Authors: Christian Cameron

Tyrant (72 page)

BOOK: Tyrant

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Kineas didn’t like the sound of the battle on the right. He glanced at the sun - still early morning, for all that he felt that he had fought all day. Kineas reined in by Eumenes, who had lost his helmet. ‘You have the command here.’ Kineas pointed at the gap, the road that still ran all the way to the ford. ‘Do all the damage you can,’ he said.

Eumenes looked at his tired men and the gap. ‘Are we winning?’ he asked.

Kineas shrugged. ‘You just broke a Macedonian taxeis,’ he said. ‘What more do you want?’

‘Where’s the king?’ asked Eumenes.

Good question, thought Kineas, as he rode for the right flank.

He rode up the ridge with Niceas and Sitalkes at his heels. He had to see.

The rout of the riverside phalanx had evened the score, but no more, and the veterans were holding Memnon’s men or even pushing them back. Zopryon’s main effort was falling to the right of the Olbian infantry.

There was a cavalry mêlée to the right of the spearmen - companions and Thessalians, Olbians and Sakje. It stretched from the right flank of Memnon’s men all the way to the north end of the ridge.

In Persia, there had always been dust. Dust was kind - it hid the bestial panorama beneath a shroud of earth. The Poet called it the
battle haze
. The damp ground of the sea of grass was not so kind, and Kineas was looking down at a cauldron of death with no disguise, no shroud of dust. The armoured mass of Macedon had fallen like the smith’s hammer on Nicomedes’ troop and the Grass Cats. Kaliax of the Standing Horse had hidden in the tall grass to the north and west of the ridge, had swept into the flank of the Macedonians, and stopped their advance - but that was all. The whole fight was balanced, a great circular mêlée of cavalry that stretched from Kineas’s feet to the north of the ridge, three stades of dying men and horses.

The balance was about to be broken. There were fresh Macedonians coming across the ford. They had to push through the broken taxeis, but someone would rally the raw men soon.

Balanced on the point of an arrow, Kineas thought. But only until the fresh Macedonian horse pressed into the Sakje on the far right. Then the cavalry fight would unravel like a skein of yarn, and the Thessalians would fall on the flank of Memnon’s infantry, and the rout would start.

‘Where is the king?’ Kineas asked the sky, and the gods.

Under his eye, Sakje shot Macedonians at arm’s length, and Macedonian lances emptied saddles, and men fought with spears and swords, or bare hands and daggers. Kineas fought the urge to do something. It was hard to sit and watch.

His reserve was pitifully small. His attempt to deliver a great blow against Zopryon’s line and withdraw had gone awry. There was no longer any hope of withdrawal. Like two wrestlers, the two armies could only fight until one was beaten - they were locked close.

Kineas thought he saw Zopryon. A big Macedonian in a purple cloak was pushing up the bank of the ford, and even as he watched, the man pointed at the cavalry mêlée and shouted. An arrow plucked the man at Zopryon’s side from his horse.

The Sindi on the thumb were still fighting, still slowing Zopryon’s manoeuvres across the ford.

Kam Baqca was at his side. She gestured with her whip - more like a staff of white wood. ‘I curse them, and they die,’ she said. ‘The grass curls around the legs of their horses. The worms open holes for their hooves.’

Kineas drank from a gourd of water handed to him by one of the slaves. ‘Zopryon’s horses are exhausted. Even with his advantage in numbers, he’s having trouble.’ He grimaced. ‘I was a fool to make a stand. I cannot break off. And the king is
late
.’ He met her eyes. ‘I need you to charge.’

‘Yes. I will charge. I will hold him,’ she answered. But she returned his smile - a singularly sweet smile, like that of a young girl receiving praise. ‘I am ready to die now,’ she said. ‘And now is the time. For me.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘And for me?’

‘Not yet, I think,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Baqca. Perhaps this will teach you the humility I never learned.’

She motioned with her staff, and her escort formed around her at the top of the ridge. They formed an arrowhead, with Kam Baqca and the standard at the tip.

Kineas wanted to remonstrate that they couldn’t ride straight down the ridge, but they were Sakje, and he knew them.

She flashed him one last smile. ‘Charge!’ she shouted in a man’s voice.

They fell down the hill like an avalanche of horseflesh, and they punched through the nearest ranks of Macedonians like a cleaver through meat. Dozens fell. Nicomedes’ beleaguered troop was saved, and the survivors rode clear, dismounted, drank water.

Kam Baqca’s risk allowed her to cut straight into the heart of the cauldron, and her fifty riders were like an arrow of gold flying through swirl of fog and mud.

Kineas sat with Sitalkes at his shoulder and watched the charge. So great was their impetus, and so hot burned their fire, that the cauldron of the mêlée moved away from the marsh’s edge. In the centre, the Macedonian cavalry flinched away from Memnon’s men.

Kineas pulled his gaze away from the Sakje priestess. At his feet the veteran taxeis was no longer pushing Memnon back. Philokles’ young epilektoi were into their flank files. From the height Kineas could see Philokles’ plume, could hear his battle rage. Even as he watched, Philokles tipped his great shield, slammed it into a new opponent and rolled his enemy’s shield down with the force of his arm and then killed him with a brutal spear lunge into the man’s unprotected throat. The men behind Philokles’ victim shifted uneasily.

