Kineas rubbed his trimmed beard. ‘They’re going to fight now?’
Diodorus struggled to catch his breath. Memnon arrived. ‘They’re going north. The parley must have been to cover them. The whole army is in motion. There’s cavalry as a screen — we were lucky. And they’re tired. We got a glimpse.’
Kineas stretched as tall on his mount as he could, as if he could see farther. The last of the rain was blowing away in the east, but the visibility was still soft, and the middle distance of a few stades was already losing colour. ‘North?’ he said.
The reckless Sakje rider was coming to him. A stade away, Kineas could see it was Ataelus. His heartbeat quickened. He had a sense — almost the sense of his baqca dreams — of knowledge. Ataelus was coming from Heron. Heron was searching north. Diodorus said the Macedonians were marching north.
Kineas could see it — Zopryon’s desperate lunge. The desperate boar gores kings.
Ataelus didn’t bother to dismount. He pulled up so close that horse sweat showered his audience. ‘Heron finds ford. North. And Macedon find ford too.’
Kineas felt the weight of the inevitable future clamp down. Another ford — with a wide shingle and a big dead tree, no doubt.
The ford was just north of their northernmost herds — just by the shrine of the river god. Ataelus said that it was as wide as four wagons and no deeper than a man’s knees, and that there were Macedonians on the far side — just a handful, but more arriving — and that Heron was determined to hold the ford as long as he could.
Kineas didn’t wait to hear it all. He turned to Memnon. ‘I’m off to see the king. Take the phalanx and march immediately. You have to beat the taxeis in the race. They have a head start, but you have the inside track.’
Memnon nodded. ‘They won’t cross tonight.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘They’ll try. Go!’
He turned to his own officers. ‘Eumenes — your men are the most rested. Every man take two horses. Mount all the Sindi. Ride like every one of you bestrides a Pegasus. Nicomedes — go with him as soon as your men can mount. I’ll push the slaves to get a wagon in motion and you’ll have a late dinner. Thirty stades?’ he asked Ataelus.
Ataelus shrugged. ‘An hour’s ride.’
‘Diodorus — pull your men back from the ford. Rest now. You’ll ride with me in an hour.’ Kineas looked around. ‘We must win the race to the ford.’
They all nodded.
Kineas said, ‘This is his last throw. This will be the battle. He’s stolen a march — and we know he can march fast. Now we show what we can do.’
Philokles put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Enough orders,’ he said. ‘See you at the ford.’
Kineas’s news only served to reinforce what the king had already heard.
Marthax was blunt. ‘Maybe the ford. Maybe not the ford.’ He made a motion with his hand. ‘We cannot allow him to march away — go south, go to Olbia.’
The king looked five years older. ‘We’re taking the Sakje across the river,’ he said. ‘We will follow him, crush his rear guard, impede his march.’
Kineas took a deep breath. ‘He will have a three hour head start. He will march all night. You won’t catch him until morning. If I’m right, he’ll be crossing.’ Kineas ran a hand through his hair. ‘We have the smaller army and we intend to divide it?’
The king shook his head. ‘We have the faster army. We watch all of his motions and we rejoin to fight.’
Kineas shook his head. ‘He may force you to fight on the sea of grass — and I’ll be hours away, unable to help.’
Marthax’s face was set. He spoke rapidly, and the king translated. ‘We have no choice. If he gets ahead of us to Olbia, we’ve lost.’
Kineas could see that their minds were made up. They were tired — everyone was tired, and there was no time to talk. He thought about a battlefield he had never seen, except in a dream. He thought about the king, his friend — and rival. Riding away to leave him.
He knew what mattered now. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, ‘Leave me a clan — I can’t hold the ford with the Greeks alone.’ He was more afraid of how the Olbians would feel, waking to find that they alone were to bear the weight of Macedon.
The king frowned, but Marthax nodded. ‘Grass Cats. Standing Horses. You keep both. You know chiefs. Grass Cats fight all days — tired. Not ride all night. Standing Horses take hardest fight yesterday.’ He sent Ataelus for the chiefs. Through the king, he said, ‘I think Zopryon will go to the ford. We will catch him two hours after dawn — I think. You hold him. We will catch him.’ The other chiefs were hurrying up the hills, those that weren’t already across the river, fighting. Kineas saw Srayanka, already mounted, giving orders to her household knights. Philokles ran by her at the head of his light-armed two hundred, setting out at a run, and even as he watched, Philokles lifted his spear to her, and she shrieked a war cry in return that was taken up by her clan. Eumenes’ troop was already vanishing into the gloom. Nicomedes’ men were mostly armed, and the slaves had two wagons loaded — the whole column was moving, with Memnon’s heavy phalanx marching at the rear.
Kineas was proud of them.
Kaliax of the Standing Horse came first. He was nursing a badly cut arm, and he was pale, but he agreed to serve at Kineas’s command. Varo of the Grass Cats looked better — he spoke quickly, still full of the daimon of the fight, and he spoke eloquently in Sakje of the day-long skirmish beyond the ford, the puncturing of the enemy screen, the discovery that the enemy camp was being packed.
Kineas tried to be patient, but his heart was with the Olbians, moving swiftly up the river. They might be fighting in an hour. Right or wrong, Kineas wanted to be there. He had the eye for the ground, and his was the voice that all of the other Greeks would obey — even Memnon.
It occurred to him that he might die today — this very evening, if the fight started immediately. He felt his stomach clench, and his heart race. It was here. Now.
He wanted to see Srayanka again. The last time. She was at the foot of the hill, just the length of a racecourse away.
Instead, he turned to Varo and Kaliax. ‘There will be fighting at the river god’s shrine by nightfall,’ he said. ‘It is an hour’s ride for you. How soon can you come?’
Kaliax flexed his injured hand. ‘Sunset,’ he said.
Varo nodded. ‘Some of my Cats are still across the ford. We’ll need remounts — food. Sunset at best.’
Kineas nodded grimly. He hadn’t hoped for any better. ‘Come on my right flank,’ he said. He had to search for the words, and after a minute of confusion and worry, he slid off his mount, walked to a campfire, grabbed a burnt stick and a scrap of linen that covered a pot despite the protests of the Sindi woman at the fire. He put the linen over his knee and drew. ‘River,’ he said. Then two lines at right angles, like a road. ‘The ford and the shrine,’ he said, and the two chiefs nodded. He sketched a block, a simple rectangle. ‘The Greeks,’ he said. And another, crossing the river. ‘Macedon.’
Both chiefs nodded. Kineas’s stick was out of charcoal. He walked back to the fire and chose another. He drew a line, and then a broad, curving arrow. ‘You come north,’ he said. ‘Swing east, away from the river, along the ridge.’
Both men nodded. ‘Sunset,’ said Varo.
‘Go with the gods,’ said Kineas.
He could feel the thing moving — the whole course of events, the preliminary to the battle, sweeping along like the river in the king’s story. He wanted his warhorse and armour; wanted to make sure the slaves had sufficient food for a hot meal for every one of the Greek allies — wanted to see Srayanka.
He had no time to talk to Srayanka.
He would probably never see her again.
He mounted, took one look at the column of Olbians vanishing into the deep grass along the river, and rode down the south side of the hill to where she sat her horse, one hand on her hip and the other holding her whip. She smiled at him. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Now you will see how we fight.’
Something in Kineas was too weary to talk. He had only come to say goodbye, but she was so alive, so like a goddess — the Poet often said that men and women were like gods in their best moments, and there she was.
He didn’t want to die. He wanted to be with her for ever.
