. He pushed his brain to consider Phocion’s attack - something subtle in the feint. He decided on a simple solution.
‘I am ready,’ he said, settling into his stance, shield forward, sword back. He moved out cautiously and Phocion danced around him, but this time Kineas didn’t offer his sword. He stayed behind his shield, accepted a light blow on his hip and a stinging cut that drew blood from his shield-side knee. Phocion made a back cut and Kinea
s exerted the full force of his will to avoid the response he had been taught - a cut at the opponent’s wrist. Instead, he simply stepped back and blocked with his shield. It was dull, and the weight of the shield pulled at his arm, and after some minutes Phocion feinted low and thumped him on the head and he fell. Phocion extended a hand and drew him to his feet.
‘You are a man,’ he said. He grinned. ‘I suspected as much.’
Kineas nodded. His head hurt.
Phocion smiled at him. ‘What is my new feint, Kineas?’ he asked.
Kineas rubbed his head. ‘No idea, master. It starts with a faked sloppy back cut.’ He smiled wryly. ‘It only took me ten tries to establish that.’
Phocion nodded. ‘And how do you defeat it?’ he asked.
Kineas shook his head. ‘No idea, master.’
Phocion grinned, looking much younger. ‘You may yet be the best of my students, young blowhard. Go and oil yourself and get a rub.’
Graccus shook his head. ‘I don’t understand, master,’ he said.
Phocion shrugged. ‘You will,’ he said.
Kineas smiled at Phocion. ‘I understand,’ he said.
And then he was on a branch of the tree, higher than he had ever been.
And then he dreamed that he was a god - Zeus incarnate - and that in his hand he held the thunderbolt, which gleamed with white fire and jumped in his hand, and yet seemed to be composed of men and horses . . .
And he awoke with the taste of hubris in his mouth.
In an hour, the whole column was moving. They rode north and west along the Oxus, with Mosva’s brothers, Hektor and Artu, as well as Gwair Blackhorse all out front guiding the column. They had ten thousand horses and the combined force was four stades long from Kineas at the front to the last Sauromatae maidens, wreathed in scarves, who rode in the dust clouds at the rear, herding the cattle.
Twice they saw distant figures on horseback. Kineas ordered the scouts not to pursue, but he put more Sauromatae out as a screen. He didn’t want every tribal chief within a thousand stades to know the make-up of his column.
Now they were at the Macedonian frontier. The Polytimeros was the edge of Alexander’s lines.
Late in the second morning since Nihmu’s return, scouts reported that the forks of the Polytimeros were ahead, and an hour later, as they ate their cold porridge while their horses cropped grass, Ataelus returned. He kissed Samahe, the two entwined like two trees on a wind-blasted island in the Aegean, and then Ataelus wrenched himself from her and turned to Kineas. He grinned.
‘Philokles say “Come now!”’ he said. ‘Luck for standing at shoulder. More stuff like Philokles for saying.’ Ataelus shrugged, grinning.
Kineas gestured at the column. ‘Here we are,’ he said.
‘Come now!’ said Ataelus.
‘I told you,’ said Nihmu. Ataelus ruffled her hair and she grinned.
‘How far?’ Kineas asked.
‘Two days, for riding like Sakje.’ Ataelus emphasized this with his fist. ‘Like Sakje.’ He grinned again. ‘Come for rescue Lady Srayanka. Strike blow against Iskander.’ His fist smacked into his open hand with a noise like a breaking gourd. ‘Hurry! Philokles says for ...’ the chief of the prodromoi scrunched up his face, remembering, ‘utmost hurry. Yes?’ He looked around at his friends. ‘Ride like Sakje!’
Kineas turned to Diodorus. ‘Water the horses. Every man to have his remount handy.’
Diodorus saluted. ‘Ride like Sakje!’ he said with relish.
20
Philokles met them in a grove of willows four hundred stades further east, on the banks of the Polytimeros, which swelled there to be more than a stade wide and flowed just dactyloi deep. The willows were ancient and there were three different altars arrayed beneath the canopy. Darius was asleep under an awning of cloaks held on spears.
Kineas dismounted in the cool shade and they embraced.
‘I have seen her,’ Philokles said.
Kineas felt the slow flame of hope rekindle in his heart.
‘Get your column under cover of the trees and let’s talk,’ he said. He looked thinner, and beneath his eyes were circles of darkness like a mask of despair.
Eight hundred warriors with ten thousand horses are difficult to hide, but Diodorus and Andronicus and Bain did their best while Kineas drank water and Darius roused himself from sleep. He looked as wrecked as Philokles.
When he was seated, Philokles began.
‘We were lucky,’ he said. ‘And I disobeyed you. I convinced Ataelus to stay with me and let the queen’s messenger find his own way home. I took Darius to Alexander’s camp. Alexander has so many stragglers since the massacres on the Jaxartes that I walked straight through the sentries without a question.’ He shrugged. ‘I won’t make an epic of it. Darius found the women by posing as a slave. I learned - almost without effort, I must concede - that a column of mercenaries was to march to the relief of Marakanda.’
