Getae in close. He thought that he’d have one chance to charge them and scatter them, force them into close action where his big, grain-fed military horses would overpower their ponies.
‘On me. Trot.’
The Getae were still coming on. At this distance they might just be seeing the armour, and the horse size would be hard to judge…
‘At them!’ Kineas had his horse in hand, was ready for the change to the long surge of the beast’s powerful hindquarters. He trusted the stallion to know how to gallop over the tussocks — if he misjudged, they’d be dead in a heartbeat. ‘Artemis!’ he cried, and the veterans took it up — Artemis, Artemis! It was a pale, thin remnant of the sound that three hundred of them had made, but loud enough.
The initial charge was going to be successful. He could feel it already in his balls, see the next act of the play as easily as if he had written it himself. He rose a little in his seat, pressed his horse’s sides with his knees and threw his light javelin into the side of a Getae. The next one pivoted his pony on its haunches, pulling her mouth viciously, but he was too slow, and Kineas’s warhorse rode the smaller horse over without changing gait. A boy — brave, or perhaps simply frozen — waited for him, sitting on his horse with his bow drawn. Kineas put his head down to take the point of the arrow on his helmet and leaned forward with his heavy javelin. The bow twanged, a singular sound even in the melee.
The arrow missed — it went the gods knew where — and Kineas reversed his javelin in both hands and swung it like a staff, knocking the boy clear of the saddle. At the end of the stroke he reversed the staff again and turned his head. He drew rein, used his rein hand to push the helmet back on his head so that he could see and snapped his head right and left looking for friends and foes.
Niceas was right by him, mumbling a litany of prayers to Athena, his heavy javelin reversed and held short in his fist, dripping red on to the ground. Antigonus was on his other flank with his heavy sword out. His horse was giving him trouble, skipping and hopping. Smell of blood. New horse. Kineas didn’t have to think about these details, he just knew them, just as he could see the shape of a fight in his mind.
Coenus and Agis were side by side, a few horse lengths away. Coenus was just finishing a man in the grass. He had a long red mark down his right thigh. None of the others appeared to be hurt.
Kineas used his knees to push his horse around in a tight circle. One man was down — his count was one short. There were dead and dying Getae all around him in the grass and a double handful already a hillside away. Even as he watched, one of them took an arrow full in the back from Ataelus’s bow and the man fell slowly, losing his seat and finally collapsing to the ground. His horse stopped and began to crop grass. The other Getae continued to run. Agis tried a long javelin throw from horseback, missed, swore, and then the surviving Getae were swallowed by a hillside and the fight was over.
No time at all had passed since Kineas had first spotted the Scyth coming back. The blink of an eye. Kineas had done something to his back and had the pain of a pulled muscle in his shoulder. He felt as if he had pushed a plough in a field for a whole day. He turned to Niceas. ‘Who’s down?’
Niceas shook his helmeted head. ‘I’ll find out, sir,’ and he rode away.
After a few moments. Niceas rode back, his shoulder hunched like an old man. ‘Graccus,’ he said. He turned away, hand on his amulet, then looked at Kineas. ‘He got an arrow in the bole of his throat as soon as we went to the gallop. Dead.’
Kineas knew that Niceas and Graccus had been friends — sometimes more than friends. ‘What a waste. Stupid barbarians — we must have killed ten of them.’
‘More than ten. And three prisoners. The boy you levelled. You want him?’
Kineas nodded. ‘That’s why I didn’t kill him, yes. He and Crax can plot behind our backs.’
Niceas nodded heavily. ‘The other two — they’re wounded.’
Kineas could hear someone making a horrible, pitiful mewling alternating with a full-throated roar of anguish. He rode back to the first man he had downed, it was a good throw — the javelin was through his chest and had probably cut his heart. He gave the shaft a half-hearted tug without leaving the saddle. It didn’t budge. He kept going, riding carefully over the tussocks until he came to the wounded men. The loud one was hit in the guts by a throwing javelin. He might live a long time, but it would be horrible. The other man had lost a hand to somebody’s heavy sword. He was bleeding out, his face empty. He was trying to stop the flow of blood with his other hand, but he wasn’t really strong enough. He had also soiled himself from the pain.
