Storm of arrows t-2 Read online

  ‘Now,’ ordered Kineas.

  They rode down the long hill by the inner harbour and then straight through the gates, which stood wide open. There were bodies on the ground, but the horses didn’t shy. The horses had seen corpses before. Their hooves pounded the ground and they were louder than the tramp of Dion’s men, and more deadly, and where they passed they left only the silence of expectation.

  In the citadel, no sooner had the garrison passed the gates than the men pressed against the wet rock walls leaped into the courtyard and butchered the watch. The men coming off the walls had been as raw as their victims once, but that was months ago, and the Macedonian farm boys died with as little regard as lambs at a sacrifice. A few had time to scream and one file-closer tried for the gate. He died with a heavy black spear through his back plate of tawed leather.

  Dion cleaned his sword against the beggar’s rag of a cloak and led his men into the clear space of the agora. He was intelligent enough to wonder why the agora was empty — not even a single merchant opening his stall — but the cowards had to know that he would come for blood. He formed his men in a tight phalanx. Their motions masked all sound, but something made him uneasy, and as the last man fell into his place, Dion called for silence.

  Hoof beats.

  Dion was just turning to bellow an order when a spear punched under his armpit. The point emerged through his neck and he lived only a few seconds — just long enough to watch the wolves fall on his phalanx. They looked like wolves…

  ‘Kill them all,’ Memnon bellowed as he ripped his spear out of the corpse.

  Kineas led his men up the road that ringed the citadel, still expecting a shower of arrows or red-hot sand, but there was a torch waving enthusiastically from the great tower over the arched gate and then he was in the echoing tunnel, his horse’s hooves beating hollowly against the paving stones. Then into the citadel itself — new blood in the courtyard, a dozen Macedonians dead in their armour and Philokles with his twenty picked men facing fifty Keltoi of the tyrant’s bodyguard across the courtyard.

  In the cold iron dawn, Kineas could see the tyrant and his Persian minion at the back, shoving more Keltoi out of their barracks.

  Kineas turned to Antigonus, Eumenes’ hyperetes and one of Kineas’s few original troopers. Antigonus was a Gaulish Kelt himself. ‘Tell them to step aside and we’ll accept their service. Or they may stand and die.’

  Antigonus rode into the relative silence of the palace courtyard. Resignation could be read on every face — even the tyrant’s.

  The citadel had fallen. The sounds of a successful escalade were the background to Antigonus’s voice. The road to the agora was full of city hoplites hunting the last of the garrison. The screams of the farm boys could be heard all the way across the river, and Dion’s head was already on a pike over the main gate.

  Antigonus spoke in the Keltic tongue of his fathers, gesturing repeatedly with his spear at the men behind him, and once at the tyrant.

  The leader of the Keltoi, a tall, thin man in a heavy golden torc and massive gold bracers, stood forth, his heavy Thracian sword held comfortably in both fists. He had tattoos in heavy blue that ran up his legs, under his tunic, and emerged again at his neck to cover his face. He nodded easily to Antigonus and then to Kineas.

  When he spoke, his voice was sad. His Greek, while accented, was good. ‘We eat his food. We take his coin. We swear oaths.’ The heavy Kelt shrugged. ‘We die here.’ He pointed with his sword at the cobbled courtyard of the citadel.

  The tyrant laughed. It was a bitter laugh. He stood straight and came forward — a little drunk, as was his wont. ‘Well, some things are worth buying,’ he said from the safety of the last rank of the Keltoi. ‘You came for my city after all,’ he said to Kineas.

  Kineas felt the rage of gods grip him. But for this man and his plotting, Agis and Laertes would still live, so would Nicomedes, and Ajax, and Cleitus. And the king. ‘I came for you, traitor,’ he said thickly.

  The tyrant shrugged. ‘Odd how the public interest and self-interest coincide. I don’t imagine I could offer you gold to let me live?’

