Tyrant: Storm of Arrows (62 page)

Kineas laughed, and it hurt. ‘You’re a good man,’ he said.

Philokles smiled. ‘I can’t hear you say that too often.’

The haze was clearing because the Scythians were too fatigued to pursue, and besides, the water of the Jaxartes was up to the hocks of their horses. Phalangites scrambled across the ford that they had won at such cost. Alexander’s charge had saved them, but they had no order and they were done for the day.

Kineas turned his head and he knew them all - every man and woman - and he saw how the dream was true and not true. He looked to the front and he saw a beaten army, awaiting only the last blow. Just at the base of the great dead tree a lone horseman sat on an armoured horse, his gold-covered helm red in the last of the sun. He had a bow.

Leon’s voice, away to the left, called through the red murk, ‘He’s mine!’ and started into the water.

Diodorus said, ‘Keep the line, by Ares!’

Kam Baqca was at his shoulder. ‘
It is time to cross the river
,’ she said.

Kineas raised his sword, though the pain came in like the sea at flood tide. Above the red swirl of dust he could see the last of a blue sky, and high in the sky an eagle circled.

‘Charge!’ he said. He gestured . . .

EPILOGUE

The next day in the full light of the sun, Srayanka crossed the river with thirty riders, all spear-maidens, their armour clean, their horses groomed and their hair adorned with circlets of roses and grass. Srayanka wore the sword of Cyrus, the hilt of jade flashing its own message in the sun.

On the enemy side, they met an escort of Macedonians who were not so clean, and she nodded to herself. The escort was led by the one Kineas had known - Tolmy - and he was wounded. She gave him only a blank face. They rode through a silent camp of Macedonians - silent except for the groaning of the wounded and the shrill pain of the horses. Those who could stared at her as she passed.

She led her column past the siege machines where unwounded men stood ready, and past lines of tents and hasty shelters made of blankets, to where a dozen pavilions were pitched together, and Tolmy led them into a courtyard formed by the pavilions. ‘The king will see you here. He is wounded.’ He spoke very loudly, as if to a fool.

‘My husband put him down,’ she said, in Greek, and the Macedonian trooper’s mutterings were as ugly as her smile.

She did not dismount, although Tolmy beckoned to her several times.

‘The king awaits you,’ he said.

‘Tell him to come here. I do not dismount in a camp of enemies.’ She raised her chin.

Her heart pounded in her chest, until she reminded herself that she had nothing to lose. She kept her chin high and eventually the flap of the greatest tent opened and Alexander emerged. He was pale, and he limped, and he immediately sat when a seat was brought.

‘Only an Amazon would bring this courtesy, lady. Any other defeated king comes and kneels.’

Srayanka shrugged. ‘I am kind, then. I will not ask you to kneel.’

Alexander’s face was instantly a mask of rage. ‘It is you who are beaten,’ he spat.

She had a bag in her left hand. She opened it and threw the object it held on to the ground. It was Alexander’s golden helmet. ‘I might have put this atop a trophy such as the Greeks raise, across the river, and
nothing
could you do to stop me.’ She nodded at his silence. ‘Keep it with my thanks for your courtesy when I was a hostage.’

Alexander drew breath to speak and she raised her hand. ‘Listen. I have not come to mock. You killed my husband - but I will hold my hand. You will not come across the Oxus or the Jaxartes, and the Sakje will no longer support the usurper Spitamenes, whom I hate. That is my word. Cross the rivers and die. Go elsewhere and conquer as you will.’

‘I will conquer the world,’ Alexander said. His anger was quenched already by his burning curiosity, his interest, his appreciation.

She spat back, ‘Stay off the sea of grass, King.’ She shrugged. ‘Tell your slaves we came and gave you tribute, if you must. But stay off the sea of grass.’ She drew the sword of Cyrus from the scabbard at her side. ‘My people say this is the sword that Cyrus the Great King brought to the sea of grass. He left it with us. Come across the river and see what you will leave behind. I have spoken.’

She left him sitting on his ivory stool, holding his helmet. She didn’t wait for her escort of Macedonians, who had dismounted, expecting a longer parley. She gathered her maidens and they rode clear, and no hand was raised against them.

