Cloak, who had only a short sword and was fully engaged with Urvara. She threw Kineas a look — exasperation or desperation — and Kineas rode into the enemy general’s flank, tipping him to the ground without a blow, where Carlus finished him with a spear thrust. Legs locked on Thalassa’s barrel, Kineas found himself in a knot of desperate Macedonians in dust-coloured cloaks, probably Purple Cloak’s bodyguard. He cut right and left, took another blow on his left shoulder that cut the leather straps on his armour and kneed his charger into a run, bursting through the enemy and into the clear, blind with pain. He grabbed for his lost reins, missed them, but Thalassa turned under him like an equine acrobat, wheeling so sharply that Kineas almost lost his seat. The three bodyguards were locked with Carlus and Sitalkes. Kineas could see the blue plume on Diodorus’s helmet beyond Carlus’s giant form. He leaned forward on his mare’s neck, gasped a gulp of air and glanced at his left shoulder, which appeared uninjured despite the pain. Then he tapped Thalassa’s barrel with his heels and the horse responded with another powerful lunge forward, so that he crashed full into Sitalkes’ opponent, knocking the man’s horse back and losing the enemy rider his seat. Sitalkes put the man down with brutal economy while Kineas engaged his other opponent, trapping his sword in a high parry, cutting his bridle hand with a circular overhead feint and then killing him with a blow to the neck.
He had been riding for almost a minute with only his knees, his charger responding magnificently, but now Kineas reached again for the dangling reins, looking right and left, exhausted by the intensity and the exertion. His breath came in wracking heaves and his knees threatened to lose their grip on his mount. His right wrist barely responded.
Diodorus smacked Red Cloak in the side of his helmeted head with the full swing of his cornel-wood javelin, and the man went down, unconscious or dead. Diodorus immediately began bellowing for the Olbians to rally. Eumenes met Kineas’s eyes — he’d downed his man and was also looking around. In the river bed, the big Keltoi on their heavy chargers had blasted the rest of the bodyguard to shreds and were cleaning up. Carlus was already off his horse, stripping the corpses of his victims. Sitalkes gave Kineas a satisfied smile — not bloodlust, but pleasure at being alive.
The shattering noise of the melee died suddenly to horse sounds and human agony.
Diodorus was everywhere, rallying his men and watching the battle. Kineas let him do it. He was riding for Srayanka.
To the north, Bain’s riders were pressing closer to the beleaguered mercenaries and the Macedonian mounted infantry, firing as they went. The whole fight had become a dust cloud and a cacophony of noise. Horses were dying with screams of anguish. To the south, something had happened — Kineas couldn’t see any fighting at all, but neither was there any sign of the mercenary infantry. To the east there was a battle haze rising — someone was engaged with the Sauromatae in the river bed.
All of it could wait while he greeted her. She was off her horse, standing against one of the ancient altars.
‘Srayanka,’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘I feel as if I’m going to die,’ she said, so very much herself that Kineas had to smile despite her words. He started to dismount, leaving Thalassa to crop grass in the middle of a battle.
‘Fight your battle!’ she said through gritted teeth. And then she gave a cry, somewhere between grunt and scream.
‘You-’ he said, and took her in his arms.
‘Bah,’ she murmured into his cloak. ‘You’re covered in blood.’ But she smiled.
Behind him, Andronicus called to him. He turned to see Andronicus and beyond him he saw Ataelus coming from the west, riding flat out.
‘Look!’ yelled Eumenes. He was pointing west, beyond Ataelus. Kineas turned.
There was a dust cloud — a huge cloud that rose like an avenging god over the plains. It was large enough to be another army, and that army was close.
‘Athena guard us!’ Kineas prayed, reaching for his helmet and finding it gone. A random arrow fell close. ‘Rally the Olbians!’
Diodorus had the task in hand. Philokles ran up leading his horse. He, too, began to call for the Olbians to rally. Antigonus surfaced from a knot of Keltoi and began to beat them into column.