  ‘Fight me man to man,’ Kineas said. ‘If you win, my men will set you free.’

  He began to ride around to the left, to get a clearer look at the tyrant. At his knee, another horseman moved with him.

  It was a foolish challenge, and he felt like a fool for making it. He could barely stand after his wounds at the Ford of the River God and the attack in the dark. Single combat was for young men who wished to be Achilles, not middle-aged men in love.

  The tyrant glanced around and laughed grimly. ‘No. I think not. Even if I won, these folk would butcher me like a heifer.’

  Kineas shook his head in denial. ‘Only a dishonest man fears the dishonesty of others,’ he quoted.

  The tyrant spat. ‘Spare me your philosophy. And the rest of you — you plan to follow him? Will you be as loyal to him as you were to me? Eh, Kineas? Ready to ride the lion?’

  Kineas sat straighter. ‘I have no intention of taking control of the city,’ he said stiffly.

  The tyrant smiled. ‘You lie.’ He shrugged. ‘But what do I care? Your ignorance will bring about the deaths of every man here — but I’ll be dead. My share in this story ends here, doesn’t it?’

  The hippeis were calling for the tyrant’s death. They began to chant. The Keltoi readied their shields.

  ‘My ignorance?’ Kineas said. ‘Ignorance? I am ignorant of what sort of man would betray his own city to a foreign garrison! And I did not come to bandy words with such a traitor.’

  The tyrant stood up straight, like a soldier on parade. He stood out from his Keltoi. ‘Listen to me, you aristocratic bastard,’ he said. ‘The world is about to go to shit. When Alexander and Parmenion go to war — listen! The monster has lost his mind. We need Antipater! It will all come apart now — everything the boy king did will collapse like a cheap market stall in a wind — and all his wolves will fight over the spoils. Are you ready for that?’

  Behind Kineas, Antigonus translated the exchange. The Keltoi chieftain listened patiently, his sword cocked back over his shoulder, a pose he could apparently hold for hours.

  Behind the Keltoi, on the steps of the palace, the tyrant’s Persian steward produced a bow — an elegant recurve bow that glowed with wax. He raised it at Kineas, but before he could shoot, he took an arrow in the chest and a second in the groin and he fell screaming. His squeals pierced the morning damp and made men — even hard men — flinch. The tyrant turned to glance over his shoulder. He grinned — a mad, death’s-head grin. Then he seized a dagger from the belt of the Kelt nearest him and flourished it high like an athlete.

  ‘Your turn, Kineas!’ he shouted. ‘By all the gods, Hama, I release you and your men from your oaths!’ And so saying, he plunged the dagger into his own neck.

  Close at Kineas’s side, awaiting his chance, Ataelus the Scyth put his knees to his charger and it rose, rearing and punching both hooves like a boxer. At the top of its attempt to climb the heavens, he leaned out over his charger’s neck and fired two more arrows over the Keltoi.

  Unlike the Persian, the tyrant went down without a sound.

  Antigonus spoke again in the guttural Keltish tongue. The chieftain, Hama, spared the tyrant’s twitching corpse a respectful glance, and nodded.

  ‘I think we live,’ he said, and placed the point of his sword carefully on the ground. ‘Our oath dies with him.’ Around him, the Keltoi sheathed their weapons or laid them carefully on the wet paving stones.

  Philokles walked over to the tyrant’s corpse like Ares claiming his spoil. ‘He died well,’ the Spartan said.

  ‘May I do as well,’ Kineas agreed.

  Kineas managed to order a guard to protect the Keltoi from harm before a mob of his own soldiers put him up on a shield and carried him off to the agora. And even as the city rang with his acclaim, he thought of Srayanka, already out on the sea of grass, travelling east.

 
; Taking the city had been the easy part. Because Satrax the King was dead, and the Sakje alliance was shattered, and Alexander the King of Kings was out on the sea of grass, and the old gods of Chaos were laughing.

