Tyrant: Storm of Arrows (58 page)

As they rode back, Philokles rattled on about his time with her. ‘Very much the sort of barbarian that Solon or Thales might have admired. Utterly free.’ He shook his head, barely visible in the moonlight. ‘I warned her that Spitamenes was coming. She knows him. I gather that it is a marriage of convenience.’

‘As long as he is on the right while we are on the left,’ Kineas said. ‘If he comes in front of Srayanka, she will kill him and to Hades with the consequence.’

They reached their camp in the last glow of the western horizon. Fires were lit and warriors ate their fill. Leon waited until they took their horses out to the picket lines.

‘We have food for two more days and then things will get tight,’ he said.

‘The whole host of the Sakje is in the same position,’ Diodorus said bitterly. ‘All Alexander need do is wait, and we will all melt away.’

‘Two hours ago you were ready to leave,’ Kineas said.

‘I’ve ridden all this way,’ Diodorus said, shrugging off his own mercurial comments.

‘Alexander is in the same situation. He’s converged all of his armies in the east at the edge of a desert, and he’s spent the summer fighting partisans. He doesn’t have the food stores he’s used to. We’ll fight him, tomorrow or the next day. My wager goes on the next day.’

Srayanka came up with Antigonus and the rest of the chiefs and officers, as if Kineas had called a council. They stood quietly, and Kineas smiled to think of the Sakje outside the queen’s red and white silk tent.

‘They’re fine?’ Kineas asked Srayanka.

Srayanka smiled. ‘Would I wander out here to talk of war if my children were unwell?’ she asked. She looked wryly at Samahe. ‘I am becoming my mother. When young, she rode with the spear-maidens, but in middle age, she was a mother first and her hand grew light.’

Kineas took her chin and kissed her. ‘I don’t think your hand will grow light,’ he said.

‘Let Spitamenes come under it tomorrow and we’ll see,’ she said.

‘Alexander is the enemy,’ Diodorus drawled.

‘Alexander was polite,’ Srayanka said. She tossed her head. ‘Hephaestion - that one I would geld, if only for Urvara’s sake.’

Kineas felt his guts roil. ‘I hadn’t heard this.’

Srayanka shrugged. ‘She’s a tough girl. He did not break her, and the young Olbian boy loves her, and she has healed. No more need be said. But Hephaestion . . .’ No one looking at Srayanka in the light of a fire needed to wonder if her hand had grown light. She cocked her head to one side. ‘So, husband, do you see it in your head?’

There in the firelight, Kineas outlined his plan. He drew pictures in the dust with the tip of a bronze knife he’d found in the fire pit. ‘Ataelus and I agree that Alexander will send a force north - either he will lead it himself or he will send someone he trusts. It’s something he learned from Parmenion. It will be Philotas, won’t it?’

‘He murdered Philotas!’ Diodorus said. ‘Old age must be getting to you.’

‘More fool he. Philotas was his best after Parmenion. So Eumenes, perhaps? The Cardian?’

‘Craterus?’ Philokles asked. ‘I never served the monster myself, but I know the names. Why not Craterus?’

Kineas shrugged. ‘Somebody dangerous, with good troops, probably all cavalry. In my head I still see Philotas.’ He paused and poured a libation to the dead man’s shade. ‘They’ll go north to the next ford - which Ataelus has already located - and try to push across into the queen’s left flank. We’ll meet them at the ford if we’re quick. That’s the best service we can do for this army.’

Everyone nodded.

‘And if Zarina loses, we’ll have a clear road home,’ Srayanka said.

Kineas nodded. ‘Yes.’ He didn’t elaborate.

‘Let us say we meet this Macedonian and rout him back across the ford,’ Samahe asked. She shrugged, looking around. ‘Why do you look at me this way? We have been known to win battles in the past!’

That got her a laugh.

‘Then what? Eh?’ She looked around, defiant.

Kineas nodded. ‘I really can’t say. We could cross after them and return the favour, but I would expect that any fight will leave us too beaten up to turn their flank - and we’re too few. We ought to be able to turn in on our own side, however,’ Kineas’s knife point traced a black furrow along the Sakje bank of the line that marked the Jaxartes, ‘and strike the flank of their main effort.’

‘Our horses would be blown,’ Srayanka said thoughtfully.

Diodorus had found a heavy basket to sit on. He leaned forward, the basket creaking under his weight, and he pointed a stick at the map in the dirt. ‘What if Alexander’s main effort is the northern ford?’ he asked.

