Darius shook his head. ‘I was still a rebel. Then, after Alexander won, it was clear to most noblemen — clear enough to my father — that if we continued to rebel, we were handing our empire to the foreigner. So we marched to the so-called Great King at Ecbatana, and followed him to Gaugamela.’ He shrugged. ‘You were there?’
Kineas nodded. ‘On our left.’
Darius looked surprised. ‘Our right? I was there!’ He winced again. ‘By fire, you cut me deep.’
Kineas began trying to feed soup to Niceas. Beyond the fire, the Sauromatae and the Sakje were mourning the dead woman, singing her songs to her pyre. The smell of horse meat was strong.
‘It might have been deeper,’ he said.
The Persian nodded. ‘So it might. I was at Gaugamela, and we almost broke you.’
‘But you didn’t,’ Kineas said with satisfaction. He might not serve Macedon any more — indeed, he was probably an enemy of Macedon, when sides were counted — but Gaugamela had been the last fight of the Hellenes against the Persians, and he was proud of his role there. He had won the laurel for valour, because his unsung Allied Cavalry had held the line when the Persian cavalry threatened to break Parmenion’s flank and bury the taxeis under an avalanche of Persians.
‘It was the longest fight I can remember. I lost two horses — and lived.’
Kineas nodded in agreement. In his experience, most field battles were decided fairly quickly, and the other side took the punishment when they broke. At Gaugamela, the decision hung in the balance for an hour, and both sides died.
‘After the battle, my father was dead and my household dispersed. My cousin claimed the lordship — he was older and…’ the Persian gave an expressive shrug. ‘We never got home. We moved north into Hyrkania, but there were too many wolves there already and we kept going until we came here. We thought to carve out a kingdom, far from the Hellenes.’ He gave a self-deprecating smile, the same smile he’d worn when he lost his sword in the fight. ‘We ended up as bandits.’
‘This might make a good kingdom,’ Kineas said. He pointed at Niceas’s form. ‘He thinks so.’ They sat in companionable silence for some time. Eventually, Kineas asked, ‘Are you worth a ransom?’
‘Somewhere, if my mother lives, I have some small riches,’ the man admitted. He shrugged again — he shrugged a lot. ‘I doubt it. You Greeks have everything around Ecbatana now, and most of our eastern holdings, too. We had a tower in Bactria — I doubt it even tried to hold your mad king.’
‘Not my mad king,’ Kineas began. It was his turn, and the young Persian with the perpetual shrugs was a good companion. Kineas intended to win him as a friend and put him in a troop — he was a good sword, too good to waste. But Niceas chose that moment to sputter around a spoonful of soup. His body gave a spasm and he sprayed soup out of his mouth.
His eyes were open.
‘What the fuck?’ he said.
Kineas felt his eyes fill with tears. ‘You stupid cocksucker,’ he said with tones of those born to the agora in Athens. ‘You fell off your horse!’
Niceas smiled. ‘More soup,’ he said.
The next day, Diodorus caught up with them. His part of the army camped above them on the heights where the road turned east and went down into the country of the Rha. Diodorus came down the ridge with a dozen troopers, including Coenus and Eumenes.
Diodorus went straight to Niceas, as did Coenus. Afterwards, Diodorus ordered a tent put up for the strategos, and Eumenes went to fetch it. ‘I heard the old man was dead,’ Diodorus said. His face was still red and blotched from emotion — perhaps from weeping. ‘He’s saved my life more times than my nanny paddled my behind. I came as fast as I could.’
Kineas nodded. He’d slept through the night once Niceas’s sleep had given way to healthy snores, and he felt ten years younger. ‘I thought he was gone,’ Kineas admitted.
Coenus was feeding the hyperetes more barley soup. ‘He still looks like shit,’ he said.
Niceas croaked something about feeling better.
Kineas shook his head. ‘He took an arrow in the side. We weren’t in armour. Bad decision on my part. And the bandits were good — damned good. Tough fight.’
Coenus thrust his chin at the Persian who was tending the soup. ‘Prisoner?’
Kineas nodded. ‘And recruit. When Eumenes gets back, put him in his troop. He’s a swordsman — as good as me. I assume he can ride.’
Coenus laughed. ‘He is a Persian.’ He coughed. ‘You and Ataelus killed all his friends…’
‘I get the feeling he doesn’t miss them. If he cuts all our throats, I’ll be proven wrong.’ Kineas pulled his cloak tighter. ‘I’ll stay here with Niceas.’
Coenus and Diodorus exchanged glances. ‘Nah,’ said Coenus. ‘You’re the strategos. This isn’t the only bandit band — ask Ataelus. The plains are full of them, by all accounts. You go and command. Leave me with my section and I’ll bring the old boy along when he’s ready.’
Diodorus stepped forward. ‘He’s right, Kineas.’
Kineas rubbed his beard. ‘You are both correct, of course. Very well. Coenus, I’ll send your section down the ridge. Diodorus, let’s get Ataelus and plan the next set of marches. Lot is five days behind you. Somebody gets to tell him that his daughter is dead.’
Diodorus winced as if cut.
The high plains between the Tanais and the Rha were indeed full of bandits — an endless profusion of masterless Persians and outlawed nomads and Macedonian deserters, so that there wasn’t an intact farmstead between the two rivers. Four years of war in Hyrkania and the south had filled the high plains with the human flotsam of war, and like wolves on the verge of a hard winter, they were desperate men. When forced, they fed on each other, band against band. All raided the settlements on the expanding edge of their self-made desert. Ataelus had already lost three men to them before the fight with the bandits on the Tanais, and his prodromoi were eager for revenge.
Kineas and Diodorus assigned the second troop, heavy with the Keltoi, to reinforce Ataelus. Kineas took charge of the column and Diodorus took charge of the extermination of the bandits. He didn’t catch as many as he wanted to, but the main body crossed the high plains to the valleys of the Rha without losing a single horse or man, and unknown to them, the Sindi and Maeotae farmers blessed them. Diodorus drove the larger groups across the marshes to the north, and twice he caught bands and the Keltoi and the Sauromatae wrecked them. They brought back a rich haul of horses, some very fine, and enough gold and silver to please the men who did the fighting. Casualties were gratifyingly light — as was to be expected when employing overwhelming force.
Kineas called his new horse ‘Thalassa’, after days of riding the magnificent silver charger and trying out various temporary names (‘Brute’ seemed the front runner, as the beast towered over most of the other warhorses by the width of a man’s hand). The big horse had the colour of a stormy day at sea. She was sure-footed and had an amazing quality of stillness — not lack of spirit, but something like patience — that suited a commander’s horse. And on the day that Sappho insisted that so noble an animal needed a better name than ‘Brute’, the lead elements of the army crested the last ridge of the Rha’s frontier and saw the Kaspian sparkling in the distance, the Bay of the Rha full of ships, and like Xenophon’s men seventy years before, they cried out for the sea, and the name was given.
The crossing had not been particularly arduous except for recruits and the men of second troop who’d spent a week fighting bandits, but the army’s grain supply was very low — most men had only a day’s grain in their packs, or less if they’d been improvident. The sight of fifty small boats in the bay raised everyone’s spirits, and the presence of Philokles on the gravel and mud beach drew a roar of acclaim. Kineas embraced him.
‘Does this place have a name?’ Kineas asked. Philokles smelled clean.
‘Errymi, the Maeotae call it.’ The Spartan gave a wry smile. ‘It is good to see you, Kineas.’