Cleitus tell Pharnuches, their commander, his march route. I sent Ataelus north and waited until the column marched. There’s not another crossing this easy for a hundred stades.’
Darius chuckled. ‘We even marched with the column,’ he said. ‘The Amazons have a cavalry escort — a dozen of Hephaestion’s own Companions.’
‘He commands the Companions now,’ Philokles put in, as Diodorus came up with the other officers.
‘Who does?’ Diodorus asked. His armour was off, and he took a helmet full of muddy water from Ataelus and poured it over his head. ‘Damn, that’s good.’
Ataelus grinned. ‘For sick making — too much water,’ he said.
‘Hephaestion commands the Companions,’ Philokles said.
‘Fucking catamite,’ Diodorus said. ‘Alexander must be hard up for cavalrymen.’
Philokles shrugged, and Darius flushed. Diodorus raised his hands to mollify them. ‘Well, he is a catamite. He manipulates Alexander — always has. Hephaestion couldn’t command a squadron of cavalry in a religious parade.’
Philokles raised an eyebrow at Diodorus. The two men fell silent and something passed between them. Philokles rolled his shoulders, as if he had been carrying weights and they had finally been put aside. ‘Have it as you will — you two know these people better than I. But the troopers guarding Srayanka are the best of the best. They’re right in the centre of the column.’
Kineas nodded. ‘Then that’s where the blow needs to fall,’ he said.
He put out pickets, a few of the Sakje riding as much as fifty stades south and east, and then he and his selected officers rode the banks of the river for twenty stades north and south, but Philokles’ ambush site was the best. To the north of the island of willows was another island covered in poplar, and to the south was a third island covered in rose bushes and tamarisk. More tamarisk grew in a shield-shaped tangle to the north and east along the bank and spreading away south, blocking the line of sight of the approaching force.
That night, he gathered all the officers down to the lowliest file leader and drew a map in the sand. He oriented them on the island of willows where they stood.
‘Here is the river,’ he said, showing the course of the Polytimeros. ‘Here is the trade road they will come up. The trees from the spring banks shade the road and offer cover.’ He allowed the tip of his stick to follow the road. ‘Just south of here is a stand — really a thicket — of tamarisk and poplar. The road winds between the trees and the river.’ Kineas indicated the riverbank and the current river bed. ‘The battlefield will be shaped like a diamond. They enter the diamond here, when they begin to pass between the woods and the river. Their scouts will not find Temerix in the tamarisk trees,’ (a ripple of laughter for the pun), ‘and will pass down the road. If any of them are really professional, they’ll ride right around the trees to the south. If so, we can forget them. The bulk of the column will enter the defile here,’ he indicated the top of the diamond, ‘and march along the road. There will be eight hundred of them in the front division and they’ll cover two stades of road. When the head of the column is ready to cross the Polytimeros here,’ and he indicated the island of willows where they stood, ‘the middle of the column will be passing Temerix. Understand?’ He received a chorus of nods and grunts. ‘I’ll show you in the morning, in any case. Unless some hothead screws it up, the column will keep marching across the Polytimeros. The infantry in the first division will either cross and keep marching, if they’re idiots, or they’ll cross and form in battle order to cover the second division, if they’re acting like soldiers.’
Eumenes, translating at his side, paused. Kineas understood him to be explaining to the Sakje why the Greek mercenaries would form a battle line on the other side. Kineas waited for him to finish. The Sakje nodded and pursed their lips in approval of such a professional move — the assumption that every river crossing was an ambush impressed them.
‘The Sakje squadron will be behind the island of poplars here,’ he said. They’d be well down the river bed, hidden by the next island to the north and by the habit of scouts to get across watercourses as quickly as possible. The notion that the watercourse was itself a highway might not occur to them. Even if it did, few of them would ride two stades off the line of march to check out an island.
He hoped.
‘When the signal is given, the Sakje show themselves and attack the rear of the first division. Harass them, shower them with arrows, but do not close. All I require is that the first division be unable to fall back to support the second division.’