Darius nodded. ‘I learned that Alexander ordered the Amazons to Kandahar. One of them is pregnant and Alexander wants her to deliver among his women. She is to be escorted by the relief column for Marakanda.’ He gave Philokles a smile. ‘It was as if the gods intended us to know - the Amazons are a three-day wonder in the camp, and there is no security. Tribesmen come and go. Alexander is recruiting Sogdians, and any barbarian with a bow can ride in through the gates.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘This is so much like a miracle that it seems like a trap. How many in the column?’
‘Two thousand men. Greek mercenary infantry, and a more polyglot crew of scum you can’t imagine. I’d have been decarch in another day. I had to leave before they placed me in command of the whole expedition. ’ He gave a tired smile. ‘Four hundred mercenary cavalry under an officer I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘Listen, Kineas, Alexander is mad. Worse, the distrust and the politics of that camp are as bad as anything I’ve ever seen. It is not so much an army as a collection of factions. The death of Parmenion has cut them hard.’
Kineas nodded. ‘He did a lot of the work,’ he admitted.
‘And a handful of Hetairoi, with some mounted Macedonian infantry as prodromoi and a hundred Macedonian cavalry under Andromachus,’ Darius said, completing the report. He jerked a thumb at the men in column picketing their horses. ‘We can take them.’
Kineas winced. ‘Companions?’ he asked. His tone reminded them of what a tough proposition a few hundred Companions on wretched played-out horses had been a year before.
Philokles rubbed his beard. ‘You are right to be cautious. The Macedonians are dangerous - every one of them is as good as a Spartiate. They’ve been out here so long that war is the only life they know.’ His tone was frankly admiring.
‘So much for the philosophy of peace,’ Kineas said mockingly.
‘I was born a Spartan,’ Philokles said with slow dignity. ‘Philosophy was learned later.’
‘Yet you think we can take them.’ Kineas started to ease himself out of his breastplate.
Philokles stood. ‘Right here,’ he said. ‘They’ll be here in two days. I sat in the command tent and listened to Cleitus tell Pharnuches, their commander, his march route. I sent Ataelus north and waited until the column marched. There’s not another crossing this easy for a hundred stades.’
Darius chuckled. ‘We even marched with the column,’ he said. ‘The Amazons have a cavalry escort - a dozen of Hephaestion’s own Companions.’
‘He commands the Companions now,’ Philokles put in, as Diodorus came up with the other officers.
‘Who does?’ Diodorus asked. His armour was off, and he took a helmet full of muddy water from Ataelus and poured it over his head. ‘Damn, that’s good.’
Ataelus grinned. ‘For sick making - too much water,’ he said.
‘Hephaestion commands the Companions,’ Philokles said.
‘Fucking catamite,’ Diodorus said. ‘Alexander must be hard up for cavalrymen.’
Philokles shrugged, and Darius flushed.
Diodorus raised his hands to mollify them. ‘Well, he is a catamite. He manipulates Alexander - always has. Hephaestion couldn’t command a squadron of cavalry in a religious parade.’
Philokles raised an eyebrow at Diodorus. The two men fell silent and something passed between them. Philokles rolled his shoulders, as if he had been carrying weights and they had finally been put aside. ‘Have it as you will - you two know these people better than I. But the troopers guarding Srayanka are the best of the best. They’re right in the centre of the column.’
Kineas nodded. ‘Then that’s where the blow needs to fall,’ he said.
He put out pickets, a few of the Sakje riding as much as fifty stades south and east, and then he and his selected officers rode the banks of the river for twenty stades north and south, but Philokles’ ambush site was the best. To the north of the island of willows was another island covered in poplar, and to the south was a third island covered in rose bushes and tamarisk. More tamarisk grew in a shield-shaped tangle to the north and east along the bank and spreading away south, blocking the line of sight of the approaching force.
That night, he gathered all the officers down to the lowliest file leader and drew a map in the sand. He oriented them on the island of willows where they stood.
‘Here is the river,’ he said, showing the course of the Polytimeros. ‘Here is the trade road they will come up. The trees from the spring banks shade the road and offer cover.’ He allowed the tip of his stick to follow the road. ‘Just south of here is a stand - really a thicket - of tamarisk and poplar. The road winds between the trees and the river.’ Kineas indicated the riverbank and the current river bed. ‘The battlefield will be shaped like a diamond. They enter the diamond here, when they begin to pass between the woods and the river. Their scouts will not find Temerix in the tamarisk trees,’ (a ripple of laughter for the pun), ‘and will pass down the road. If any of them are really professional, they’ll ride right around the trees to the south. If so, we can forget them. The bulk of the column will enter the defile here,’ he indicated the top of the diamond, ‘and march along the road. There will be eight hundred of them in the front division and they’ll cover two stades of road. When the head of the column is ready to cross the Polytimeros here,’ and he indicated the island of willows where they stood, ‘the middle of the column will be passing Temerix. Understand?’ He received a chorus of nods and grunts. ‘I’ll show you in the morning, in any case. Unless some hothead screws it up, the column will keep marching across the Polytimeros. The infantry in the first division will either cross and keep marching, if they’re idiots, or they’ll cross and form in battle order to cover the second division, if they’re acting like soldiers.’
Tyrant: Storm of Arrows Page 29