Farther to the west, between the thumb of oaks and the flank of the veterans, the empty grass was filling with peltasts and Thrakes, and there were Thrake cloaks amidst the trees, hand to hand with the Sindi, who had stayed at their post to the end, and whose arrows had been the margin on the left.

Eumenes would charge the Thrake, and win, or lose. Either way, the left would hold.

Philokles and Memnon were spear to spear with the best Macedon had to offer, and nothing Kineas could do would change their fight.

At the north end of the ridge, Grass Cats and Olbians milled at the edge of the maelstrom, leaderless.

The golden arrowhead had gone deep, and the beast was wounded, but golden men and women were falling now. Kineas could no longer see Zopryon, but he could read the man’s thoughts. Zopryon must think that the golden arrow was the last throw - and that the golden helm was the king of the Sakje.

And off to the west, another flash of gold came across the river and out on the sea of grass. His heart rose.
The king
.

It was just mid-morning, and he needed an hour. One more distraction would buy time, and keep men alive. If the right held, then the centre would hold, and the king would come to find the men of Olbia alive. If the right collapsed, then the king would come only to build pyres for the dead. And if the king’s delay was deliberate . . .

Kineas turned to Petrocolus, who looked older than his fifty years. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

Without a word, he rode down the north flank of the ridge. Even from the last of the ridge he could still see the horsetail standard, well out on the plain. He wondered what would happen if he refused his fate and rode away.

He laughed. He motioned to Nicomedes’ men where they were drinking water, and they remounted to follow him, swelling his numbers.

Farther east, there were Grass Cats getting remounts, and a dozen of Diodorus’s troopers - and Diodorus.

‘These gentlemen gave us fresh horses,’ Diodorus said. His helmet was gone, and his red hair was almost blond in the sun. He had a nasty wound across his shoulder and one of the straps on his breastplate was severed. ‘It’s been warm work here. I thought we were going to withdraw?’

Kineas shrugged. ‘Too late.’

Diodorus started to struggle with his breastplate, and Sitalkes handed him a length of leather. The two of them worked to tie the breastplate tighter. Niceas was organizing the survivors into a single troop.

‘Where’s the king?’ Diodorus asked.

Kineas pointed out to the west with his whip. ‘The king is coming,’ he said. Men stopped what they were doing to listen, and he shouted it, pointing across the mêlée and the rising dust. ‘The king is coming!’ and the word spread like a grassfire on the plains.

Diodorus gave his cynical half-smile. ‘Of course he is,’ he said, and slapped Kineas on the back plate. ‘Let’s ride to meet him.’

Kineas made a motion with his whip, and the Olbians fell in on him, and Grass Cats rode in a loose knot at their right.

As they rode north, more men joined them - wounded men, and men who had, perhaps, had enough of the fight, and now felt differently. Kineas didn’t harangue them. He just gathered them, his eyes on the horsetail standard.

Every Sakje eye was on the horsetail standard, and every Macedonian eye. Sacred to the one - royal to the other. Kineas gathered his men while the maelstrom swirled to a new centre. He kept them moving north, pecking at the mêlée to disengage those who could be pulled free.

The ground was losing its moisture, and the dust of the deadly battle haze was finally starting to rise.

Kineas watched the battle as he pushed north. The Macedonian horses were done - ruined by the campaign, not the battle - and they could never pursue when the Sakje gave ground, so that he was able to take men out of the battle lines and the Macedonians could do nothing in response but watch.

It took time, and he saw too much. He saw Nicomedes’ body pinned under Ajax’s horse - just a spear’s length from the mangled remains of Cleomenes the traitor. He saw Lykeles with a broken lance straight through his body, and gentle, priestly Agis would sing no more of the Poet’s words with a sword cut across his face and neck. The Olbian cavalry had held the worst of the first Macedonian charge, and paid.

And Varô of the Grass Cats was surrounded by his household with a ring of dead enemies like a hill fort. The survivors were grim faced, but they rallied under the leadership of Varo’s daughter, Urvara. He gathered them and moved north, while the attention of his enemy was locked on the horsetail standard.

And then the standard fell.

Every Sakje gave voice together, and despite the distortion of a thousand voices, Kineas knew the word. ‘
Baqca!
They cried.

By then, Kineas had almost two hundred men - Olbians and men of Pantecapaeum, Diodorus and Andronicus, Coenus, Ataelus, Heron and Laertes with a length of linen tied around his bridle hand; two dozen Grass Cats and a handful of bloody Standing Horses as well as Niceas, Petrocolus and his troop. He was as far around the flank as he could spare the time to go, and he prayed to Athena that his two hundred men would, like Kam Baqca’s charge, distract Zopryon and his army for a few more minutes. The sun was high in the sky above the dust.

He pointed to where the standard had fallen. ‘That’s where Zopryon is!’ he called, his voice still strong. Sitalkes put a javelin in his hand.

He looked at his friends. There was no tree across the stream; he was on the wrong horse, no ford, the whole thing was insane. But the feeling of victory that suffused him was the same, and so he knew that this would be the time. And he meant to see it finished.

‘Zopryon’s head is Srayanka’s bride price!’ he yelled, and his voice held. They laughed, because of whom they were, Hellenes and Sakje laughing together, and their laughter was terrible.

‘Charge!’ he said, for the last time.