Satyrus writhed in an agony of their indecision for as long as it took a smith to pour a bronze ingot. They were quite a contrast to Seleucus.
He debated saying something — he, the youngest, and by far the least of them — but the one who knew the terrain.
But he sensed that Prepalaus wanted an excuse to delay battle, and that the man’s dislike of him could be the excuse.
Satyrus rode down the column and fetched Stratokles, who was with the mercenaries.
The man embraced him like a long-lost brother. Satyrus was surprised at the Athenian’s enthusiasm.
‘I need you to shepherd the alliance,’ he said. ‘Every minute counts.’
Stratokles had been standing with his men, and with Herakles — now the taxiarch of two thousand Ionian hoplites. Herakles saluted smartly. Satyrus waved, and Stratokles mounted, and they rode back up the column.
Stratokles took Lysimachos aside and spoke to him — low tones, urgency.
Then he came back out of the tent to Satyrus and mounted. ‘The thing is done,’ he said. ‘I’m going to lead my men.’
Satyrus went back into the tent — already too hot. Lysimachos was putting on his armour.
‘You may stay here,’ he told the Macedonian strategos. ‘The Bosporons and my Thracians are marching. And we will march all night.’
The first cavalry skirmish was so obviously a feint that Demetrios ignored it and led his cavalry east, looking for Lysimachos. But before the day was two hours old, his pater sent a recall, claiming that there were thousands — that was the word the messenger said — thousands of cavalry coming up the lake road from Synadda.
Demetrios’s men were in high training, and they responded perfectly, so that his rough skirmish line going west changed front to the south in half an hour, and they began to sweep back south and west. The centre of the line contacted enemy cavalry north of the road, and Demetrios ran out of daylight trying to cut them off. But at nightfall, he rode the line of his campfires. He had secured his father from surprise. And his best men picked up a pair of prisoners that confirmed his suspicion. He was facing Seleucus. From the south.
‘Good for Neron,’ he said.
In the mists before true dawn, he brought up the best of his own Companions. He briefed his officers in the courtyard of the temple at Cybele, and many of them prayed there. The omens were all auspicious.
His enemy’s omens must have been auspicious, too. Demetrios came down the hills into the denser mist of the valley floor, his cavalry line formed parallel to the road, visible across the plain, and the enemy charged him — formed wedges of professional cavalry on superb horses.
Both sides charged twice. They were well matched. Demetrios killed a Macedonian officer in the second charge — someone important — and then there were armoured troopers in blue cloaks on his southern flank, and he extricated his Companions as carefully as he’d engaged them, picked up his Greek mercenaries and came down the hills a third time, to find the road empty.
Throwing out scouts in all directions, he followed them.
He caught them again just as the last mist burned off — a brilliant day with a few high clouds. And there were the blue cloaks — almost a thousand of them. He was close enough to see that their leader was an old man.
Demetrios knew them. They’d captured him as a boy. He nodded.
‘Horns of the Bull,’ he ordered his Greek cavalry on either flank.
And then the folds of earth north of the road sprouted Persians, like Jason sowing dragon’s teeth.
Demetrios had to allow himself to be pushed all the way back to his hills. Only there, when he linked up with his father’s cavalry, could he rally.
But with four thousand more cavalry, he could rule them. He turned about one more time, despite the fatigue of his best men, and pushed down the hills one more time.
The blue cloaks and their Persians had to give the ground now. There was no fighting at all. Both sides were too professional to waste men on a declined engagement. The blue cloaks retreated south down the road, and the Persians covered their flanks.
And then something struck Demetrios in the left flank like a thunderbolt.
Scopasis reined in, wrenching his lance from the corpse of the man he’d gaffed like a fisherman would gaff a salmon in the Tanais River. It took both hands and the strength of his horse to drag the head clear. And the point was bent — the spear ruined.
Melitta put her head down and galloped clear of her own line, headed uphill. Her trumpeter stuck with her. They climbed away from the fight until she could see.
The sun was setting and the road shone like a silver ribbon in the pale green fields on either side. The dust clouds of the cavalry moving below her looked like dandelion tufts.
She was in some enemy’s flank. Her people had ridden all day for this moment, and she wasn’t going to stop them, even though below her a pair of adolescent girls were beheading a man, and another was being scalped, alive.
She took a deep breath.
‘Blow “look at me”.’
The trumpeter put her gold trumpet to her mouth and blew, long and hard, and every tribesman’s head turned.
Melitta raised her spear and pointed south, into the rear of the enemy formation. They outnumbered her twenty to one, but the sun was setting at her back, there was dust in the air, and fleeing men count every foe thrice. Or so the Sakje said.
Demetrios heard the trumpet and his heart sank.
More Persians, or worse, their Saka allies. All the way around his flank — they must have slipped along the ridge.
Demetrios ordered his companions back. The rest, mercenaries and allies, were realists. They’d begun retreating as soon as they heard the trumpet.
They lost men, but they fought through — the enemy were either timid, or far, far fewer than fear had made them. But Demetrios couldn’t risk a defeat — Seleucus was rich in cavalry. So he retired all the way back to his hills, and his horsemen camped where they had started.
But the enemy did not. It was only when dark fell and fires were visible that Demetrios saw that the blue cloaks had broken contact. The road south was empty.
Some of his men cheered. But Demetrios felt alone, and he sent three messengers to his father.
‘You thought perhaps I’d march away and leave you?’ Antigonus said the next morning. ‘We have Seleucus. Lysimachos may still be up near Heraklea — scouts out as far as Gordia and no reports at all.’
Demetrios drew on a wooden table with his dagger. ‘What if Lysimachos were east of us — on the Sangarius?’
Antigonus nodded. ‘It’s possible, but if we strike today, it won’t matter a damn.’
‘Pater-’
‘I make the strategy, boy. Knockout blow. We don’t piss on them — we kick them in the crotch. Right down the road, fast as we can — you cover my left.’ He looked at the scratches in the table. ‘With a little luck, we catch them in mid-afternoon and that’s the war.’
The moon was high when Satyrus found Melitta. Her men were mourning their losses — two gone to the shades.
‘You are too far north,’ she said. ‘We need to fall back to the ridges.’
‘I’m already south of here — there’s a village, Malos, twenty stades south. Nikephoros is resting the infantry there. I came for you.’ Satyrus sat like a statue in the moonlight.
Melitta took his hand. ‘You have finally become a Sakje, brother,’ she said. ‘How many stades have you ridden this week?’
‘All the stades the winds crosses,’ Satyrus said, wearily. ‘And now we need to cross twenty more.’
Even in the moonlight, they could see that the plains at the base of the ridges were alive with moving men and fires. Lysimachos had been even more daring than Satyrus had hoped; he’d launched his army in a race across the plains, and trusted that he’d have time to sort them out if a battle occurred. The best units — Prepalaus’s Macedonians, Lysimachos’s veteran mercenaries, the Thracians — had moved almost as fast as cavalry.