Christian Cameron: Storm of arrows

‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘Listen, my love — I can rally my men in an hour. Marthax will never stand against us — the Grass Cats and the Cruel Hands and my phalanx will break him in the dawn. You will be queen.’

She smiled — a smile that showed him that she had thought all of this through, and didn’t need his political guidance, however much she loved him. ‘I would be queen of nothing,’ she said. ‘This way, my child will be king. Now go.’

‘Child?’ he said, dumbstruck, as she pushed him away and yelled for Hirene, her trumpeter.

And then he was no longer a lover or a warrior, but a general, and he had work to do. Srayanka’s column, with herds of horses, goats and sheep, and a hundred heavy wagons, moved east just after dawn. Kineas’s Greek cavalry shadowed their departure, and Ataelus’s scouts watched Marthax.

Marthax was mounted, the rising sun flashing on his gold helm and his red cloak, and his warriors had their bows in their hands, but they didn’t move.

The sun was high in the sky by the time Kineas’s hoplites marched south, but they were going home and they were happy to be moving. They sang the paean as they marched past Marthax’s men. They had fought Macedon together, and neither side seemed interested in conflict.

Kineas ignored Diodorus’s hand on his bridle and his admonitions and rode clear of his column. He trotted up a short slope to where Marthax, massive and red, sat on his war charger — a great beast easily two hands taller than any horse in the army. Around him sat his knights and his leaders. Kineas knew them all. They had been comrades, until yesterday.

‘Are we enemies?’ Kineas asked, without preamble.

Marthax looked sad. He shrugged. ‘Will you marry her?’ he asked.

‘The Lady Srayanka? Yes, I intend to marry her.’ Kineas had a linen sack in his hand, and he toyed with the knot of the string securing the neck of the bag.

‘Then we are enemies,’ Marthax said slowly. ‘I cannot allow you — the king of Olbia — to wed my most powerful clan leader.’

Kineas met his eyes, and thought of the last year — planning a campaign and executing it, with this man at his side, his humour, his great heart, his invincible size and clear head. ‘You are making a mistake,’ he said quietly. ‘I am not the king of Olbia. I do not want your throne — and nor do you.’

Marthax — a man who never quailed, who knew no fear — glanced away, looking over the plains. ‘I will be king,’ he said. ‘And I am not Satrax, to tolerate her scheming. She will wed me, or no one.’

Kineas shook his head. ‘You are being a fool. Who is giving you this advice? She will not marry you — you don’t even want her! And her claim to the kingship is better. The first time you make a mistake, the tribes will desert you.’

Marthax turned slowly back to him. He shrugged. ‘I have spoken my words,’ he said. ‘If she returns from the east, she will be my subject, my wife or a corpse.’

Kineas opened the sack and dropped the contents on the ground. ‘She was almost a corpse last night,’ he said.

Around them, the knights shifted and a murmur of discontent came like a breeze over grass.

Marthax looked at the head lying there. ‘You have murdered one of my knights,’ he said, but he appeared more confused than angry.

‘This one attacked her yurt in the night,’ Kineas said, pointing at the head of Graethe. ‘He had fifty men. They are all dead.’ Kineas looked around. ‘You are making a terrible mistake, Marthax, and someone is leading you to it.’ Kineas raised his voice. ‘Let me be clear. You — and you alone — have split the clans. This one paid for his attempt to murder the lady. Now she is riding east, to fight the monster. You will let her go. You will let her go. ’ He took a deep breath. ‘I am the lord of the walking spears, and of the flying horses. And I am baqca. Harm her on her march east, and I will burn your City of Walls, and no merchant will ever come to the sea of grass again.’

‘Go and fuck yourself, Greek,’ Marthax said, rising to his full height in the saddle.

‘No gold. Nowhere to sell your grain. The end of your way of life. How long will you be king, Marthax? Will you last out the summer?’ Kineas rode his horse right up close. Marthax towered over him, but Kineas was too angry to be afraid.

‘Go, before we do you harm,’ Marthax said through his teeth.

And then the child was there, pushing between the horses unseen. She stood by Kineas. ‘ He will pretend to be king until the eagles fly,’ she said. ‘ They will pick his bones.’

‘And take this carrion-imp with you,’ Marthax said.

Kineas scooped the girl up, turned his horse and rode back to his column. She squirmed for a while and then dropped off his lap to the ground.

‘I must get my horses,’ she said.

Kineas let her go. A Scythian — even a child — was nothing without her horses, and Kineas understood the pull. Even as he watched her running across the grass towards the royal herd, he saw Prince Lot and the Sauromatae mounting up. They had fewer remounts and no wagons, and lived in tents made of heavy felt. There were two hundred of them, with another fifty wounded on travois dragged behind spare animals.

Prince Lot saw him and approached. His Greek was terrible and his Sakje stilted. After a minute, Kineas had gathered that the Sauromatae wanted to travel with the Greeks. Kineas rode on, calling for Eumenes. The boy — scarcely a boy now — had three wounds and was still in a wagon, but he was well enough to sit up and translate.

‘He says, “I wish to travel with you. I spoke to the lady — she rides too fast for my wounded.” He says, “Srayanka said that you would follow her by the Bay of the Salmon.” He says, “I can show you the road, and my wounded will have more time to rest.”’ Eumenes listened to Lot’s last phrase and gave a weary smile. He pointed at the fading dust cloud that was Srayanka and her clans. ‘He says, “She should have been queen.”’

Kineas smiled at the first good news of the morning. ‘I will be delighted to have you with us,’ he said. He repeated this until Prince Lot smiled broadly.

Kineas also had a handful of Sakje prodromoi. Ataelus had recruited them — almost twenty now — with liberal promises of horses, and made them into his own small clan, including his new wife. None of them had deserted, even the two Standing Horses, and they gave Kineas eyes far in advance of his little army wherever they marched. Another of old Xenopon’s recommendations, even though the man had probably been too conservative to approve of Kineas’s use of ‘barbarians’ for the role.

Kineas waved Ataelus in from his intense watching of the main Sakje host, and told him to include the Sauromatae in his calculations. Ataelus grunted. He rode over to the column of travois, where the adolescent girls rode lighter horses, with their bows in their hands.

‘For them, for scouting,’ Ataelus said. He spoke to Lot, who nodded.

Kineas turned to leave them to it, and started for the head of the column, but suddenly Ataelus’s wife screamed a war cry, and other scouts were shouting. He turned his horse in time to see the lanky figure of Heron, the hipparch of the hippeis of Pantecapaeum, bringing up the rearguard. He wore his perpetual scowl as he watched his troop ride by.

There was movement from Marthax’s camp. Out on the plain of grass, a dozen horses ran. Behind them came a troop of Sakje, all in armour. They were slower than the horses they pursued, and they were losing ground. Farther back, Marthax’s main line had begun to move forward.

‘Shit,’ Kineas said. He knelt on the back of his ugly warhorse and tried to see through the dust already rising over Marthax’s line. The man had three thousand cavalry — no more — and he couldn’t hope to win a pitched battle against Kineas’s hoplites and his Greek cavalry. But he could do a lot of damage by harrying Kineas’s march. He could force Kineas to waste weeks. He could cost Kineas the city of Olbia and leave the army stranded on the plain, at the mercy of the winter.