Christian Cameron: Storm of arrows

Diodorus shrugged. ‘So?’ he said. ‘They’ll run, and then they’ll stop. Alexander will proclaim victory. Nothing will be changed. Isn’t that what we’ve learned on the plains?’

Philokles mounted his charger — the same horse that Satrax had given him in the snow, a year and more ago. ‘Now Kineas seeks to teach us a different lesson, my friend.’

Kineas took his children from Nihmu and kissed them both. ‘You will protect them?’ he asked.

‘Until they begin to protect me,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Baqca.’

Kineas turned for his horse. Philokles gave Kineas a hand and Srayanka pushed and together they got Kineas up on Thalassa.

‘Get the horses watered,’ Kineas said. ‘All of them.’

Srayanka nodded, as did Lot.

Kineas sat silent for a long time, and gradually his friends, his staff, the chieftains and all around him became quiet.

He was about to speak when he saw the eagle.

He pointed off to the south. The eagle was rising slowly from across the river, clearly burdened by something — probably a rabbit. The prey’s entrails hung down between the eagle’s wings, unbalancing his flight. The bird turned and beat slowly towards them, wings pumping the air.

Among the Greeks and Sakje all conversation ceased, and every head watched the bird as it flew slowly, erratically, and as it closed, Kineas could see that the eagle had been feeding on the carcass of the rabbit, whose blood stained its white fur in streaks. The eagle rose again on a draught of warm air as it came over the bend in the Jaxartes where the officers had gathered while Kineas’s wounds were tended. Then the eagle vented a raucous scream, pivoted on a wingtip and dropped the carcass of the rabbit, so that it plummeted to earth, making Thalassa shy and bouncing as high as a man’s head before flopping almost at Kineas’s feet. The eagle screamed again and turned away, leaving Kineas with an impression of fierce, mad intelligence from its golden eyes. Rid of the carcass, it flew like the wind itself, rose into the heavens and raced away.

The waves of pain from mounting had vanished with the eagle. He straightened his back and raised his voice. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Would you leave a brother in a fight? This is not about winning. Winning — it is just as Diodorus has said. This is about virtue. ’

‘And you will die for virtue?’ Diodorus asked, but his eyes were on the sky.

‘Wouldn’t you?’ Kineas asked. ‘You never left me in the agora that day, Diodorus. You might have run.’

Diodorus put his hand before his eyes.

Kineas took a painful breath. ‘This is what we do, friends. Let’s do it well.’

Srayanka kissed him. Then she rose, clamping her mare between her legs and stretching her spine.

‘Sakje!’ she shouted. ‘Will you follow the king to battle!’

‘Baqca-King,’ they roared, a long, drawn-out roar like the sound of lions at the edge of night.

She was crying. Many of them were crying, but the dust dried their tears as they rode.

They rode five stades or more, seeing only the ephemera of battle — a fleeing rider, a wandering horse with its entrails dragging behind, screaming in pain. Time had flowed away under them like the rivers of the steppe, and it was afternoon, and despite fresh horses, they were tired.

And then they could hear the battle before they could see it, a cacophony of horse noise and metal that filled the air. Swirls of dust came floating over the low ridge in front of them as if ejected from the battle, or as if the spirits of the dead were fleeing.

Kineas stopped his horse at the base of the ridge. He waved to Ataelus. ‘Go and be my eyes,’ he said.

Ataelus gave a sad smile. ‘For you!’ he called, and he and his wife galloped diagonally up the ridge.

Kineas turned to the officers. ‘Dismount. Have the troopers take a drink,’ he said. ‘When we go over the ridge, we’ll have the Sakje on the right, the Sauromatae in the centre, and the Olbians on the left, where they are least likely to get entangled with the Massagetae or the Dahae.’ He looked at them all. ‘Unless Ataelus tells me something that shocks me, we will go over the ridge and straight into the maelstrom.’

Diodorus was ash-straight, sitting his horse as if on parade in Athens. ‘What is our objective?’ he asked.

Kineas raised an eyebrow. ‘I intend to cut my way to Alexander,’ he said. ‘But failing that, remember what Zarina said. You are warriors. Do as you will.’ He allowed himself a small smile. ‘Obedient warriors in crisp formations!’

He won an answering smile from Diodorus.

He was considering a farewell speech — a classic battle oration — when he saw Ataelus careering down the ridge, Samahe at his heels. The man’s body language screamed of disaster and Kineas abandoned his notion of a formal goodbye. ‘Mount,’ he called.

He waited until the slackers were mounted. ‘Walk,’ he called. He waved his arms to indicate that the Sauromatae and the Sakje should form arrowheads to the right as he had described. Srayanka reached out a hand — a hard hand with a doe-soft back — and they clasped hands like soldiers. ‘Goodbye!’ she said. ‘Wait for me across the river!’

‘Live long, Queen!’ he shouted back in Sakje, and they were parted, her column forming to the right as his bore straight up the ridge.

Ataelus pulled up next to him. ‘The Zarina’s standard is down,’ he said. ‘The Dahae are leaving the field.’

‘Ares wept!’ Diodorus said.

And Kineas thought, This is not what I saw.

Even Thalassa laboured over the last of the climb, but before the sun had set another finger’s-breadth, Kineas topped the ridge and the whole of the battlefield was laid out before him, a bowl of war covering eight stades or more from ridge to ridge. And what he saw shook him.

Nearer to him, Scythian warriors on the other slope of the ridge were retreating, shooting arrows, in the face of a heavy line of enemy cavalry — Macedonians and Greeks and Sogdians all intermixed. The Scythians were spread thin, and they gave ground quickly and never tried to rally.

Down in the centre of the bowl, the pikemen of the phalanx had established a line across the ford and had pushed on for some distance. A rubble of dead horses, visible even at this distance, marked the futility of the Sakje resistance. But there was just one phalanx — the other was visible, pikes erect, across the river behind the line of siege machines.

Only far away, at the limit of vision on the Sakje right, did the army of Macedon seem to be getting the worst of it. There, and only there, was the movement of the antlike contestants retrograde. Years of watching battles — and serving in them — had gifted Kineas with an instant grasp of the meaning of the hundreds of signs — sounds, motion, even the quality of reflection of light could tell you which direction a man was moving. The Macedonian left was losing. The rest of their army was at the point of victory.

Over all of it, the fog of Ares rose from the sandy ground to obscure everything but the wraithlike movements and the strongest glints of polished metal. The Sakje still glittered with gold, so that even through the battle haze, Kineas could estimate their positions.

Nowhere could he find Queen Zarina, who should have been in the centre. But just to the near side of the enemy centre, just behind the fighting, Kineas could see a purple cloak surrounded by aides. Even as he watched, Alexander was leading a wedge of Companions into the Massagetae nobles to his front.

And behind the Macedonian lines was the river. Dead trees filled the ford, and across the river, a huge dead tree towered over the field, stark and awesome, and Kineas felt the full weight of his doom. He shivered, and his side hurt — something liquid seemed to move inside his skin, and he swayed in the saddle. He began to turn his horse — he thought of how he might, after all his posturing, leave the field, flee with honour. Or without it.