Christian Cameron: Storm of arrows

Eumenes the Cardian was looking around for support, and then he was riding away, followed by his staff, with Diodorus hard on his heels. The Athenian caught Eumenes’ trumpeter at the edge of the rising battle haze and tipped him out of the saddle with a swipe of his spear.

To the north, the enemy’s mercenary cavalry were across the stream and rallying on Srayanka’s flank, coming forward at a collected trot in a strong tetragon. Unlike Eumenes, the mercenary commander saw his part of the trap in time to respond, and he wheeled to face Lot’s Sauromatae on the flat ground a stade north of the ford, and both forces vanished in a towering cloud of dust.

Across the Jaxartes, Antigonus was sounding the rally call.

Kineas looked over the battlefield one more time. ‘You can’t have everything,’ he said. ‘The Sauromatae are in for a fight. Let’s go!’ He waved to his escort — the only reserve he had — and they were off, over the ridge and through the dust cloud of Srayanka’s last melee. Her golden gorget shone like the sun, and he found her easily.

‘I need to help Lot,’ he shouted.

‘Our horses are tired!’ she called, but she sent dozens of her household knights to swell his ranks as they rode north along the Jaxartes. The mercenaries were holding their own, their backs to the river, visible through the battle haze like spirits in the underworld.

‘Trot!’ Kineas ordered.

He had fifty men, and they began to pull in on either side of him to make a wedge. He wheeled his horse to make sure — sure! — that he would punch into the mercenaries and not disorder the Sauromatae, and then the dust stole his sight and he was in a tunnel of sound and fury and fear. A spear came out of the scrum and tore into his Getae gelding’s neck just as he threw his first — he never saw whether he hit his man or not — and then he was sword to sword with a Greek, and the Getae horse was sinking between his legs. He took a blow on his bridle gauntlet and hacked the man between his helmet and his cuirass and they went down together and he was punched off his feet by the next horse in his file riding over him. He curled into a ball, his side almost numb with pain where a horse hoof had hit him for the third time in four weeks. He tasted grit between his teeth and tried to spit. His own dying horse screamed as yet another horse trampled it and fell, and the weight of the horse’s rump crushed Kineas to the earth, drawing a scream of pain from him.

But the gods did not utterly desert him, and the horse’s weight was shared by his own gelding. They both rolled away, maddened, and yet no hoof caught him amidst the warp and woof of their tangle. He crawled a few feet clear.

‘Brother?’ Philokles asked. He reached down a strong hand and lifted Kineas out of the dirt and up on to his own charger’s back as if Kineas weighed less than Nihmu. ‘I would have sworn by all the gods that you had told me to avoid coming off my horse in a battle.’

Kineas put his hands around the Spartan’s waist. ‘Fuck yourself,’ he said thankfully.

The fight was over before Kineas was rehorsed, and he was the only casualty. His bodyguards were deeply ashamed, as neither of them had seen him fall, and their apologies had all the drama the Keltoi could bring to any theatre.

Lot emerged from the dust and pulled off his helm. His golden armour was scratched in several places and his sword was gone. ‘By the gods!’ he said. ‘That was a fight to remember. Who were they? Your cousins?’

Kineas watched the last of the Greeks crossing the Jaxartes, harried by Ataelus’s scouts and still in good order. ‘Greeks and Persians under a good officer,’ Kineas said. His side hurt when he laughed or breathed. He had broken ribs.

‘This officer?’ Lot asked, leading a horse forward. The man on the horse’s back looked defiant. He had bright blond hair and a heavy face.

Kineas didn’t know him. ‘Ransom?’ Kineas asked Lot, with a grimace for the pain.

Lot shrugged. ‘He was brave. I unhorsed him at the end — I thought I might keep him.’

Back at the ford, Srayanka and Diodorus’s trumpets were busy.

‘Where are you from, Hipparch?’ Philokles asked.

The man looked from one Greek spear to the next with wonder. ‘Amphipolis,’ he said. ‘You’re all Greek!’

Lot spat. ‘Eat my scrotum,’ he said in Sakje.

‘Listen, officer of Amphipolis,’ Kineas said. He felt the goddess at his elbow. ‘Listen, friend. Ride away. Go free. Your ransom is this — to go in person to the Parthenon and sacrifice to Athena.’

The Greek officer sat straight. ‘I will do that,’ he said dully. His elation at escaping death was slipping into an awareness of defeat.

‘I’ll just keep your horse,’ Lot said, pulling the reins. ‘Take him, lord.’

‘Good!’ Kineas said. He mounted the Thessalian gratefully, although he needed help and it hurt. He pointed back to the far ridge where the remounts awaited and touched Philokles on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go and find the others.’

They rode away, Olbians and Keltoi and Sauromatae, leaving one Greek cavalryman alone, dismounted in the dust.

By the time they reached the ford, Eumenes was gone and they could hear his men rallying on the flat ground above the Jaxartes, already three stades away.

‘He won’t come back,’ Diodorus said.

Kineas watched the Macedonians from beneath his hand, breathing hard. ‘Athena, I thought I was done for.’ He kept watching. ‘I’m inclined to agree. He’s going somewhere else.’

Kineas looked back across the ford. ‘How badly did we hurt him?’

Philokles shook his head. ‘Thirty or forty men. A bee sting.’

Kineas nodded. ‘Let the prisoners go — dismounted. They won’t fight us again today if they have to walk.’ He slumped. ‘I need to wash in the river and I need someone — Philokles — to wrap my ribs so that I can ride.’

‘We could just ride away,’ Diodorus said.

Srayanka nodded. ‘We turned them,’ she said. ‘No man can say we have not done our part.’

Kineas dropped from his horse to the ground and Sitalkes helped Philokles strip his armour. They tried to be gentle, but Kineas felt his vision tunnel and twice he cried out from the pain. Free at last of the scale shirt, he picked himself up and walked into the water. The cold helped him, as did the feeling of the grit running away. He splashed water on his torso, wincing as every motion of his left arm sent a pulse of pain down his chest and into his groin.

Srayanka held out a sheet of linen as a towel. ‘All my maidens are jealous,’ she said.

Kineas tried to smile. He felt better, but there were so many layers of pain and fatigue that he wasn’t sure he could function. He had lost a great deal in the dust when his horse died under him.

Philokles took another length of linen from Leon and began to wind it around Kineas with the whole strength of his arms. Kineas couldn’t breath much, but the pain in his side diminished.

‘I think we’ve done our part,’ Diodorus said. He obviously didn’t like what he was seeing.

‘What was our part?’ Kineas asked. ‘We did our part when we stopped Alexander on the Oxus — when we rescued you, my lady. When we stopped Zopryon.’ Philokles was binding his chest, winding it around and around his upper thorax. Kineas found it difficult to breathe, and Srayanka could see it.

‘You are wounded. Take the children and the rest of the wounded and start west,’ she said. ‘We will yet cheat this prophecy.’

Kineas took the deepest breath he could manage and was delighted to find no pain at the bottom of the air, even as his twin vision saw things far away. ‘Even now, Zarina is winning or losing this battle,’ he said. ‘Listen to me! She planned to line the riverbank. Alexander has his siege artillery. Guess what will happen! The phalangites will have room to claw a foothold on the bank. When Alexander leads his cavalry across, will the Dahae and the Massagetae hold?’