  4

  The funeral of Cleitus was a city-wide occasion. Almost every household had dead to mourn, between the battle at the ford and the storming of the city and the tyrant’s excesses. The dead of the great battle were long since buried, and the trophy long since raised at the edge of a field of unburied enemies — a cursed spot to any Greek, and an uncomfortable thought — but the dead were still fresh in the memories of their city, and needed words said in public to mourn them.

  Cleitus, who had once been the city’s hipparch, and remained the leader of the aristocratic faction until his death, remained unburied, because the tyrant had denied his family the right to conduct the funeral. He had feared the public reaction.

  Now Kineas had the tyrant’s ivory stool. He did not wear a diadem and he did not reside in the palace — instead, he awoke as usual at the hippodrome barracks, where the tyrant’s ivory stool leaned against the wall like a reminder, or an accusation. He was in some middle ground between the absolute power of the tyrant and his old role as hipparch and strategos, or military commander. He ordered that the funeral be a public occasion, and he was obeyed.

  The army had been in the city for five days. There were Athenian ships in the harbour demanding grain, and the first boats full of grain were on their way down the raging river to the port. The autumn market was opening on the plain north of the city, although it would be weeks before cargoes could be gathered for the Athenian merchants, who owned the largest ships in the world. On the third night, he had gone to the stables and bridled the Getae mare and ridden her out of the dark gates, past all the farms, to the beginning of the sea of grass. As the sun rose, he sat at the edge of her world, and he reached out like a baqca…

  Across the plains that rolled under the new sun, past the camp where Marthax chewed on the ruin of his plans, then north and east around the Bay of Salmon, and there she was, rising in the dawn, naked to the waist, cleaning her teeth with a twig, and she gave a start as he came near and grinned…

  He awoke cold, and tired like a drunkard, but he was happy again.

  The next night, Kineas dreamed of Srayanka’s tribes and their horses riding over the sea of grass, and of the dead, and of the tree. He tried to banish his dreams. He longed to be away into the dawn.

  On the high ground north of the market camped the little army of Sauromatae. City slaves had built them cabins against the late summer rain, but Prince Lot’s presence at his side served to remind Kineas, if he needed any reminder, that the sailing season was closing in, and he needed to leave soon if he was leaving at all. Five days in Olbia had revealed a host of reasons why he could not leave. The assembly had met twice and both times he had risen to announce his departure, and both times he had instead spoken of how many of the tyrant’s laws had to be repealed, and how essential it was that the rule of law be restored.

  On the fourth day, the assembly made him archon.

  He went back to the barracks and talked with Philokles and Diodorus for hours, and then he sat on the ivory stool in the agora and announced the funeral of Cleitus.

  The funeral day promised to be warm and sunny, and the procession began to form under the stars of earliest morning, the first stars and clear sky they had seen in days. Diodorus had the hippeis mustered before the first blush of dawn on the sand of the hippodrome. He had good officers under him, veteran hyperetes, and every man in the ranks had served in a battle — some in three.

  Niceas grunted. ‘They don’t look the same as they did last year,’ he said.

  Kineas rubbed his chin. It was not a day for laughter, but he smiled. ‘No,’ he said. As he grew used to power, he was learning to say less and think more. ‘No, they don’t.’

  Niceas grunted again. ‘Weather looks better. Sky is clear.’ Behind him, the hippeis were falling in. Where five hundred had mustered on the morning of the great battle, fewer than four hundred would answer today.

  The survivors of Cleitus’s fourth troop — now under Petrocolus’s command — were the strongest. They had come late for the battle and ridden only in the final charge, and despite having the oldest men, experience and fine horses had kept most of them alive.

  But Nicomedes was dead — and his hyperetes for the third troop, Ajax of Tomis, lay in a canvas shroud, sewn tight, awaiting shipment to Tomis to be buried by his father. Their troop had fought alone against a tide of Macedonian horse, and died almost to a man. The survivors made a silent file in second troop.

