‘I have not lived all my life on the back of a horse just to fall off when I’m pregnant,’ she answered. She smiled at him, but the edges of her lips were white.
Thalassa bore fatigue without any apparent change of gait. She went up the steep side of the ford in two bounds, and then Urvara was beside him, with Srayanka a stride behind. Andronicus’s trumpet rang out, three clear notes, and then again — the retreat.
Kineas reined in at the edge of the battle haze and risked a glance back. The new dust cloud was closer. To the south and east, Temerix’s men were already mounted on their ponies, jogging steadily across the last flat ground to the ford.
From the vantage point of a tall horse at the top of the riverbank, Kineas could now see the Sauromatae. Their bronze scale armour glinted in another battle cloud, half a stade east along the river bed. Somehow, the Greek infantry, the mercenaries, had moved into the stream bed.
Kineas shook his head, because this was all taking time and time was something he didn’t think they had, but even as he watched, Lot rode clear of the war haze, looking for the sound of the trumpet. Kineas made a sweeping gesture with his arm, pointing north and west. Lot pulled his helmet off and waved it, then gave a broad nod to signal assent. He was still refastening his helmet when he went back into the cloud.
An arrow whistled out of the trees on the far bank and plucked one of Temerix’s psiloi from his pony. The man screamed and then Temerix dismounted, waving his men into formation on the surer footing of the island. He already had the golden bow in his fist, and he nocked and drew in one smooth motion. His first arrow brought an answering scream of pain from the poplar trees along the far bank.
Kineas turned to Eumenes and Urvara. ‘Gather up the Sakje. Rally them and cover the flight of the Sindi.’ He looked down at Philokles. ‘Are you walking for a reason?’
‘I fell off,’ the Spartan said.
Kineas might have grinned, except for the situation. ‘Then run back to Temerix and tell him to stop playing rearguard and get his arse across. And then come back. No heroics — we are not lingering.’
Philokles saluted — the first time Kineas had ever seen him salute.
Srayanka reached out and took his hand in hers. Her nails dug into his bare forearms and she grunted. Sweat was pouring off her. Kineas tried to steady her.
Ataelus was watching the fight in the ford. ‘Spitamenes,’ he said, as if he was pronouncing a sentence of death. ‘For fucking Persians.’
Kineas looked over his shoulder. Temerix had his Sindi formed in an open line and they raised their bows together and loosed a volley that rose high and fell beyond the brush at the edge of the spring bank. Screams erupted and then a group of Iranian cavalry came through the trees and straight down the bank, riding like Sakje.
‘Athena stand with us,’ Kineas said. There were a hundred or more Medes. More like two hundred.
Kineas looked behind him. Eumenes had maybe twenty Sakje in a clump. If the Persians came up the bank and into the rear of the Olbians, it would be over. The Olbians would never recover.
Bad luck. He was so close to pulling this off.
Temerix called another order, and his archers formed closer, a pitifully small wall at the edge of the island, but they had a three-foot-high bank to defend. They loosed again and their arrows slammed into the front of the Median charge, and wounded horses reared, tangling the charge in their fall, while others baulked the jump to the island. Philokles arrived, running hard, and he roared at Temerix, who ignored him. The Sindi chief slung his bow and took up his axe.
Eumenes had thirty riders and Urvara had another ten.
‘I’m sorry, my love,’ Kineas said. He was the only voice they would all obey, and there was no one with whom he could leave her. He reached up to pull his cheek plate down and again found it gone.
‘Sakje! Come and feast!’ Srayanka sang at his side, and her clear voice carried where a man’s voice might have been lost. She reached out and pulled his long knife from the scabbard at his waist.
More riders emerged from the battle haze behind her. She sang again, and every Sakje in earshot was grinning.
Kineas filled his lungs, judging the time as one more rider joined Urvara. ‘Follow me!’ he shouted. He pointed his sword down the riverbank, and they started to move up behind him. He turned his head and saw Sitalkes, Darius and Carlus range themselves around Srayanka.
