Kineas took it. Their hands clasped.
‘I swear by Zeus and all the gods, and by the shade of my mother who died to bear me, and by the power of my love for you, Kineas, that I will never be drunk again in your presence, that I will never drink wine to excess. And if I dishonour this oath, may all the Furies shred my soul.’ Philokles spoke in his sober voice.
‘May the gods hear you, and support you in your oath,’ Kineas said. ‘But when I am gone, you must stay on this path. Or it will be your death.’
The Spartan and the Athenian embraced.
‘I’m sorry!’ Philokles said, and burst into tears.
‘You need to stop being a soldier, brother,’ Kineas said. ‘It’s the killing that makes you drink.’
Philokles wept for a while, and then he stood straight. ‘What do people do when they don’t drink?’ he asked.
Kineas picked up the amphora. ‘Experiment. You’re the philosopher! ’
31
And at last, after a year in the field, the army of Olbia, as represented by the hardiest three hundred men, and the Western Assagatje, as represented by four hundred riders culled by two summers of war, and the Western Sauromatae, as represented by Lot’s two hundred, came to the gathering of all the Sakje peoples.
Queen Zarina had camped the bulk of her forces in a bend of the Jaxartes, secure that the water at her back was deep and cold, and that the mountains on her flanks were too difficult for any foe. In the vale of the Jaxartes, she had gathered thirty thousand warriors, and as many again lived in satellite camps, as close as a day’s ride away or as far as ten days’ ride, so that if the Sakje had been grains of sand spread across a parchment, it was as if the gods had tipped the parchment so that one corner of it held all the sand — tons of it — in one small area.
The grass was devastated, and twice the whole army had had to move. There were no deer to be hunted for fifty stades, no fish in the river, no wood for fires. Every tribe had sent away its weakest to their winter grounds to lessen the numbers, and even then the queen had to rotate tribes out on to the grass and back to the river to watch Iskander.
Across the river, the army of Macedon concentrated forces from camps along the Jaxartes, the Polytimeros and the Oxus into one single mass of men, horses and machines. The siege of Marakanda had been broken and only the thinnest garrison left. Oxen pulled the king’s siege artillery up to his camp on the edge of the sea of grass, the greatest horde of enemies the Sakje had ever seen — and still the Macedonian officers stared at the dust clouds across the river and shuddered. Even odds against a foe who was mounted throughout her force.
North and east of Alexander’s army, a smaller force — just two thousand men, Sogdians and Bactrians and mercenaries and a handful of Sauromatae — moved along the southern bank of the Jaxartes, searching for a ford, under Eumenes.
Kineas heard it all from scouts, from the Sakje, from Srayanka and finally from Ataelus himself before the last day of march was done. The sun was setting on the valley of the Jaxartes, and below them twenty thousand horses milled, every horse looking for the last clumps of grass along the river. Young men raced and shot bows. Women sharpened weapons and repaired tack. Tents of felt rose from some encampments, and others had a few wagons, but in the main it was a war camp and the people lay on the ground with the reins of their horses near to hand.
Ataelus waved at the whole sweep of the people, who covered the ground as far as the eye could see. ‘The power of the Massagetae, the Sakje, the Dahae.’ Ataelus wore a grin that eliminated his cheekbones. ‘I was for boying here.’
Philokles rubbed his beard and watched, transfixed, while trying to take in what Kineas had just told him. ‘So Alexander will try to turn the Sakje left?’ he asked.
‘Alexander will come right across the river,’ Kineas said with finality. ‘But my guess is that he will send a column to wrong-foot the Scythians on their left. And that’s what Ataelus says.’
Philokles could almost see it. ‘Ares,’ he said. ‘Right across the river here?’
‘No,’ Kineas said with a smile. ‘There’s no ford here. The queen chose her camp well. Upstream ten stades is where he will come.’ He spoke with conviction, and Ataelus nodded.
The Sakje screwed up his mouth. ‘Short ride,’ he said. ‘To battle,’ he added after a pause.
‘If you know all this, surely you can defeat Alexander?’ Philokles asked.
Kineas shook his head. ‘Do I look like a Sakje chief? I will not command here, Spartan. I can only share my views with Queen Zarina. Let’s go and meet her.’
‘But we may defeat him?’ Philokles asked again.
Kineas halted his horse and leaned close. ‘I have no idea, brother. I’m not a seer — I’m the commander of half a thousand cavalry. So perhaps, despite your concern for the triumph of Panhellenism, you could shut the fuck up about the battle?’
Philokles laughed. ‘You’re nervous! I’d never have believed it!’
Kineas glared, but held his tongue.
Philokles laughed again. ‘Let’s go and meet the queen of the Sea of Grass!’
When the column was halted, they had to camp on a site that had already been used and abandoned by other contingents, and it took time to wedge eight hundred people and four times that many horses into the edge of the sprawling camp. The site was good and water was plentiful but the grass was cropped to the roots. Antigonus laid out the horse lines almost in the bed of the river, the only place where there was any grazing not already taken by other groups, and he doubled the horse pickets because Macedonians could be seen just a pair of bow shots away across the river.
Lot rode up from the Sauromatae at the back of the column with Lady Bahareh at his side. He clasped hands with Kineas. ‘She and Zarina are old friends. We — Zarina and I — have traded some sword cuts.’
‘Good,’ Philokles said. ‘We can all hide behind Bahareh.’
The Sauromatae spear-maiden grinned. She was as thin as a tree branch and her hair was the colour of iron. ‘I’ll protect you, little prince,’ she said. ‘Greetings, Lord Kineas.’
Srayanka took Ataelus and Parshtaevalt, and Kineas took Leon and Diodorus. Philokles never required an invitation. They took no escort and left their people cooking dinner. They rode hard for the queen’s tent, just a dozen stades away around the next bend in the river.
After travelling more than four hundred parasangs from the Ford of the River God on the little Borysthenes to the upper Jaxartes, Queen Zarina was almost a disappointment.
Qares, Zarina’s messenger earlier in the summer, was the first to recognize them. He ordered a group of adolescent girls to hold their horses and ushered them into the queen’s tent, a magnificent construction in red and white. There were no guards, and the tent was full of tribal leaders and Sakje knights, as well as other Massagetae in simpler dress and a dozen slaves. If Qares hadn’t been standing in respectful silence next to him, his whole attention focused on a short woman in a simple dress, Kineas might have mistaken who among the assembly was the queen. There were several women with regal bearing, two of them in armour, but the queen stood towards the edge of the group, looking at arrow shafts. One by one she looked down the shafts, making quiet comments to a child who stood by her with her gold-covered gorytos, until thirty were chosen. The discards were carried out of the tent. Kineas had time to observe her as she spoke in quiet tones to the child, and to a man of her own age who stood at her shoulder.
Zarina was a short woman with iron-grey hair in straight braids woven tight with gold foil, the only sign of her royalty that she wore on her person. On a lacquered armour stand behind her sat a coat of iron scales with alternating rows of gold, with a golden gorget as rich as Srayanka’s and a golden helmet surmounted by a gryphon whose eyes were picked out in garnets. The child — clearly her squire — replaced the gorytos on the armour stand and brought her a long-handled axe with a double blade. She rubbed her thumb across the blades, first one and then the other, and smiled. As she smiled, she raised her eyes and in one glance took in Qares and then the group with him.
‘You found them!’ she said, stepping forward. The tent fell silent as she raised her voice and every head turned.