And across the river, at the top of the ridge that towered over the ford of the Jaxartes, a big man, naked in the sun, made a pile of all the Macedonian armour that his friends had stripped from the dead. He wept as he worked, but he worked hard, and many hands helped. He built the trophy carefully, until it towered above the ridge, and the helmet that graced the top had a blue plume and the bronze caught the sun and burned like a beacon.

HISTORICAL NOTE

Alexander lost?

What kind of revisionist claptrap is this, anyway?

Alexander’s record of endless victory was widely questioned in his own lifetime and there’s no need to call an historian ‘revisionist’ if he chooses to believe that Alexander was fallible. Most of our sources on Alexander date from
long
after the events of his life but, rather like the gospels, we suspect that ancient authors (like Diodorus Siculus and Arrian and Plutarch) had access to contemporary works we have lost. Whether you accept this or not, it’s worth noting that Peter Green, Alexander’s best biographer (in my opinion) felt that Alexander was beaten on the first day at the Granicus and only Parmenion’s direct intervention saved him on the second day.

By the same token, while some historians choose to accept Arrian’s contention that Alexander won the Battle at the Jaxartes, I invite the reader to look at the sources with the jaundiced eye of the modern newspaper reader. Something went dreadfully wrong in the Jaxartes campaign - I think most historians would agree on that. Troops were sent home and defeats were experienced. Alexander did not, as it turned out, choose to conquer the steppes or even advance into them.

It is worth noting that Cyrus really did lose his life and his army to the Massagetae, and that Darius got into deep trouble against the Western Scythians. It seems unlikely that Alexander’s army could force a decisive victory against the nomads, even if he managed to force a river crossing. Note that, even if you believe that he won the battle, he didn’t advance one step beyond the battlefield. Compare that to his actions in other fields, and ponder . . .

I think he lost - or rather, as the novel suggests, I think he failed to win.

For those relatively unversed in the period, Alexander’s murder of Parmenion and the loss of the column south of Marakanda are historical events, as are the ‘treason of Philotas’ and his subsequent torture and execution, the murder of several thousand Sogdian prisoners, and the riches and power of the Euxine cities and the Scythian tribes of the Sea of Grass. My website,
www.hippeis.com
, has a bibliography. For those who know these events well, I created my own timeline based on the superb comparison charts in the annex to Robinson’s
History of Alexander the Great and the Ephemerides of Alexander’s Expedition
(1953) which allow the reader to compare Arrian, Diodorus, Justin, Curtius, and Plutarch on an event-by-event basis.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Very little survives of the Scythian language, and I am an author, not a linguist. I chose to represent some Scythic words with Avestan, and some with modern Siberian words, and some with Ossetic words, all with the intention of showing how difficult a language barrier is, even when many words share common roots. I have a very little skill with Classical Greek, and none with any of the other languages mentioned, and any errors in translation are entirely my own. I have translated some of the poetry on my own, and other passages I have paraphrased from nineteenth and early twentieth century translations - which were excellent! In particular, the
Hymn to Demeter
on page 45 is from Hugh G. Evelyn-White’s translation. The extracts and quotes from Aristophanes’
Lysistrata
on page 166 are John Lindsay’s translation of 1926. The
Hymn to Ares
on pages 297-298 is from Hugh G. Evelyn-White’s translation. The poetry on page 311 is, of course, Samuel Butler’s translation of one of the
Iliad
’s most famous passages. Page 359 features another Homeric Hymn, this my own (with help from Perseus!).

In addition, as you write about a period you love (and I have fallen pretty hard for this one) you learn more. Once I learn more, words may change or change their usage. As an example, in
Tyrant
I used Xenophon’s
Cavalry Commander
as my guide to almost everything. Xenophon calls the ideal weapon a
machaira
. Subsequent study has revealed that Greeks were pretty lax about their sword nomenclature (actually, everyone is, except martial arts enthusiasts) and so Kineas’s Aegyptian
machaira
was probably called a
kopis
. So in the second book, I call it a
kopis
without apology. Other words may change - certainly, my notion of the internal mechanics of the
hoplite phalanx
have changed. The more you learn . . .