It was like the end of every action. War in all its glory. Kineas rode over to the screaming man and thrust his heavy javelin through the man’s upturned face. Thrust, twist. The man fell forward across his own lap, instantly silent. The other man turned and looked up at him. He raised his eyebrows a little, as if surprised. ‘Do the thing,’ he said in weak, guttural Greek.
Kineas saluted his courage and prayed to Athena that when it was his turn he’d be as brave. Thrust. Twist. The second man died as fast as the first. ‘Graccus can have them to work the ferryman’s oars. Poor bastards. Niceas, get the slaves moving. We need all the javelins back — I left mine about a stade deep in that poor bastard over there. Anyone else hit?’ He looked around. ‘Put Graccus over his horse.’
Ajax was looking at him with loathing. He was clutching his arm.
Kineas pointed at him. ‘Ajax. Show me your arm.’
Ajax shook his head. But the corners of his mouth were white.
‘Antigonus, get Ajax off his horse and see to his arm. Ajax, that’s what war is. That’s all it is, boy. Men killing men — usually the strong killing the weak. Right. The rest of you, dismount, except Lykeles and Ataelus. You and the Scyth collect the horses.’ Lykeles was one of the best riders, and horses loved him. He rode out. The Scyth was already out on the plain, using his short sword to take the hair off men he had killed. It was a grisly piece of barbarism and Kineas didn’t spare him more than a glance.
Kineas stayed mounted, in his armour. He rode from man to man, exchanging a few words, a jest or a curse. Making sure they weren’t wounded. The god-given spirit that flooded a good man in a fight could rob him of the ability to feel a wound. Kineas had seen men, good men, drop dead after a fight, pools of blood around them, without ever knowing they had taken a wound. Horses could go the same way, as if they, too, were touched by the daimon of war.
Coenus’s wound was minor, but Kineas set Niceas to look after it while he tended Ajax. When he had seen to the others, Kineas cantered his horse to the top of the next rise and looked past the slope towards the hills in the distance. Carrion birds were already coming in to the feast of Ares. The smell of blood and excrement lay over the smell of sun and grass, polluting it. His shoulders sagged and his hands shook for a while. But the Getae didn’t come back and in time he had control of himself. The Getae horses were rounded up, the few wounds coated in honey, and the column moved off across the sea of grass.
They made camp early because the men were tired. They found a small steam with a handful of old trees growing on the bank with enough downed wood to make a fire. Crax was working, Kineas was happy to note. He moved heavily, but he moved. The other Getae boy was still out. Ajax’s slave was cooking, a stew of deer meat and barley from their stores. The men ate it hungrily and then sat quietly.
Niceas didn’t speak except to ask about the burial of his friend, but Kineas shook his head. ‘Town tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We’ll give him a pyre.’
Niceas nodded slowly and went to take a second helping of food. Ajax avoided Kineas, staying around the fire from him. Philokles, who had played no part in the fight, came and lay on the ground next to him where he sat with his bowl of stew. The Spartan indicated Ajax with a thrust of his jaw. ‘He’s in a state,’ he said. ‘You should talk to him.’
‘No. He watched me kill the captives. He thinks…’ Kineas paused, searching for words. I’m in a state, too.
‘Bah, he needs to grow up. Talk to him about it or send him home.’ Philokles took a mouthful of his own food, dropped a heavy piece of campaign bread into his bowl to soften it.
‘Maybe tomorrow.’
‘As you say. But I’d do it tonight. You remember your first fight?’
‘Yes.’ Kineas remembered them all.
‘You kill anyone?’
‘No,’ Kineas said, and he laughed, because his first fight had been a disaster, and he and all the Athenian hippeis had ridden clear without blooding their weapons and hated themselves for it. Hoplites disdained the hippeis because they could ride out of a rout.