Bain agreed, but the gleam in his eye told another story. Kineas resolved to send Eumenes to keep him in check.
‘The Olbian cavalry will be here.’ Kineas indicated the base of the woods, just a stade from the crossing. ‘The woods will screen us until it is too late. If they see us early,’ Kineas shrugged, ‘we fight it out. But if they don’t see us, we charge straight for the prisoner escort. If they run back along the road, they’re meat for Temerix. If they flee into the river, we’ll hunt them down. Remember that Srayanka and Urvara are waiting. Pray for some luck.’ He paused. ‘At the same time, Temerix starts punching arrows into the second division. They either counterattack into the thorns or they flee down the sides of the watercourse into the stream bed.’ Kineas pointed at the far side of the diamond. ‘The Sauromatae knights are here, behind the island of roses. If the Macedonians come down into the river, the Sauromatae deal with them. Again,’ and here Kineas turned to Lot, ‘we are not here to fight a battle. We are here to get Srayanka and Urvara. Kill some Macedonians if you can, but listen for the second trumpet.’ He looked around them, Sakje and Olbians and swarthy Temerix, again in the position of maximum danger. ‘When the second trumpet sounds, you break like a cloud of swallows fleeing a hawk on the plains and vanish like morning mist. We rally at the last camp on the Oxus. Unless we fuck up massively, there will be no pursuit because they don’t have the horses to follow us across the plain. Right?’
Nods and grunts.
‘Sounds beautiful,’ said Diodorus. He was grinning. ‘What do you think will really happen?’
Kineas couldn’t help but grin back, because the dream of the thunderbolt was still with him, and because the power to see Srayanka and hold her in his arms again lay in his own hands, and he was not a boy. ‘It will all go to shit and we’ll fight our way through it,’ he said. ‘Look, friends. If all else fails, cut your way to the middle of the column and get the girls. Unless the gods are against us, they’ll get free of the escort on their own.’
Philokles leaned in. ‘Srayanka is heavily pregnant,’ he said. He looked around with the embarrassment most men kept for discussions of sex and women’s matters. ‘I may have forgotten to mention this.’
A thunderbolt. Kineas looked at his friend with his mouth gaping like a landed fish.
Philokles cocked his head to one side. ‘I did forget to mention it,’ he said. ‘She told Darius that if she weren’t so heavy, they’d all have ridden free weeks ago. They may not be able to escape on their own.’
Kineas took a deep breath — he had known, in a vague way, that she was pregnant. This was more real. He felt a blow in his gut and the sudden pierce of anxiety like an arrow in his side. But he thought of Phocion and refused to bow to fate.
‘Cut your way to the middle of their column. Get the women. And then run like fire on the plain.’ He pointed at Temerix. ‘As soon as they try for you, you run down the trails you’ve cut and out of the back of the woods — right past us and on to your ponies. Understand?’
Temerix never smiled. He gave a curt nod, like a man given unnecessary and patronizing instructions.
‘Hey!’ Ataelus said. He rattled off some rapid Sakje to the chiefs, and they all grinned together. He turned back to Kineas. ‘If the wind for us, give them fire in the faces.’
Kineas pursed his lips and nodded. ‘Yes,’ he agreed.
In the morning, he led them on a ride around the invisible boundaries of his diamond until every man understood his orders. At nightfall, Samahe came to tell him that the Macedonian column was camped eighty stades up the Polytimeros.
That night, he dreamed again of the thunderbolt in his hand and Ataelus awakened him before the sun with a report from the outer pickets. The Macedonians were moving.
It was difficult to hide eight hundred men. Teams of Sindi brushed the main road clear of tracks while the little army set itself in its positions. Men hurried unnecessarily and were injured. A horse fell down the spring bank of the river and had to be killed, and the process of butchering and disposing of the horse took so long that Kineas was close to screaming with frustration.
Even after a hundred helmets full of water, the place where the horse had died was a mass of blood and flies.
Kineas clamped down. ‘Leave it,’ he said, his teeth clenched, glaring at the miserable Sakje rider who had
