Kineas’s horse was away with his first touch — flying ignominiously for the ford. He was well out front — safe enough, and he looked back for Niceas, who was right at his heels.
The rain cleared a little, and he saw the Sauromatae charge straight through the broken line of Leucon’s men. They struck the Thessalians with a sound like a hundred men beating a hundred copper kettles with spoons, and the Thessalians were stopped in their tracks.
Leucon’s men were the youngest and best among the Olbian hippeis. The moment they saw the allied Sauromatae, they turned. The red cloaks were evenly matched. Javelins flew, and men fell. The whole line — both lines — threaded through the combat like shuttles on a loom, and then swirled into chaos in a matter of hoof beats.
Kineas tore his eyes away. Time would be counted in heartbeats, now. The engagement he didn’t want was starting — half his command was committed, and if Zopryon had more cavalry to commit, he could win a sharp victory before nightfall. Kineas bore right, for Diodorus. Diodorus was there before him, his men already wheeled off to the left and reformed.
‘Follow me!’ Kineas yelled, and turned his horse. The stallion responded again — a magnificent animal, the best war mount he had ever possessed.
He led Diodorus’s troop up the right flank of the enemy, guessing their location by sound and intuition. Their arrival panicked the red cloaks, and they broke, but this time they were tangled in the melee to their front and they took casualties breaking off. Their horses were done, and they died in dozens, cut down from behind or trapped in the mud on foundered horses — and the relative freshness of the Olbians began to tell. Then Kineas heard another voice, like a giant in the dark — Ajax, with Nicomedes’ troop, closing in on the doomed red cloaks from the other flank. And even in the murk, he could see Eumenes, his sword wet with blood, exhorting the younger Olbians to rally, to press harder.
Scenting victory, Kineas harried them, unhorsed a trooper, cut another man’s arm and then killed their trumpeter in three quick fights. In a flash of lightning he saw their commander in an ornate, gilded breastplate and he charged the man — a man he knew — but the officer declined the combat and galloped for the safety of the rear. His horse, at least, had the energy to run.
Phillip Kontos, Kineas thought. A man he respected — and now sought to kill.
Kineas pursued a half a stade, reined in, peered into the gloom — he was alone.
He realized that he was farther down the field than he had intended, and that he had lost his hyperetes. ‘Rally!’ he called, his voice hoarse, rising, cracking with the third repetition.
A Sauromatae rode up to him and pointed back to the ford, as if he was a young trooper who needed direction.
Ataelus came up out of the rain, grabbed at his reins, and shouted, ‘Pike men!’ and pointed into the rain.
Kineas squinted and saw, far too close, a column of heavy infantry. He pulled his horse’s head around. In the middle distance, he could hear Niceas’s trumpet. He’d ridden too far — been a fool. Carried away in the charge.
He leaned forward on his horse’s neck and put his head down, in case the Macedonians had archers. This was their army — he was right in among them, a stade or less from their pike men. He pulled up at the first big knot of his own men — he was pleased to note that his horse still flowed over the ground — and shouted shrilly for them to fall back.
The pike men — a full taxeis — were forming from column into their combat formation.
With gestures, with the flat of his sword, with Ataelus calling in Sakje, he moved his men back, back to the line of the first charge and then back to where Niceas was sounding the recall — Niceas was exactly where he ought to be. He had a cut on his bridle arm and his helmet was gone, and he was still blowing his trumpet, and his face as Kineas came out of the rain was like a father’s with a strayed infant — love, relief, anger all born together.
Niceas put his trumpet on his hip and glared at Kineas. ‘Where the fuck were you?’ he yelled.
‘Playing Achilles like a fool,’ Kineas yelled back.
They were forming again. Kineas was proud of them — hard enough to form after a fight you win, harder to form after two, and Leucon’s men had been shattered, lost their captain, and they were pushing into their ranks, ready for a third go. Their horses were done, and no one had a javelin, heavy or light.
Kineas expected it to be darker. It was as if no time had passed from the first encounter. Off in the rain, and the ground fog that was rising to meet it, a Macedonian trumpet sounded, and then another. A few stades to the south, there was shouting.
Niceas panted for a few breaths. ‘Are we winning or losing?’ he asked. Then he grinned. ‘Aren’t you the man who ordered us to avoid a general engagement?’
Kineas shrugged, his attention focused on the rallying troopers. ‘I take your point, old man. Let’s get across the river. Where are the Sauromatae?’
Niceas pointed to the centre of the line. ‘Eumenes got them halted, all but a handful.’
Kineas rode to Eumenes. ‘Take command of your troop,’ he said. ‘Leucon is dead.’
Eumenes’ face fell — his mouth opened and shut like a gaffed fish, and nothing came out.
Kineas pointed again. ‘Take command,’ he said. His voice betrayed him, coming out as a squeak.
The reaction hit them all after they were successfully across the ford, riding in good order despite the rain and their own wounded. They were cold and wet and tired — too tired to cook or curry horses, and the officers had to bear down. Nicomedes and Ajax were as brutal as Kineas, using the whip of their tongues to berate any man whose horse was untended, or gear abandoned on the grass. Niceas pulled one of the younger men away from a fire and threw him to the ground.
Discipline was restored.
And then, after the first few minutes, the soul fatigue passed. Kineas thanked all the gods for the Sindi, who sprang into action, building fires, tending wounds, and cooking. Warriors came from the other camps — Olbian hoplites, and then a few Standing Horses, and some Patient Wolves. They came in the rain, with a jar of mead, or a skin of wine, or a haunch of cooked meat.
And the fires roared higher, pushing the rain back into the sky. Men ate their food, and drank some wine, or gifted mead, and the silence broke. Suddenly everyone had to talk, to tell his story.
Kineas still had his breastplate on, and his helmet under his arm, standing cloakless in the rain, watching for another outburst of insubordination, already beset with the next phalanx of worries.
Philokles had missed the whole engagement, but waiting had taken its own toil. Now he was half drunk, and he pawed at Kineas, trying to get his armour off.
‘Don’t be an idiot!’ Kineas snapped. ‘I don’t want it off yet.’
‘Who’s an idiot?’ Philokles answered. ‘I didn’t ride off into the Macedonian lines — Ajax says you were like a god. Are you looking for death? Or are you a fool?’
Kineas shook his head. ‘I’m a poor general. Once I start fighting, I’m lost — blind. I focus on the man in front of me, and then the next.’ He shrugged, his own reaction beginning to set in. ‘I ran across an old — rival.’
‘Put him down?’ asked Philokles.
‘He ran,’ Kineas said.
Philokles pulled the helmet out from under Kineas’s arm. ‘Get this statuary off your hide, brother. Live a little. Step out of the tyrant’s grasp for the evening. Go kiss Medea — if I can’t bring you to sense, perhaps she can!’
Kineas relinquished his helmet. ‘You’re drunk, brother.’
‘Bah! I am drunk. You should try it. Greek wine gives dreams from Greek gods — no dreams of death.’
‘Who dreams of death?’ asked Diodorus. He was rubbing his hair with his tunic, and was otherwise naked. ‘That was the ugliest action I’ve ever been in.’