Niceas grunted. ‘They don’t look the same as they did last year,’ he said.
Kineas rubbed his chin. It was not a day for laughter, but he smiled. ‘No,’ he said. As he grew used to power, he was learning to say less and think more. ‘No, they don’t.’
Niceas grunted again. ‘Weather looks better. Sky is clear.’ Behind him, the hippeis were falling in. Where five hundred had mustered on the morning of the great battle, fewer than four hundred would answer today.
The survivors of Cleitus’s fourth troop — now under Petrocolus’s command — were the strongest. They had come late for the battle and ridden only in the final charge, and despite having the oldest men, experience and fine horses had kept most of them alive.
But Nicomedes was dead — and his hyperetes for the third troop, Ajax of Tomis, lay in a canvas shroud, sewn tight, awaiting shipment to Tomis to be buried by his father. Their troop had fought alone against a tide of Macedonian horse, and died almost to a man. The survivors made a silent file in second troop.
Leucon had died in the rain and confusion of the night action, and Eumenes, despite three wounds and the treason of his father, sat at the head of first troop with Cliomenedes. Eumenes’ father, Cleomenes, had been instrumental in handing the city to the Macedonians — either for personal gain or because he truly believed that Macedon promised the city a richer future. He had died out on the sea of grass, leaving his son a rich man, and a deeply unpopular one.
Clio was the youngest of their officers, Petrocolus’s adolescent son, who had commanded the troop through the harrowing last hour of the great battle, and he was struggling to maintain authority despite his popularity and obvious courage. The two young men had all the youngest cavalrymen and his troop had seen the longest fighting, if not the hardest. The homes of the wealthy up by the statue of Apollo were still full of wounded from this troop, but for the moment, only twenty troopers sat behind them,
Only second troop, commanded by Diodorus and now holding all the mercenary cavalrymen, looked prepared for another day of battle. A summer of campaigning had made Diodorus into a fine commander, and Antigonus the Gaul was the complete hyperetes — calm, authoritative and efficient. His appointment made the integration of the tyrant’s former bodyguard simpler, because he spoke their language and could claim some birth that impressed even Hama, their chieftain. There were almost a hundred of the Keltoi, and they were natural horsemen. Recent enmity meant nothing to them — more important were their endless taboos and rituals. A Greek officer might quickly have fallen foul of them. Antigonus had no such troubles. But for political reasons, only Hama and a dozen of his Keltoi rode in the second troop today. The rest were in their barracks. This was a parade of the victors.
And there was Heron. The tall young man was no less gawky in the saddle than walking the grass, and even the tallest of the captured chargers was too small for him. His troop — men of Pantecapaeum, a neighbouring city, and not really under Kineas’s command — had also taken part in Nicomedes’ desperate defence on the left of the army. They had been luckier — and broken earlier — and fifty saddles remained filled. But their victory was bitter- sweet. They were now exiles. Victory in the great battle had empowered the democratic faction in their city, and the troop of rich men — aristocrats to a trooper — was no longer wanted at home.
Kineas and Diodorus had been the victims of just such an event. They knew the sting of exile — the humiliation and the endless small slights that citizens imposed on stateless men. But Heron was a prickly fellow at the best of times, and he sat in his resentment, disdaining attempts to improve his lot, and his men followed his lead. They remained with Kineas because most of them had nowhere else to go.
Finally, formed on the far left of the line of hippeis, there were Ataelus’s twenty Sakje, half of them women. They wore odd combinations of Greek and Sakje armour, rode expensive horses and were covered in gold. They were exotic and dangerous and they would march in the procession, despite the protests of certain city factions, as would the Sauromatae.
All the survivors had benefited from the battle by acquiring the very best of the Macedonian armour and the heavy Macedonian chargers. On the day of battle, the Macedonian horses had been starved and tired — but a month on the grass, even in the rain, had restored some of their spirit, and five days’ access to the granaries of the city meant that every man was mounted like a prince.
Diodorus cantered up and gave a precise salute, his fist clenched on his breastplate. Kineas returned it.
