Christian Cameron - King of the Bosphorus

Satyrus's horse was hurt – it bucked, rose on its haunches and shook. Satyrus struggled to keep his seat and Eumeles swung at him with the mace, catching his left hand on the reins.

Satyrus rammed his heels into his horse to no effect. He cut at Eumeles, but the taller man had a better horse and managed to stay just out of his reach. He flicked the mace and Satyrus only just avoided losing his sword.

'I kill you, and the rest is easy,' Eumeles said.

Satyrus couldn't control his mount, and Coenus was locked spear to spear with another man. Satyrus's thoughts flashed to Sappho: Eumeles could say the same of your mother! He killed her because he feared her!

Satyrus's horse was shuddering. The mace blow had hurt it – there was blood in one ear.

'Kill me, and you will still lose this battle.' Satyrus had to shout, but Eumeles heard. 'And your kingdom. You are a fool, Eumeles.'

Eumeles flushed with anger. Being smarter – cleverer – than other men was the measure of his life. The word 'fool' carried. It struck like a blow.

Satyrus followed it up as if it was part of a combination. Just for a moment, the gods gave him control of his horse. He thumped its sides like a boy on his first horse and it leaped forward, breast to breast with the big Nisaean. Satyrus let go of the reins and got his left hand on Eumeles' elbow as he cocked back his mace for the final strike and pushed – the simplest of pankration moves. Then he smashed the pommel of his father's sword into the open face of Eumeles' helmet.

Satyrus's horse stumbled but he managed to cut the tyrant across the thigh under his guard, then he caught at Eumeles and dragged him from the saddle as his own horse went down. The tyrant screamed, front teeth gone, and rolled clear. Satyrus grabbed his ankle and got a kick in the head from his free leg. Satyrus was on the ground but he cut overhand with the sword in his right hand and landed a blow on Eumeles' breastplate. It held. Eumeles had his hand on his sword and he drew it and kicked Satyrus again. Satyrus rolled and parried. He locked his legs around the other man's trunk and sat up. His side flared like fire, but he got his sword point in under Eumeles' arm-

An arrow had appeared in Eumeles' throat. Satyrus looked up and Melitta was leaning over, reaching for another arrow.

'We got him!' she shouted. 'Now it's our time!'

Satyrus sat still for long heartbeats, looking into the empty eyes of his enemy. There was, truly, nothing there.

'You need a horse,' Coenus said.

Satyrus forced himself to his feet, his gut throbbing. Coenus had the tyrant's Nisaean. He looked taller than a mountain.

I get to try this once, Satyrus thought. And then I just won't be able to.

He got up on an aspis and flung himself – fatigue, hurt gut, arm wound and all – at the saddle. He got his right knee over the horse's back and clung – a pitful figure of a king, he assumed – for a long moment, and then his knees were locked against the tall horse's sides and he had the reins in his hand. He pulled off his helmet and gulped air. No one was watching except Coenus, who looked concerned, and Satyrus managed a smile.

He looked around. Eumeles' centre was going with his death. The Sauromatae in the middle had had enough, and they broke, and the Olbians and the best of the Sakje knights exploded through them, shredding their formation and then harrying the survivors. Satyrus let them go, pulling up in the dust to check his own wound. He felt weak. But he was alive.

The blood from his gut ran all the way down his crotch, but it was slowing. Unless the tip had been poisoned…

The thought made him feel weak. And it hurt.

Coenus reined in at his side. 'How bad, king?'

Satyrus had to smile. 'You've never called anyone king, old man!'

Coenus pointed behind them. 'Eumeles is dead. You are the king. I ought to get you off the field.'

Satyrus shook his head. 'No king worth following would quit the field until it was won. Upazan's still on the field,' he said, 'and Nikephoros. Find me that trumpeter and rally the Olbians. We need to help somebody. My money is on Ataelus.'

Coenus found the hyperetes, and the trumpet calls to rally rang out over the rout of the centre. Melitta heard the calls and she slowed Gryphon. She was unwounded, and he was still as strong as he'd been when she mounted in the morning. She patted his neck and looked for Scopasis – right at her elbow.

Behind him, Laen and Agreint and Bareint and all the rest of her knights. No one seemed to be missing.

No brother.

'Where's my brother?' she asked.

Scopasis shook his head. His full-faced Thracian helmet made him look sinister, a monster with a beard of bronze. 'I saw him remount,' he said. 'Coenus put him up on Eumeles' horse.' He shrugged. 'You ride away. I follow you.'

The Sindi waved an axe. 'We broke them!' he shouted.

She wished she had her own trumpeter. The Olbian hyperetes was sounding a recall, but he was a stade behind her and half of the centre was with her, the rest far down the field.

'We should go to the left,' she said.

No one questioned her. So they turned their horses east, ignoring the call of the trumpet. Men formed on her household – many of them Sakje, like Parshtaevalt, who came and rode with her as they turned.

'Lady!' he said.

'Parshtaevalt!' she called. 'I need to know what's happening on the left!'

She borrowed his trumpeter and together they rallied much of the centre and faced them to the left. It took time, and she could hear fighting – heavy fighting – in the haze to the east.

Kairax went himself, and came back when they had three hundred knights, all facing east with the setting sun at their backs.

'The Greeks are spear to spear and breast to breast,' Kairax said. 'No one will give a step. The farmers carry all before them, but they will not try the flank of the phalanx. And who can blame them?'

Melitta took a deep breath. With one order, she would expend her last throw of the dice. Could her three hundred break Nikephoros?

They had failed the day before.

She rode out a pace and turned her horse so that she faced the Sakje knights.

'We will go right into the back of the phalanx,' she said. 'There must be no hesitation. No warning. There will be no second time and no arrow rush. Are you ready?'

Most men nodded, tipping the plumes of their helmets so that they seemed to ripple.

'Let's do the thing,' Parshtaevalt said. Satyrus felt the pain in his gut spreading to his limbs, and he wondered again if there was poison, or if cowardice was spreading to his groin like the pain. While the Olbian cavalry rallied – slowly, because they were not his father's men, for all they claimed the title – he had time to think about his wound, and Coenus's willingness to take him off the field. To lie in a tent and wait for news.

The battle was won. Nothing here to fight for, except reputation.

What if he was poisoned?

Satyrus sat on the horse of his dead enemy, surrounded by corpses. If I am poisoned, he thought, it is in my blood, and these are my last hours.

His head came up, and he straightened his back. He was a son of Herakles, and Kineas, and he was not going to ride away and die in a tent, of blood poisoning.

When the Olbians were rallied, he put them in a rhomboid – a formation they knew – and they walked their horses west into the setting sun, moving slowly, looking for a new foe.

In a stade, they found one. Upazan had not routed Ataelus – but he had numbers and he had arrows, and only Ataelus's rage and ten years of bitter resistance sustained Ataelus's outnumbered riders. They fought like demons – like dead men. And when their backs were to the river and they couldn't run, they died.

Satyrus didn't see Ataelus fall. Upazan put him down with an axe, from behind, while the little Sakje commander put an arrow into Upazan's tanist in the swirl of the melee.