The Macedonian army was dying.
Kineas had a javelin — too long and too heavy and the gods knew where he’d gotten it — he thrust it at a Macedonian face and the man went down, taking the javelin with him, and Kineas’s horse was astride the broken body of Kam Baqca, gold and dirt mingled beneath his horse’s hooves — another red cloak, and Sitalkes swept him from the saddle — the dust was rising faster, or the sun was stronger — the falling red cloak had the horsetail standard in his fist. Kineas hit him — hit him again, lashing him with the whip, screaming his war cry in the man’s panicked face. Sitalkes got a hand on the standard, and together they killed the man, and Sitalkes held the standard high. Sakje voices cheered — fresh voices, and closer, now.
More Macedonians — where were they coming from? Kineas’s head snapped back as something hit him a hard blow — he couldn’t see, but he hung on, his whip rising and falling, and then he was free, like a ship at sea that cuts loose an anchor, and he had his reins and the gelding was still under his command. He whirled his whip, his arm feeling like a chunk of wood; the tendrils of the weapon caught at an enemy helmet. As soon as it tore free, he saw… Sitalkes cut a man from his horse and a dismounted Macedonian cut at his side, clanging against his breastplate, and Sitalkes fell amid the hooves, gone in the dust — the standard going down again. Coenus killed the Macedonian, and Ataelus caught the standard.
Kineas was eye to eye with Zopryon. There was no shock — the man was where he ought to have been, at the centre of the battle cloud. Kineas had long enough to see defeat in his eyes — and rage.
Kineas lashed him with the whip, two quick blows, and one of them went home, a tendril of the lash wrapping under the brim of the man’s gilt helmet and taking an eye, but Zopryon’s back slash with his sword cut through the Sakje whip, leaving Kineas with a handle of gold and no weapon. Kineas leaned forward, and the gelding responded, rushing the bigger horse and catching him broadside on. The gelding’s teeth bit hard, and the stallion struck back — but Kineas caught Zopryon’s rising sword arm with his left hand and trapped it with his right, used the other man’s strength and his strong left leg against his horse’s spine to clasp him tight and pull him down — and they were in the dust, the horses a storm of teeth and hooves above them. Kineas fell on top, and their bronze breastplates bounced and winded them both. Kineas got an arm around the man’s neck — nose to nose, Zopryon’s breath was foul like a bad wound, and his eyes were those of an injured boar.
Zopryon, by luck or skill, forced Kineas back against his injured leg and Kineas screamed. Twice, Zopryon got the pommel of his sword against Kineas’s helmet, and his head rang with the blows, and darkness threatened.
Kineas had only one good leg, but rage and thirty years of wrestling broke the Macedonian’s bridle arm in a scream of sweat and blood. The crack of the arm seemed like the loudest sound on the battlefield — but pain, rage, desperation, strength born of despair allowed Zopryon to roll back, rise to his knees in the dust, and, ignoring his shattered left arm, cock his sword for a killing blow.
Kineas went for his second dagger, trapped by his injured leg — too slow.
The first arrow went into the Macedonian just above the circle where his neck emerged from his breastplate. And then he seemed to grow arrows like some trick of a stage machine — one, then four.
Kineas was on one knee, and he couldn’t think very well, but he raised his head, and her blue eyes were there above a tall horse, and above them the dust rose like a funeral pyre. And even as he looked at her, the dust opened and he was looking at the sky. The sky above the dust was blue and in the distance, far out over the plain, clouds rose in pristine white. Up there, in the aether, all was peace. An eagle, best of omens, turned a lazy circle to his right. Closer, less auspicious birds circled.
A hand grasped his, hard as iron on the calloused side, and soft as doeskin on the back under his thumb.
And darkness took him.
He was sitting on a horse in the middle of a river — a shallow river, with rocks under his horse’s feet and pink water flowing over and around the rocks. The ford — it was a ford — was full of bodies. Men and horses, all dead, and the white water burbling over the rocks was stained with blood.
The river was enormous. He lifted his head and saw the far side, where piles of driftwood made the riverbank look like the shore of the sea, and a single dead tree rose above the red rocks of the shore. There were other men behind him, all around him, and they were singing. He was astride a strange horse tall and dark, and he felt the weight of strange armour.
‘Is this any river you have ever seen?’ Kam Baqca asked mockingly.
‘No,’ he admitted, feeling like a boy with his tutor.
‘The hubris of men, and their vanity, is beyond measurement.’ She laughed, and he looked at her, and the white of her face paint could not obscure the rot that had taken most of the flesh of her cheeks.
‘You’re dead!’ he said.
‘My body is dead,’ she said.
‘And mine?’ he asked. Even as he spoke he looked down, and the skin of his arm was firm and marked with all the scars that life had given him.
She laughed again. ‘Go back,’ she said. ‘It is not yet your time.’
There were three of them, sitting on the branches of the tree, and each was more hideous than the last. The one on the lowest branch reached above her and took something from the crone on the next branch, and when she looked at him, she had just one eye, but that was as bright as a young girl’s. She held up her hand, and from it dangled a thread, or perhaps a single hair of a child, and it was bright gold and shone with its own light, although it was shorter than the width of a man’s finger.
‘Not much left,’ she said, and she cackled. ‘But better than nothing, eh?’
‘Enough to father a child or two,’ giggled one of her hideous sisters.
‘Enough to defeat a god,’ roared the one on the highest branch. ‘But only if you hurry!’
