Sakje. Men on exhausted horses.
Kineas made his decision. He tossed the apple core as far as he could — another boyish gesture — and mounted his spare warhorse, a big Sakje gelding. Big, but nothing on Thanatos. ‘Petrocolus — stay right here. Form to the right of the Sakje.’ He pulled the horse’s head round. ‘Follow me,’ he said to Niceas, and drove the horse down the trail.
Straight across the marsh — the trail was all mud, but the ground was already drier — and then across the front of Eumenes’ troop of horse. ‘Hold here for my order,’ he said to Eumenes.
Eumenes saluted.
Kineas rode to Memnon. The Macedonians were half a stade away, and Memnon never took his eyes from them.
Kineas reined in. ‘We’re going to attack — right now. I need you to push the raw taxeis to the right,’ he said. ‘Every pace matters. Let them come as far down the field as you dare, and then try to push them to the right.’
Memnon still had his shield on his foot and his helmet on the back of his head. He took his eyes off the Macedonian line long enough to flash Kineas a victor’s smile. ‘Didn’t I tell you it would come to this? The spear push. Against Macedon.’ He turned away from Kineas, saying, ‘Best ride clear, Hipparch. This is where things get dirty.’ And as soon as Kineas had his horse in motion, Memnon bellowed, ‘Spears and shields!’ like an old bull accepting a challenge. As Kineas rode down the front ranks, every Olbian pulled his helmet down over his head, set his shield on his arm, and lifted his shield. Kineas drew his sword and lifted it in salute, and they started to cheer.
‘Silence!’ roared Memnon. ‘Cheering is for amateurs.’
And they were silent.
To his right, the phalanx of Pantecapaeum copied their motions. Indeed, not a single pace separated the two formations.
Kineas came to the front of Philokles’ men. Philokles himself was at the front right corner. Kineas leaned down. The eyes in the helmet were alien, ferocious, bestial. ‘When you hit, push right,’ Kineas yelled. ‘Every pace will count!’ Kineas pointed down the field, where the Macedonians were coming on, just a hundred paces or so away. The veteran phalanx marched as if on parade. The other phalanx was still being galled by the arrows of the Sindi, and its files closest to the river were disordered. Men on that flank had their eyes on the oak trees next to them, and arrows came out of the trees at point blank range to punch men screaming from their feet. Not many men, but enough. The front rank had an enormous bend in it, and the middle ranks were not closing up — and the whole taxeis was angling away from their tormentors on the riverbank.
A space fifty paces wide had opened between the rightmost file of the phalanx and the riverbank as they tried to avoid the arrows.
‘I see it,’ said the voice of Ares from Philokles’ helmet.
Kineas rose erect on his mount. ‘Go with the gods,’ he said, and rode down the line to where Eumenes waited. As he came up, Eumenes was pointing at the gap. ‘Don’t point!’ Kineas said. At this range, a single gesture could alert one of the enemy officers to their peril.
Memnon had his men in motion. Their spears were down, their shields up, and the whole line went forward as one. And the Macedonian pikes were coming down, and beyond them, the heavy cavalry was moving toward Kineas’s right flank.
Time for the Grass Cats and the Standing Horses. Time for Nicomedes and Heron.
But they were on their own. Kineas was here.
There was a roar from the Olbians or the Pantacapaeans — or both. And an answering roar from the Macedonians. Just to Kineas’s right, Philokles’ men moved faster, breaking into a trot.
The Macedonian pikes were longer than the old-style hoplite spears. A man had to be very brave to face the prospect of pushing his body, his shield and his head through the wall of pike points.
Philokles’ men were brave, and they had proven their mettle the day before. They went into the iron forest without hesitation, at the trot, and Kineas heard Philokles’ war voice roar, ‘Now!’ and then the lines met, shield to shield. From Kineas’s place on horseback, he could see the Spartan’s transverse plume of scarlet, and he saw the eddy of carnage the Spartan left behind him, and the whole of the epilektoi made a noise like cattle, or thunder, and the Macedonians, whose front hadn’t been perfectly formed to start, moved. It was all a matter of two paces — the epilektoi struck, and then, two paces later, the Olbian spears were in, Memnon’s challenge carrying even over the sound of war. The raw phalanx of Macedonians contracted and men fell as they lost their balance and suddenly Philokles’ plume moved forward three paces — five. The Macedonians were struggling to restore their order. A lot of men were dying.
Kineas rode to the head of Eumenes’ troop. He faced the men. ‘We will go right along the edge of the phalanx,’ he said. ‘At my order, we will turn and charge. There will be no room. There will be no time. The river waits for a man who pushes too fast on the left, and the spears will eat a man who pushed too far to the right.’
Philokles’ charge had gained them another five paces. They had a gap of perhaps sixty paces between the Macedonian flank and the river.
Kineas tried to catch every eye. ‘We will turn the block, just as on the drill field. It must be done well. Everyone see it? This is where you show that you learned your lessons.’
Time was flowing away.
He took his spears from Sitalkes. Even Sitalkes looked grim.
Kineas had no time for men, even those he loved. He turned for Niceas. Niceas nodded, his bridle hand at his throat. He was murmuring his prayer to Athena.
‘Walk!’ Kineas ordered. As soon as the block of fifty was moving, he ordered: ‘Trot!’ To the right, the epilektoi were faltering. Even disadvantaged, the Macedonians were deeper, their files stronger. They were pushing hard.
The transverse plume was still leaving an eddy of death.
Memnon’s men were locked. There were horses dying farther to the right, and Kineas could hear their screams like a demand for his attention, but he had chosen his foe.
And almost at his feet, the terrified eyes of the rightmost file leader in the young taxeis locked with his. Kineas rode past him, along the highway of the empty ground where the new men had flinched from the Sindi.
The deeper he got, the more ruin he’d cause.
The rightmost file was raising their pikes. Kineas didn’t think that one file could stop him, but neither did he care to lose men. ‘Right! Turn!’ Kineas yelled.
Ten paces separated him from the flank of the pikes. An absurd distance. The men behind the right files were already defeated. His heart swelled with a dark joy.
‘Charge!’ he said.
They were only fifty men, but the taxeis couldn’t endure the invasion of their files, and men in a phalanx panic when they sense an enemy behind them — for good reason. Kineas threw one of his javelins into the unshielded side of a pikeman, and then he was among them, wielding his heavy javelin two-handed, reaching out over his horse’s neck to plunge it down into his foes while his horse bowled men over or kicked them. He struck and struck again, more concerned to sew havoc than to finish off wounded men. His good javelin was suddenly gone, jammed into a man’s skull where the helmet failed to cover his cheeks, and then the Egyptian sword was rising and falling — the Macedonians had heavy glued linen cuirasses, and idle blows did no damage to them, but their backs were turning under his weapon.
They broke slowly, a file at a time, and the irony of the Olbian charge was that the collapse of the riverward taxeis occurred after the Olbian attack had lost all of its impetus in the press of bodies. But the pressure on their front was relentless, and the threat of the cavalry was enough. The rear ranks flowed away, and then the whole mass, almost three thousand men, was pouring away.
The Olbian horse had to let them go. They were already spent, and they were only half a hundred. Niceas was blowing his trumpet, and they were slow to rally — the flank of the veteran taxeis was open, but the Olbians were too slow, too tired, and the veterans had seen the threat; their flank files turned smartly and their pikes came down, while their main force pressed to the front, forcing the lightly armed men of Pantecapaeum and the Olbian phalanx back, foot by foot.
Kineas didn’t like the sound of the battle on the right. He glanced at the sun — still early morning, for all that
