Two hundred parched throats found the energy to shout, Yes!
‘March – walk! No trumpets!’
They were off. Now Satyrus was pushed back and back until he was in the sixth rank, the very centre of the rhomboid. He knew the drill, but it was different in the dust. He was between two complete strangers, but the one on his left turned a pair of bloodshot eyes from deep within a Thracian helmet. ‘Nothing to worry about, kid!’ he said. ‘Safe as being home. First time?’ he asked.
‘Yes!’ Satyrus shouted over the rising noise of their passage.
‘Careful with that spear, then!’ his new file-mate said. ‘Don’t hit Kalyx with it. He’s not the forgiving kind.’
The other men laughed.
Half a stade passed very quickly.
‘Paean!’ said his uncle’s voice. ‘Make them hear you!’
The Paean of Apollo began with four beats of carefully measured rhythmic silence, and Andronicus beat his trumpet with a knife hilt – crack, crack, crack, crack – and the paean bloomed like a flower in the rising dust, an offering to a god who valued more than just slaughter.
Satyrus sang with them, and he was so moved his voice choked, and he felt as if he was one with all these men around him – one pair of arms and legs in a beast with a hundred arms and legs like the titan of legend.
They began to trot.
‘Close up!’ shouted the man on his right. Satyrus was embarrassed to see that he had lost ground. His horse responded beautifully, closing the gap in a few anxious heartbeats, and they were at a canter, the files a little spread from the speed, and then, in an instant, there were men all around him shouting, screams of terror and panic as if the gods had rendered every man witless. Satyrus couldn’t see anything – there was no one to fight, and then, out of nowhere, a sarissa head slid past his knee, the sharp edges cutting his thigh where one enemy soldier, at least, had tried to change his front.
Then they were plunging through the enemy phalanx – Satyrus hoped that it was the enemy phalanx – among hundreds of men in heavy armour, but they were casting their sarissas to the ground and running or dying under the hooves. There were men on foot all around Satyrus and his horse had almost stopped.
He stabbed overarm with his spear at the first hand to try to seize his bridle. These men were desperate – and terrified. Most of them weren’t even fighting back, just trying to push past him, but some either intended to die fighting or simply wanted his horse. A blow in the back nearly unseated him.
He punched back with his spear on reflex and almost lost his seat again as he failed to hit anything.
It looked to him as if the cavalry had lost all of its momentum and cohesion in the impact and now spilled out along the rear face of the phalanx, but the centre of the rhomboid had penetrated deeply – and Satyrus was in the part that had penetrated, lost in a sea of enemies.
For no reason he could discern, Satyrus was now a file-leader. He saw mounted men behind him. He managed to lock his knees on the dark bay’s back and he obeyed his uncle and put his head down so that oncoming foes had only his helmet to attack – the best armoured part of him – and the charger responded by pushing forward through the press. Twice he reared his charger to clear the men in front, and the second time, she lost her footing on a corpse and they fell heavily. The horse rolled off, uninjured, and a spear-butt rammed into the earth inches from Satyrus’s nose. He had lost his spear, but he got the sword out from under his arm, rolled to his feet, ignoring the pain from the old wound in his side, and parried the next blow, lifting the man’s sarissa shaft high and stepping in under it as Philokles had taught. He cut out, almost blind, and his short sword bit into the man’s hand and he screamed, and then Satyrus’s file-partner, the man in the fancy Thracian helmet, spitted him on a spear. ‘Get your horse!’ he shouted.
The charger with the fancy tack was standing obediently just an arm-length away, and Satyrus swarmed up her side as if he was getting onboard a ship – she was a tall horse. The man in the Thracian helmet knocked another fleeing Macedonian flat, and then Satyrus was up, sword in hand, helmet askew but otherwise none the worse.
‘Come on, lad,’ Thracian helm called, and they were off into the dust. Then there were more horsemen, and more – men in blue plumes and cloaks – and then Satyrus had Crax at his shoulder.
And then there were other men – men with bright white shields – shouting and laughing and waving all around him. An officer was yelling for his men to open a file and let the cavalry through.
Satyrus reined in his charger and simply breathed. He was pressed up hard against the white shields, but they were grounding their spears, pushing the bronze butt-spikes into the salt sand.
‘Ares,’ a Macedonian voice said. ‘Look at this child!’
Satyrus peered down at the dust-covered face. ‘Eumenes?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ the Macedonian panted. ‘Yeah, Eumenes, kid. Who are you guys?’
‘Hippeis of Tanais!’ Crax roared by his side. Satyrus nodded proudly.
The man behind him slapped his back. ‘Well done, little lord,’ he said.
The trumpet sounded off in the dust.
‘Fucking dust,’ Hama said. The Keltoi had appeared as if by magic.
‘Try being down in it, horse boy,’ the Macedonian said. Then the white-caked face creased in a smile. ‘Thanks, horse boys!’
Another Macedonian called out, ‘First fucking Greeks I’ve ever liked – you saved our arses!’
They were moving again, because the Macedonians were shuffling to the side, opening a lane. Satyrus followed Hama, who was now, apparently, his file-leader. All the other men who should have been in between were gone.
‘Hama?’
‘Shush, lord,’ was his reply. ‘Listen for the trumpet!’
Melitta could see the length of the main avenue of the camp, and there were Saka coming in her direction. She hesitated as long as it took to push her bow deep in her gorytos, and then she was riding towards them at a smart trot, her male burden bouncing like a sack of potatoes.
‘This is embarrassing,’ he said.
‘Don’t talk,’ she replied. ‘Look terrified.’
She rode right at the lead group of Saka – four men and a deeply tanned elder. She raised her whip and called one word in Saka.
‘Mine!’ she said, pointing at the boy across her lap. The elder smiled.
She rode past them without a challenge – she rode the length of the street without so much as a question. At the far end, the avenue was plugged with a roiling mass of Saka who couldn’t decide what to loot first. She pushed forward, her boots rubbing against their boots.
‘The red and yellow tent!!’ she called. ‘Gold and silver!’ Her Sakje had the western accent, but that didn’t bother anyone. She turned and pointed her whip. ‘All the way through the market, cousins!’
‘Thanks, little bride!’ shouted a warrior with tattoos of dragons twined up his arms. Sauromatae warrior maidens were often called ‘little brides’ because in war they earned the right to choose their husbands. Voices laughed, but again no one raised a hand against her – much the opposite. Men moved their horses to let her pass, and she left the crush with nothing bruised but her feet. Once free of the press, she urged Bion to a trot and then a canter, and when she was beyond the rows of cook fires, dangerous pits in the murk, she gave the big gelding his head and his legs opened into a long gallop that ate the ground.
‘It’s like flying!’ the boy at her back said. ‘Are you really a Saka?’
‘I’m Assagatje. My mother is the queen of the Assagatje. Of course, she’s not really a queen. Sakje really don’t…’ She was babbling. She cut herself off. He was very warm, pressed against her back, and calm, in a way she liked. Solid, like her brother. ‘My mother is Srayanka,’ she said.
‘I’m Herakles,’ he said. ‘My mother is Banugul, and my father was a god.’
‘Banugul?’ she said. ‘That’s good. It’s nice to know I rescued the right boy. Try to move your hips – it’s easier on the horse.’
The gully was just beyond the bluff on her left – she could see the loom of the bluff passing her shoulder, and she began to swing the horse wide to the right to avoid the inevitable calamity. The ground changed and she slowed Bion and pulled his head ever further to the west as she felt the horse’s weight change. She was riding right along the edge of the gully.
