caused the disaster. ‘To your places.’
Kineas was mounted on Thalassa. It was the mare’s first time in combat, and she stood tall and firm as Kineas mounted. She snorted, raised her head and then settled herself.
‘You are quite a horse,’ Kineas said. He clucked his mare into motion and played with the catch on his breastplate. A fine piece of work last spring, the piece of armour had taken so many blows that it was misshapen, and the shoulder catch no longer seated firmly in the back plate. When it popped, the two moving plates rubbed his shoulder raw. He determined to get a new one.
Where in Hades would he find a new Greek breastplate here, on the edge of the world? On the corpse of a Macedonian, of course. Except that he couldn’t see this fight leaving him time to strip a corpse.
Thalassa fidgeted. Diodorus had all the Olbian cavalry in place behind the thickets, and four of Temerix’s Sindi were sweeping their back trail. One of them had a wicker case strapped to his back. They’d caught a young hawk and they’d release her to signal that the enemy was in sight — an old Sindi trick, so he was told.
In the river bed, clouds of flies plundered the rocks where the horse had been butchered and the sound carried up and down the river bed like a manifestation of some evil god. Otherwise, there was silence, punctuated by horse noises — bits on teeth, cropping grass, reins creaking or snapping, gentle whickers and snuffles — and horse smells. The gelding behind Kineas defecated and the clod fell to earth with a heavy plop.
Kineas had waited in a few cavalry ambushes. This one was too large. The sheer number of men and horses involved raised the likelihood of discovery. He tried to decide what he would do when they were discovered. Sweat ran down his face and neck and down the hollow of his back where armour and tunic didn’t quite meet.
To be so close to Srayanka without saving her — he banished that thought.
But when he glanced over his shoulder, he couldn’t make himself think of sacrificing his friends to rescue his wife.
He farted, long and low, and the men around him laughed. His hands clenched and unclenched on his reins, and he began to tap his whip against his thigh.
Diodorus came up beside him. ‘We should dismount,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll tire our horses.’
Kineas bit back a retort. ‘Yes,’ he said, and suited the action to the word. Thalassa grunted as he slipped off her back. Philokles tied his horse to a flowering bush with shiny leaves and lay down, as if to sleep.
Kineas hated him for the ease with which he went to sleep.
Dismounted, he could see nothing but three hundred horses and their riders and a wall of poplar trees. I should have arranged my position with a clear view of the enemy’s approach, he thought. His knees were weak. He looked at the sun, which hadn’t moved a finger’s span against the branch he had chosen as a marker.
He glanced around at Diodorus. He was flushed and fingering the edge of his machaira. When their eyes met, Diodorus walked his horse to where Kineas stood.
‘I feel like a virgin looking at his first girl,’ Diodorus said.
Philokles stood up from his nap. ‘The Olympic Games will be next year,’ he said, as if this was news. ‘I imagine the athletes have already left their homes for the games at Eleusis.’
Kineas looked around, mystified. ‘That was two weeks ago,’ he said.
‘Hmm.’ Philokles looked around, as if noticing all of the cavalry for the first time. ‘They go to win immortal glory in the striving of peace. All we’re going to do is rescue some barbarian woman from Alexander. Why are you two on edge?’ He grinned. ‘You have chosen an excellent site for an ambush and arranged your troops. All else is with the gods.’
Diodorus put his sword back in its sheath. ‘Sure. Fucking Spartan.’
Kineas took a steadying breath. ‘We take a great risk here,’ he began, and Philokles smiled.
‘Friends,’ he said, holding up his hand — and the hand shook. ‘I merely hide my fears better,’ he said.
Kineas performed a quick calculation. ‘I am in the grip of blind fear,’ he said. ‘We must have at least an hour. I am as stupid as the boy who let his horse roll down the riverbank. I should go and see to my men.’ He dusted his hands.
Then he went from man to man throughout the Olbians, clasping hands with every man and saying a few words. He teased, he mocked, he complimented, and behind him, three hundred Greeks and Keltoi and assorted professional cavalrymen breathed easier and smiled. As he moved among them, a breeze came up like the caress of a friendly goddess.
Kineas too breathed easier. It took him an hour to circle his troops, constantly on the lookout for the appearance of Ataelus or the sight of a bird rising over the woods in front of him. It kept him busy and he only thought of Srayanka fifty times.
When he came back, Philokles was making water against a stone and Diodorus was staring at the line of tamarisk trees as if he could bore a hole through them with his eyes. Kineas made a show of fastidiously avoiding the Spartan’s rock, and then he lay down in the shade of a silver-leafed poplar and pulled his broad straw hat over his eyes.
His stomach roiled and he could feel all of his stress pushing at his colon. His feet felt as if worms were crawling over them and his hands shook.
‘He’s over it,’ Diodorus said with irritation. ‘Now he’ll take a nap.’
Kineas smiled under his straw hat. Over it, he thought. Despite the growing heat, he was chilled to the bone. Over it.
Ambushes are different. In a field action, the commander — and the trooper — can watch the enemy deploy, can track the enemy’s countless errors and take comfort, can lose himself in preparation, giving orders or taking them.
In an ambush, he can only wait and the only two options are victory or disaster. No one will stay safely in reserve. No one is likely to escape from the grip of war.
Sakje and Olbian and Sauromatae, most of them were in the grip of fear and panic, and the trees and bushes moved with the quivering of men.
Still, all things considered, they were better off than the Macedonian column.
It was closer to noon than to morning when the hawk burst into the air over the thorn wood to their front, her flight so loud in all the silence that men who had achieved some sort of uneasy sleep were startled awake, all their fears returned.
‘Drink water, and mount!’ Kineas said in a fierce whisper. The whisper was passed back. Horses whickered despite the best efforts of their riders, and for a minute, the Olbians made as much noise as a bacchanal. Kineas glared at them, a vein throbbing at his temple, but it couldn’t be helped.
‘We’re fucking doomed,’ he said to Philokles.
The Spartan shrugged and drank water from a gourd. ‘Marching men hear nothing,’ he said. ‘And “We’re fucking doomed” is not a statement to inspire confidence in a commander.’
‘Teach that in Sparta, do they?’ Diodorus asked. ‘Oh, for the benefits of your education, Philokles.’
‘Shut up, both of you.’ Kineas pushed forward to the very edge of the trees. He handed Philokles his reins and waved at Diodorus. ‘Let’s go.’
‘You know how to hold a horse, right?’ Diodorus asked the Spartan.
‘If I forget, I’ll just run in circles flapping my arms and screaming at the top of my voice until you Athenians come and rescue me,’ he replied in a harsh whisper.
Kineas belly-crawled forward under the branches of the poplar, his forearms abraded by rose stems. He pushed forward until he could just see over a low ridge of earth. His line of sight was limited to the ford, the island of willows and the far side of the spring banks.
‘Philokles is better,’ Diodorus said, and Kineas glared him to silence.
The damned hawk was now circling the tamarisk wood, screaming her head off. ‘Remind me of this the next time the Sindi have an old trick,’ Kineas said.
Diodorus gave him a sharp nudge. The head of the Macedonian column was emerging from the gap between the spring bank and the tamarisk wood. Either they were moving very fast or the thrice-cursed bird had been released late.
There was an advance guard of Macedonian infantrymen mounted on nags. They had javelins instead of their pikes, but their corslets and short, guardless helmets marked them. Their horses were moving carefully, clearly tired. Even as he watched, the scout’s horses became restless with the discovery that there was water and they began to neigh.
