Christian Cameron: Storm of arrows

‘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.