The Persian charge slammed into the Sindi. Axes swung against Persian swords, and Philokles bellowed and his heavy spear went through a Persian’s breastplate, tearing the man from his horse. His war cry sounded over the cacophony of battle like the cry of a hunting cat over the burble of a stream, and it froze the blood of more than one enemy.
The Sakje counter-charge seemed small and badly organized, but the Sakje weren’t Greeks — they didn’t require serried ranks to fight effectively. Instead of charging the Persian cavalry, the two groups slipped off to the left and right, every man and maid bent low, shooting hard. The Medes flinched away, fearing for their flanks, and suddenly robbed of their attempt to wrap around the Sindi, they halted and began to shoot. It was a natural decision for Asiatic cavalry, but it cost them the action.
Kineas felt like an idiot for risking himself — and Srayanka. Ataelus, at his shoulder, was rising and shooting, rising again, methodically pumping arrows into the Persians who were tangled with Temerix’s men. It was too late to halt, too late to swerve, so Kineas allowed Thalassa to push up the bank on to the island of willows. He was sword to javelin with a Persian veteran. He parried the spearhead and the man tried to use the haft to sweep him off his horse’s back. Kineas dropped the reins again, grabbed the haft and cut repeatedly at the man’s fingers, but his head burst in a spray of bone and blood and worse as Carlus struck him with a long-handled axe from the other side. An arrow hit Kineas in his breastplate like the kick of a mule on his right side, and he saw Srayanka’s face, streaked with pain and battle joy, red and white with exertion. She shrieked something that was lost in the battle, and the Medes answered a trumpet signal and flowed away — not broken, just not interested in further losses. The Sindi rose to their feet — aside from a handful, most had simply lain flat and waited for the Medes to ride away — and scrambled for the ponies who were dispersed over half a stade of island.
‘What are you doing here?’ Philokles roared at Kineas. Simultaneously, a tight knot of Medes, lost or desperate, punched through the Sindi and came at Kineas.
The great royal charger leaped from a dead halt to a gallop in three strides, her heavy hooves crashing against the rocky island. Kineas had his last opponent’s spear and he whirled it end over end and thrust hard at the first rider, a man with a copper beard, and in a moment of fear-induced clarity Kineas wondered if he had fought this man before, at Issus or at Arbela. And then his spear went over the man’s parry and under his burnoose and the man flipped back over the rump of his horse, all his sinews loosed, and Thalassa went right through the knot of Medes as two weak blows rang on Kineas’s back plate. And then young Darius was there, yelling insults in Persian, his sword dripping blood on to his hand when he raised it over his head, and Philokles was standing over a dead Mede and the survivors rode across the island and vanished west. One of the men fleeing was tall with an excellent horse and gold embroidery on his scarlet cloak, and he was clutching his side.
Srayanka sat on her horse. She had his knife in her right hand, and there was blood on it, and she waved it at the retreating Medes. ‘Come back and fight, Spitamenes!’ she screeched. She was laughing, with tears streaming from her face, and then her arms dropped and she screamed like a dying mare, a war cry or a scream of pain — or both.
‘Ares and Aphrodite,’ Kineas said, for the first time in his life praying to both instead of cursing. ‘Now, run!’
Temerix’s men needed no second urging, regardless of the death wish of their captain. On the north bank, the Medes were forming again, wary now, and pointing downstream where the Sauromatae were vanishing into their own dust cloud.
On the south bank, Diodorus and Andronicus had the Olbians in hand, or close to it, and the bank was lined with horsemen as the Sindi scrambled back. Side by side with Temerix and Philokles, Kineas and Srayanka crested the south bank together.
Diodorus was in front of the reordered Olbians. The rear ranks were sketchy and their horses were blown, but the Olbians were ready to charge again.
‘You’re an idiot!’ Diodorus said cheerily. ‘Khaire, Srayanka.’
‘You hold here until the Sauromatae are away. Then you. Sakje last under Eumenes and Urvara.’ Kineas
