Christian Cameron: Storm of arrows

‘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.

The enemy commander came up with his staff and more cavalry.

‘Eumenes,’ Kineas said with satisfaction. He knew the Cardian immediately from his heavy athletic physique. The story was that Philip, Alexander’s father, had seen the Cardian fighting in an athletic contest and drafted him on the spot. The Cardian had never disappointed the father or the son, and his physique, superb as it was, came second to his brain.

Eumenes rallied the Bactrians easily and his force began to deploy along the river, easily outflanking Srayanka’s Sakje on both flanks. The enemy commander had men on fresh horses, and quivers full of arrows, and the Sakje began to flinch, giving ground from the riverbank and then abandoning the tree line altogether.

‘Pen-pusher,’ Diodorus said with disgust, referring to the Cardian’s post as military secretary. They were lying in the gravel at the edge of the ridge. ‘Caution personified.’

Kineas nudged him and pointed carefully, drawing his friend’s attention to the bright flash of a golden helmet. ‘ He won’t be cautious,’ he said.

Upazan was waving his lance, pointing across the river.

Upstream a stade or so, Ataelus’s prodromoi burst from cover into the flank of a troop of mercenary horse, shooting at the gallop. The enemy cavalry detached some files to defeat them.

Across the river, Eumenes gave a sharp nod, as if the revealing of Ataelus’s ambush had decided him. The Bactrian cavalry put away their bows. Upazan was already in the water with thirty armoured Sauromatae.

‘Ares’ balls, Kineas!’ Diodorus rolled off the top of the ridge and got to his feet. ‘He is coming across.’ Diodorus sounded as if he’d just been invited to a particularly fine party.

Kineas shook his head. ‘He ought to give it up. No point to a flank march that meets resistance.’

Diodorus stepped into the hand-loop on his spear haft and sprang on to his charger without touching her back, a dramatic mount that brought a rustle of approval from the Olbian troopers. He bowed from the saddle. ‘To Hades with that. He’s coming.’

Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘Showy bastard,’ he said to Diodorus and leaped on to the back of his second charger without touching the gelding’s back. He grinned at Diodorus, who shook his head.

‘Who’s the showy bastard now, Strategos?’ he asked.

Kineas took his spears from Carlus. ‘Now for victory,’ he said to the assembled Olbians and Keltoi. He touched his heels to the gelding’s flanks and rode carefully to the top of the ridge, until he could once again see into the valley of the Jaxartes.

Just as on the Oxus, the Macedonians and their allies had formed on a broad front, intending to swamp Srayanka’s thin force. Six squadrons of Bactrians, Sogdians and mercenary cavalry covered almost four stades along the bank, spread out because sometimes the banks were too high or the scrub too thick for cavalry. Eumenes’ trumpeter blew a long call and then repeated it, and the whole force came across in a rush. It showed better discipline than Craterus’s force had demonstrated, and Kineas’s opinion of Eumenes the Cardian went up again.

Srayanka’s household shot one volley at close range and broke, cantering to the rear, easily gaining ground on the riders coming across the river. The river was only dactyloi deep in most places, but horses wanted the water or they feared what lay beneath and they picked their way across.

Eumenes, visible in a purple cloak and a silvered bronze Boeotian helmet with a gold wreath of bravery atop it, sat peering under his hand, watching the ridge where Kineas sat on the back of his horse. He turned, shouting something at his hyperetes. Kineas felt like hiding, an irrational desire given that it was almost certainly too late for Eumenes to save his force from Kineas’s trap.

Kineas muttered a prayer to Tyche that she not punish him for this mental hubris. Of course, it was all still in the hands of the gods.

The trumpeter raised his trumpet at virtually the same moment that Diodorus led the whole of the Olbian cavalry over the ridge at the trot and put them straight into a gallop. The ridge was nothing — a few men high at its highest point — but it was sufficient to add momentum to the Olbians.

Eumenes’ trumpet call rang out.

Kineas watched as hundreds of enemy horsemen hesitated, in the river or just reaching the top of the bank. The signal was obviously a recall.

Kineas turned to Darius at his side. ‘Tell Lot, now,’ he said.

Darius grinned and pushed his horse into a gallop.

At his side, Philokles laughed. ‘All morning,’ he said, ‘I have been dreading the fact that I would finally have to fight on horseback.’

‘You’re a fine horseman,’ Kineas said.

‘The best in Sparta,’ Philokles said. He was laughing.

The Olbian cavalry struck the Bactrians and Sauromatae at the edge of the Jaxartes and blew through them, unhorsing dozens of men and knocking horses to the ground or into the water. Their wedge was scarcely disordered, and Diodorus led them on, right into the Jaxartes, an arrowhead pointed at the enemy commander.

Off to Kineas’s right, Srayanka rallied her household with a raised hand, turned her horse under her like a circus performer in Athens and led them straight back at the enemy. Her household formed its wedge at the trot and she kept her force slow, so that they hit the shattered tangle of the Bactrians and stayed to kill them.

Kineas could see Upazan’s helmet in the melee, and he saw Leon pushing to meet the Sauromatae boy. Leon downed a better-armoured foe with a spear thrust to the face, recovered to parry a lance thrust from an unhorsed man, and had to sidestep his horse to avoid being unhorsed himself. Sitalkes finished the man with the lance and Leon pressed in, but Upazan turned his horse, parrying blows from three Olbians, and ran.

Baulked of his prey, Leon reared his horse and threw his spear. It went over the Keltoi in front of him and struck Upazan squarely between the shoulders — and bounced off his scale thorax.