‘Rhomboid!’ Kineas yelled to Diodorus.
Ataelus rode down into the ford and his horse’s hooves raised a crystal spray from the red-brown water. His face was a mask of panic. Time slowed. Kineas had time to release Srayanka so that she slumped by the altar.
Urvara seized his hand and broke the spell. ‘She’s karsanth!’ The Sakje woman wheeled her horse and pointed at Srayanka. ‘ Karsanth! Do you understand?’
Kineas didn’t understand, and Ataelus was there, and time was speeding along. ‘Big column — ten and ten, a hundred times — more! For coming here!’ He gesticulated wildly.
Kineas took a deep breath, the scent of honeysuckle and copper blood mixing like a drug in his nose. Karsanth? Poisoned? ‘Who?’ he asked Ataelus. ‘Macedonian?’
Ataelus shook his head. ‘Big and fast,’ he said. ‘For waiting too long,’ he said with bitter self- recrimination.
‘What is karsanth?’ Kineas asked Ataelus and Eumenes.
They looked at each other while Urvara shook her head. ‘ Karsanth! Karsanth! How stupid are you? ’ She was as frustrated with herself as with him.
Bain’s Sakje were out of the river bed now, up on the bank of the river in the sand and gravel, riding in a tight ring around the crumbling wreck of two hundred Macedonians and mercenary cavalry. Even as he watched, Bain waved his bow and his trumpeter blew a long, complex call, almost like a paean, and the Sakje turned inward as one and fell on the Macedonians hidden in the dust cloud. Except that the Macedonians weren’t considered the best cavalry in the world for nothing, and even shot to pieces by archery they couldn’t answer, they hadn’t lost their will to fight. In the few heartbeats Kineas watched, he saw Bain die on a lance.
‘Giving birth!’ Eumenes shouted. ‘She’s giving birth! She’s in labour!’ The young man wheeled his horse and looked at her. She was crouched by the altar, unable to move, her face a rictus of pain.
Kineas looked back at the dust cloud, and over at his love, and before he even knew what he was going to say, his arm came up. He turned to Diodorus. ‘Take the Olbians — straight up the side and over the Companions. Wipe them out. Take the casualties — we need a clear retreat. You have to build the road. Do you understand?’
Diodorus slammed his sword hand into his breastplate in salute. His face was set. ‘I absolutely understand, Strategos.’
‘Carry on!’ Kineas turned to Andronicus. ‘As soon as you hit the Macedonians,’ he said, ‘sound the retreat. Sound it over and over. Understand?’
The big Gaul nodded.
Finally, Kineas rode to Srayanka. She had her forehead on the altar, and her whole body spasmed. Urvara rode up next to him and her look at Kineas begged him to do something.
Kineas reached down as Srayanka began to recover from her contraction. Their eyes met, and then their hands, and he reached to pull her across his saddle.
‘Do not mistake me for some weakling!’ she said. ‘I will ride! I am the Lady Srayanka, not some Greek camp follower!’
‘We must ride,’ he said patiently. Behind him, his ambush was coming apart, and men were dying.
She bit her lip and narrowed her eyes. ‘So be it,’ she said. With bitter practicality, she said, ‘Get me on my horse.’
Kineas and Urvara managed it. She was not light, but they were strong, and behind them, the battle exploded into life.
Two hundred paces distant, the Olbian rhomboid crashed into the fight between the Sakje and the Companions. The Macedonians were brave and skilled, but they had neither the weight nor the numbers to stop the Olbians. The crash of the Olbian onset was like a hundred maniac cooks beating on copper cauldrons and it carried over the whole battlefield.
Srayanka had a Macedonian horse — a beauty, but not heavy enough for war. Kineas reached for her reins and she stopped him with a look.
‘I have not come all this way to lose you in a cavalry fight,’ he said.
