This, he knew, was what Zarina had meant. The Scythians had a lifetime of coordinated hunting on the plains. They knew when a beast was wounded, and they rode to the fight, every warrior choosing their own moment. His few hundred were now just the tip of the spear, and thousands of Dahae and Sakje were coming in behind them, riding into the war-storm to fire arrows or thrust with their swords. Many had changed horses after their initial panic, and they were comparatively fresh. The shock was over and they scented victory.
Kineas could smell it too, and it smelled like horse sweat and dust, and a hint of apples far away. Thalassa gave a cry and took a step forward — rare for her to move unbidden — and Srayanka came out of the murk.
‘Aiiyee!’ she shrieked and they embraced. And then she backed her mare. ‘You are injured.’
Kineas just smiled at her. Then he reached out with his right hand and pulled her close, her gorget scraping dully against his scales, and they kissed like people who might have lost everything, despite everything.
‘We could ride away!’ she said when they parted. Her hand where she had embraced his left side was covered in blood.
‘Too late, my love,’ he said.
‘I cut that fuck Hephaestion,’ she said, as if passing the time of day. She handed him a javelin. ‘A late wedding present,’ she said. Her mouth thinned. ‘Lot went down to the grass,’ she said.
‘Ahh,’ he said, pain banished for a moment. Trumpets were sounding a recall. ‘I put Alexander out of the fight.’ He would mourn Lot later. And then he thought, I will join Lot soon enough, and he hurt, and it was wet, but he chuckled again. His grin was real. His fear was gone — really, he was already dead, and this last embrace was Athena’s favour. He sat back on Thalassa, legs still strong. ‘Let’s finish it,’ he said.
Srayanka’s eyes locked with his, one last time.
‘Take us!’ Ataelus said at his side. ‘Fresh horses!’
Kineas looked around. ‘Form a wedge then,’ he said, and Ataelus and Samahe barked multilingual commands and the scouts formed up. They advanced at a trot.
Side by side, Kineas and Srayanka pushed forward into the storm of Ares. The whole melee had motion now, and warriors made way for them as they pressed forward. All of their forces were intermixed, pressing forward with the strength of victory as the sun set red as a gaping wound behind them, blinding their opponents when it could penetrate the dust, and the daimon was on them all, and the Olbians shouted ‘Apollo’ and ‘Nike’ and few shouted ‘Athena’, while the Sakje and the Sauromatae began to shout something else — something that seemed wordless and built towards a word as they pressed forward, so that all the unfocused shouts began to be a word, repeated over and over, a thousand thin and tired voices making the voice of the war god.
‘BAQCA!’ they shouted.
And the sound carried him forward. He had time to think, This is what it is like to be a god, and he felt Nike, the euphoria of victory, suffuse him. And the Macedonians were breaking, having covered their retreat, exhausted, professional, superb, but now finished. Philotas might have held them longer, or Parmenion, but Hephaestion had already left the field with what he called wounds, and the thousand fickle spirits that warp even the best moved them to flow away.
Kineas broke through into the front rank and he threw his javelin, a long, high throw that caught the rump of a fleeing horse and stuck there.
‘Good throw,’ Philokles said. ‘I find it little different,’ he said, as if continuing an earlier conversation.
Kineas’s vision was tunnelling from the pain of the throw, but he managed a smile for the Spartan. ‘Hmm?’ he said, as if they were standing on the porch of the megaron in Hyrkania, talking philosophy.
‘A cavalry melee. Just the same. A lot of pushing, but with an animal doing the work.’ Philokles smiled. His right hand was red, the wrist was red and the arm that held his spear was streaked with blood drips to belie his tone. ‘I think I like it. A good way to fight one’s last battle.’
Kineas laughed, and it hurt. ‘You’re a good man,’ he said.
Philokles smiled. ‘I can’t hear you say that too often.’
The haze was clearing because the Scythians were too fatigued to pursue, and besides, the water of the Jaxartes was up to the hocks of their horses. Phalangites scrambled across the ford that they had won at such cost. Alexander’s charge had saved them, but they had no order and they were done for the day.
Kineas turned his head and he knew them all — every man and woman — and he saw how the dream was true and not true. He looked to the front and he saw a beaten army, awaiting only the last blow. Just at the base of the great dead tree a lone horseman sat on an armoured horse, his gold-covered helm red in the last of the sun. He had a bow.
Leon’s voice, away to the left, called through the red murk, ‘He’s mine!’ and started into the water.
Diodorus said, ‘Keep the line, by Ares!’
Kam Baqca was at his shoulder. ‘ It is time to cross the river,’ she said.
Kineas raised his sword, though the pain came in like the sea at flood tide. Above the red swirl of dust he could see the last of a blue sky, and high in the sky an eagle circled.
‘Charge!’ he said. He gestured…
EPILOGUE
The next day in the full light of the sun, Srayanka crossed the river with thirty riders, all spear-maidens, their armour clean, their horses groomed and their hair adorned with circlets of roses and grass. Srayanka wore the sword of Cyrus, the hilt of jade flashing its own message in the sun.
On the enemy side, they met an escort of Macedonians who were not so clean, and she nodded to herself. The escort was led by the one Kineas had known — Tolmy — and he was wounded. She gave him only a blank face. They rode through a silent camp of Macedonians — silent except for the groaning of the wounded and the shrill pain of the horses. Those who could stared at her as she passed.
She led her column past the siege machines where unwounded men stood ready, and past lines of tents and hasty shelters made of blankets, to where a dozen pavilions were pitched together, and Tolmy led them into a courtyard formed by the pavilions. ‘The king will see you here. He is wounded.’ He spoke very loudly, as if to a fool.
‘My husband put him down,’ she said, in Greek, and the Macedonian trooper’s mutterings were as ugly as her smile.
She did not dismount, although Tolmy beckoned to her several times.
‘The king awaits you,’ he said.
‘Tell him to come here. I do not dismount in a camp of enemies.’ She raised her chin.
Her heart pounded in her chest, until she reminded herself that she had nothing to lose. She kept her chin high and eventually the flap of the greatest tent opened and Alexander emerged. He was pale, and he limped, and he immediately sat when a seat was brought.
‘Only an Amazon would bring this courtesy, lady. Any other defeated king comes and kneels.’
Srayanka shrugged. ‘I am kind, then. I will not ask you to kneel.’
Alexander’s face was instantly a mask of rage. ‘It is you who are beaten,’ he spat.
She had a bag in her left hand. She opened it and threw the object it held on to the ground. It was Alexander’s golden helmet. ‘I might have put this atop a trophy such as the Greeks raise, across the river, and nothing could you do to stop me.’ She nodded at his silence. ‘Keep it with my thanks for your courtesy when I was a hostage.’
Alexander drew breath to speak and she raised her hand. ‘Listen. I have not come to mock. You killed my husband — but I will hold my hand. You will not come across the Oxus or the Jaxartes, and the Sakje will no longer support the usurper Spitamenes, whom I hate. That is my word. Cross the rivers and die. Go elsewhere and conquer as you will.’