Leucon saluted. ‘Line. Retire in order. Avoid a general engagement.’
Kineas returned the salute. ‘You’ll make a general yet.’ He turned to Eumenes. ‘Leave your troop and go to the Sauromatae. Stay with them and pass my commands. For the moment, they are my reserve. Try to explain reserve to them without twisting their reins.’
Eumenes nodded and rode away, shoulders slumped. Leucon had not yet said anything about his father’s murder — but neither had he spoken a word to his hyperetes in three days, except to give an order.
Kineas rode back to Niceas. The line was formed — three dense blocks of men, with a looser line of Sauromatae in the rear.
‘Sound: Advance,’ Kineas said to Niceas.
The whole block began to walk forward. In twenty steps, the ford was gone behind them. In forty steps, they began to lose sight of the hills beyond the ford.
A band of Sakje appeared out of the rain, riding hard. Their first appearance gave alarm, but just as quickly they were identified — Patient Wolves. They showed their empty gorytos as they rode by, and indicated by gestures that the enemy was close.
Lightning flashed. In the time it took to illuminate the faces of his men, Kineas realized that this might be it. The fight. His death.
Silly thought — equally true for every man there.
Kineas rode along the front, too busy to dwell on mortality. He ordered all three troops to put their flank files out to prevent surprise. They passed another band of Patient Wolves, and then the first Cruel Hands — easily identified because every horse had the painted hand on its rump. Then, more and more — hundreds of them pouring by. Not routed — but drained. Done.
Ataelus rode up to him. ‘She just ahead now,’ he said. ‘Bronze Hats not so close. Careful since heard for trumpets.’ He pointed at Niceas for emphasis.
The rain was coming right into their faces. ‘Halt!’ Kineas called. Niceas played it.
They sat on their horses as the rain fell, drowning out the noise of the plain, and even whatever sound of fighting there might have been. Kineas couldn’t hear anything but the beat of the rain on his helmet. He pulled the thing off, tucked it under his arm. He turned to Niceas, intending to speak, and Niceas pointed silently over Kineas’s shoulder.
She was right in front of him, just a few horse lengths’ away. She was riding looking over her shoulder. Kineas tapped his stallion into motion and cantered up to her. The hoof beats warned her, and she turned in time to see him, and she gave him a tired smile. It was the first smile he’d had from her in a long time, even if it was only the smile of one commander to another.
‘Almost, they are beating me,’ she said. She was feeling in her gorytos for an arrow, and not finding any.
‘Take your people straight through,’ Kineas said — useless admonition. She had only a dozen of her household about her.
He put his hand to her face and withdrew it — it had gone there without his conscious volition. ‘Straight through my line — I’ll cover you,’ he said, as much to re-establish their military roles as to inform her.
‘Cruel Hands cover the rear. Always.’ Her eyebrows were up, and her eyes still had a spark in them. Then she rolled her shoulders. ‘Bowstrings wet. No more arrows. Long day.’
Kineas saw more and more Cruel Hands emerging from the murk. It wasn’t just the rain — afternoon was turning to evening.
Srayanka raised a bone to her lips, and blew on it, and her trumpeter rode up. Hirene had a length of linen around her arm and blood on her saddle, but her face had fewer lines than Srayanka’s. She raised her trumpet and blew a two-tone note with a trill — a barbaric sound that rang harshly through the rain and was soaked up by the grass, and suddenly the rain was spitting Cruel Hands, pushing their jaded horses into a gallop, or changing horses, abandoning the most blown. Kineas had the impression of many wounds, and immense fatigue, and then the last of them were past him, streaming through the gaps between his troops.
‘Get across the ford,’ he said in his command voice. He pointed with his whip.
She raised an eyebrow and motioned with her whip, touched her heels to her mount, and galloped off, her back straight and her head high. As she rode off, he thought of all the things he might have said — instead of bellowing orders at her.
Instead, he turned to Ataelus. ‘How far?’ he asked, pointing into the rain. ‘How far to the enemy?’
Ataelus pulled a strung bow from his gorytos, set an arrow to the string, and shot it in one fluid motion, the arrowhead pointed almost to the sky before he loosed, arcing away into the grey and dropping.
A horse screamed.
‘Just there,’ Ataelus said.
‘Zeus, father of all. Poseidon, lord of horses.’ Kineas swore, and then turned to Niceas. ‘Sound: Advance!’
Niceas blew the signal as they walked forward. ‘I thought we were avoiding a general engagement?’
‘Sound: Trot!’ Kineas called. He could feel his three blocks keeping their line, feel it in the sound of their hooves and the vibration of the ground. It could all be a vast trap.
He was half turned to order the charge, his throwing javelin just transferred to his right fist, when he saw the plumes, and then the whole man, emerge from the rain — two horse lengths away.
‘Charge!’ he bellowed. They were Thessalians — yellow and purple cloaks, good armour, big horses — and they were at a stand. Kineas’s charger leaped from the trot to the gallop in two strides, and Kineas’s javelin hit the Thessalian’s horse.
Their ranks were well formed, firm and tight, but he took in their fatigue in his first glance. Kineas’s horse shouldered past the wounded beast and pushed between the next two, lashing out with teeth and hooves to clear a way, and the whole troop flinched at his assault. Kineas used his second javelin like a sailor with a boarding pike, sweeping it to the right and left, tangling the troopers and knocking them off their mounts, and then the whole weight of his Olbians arrived, and the enemy formation shattered. Whatever their cautious officer had expected, a charge out of the rain by formed cavalry wasn’t it.
They were gone in an instant — they ran like professionals, leaving only a handful of bodies on the ground. The rain swallowed them up.
Kineas rose on his horse’s back and bellowed, ‘Niceas!’ in a voice that threatened to burst his lungs.
‘Here!’ replied his hyperetes. ‘Here I am!’
‘Sound: Recall!’ Kineas pushed his horse out of the mob of his own troopers — too many of them were gone into the rain, showing their inexperience by pursuing the Thessalians. He rode back along the line of their advance, until he saw the damply gleaming shapes of the Sauromatae.
‘Eumenes! We’re retiring. We had a fight — no idea what we hit. We’ll rally at the ford. Cover us.’ He turned and rode back to his own men, who were falling in on the trumpets and turning about — a dangerous manoeuvre with the possibility of an unbeaten enemy somewhere in the rain. Kineas watched them — it seemed to take an eon, and then another. He could see movement in the rain — bright colour to his right. Red cloaks. New enemy cavalry.
Nicomedes’ troop was half a stade to the rear and well formed, Ajax’s voice ordered men into the line, to close tight, close tight. Diodorus was well clear — gone into the rain. Leucon was having more trouble with the mix of men he had. Kineas rode over. ‘Now, Leucon!’ he called.
Leucon shook his head. The men of Pantecapaeum were having trouble finding their places in the rain and excitement. There were shouts to their front.
Niceas pointed. ‘Too many unrallied men — and now they’re getting snapped up. We need to get out of here.’
Kineas could feel the enemy cavalry gathering to his front. He heard a trumpet.
‘Leucon!’ he shouted. ‘Away! Run for the ford!’
Leucon pushed his helmet back, swatted a man with the flat of his sword, and opened his mouth to shout an order. A javelin punched through his neck and he seemed to vomit blood, and then he was down, and a line of Thessalians came out of the rain and smashed into Leucon’s troop.