‘Hmm,’ said Philokles. ‘How long would we last?’

Kineas shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t even fight, beyond some skirmishing to make the ford cost him.’ He gave a bitter smile. ‘We wouldn’t last long.’

‘No,’ Diodorus said. ‘And it wouldn’t be worth spit, anyway. This Sakje army isn’t a phalanx, Philokles. If you hit the Sakje in the flank, they just ride away and fight another day. If Alexander wants a fight, he has to goad them to it, fix them in place and then hit them.’

Srayanka nodded, as if she had held a conversation with herself. ‘Listen. Let us fight like Assagatje. Let us move all our remounts to here.’ She indicated a place just west of the ford, then pointed at Diodorus. ‘If Diodorus’s worst instincts are right, and Alexander comes north, we can fight in retreat, change horses and vanish. No pursuit could possibly catch us on fresh horses. Yes?’

All around the fire, the chiefs and officers nodded. Lot slapped her back. ‘Cruel Hands, you are still the cunning one.’

She went on, smiling a very unmotherly smile at her husband. ‘If we meet this flanking force and defeat it, we take the time to change horses - and we ride to the battle in the centre on fresh mounts.’

Kineas grabbed her and kissed her. They kissed, and the other leaders whooped and mocked them. When he left her lips, he shook his head. ‘You kiss better than any of my other cavalry commanders,’ he said, and she kicked his shin.

Diodorus looked at the map in the sand again. ‘We should move tonight,’ he said. He looked at Srayanka and shrugged, apologetic. ‘Forty stades under a bright moon is nothing to us after the desert. And then there will be no dust to betray us.’

‘Odysseus is, as usual, correct,’ Kineas said. He and Srayanka exchanged a long look, because precious hours were being taken from them, never to be replaced.

‘We will ride together, as we did when our love was young,’ she said, and she began to choke on her words, but she fought through unbroken. ‘I will ask you the names of things in Greek, and you will ask me the Sakje words, and we will forget the future and know only what is now.’

Philokles couldn’t bear it, and he turned away.

Ataelus was already calling for horses, and Antigonus was passing the unpopular news, but the rest stayed by the fire. The night on the plains was brisk.

‘I wonder where Coenus is?’ Diodorus asked. He waited a moment, and then decided that Kineas had not heard him. ‘Do you wonder—’ he began, and Kineas turned.

‘Coenus should be watching the sun rise over the mountains of Hyrkania in the morning,’ Kineas said.

‘Athena and Hermes, have we been riding that long in the desert?’ Philokles asked.

Ataelus grunted. ‘Yes.’

Diodorus thumbed his beard. ‘Every time you kiss Srayanka, I miss Sappho more.’

Kineas slapped his shoulder. ‘There are great days ahead,’ he said. He felt sad and happy at the same time. And then, after a pause, ‘See to Philokles when I am gone.’

Diodorus coughed to cover some tears that stood bright on his cheeks. ‘It just hit me that it will be as you say - that you do know the hour of your death.’ He sniffled. ‘Are you sure?’

Kineas gathered him in an embrace. ‘I know this battle,’ he said simply. ‘I die.’

‘Philokles?’ Diodorus asked, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Ares, it’s Srayanka who will need us.’

‘No,’ Kineas said. ‘She will be queen, and all the Sakje will be her husband. Philokles will have only you.’

Diodorus chewed his lip. ‘You remember sword lessons with Phocion?’

‘I think of them all the time.’ The two men were still locked in embrace.

‘I will be the last left.’ He was weeping, the tears flowing down his cheeks like the muddy waters of the Jaxartes.

‘So you must be the best,’ Kineas said. ‘When I fall, you command. Not just for one action, either. I leave you the bequest of all my unfought battles.’

Diodorus backed away, his hand hiding his face. ‘I was never the strategos you were,’ he complained.

Kineas gripped his neck. ‘Two years ago you were a trooper,’ he said. ‘Soon, we will fight Alexander. You know how to command. You love to command.’

‘Before the gods, I do,’ Diodorus said.

‘I leave you the bequest of my unfought battles,’ Kineas said again.

‘You should be king. King of the whole of the Bosporus.’

Kineas felt his own tears as he thought of all he would miss. His children, most of all. ‘Make Satyrus king,’ he said. ‘I’m too much an Athenian to be a king.’

The other Athenian stood straight. ‘I will,’ he said.