‘Rain’s stopped,’ Diodorus said. He grinned, his sharp features and freckled cheeks glowing with pleasure. He enjoyed command, and he worried less about the future than Kineas. ‘Maybe there’s hope after all,’ he added. ‘You look beautiful, I must say.’
‘Why are you so fucking cheerful?’ Kineas asked.
‘I’m tired of rain. And Coenus is better this morning. His fever broke in the dark. He ate.’ Diodorus tilted his helmet back so that his red hair showed at the brow. ‘You have to see him. It’s a gift from the gods.’
Kineas felt his mood lighten immediately. Coenus — one of his oldest friends, one of his best men, a scholar and a fellow exile — had been given up for dead.
So Kineas had a different look about him as he took his place at the head of the hippeis and led them out into the streets, through the gate and along the edge of the market to where the priests of Apollo waited with the phalanx — all the men of the city. There were gaps in the phalanx just as there were in the hippeis, but in his present mood, Kineas was glad to see that there were also men back standing in the ranks who had ridden into the city in the wagons of wounded.
Every morning another two or three of the wounded tried on their armour and either crept back to their pallets defeated, or fought their way through a fog of dizziness and weakness to attend the musters. The recoveries had peaked now. Kineas, who visited the wounded twice a day, had little hope for the men who continued to lose weight, or whose wounds were still fevered.
Sitalkes, the Getae boy, was one. Coenus had been another — with light wounds that had suddenly festered — and he had been down since the army left Marthax. If he had recovered, there was still hope for the rest.
Movement in the Sauromatae camp roused him from thought. Prince Lot was mounting a captured Macedonian mare. He waved to Kineas, and Kineas waved back. A glance over his shoulder showed him that Memnon was some minutes from having the phalanx in order. He pressed his knees against his own captured Macedonian charger and cantered painfully across the short-cropped grass, his hip burning with the rhythm of his unnamed charger’s hooves.
Lot raised a fist in greeting. ‘Rain stops!’ he said in Greek. He pointed to the sky over Kineas’s shoulder, where dark blue could be seen at the base of the sky in the east like the glaze on an expensive cup.
‘Rain stops,’ Kineas agreed. The Sauromatae had fought in every action that Kineas had led. Their superior armour and battle skills had kept many of them alive despite a battering, and most of their saddles would be full if they mustered. Their horse herd, bolstered by their share of the Macedonian and Getae spoils, numbered almost a thousand, guarded by shifts of well-armed young women, and they were eating Olbia’s farmers out of their grain, yet another problem Kineas had to face.
‘Rain stops and ground hard again,’ Lot said. ‘Hard ground makes good road east.’ The Sauromatae prince leaned close. ‘Need to ride — need to be home.’
Kineas switched to Sakje, a language where he was stilted and Lot was more fluent. ‘At least a month until we ride, cousin.’ Kineas had adopted the habit of addressing the senior tribal officers as cousins, elder or younger as age and rank dictated.
Lot had a magnificent, if barbaric, blond moustache, and his right hand parted his moustache and then twirled each end, a habit that was sometimes imitated behind his back. ‘Need to ride,’ he said in Sakje. ‘My nephew worries me.’
Kineas shrugged. ‘Nephew?’ he asked, wondering which of the many Sauromatae or even Sakje counted as his nephew.
‘My wife’s sister’s son. My heir. He worries me.’ Lot stared out over the sea of grass as if he could see the man riding in the distance. ‘Never thought to be gone so long.’ Lot looked chagrined. ‘Didn’t know the sea of grass was so big. ’
Kineas raised a hand to forestall him. Lot had done his share — far more than his share — to win the victory at the Ford of the River God. Since that day, Lot had never ceased to press the Sakje and the Greeks to follow him east, where his tribe and the others of the Massagetae confederacy — the eastern Sakje — were hard pressed by Alexander. And the five days of waiting at Olbia was making him edgy.
‘Patience,’ Kineas said. ‘Today we mourn our dead.’
Lot bowed his head. Then he waved to his own nobles, who began to file out into the column. Niceas had kept a space for them — they were aliens, but they were allies, and with Ataelus’s little troop of prodromoi, they