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’m always sorry to finish an historical novel, because writing it is the best job in the world and researching it is more fun than anything I can imagine. I approach every historical era with a basket full of questions - how did they eat? What did they wear? How does that weapon work? This time, my questions have driven me to start recreating the period. The world’s Classical re-enactors have been an enormous resource to me while writing, both with details of costume and armour and food, and as a fountain of inspiration.

In that regard I’d like to thank Craig Sitch and Cherilyn Fuhlbohm of Manning Imperial, who make some of the finest recreations of material culture from Classical antiquity in the world (
www.manningimperial.com
). I’d also like to thank Paul McDonnell-Staff for his depth of knowledge and constant willingness to answer questions - as well as the members of the Melbourne and Sydney Ancients for permission to use their photos, and many re-enactors in Greece and the UK and elsewhere for their help. Special thanks to Ridgely Davis (and Jack!) who took the time to teach me how to use a javelin from horseback. And years of thanks to the members of my own Hoplite group, the Taxeis Plataea, for being the guinea-pigs on a great deal of material culture and martial-arts experimentation.
On to Marathon!

Kineas and his world began with my desire to write a book that would allow me to discuss the serious issues of war and politics that are around all of us today. I was returning to school and returning to my first love - Classical history. And I wanted to write a book that my friend Christine Szego would carry in her store - Bakka-Phoenix bookstore in Toronto. The combination - Classical history, the philosophy of war, and a certain shamanistic element - gave rise to the volume you hold in your hand.

Along the way, I met Prof. Wallace and Prof. Young, both very learned men with long association to the University of Toronto. Professor Wallace answered any question that I asked him, providing me with sources and sources and sources, introducing me to the labyrinthine wonders of Diodorus Siculus, and finally, to T. Cuyler Young. Cuyler was kind enough to start my education on the Persian Empire of Alexander’s day, and to discuss the possibility that Alexander was not infallible, or even close to it. I wish to give my profoundest thanks and gratitude to these two men for their help in re-creating the world of fourth century BC Greece, and the theory of Alexander’s campaigns that underpins this series of novels. Any brilliant scholarship is theirs, and any errors of scholarship are certainly mine. I will never forget the pleasure of sitting in Prof. Wallace’s office, nor in Cuyler’s living room, eating chocolate cake and debating the myth of Alexander’s invincibility.

I’d also like to thank the staff of the University of Toronto’s Classics department for their support, and for reviving my dormant interest in Classical Greek, as well as the staffs of the University of Toronto and the Toronto Metro Reference Library for their dedication and interest. Libraries matter!

I now have a website, the product of much work and creativity. For that I owe Rebecca Jordan - please visit it. The address is at the bottom of this.

I’d like to thank my old friends Matt Heppe and Robert Sulentic for their support in reading the novel, commenting on it, and helping me avoid anachronisms. Both men have encyclopedaeic knowledge of Classical and Hellenistic military history, and again, any errors are mine. In addition, I owe eight years of thanks to Tim Waller, the world’s finest copy-editor. And a few pints!

I couldn’t have approached so many Greek texts without the Perseus Project. This online resource, sponsored by Tufts University, gives online access to almost all classical texts in Greek and in English. Without it I would still be working on the second line of
Medea
, never mind the
Iliad
or the
Hymn to Demeter
.

I owe a debt of thanks to thank my excellent editor, Bill Massey, at Orion, for giving this book a try, for his good humor in the face of authorial dicta, and for his support at every stage. I’d also like to thank Shelley Power, my agent, for her unflagging efforts on my behalf.

Finally, I would like to thank the muses of the Luna Café, who serve both coffee and good humor, and without whom there would certainly not have been a book. And all my thanks - a lifetime of them - for my wife Sarah, to whom this book is dedicated.

If you have any questions or you wish to see more or participate (want to be a hoplite at Marathon?) please come and visit
www.hippeis.com
. And for those interested in further adventures, the website has an 80-page novella (and it’s free) about the days and weeks following Kineas’s death called
Leon’s Story
.