They covered forty stades in a dream of darkness and the soft glitter of moonlight on the sand, and the hand of Artemis the huntress covered them. Ataelus’s prodromoi waited at every obstacle and every turn, guiding them around a camp of Sakje in the dark, clearing them across a gully with a burbling stream at the base, and around a shaled hill that might have hurt the horses in the dark, until they came to the back of a long ridge running perpendicular to the Jaxartes. Ataelus rode up next to Kineas in the dark.

‘For fighting,’ he said quietly. He pointed down the ridge at the river as it bowed through a deep curve in the moonlight. ‘Iskander!’ he said, and pointed across the river, where a thousand orange stars shone in the foothills of the Sogdian mountains - Alexander’s cooking fires.

They rode on for an hour, the column winding back to be lost to sight in the darkness over the big ridge. Twelve stades later, as Kineas reckoned it, they descended sharply from the path they’d followed towards the river, which they could hear but not see.

He rode down into the vale, heedless of possible enemy patrols, eager to see the ground as best he could, and Srayanka came with him, her household clattering along behind. They rode hand in hand, almost silent.

At the edge of the ford, they halted.

‘Well?’ Srayanka asked.

Kineas shook his head and grinned. ‘For whatever it means, this is not the place of my dream,’ he said. ‘Too narrow.’ He pointed across. ‘No downed trees. No giant dead tree on the far shore.’

Srayanka exhaled as if she had held a single breath all day. ‘So?’ she asked.

Kineas looked at the sky. ‘I speak no hubris,’ he said. ‘When the Macedonians come, on this field, we will triumph.’

They turned quietly and rode back across the ridge, to camp and perhaps to grapple a few hours of sleep from the last of darkness and the pre-battle jitters.

But not for Kineas. He lay awake, his body entwined with hers. He no longer needed sleep. He no longer intended to cede a moment to sleep.

The end was as close as the point of his spear.

‘
I
want the enemy to see nothing but Sakje,’ Kineas said. Srayanka nodded, as did Lot.

Sitting on his cloak, Kineas was fixing his blue horsehair crest to his helmet. He had an odd feeling, as if he had done all these things before so many times that he was an actor, playing the same part on many different days in the theatre.

All around him, the Olbians were polishing their gear and affixing their helmet crests, the hyperetes of each troop moving among them to inspect their work. Men used ash gathered from their last fire pits to put a fine polish on their bronze. Men skilled with stones put a fine edge on spear points and swords. A few of the Keltoi spoke loudly, but most were quiet.

Philokles sat on a rock, sober. He was combing out his hair. Behind him, the red rim of the sun rose above the distant mountains in the east.

Sitalkes, who had once been Kineas’s slave, came up holding a pair of javelins, with long, thin shafts and linen throwing cords. ‘I didn’t think you had any,’ he said, looking at the ground.

‘May Ares bless you, Sitalkes!’ The pleasure of a good weapon made Kineas beam. ‘I hadn’t even thought of it. Where did you get them?’ He hefted one. ‘They’re beautiful!’

Sitalkes glanced at Temerix, who was watching from a distance, glaring at them under heavy brows. ‘Temerix made the points. I set them.’ He grinned. ‘Good wood. Cut-down lances.’

The two heads were gemlike, gleaming blue-red in the first light, far better work than was usually expended on javelins. Kineas embraced Sitalkes and then walked over and embraced Temerix, who stared at the ground while being hugged and then laughed aloud when the strategos turned away.

Kineas thought that he’d never heard the Sindi smith laugh.

As ordered, Srayanka’s people patrolled the edge of the river, their forms visible in a flash of gold or bronze or red leather. Most of her warriors were hidden in stands of trees on the near side of the Jaxartes, and a handful, the boldest, prowled the far bank.

The enemy force announced itself just before the end of the dawn, when shadows were still long on the ground and spear points winked against the last of the darkness. Their dust cloud showed them to be moving carefully, and their outriders made contact with Ataelus’s prodromoi and drove them back easily. Kineas watched from a stand of trees on the ridge, his helmet under his arm, his reserves hidden in a fold of ground behind him.

At the water’s edge, an hour later, two squadrons of Bactrians pushed Parshtaevalt unceremoniously across the river, brushing aside his heroics and the feverish archery of his companions in one quick charge that sent the Sakje fleeing for their lives. Srayanka was forced to reveal all of her ambushers to stem the rout. Her counter-charge stopped the Bactrians on the near bank and emptied a number of saddles, but the small size of her force was revealed.