  Leucon had died in the rain and confusion of the night action, and Eumenes, despite three wounds and the treason of his father, sat at the head of first troop with Cliomenedes. Eumenes’ father, Cleomenes, had been instrumental in handing the city to the Macedonians — either for personal gain or because he truly believed that Macedon promised the city a richer future. He had died out on the sea of grass, leaving his son a rich man, and a deeply unpopular one.

  Clio was the youngest of their officers, Petrocolus’s adolescent son, who had commanded the troop through the harrowing last hour of the great battle, and he was struggling to maintain authority despite his popularity and obvious courage. The two young men had all the youngest cavalrymen and his troop had seen the longest fighting, if not the hardest. The homes of the wealthy up by the statue of Apollo were still full of wounded from this troop, but for the moment, only twenty troopers sat behind them,

  Only second troop, commanded by Diodorus and now holding all the mercenary cavalrymen, looked prepared for another day of battle. A summer of campaigning had made Diodorus into a fine commander, and Antigonus the Gaul was the complete hyperetes — calm, authoritative and efficient. His appointment made the integration of the tyrant’s former bodyguard simpler, because he spoke their language and could claim some birth that impressed even Hama, their chieftain. There were almost a hundred of the Keltoi, and they were natural horsemen. Recent enmity meant nothing to them — more important were their endless taboos and rituals. A Greek officer might quickly have fallen foul of them. Antigonus had no such troubles. But for political reasons, only Hama and a dozen of his Keltoi rode in the second troop today. The rest were in their barracks. This was a parade of the victors.

  And there was Heron. The tall young man was no less gawky in the saddle than walking the grass, and even the tallest of the captured chargers was too small for him. His troop — men of Pantecapaeum, a neighbouring city, and not really under Kineas’s command — had also taken part in Nicomedes’ desperate defence on the left of the army. They had been luckier — and broken earlier — and fifty saddles remained filled. But their victory was bitter-sweet. They were now exiles. Victory in the great battle had empowered the democratic faction in their city, and the troop of rich men — aristocrats to a trooper — was no longer wanted at home.

  Kineas and Diodorus had been the victims of just such an event. They knew the sting of exile — the humiliation and the endless small slights that citizens imposed on stateless men. But Heron was a prickly fellow at the best of times, and he sat in his resentment, disdaining attempts to improve his lot, and his men followed his lead. They remained with Kineas because most of them had nowhere else to go.

  Finally, formed on the far left of the line of hippeis, there were Ataelus’s twenty Sakje, half of them women. They wore odd combinations of Greek and Sakje armour, rode expensive horses and were covered in gold. They were exotic and dangerous and they would march in the procession, despite the protests of certain city factions, as would the Sauromatae.

  All the survivors had benefited from the battle by acquiring the very best of the Macedonian armour and the heavy Macedonian chargers. On the day of battle, the Macedonian horses had been starved and tired — but a month on the grass, even in the rain, had restored some of their spirit, and five days’ access to the granaries of the city meant that e
very man was mounted like a prince.

  Diodorus cantered up and gave a precise salute, his fist clenched on his breastplate. Kineas returned it.

  ‘Rain’s stopped,’ Diodorus said. He grinned, his sharp features and freckled cheeks glowing with pleasure. He enjoyed command, and he worried less about the future than Kineas. ‘Maybe there’s hope after all,’ he added. ‘You look beautiful, I must say.’

  ‘Why are you so fucking cheerful?’ Kineas asked.

  ‘I’m tired of rain. And Coenus is better this morning. His fever broke in the dark. He ate.’ Diodorus tilted his helmet back so that his red hair showed at the brow. ‘You have to see him. It’s a gift from the gods.’

  Kineas felt his mood lighten immediately. Coenus — one of his oldest friends, one of his best men, a scholar and a fellow exile — had been given up for dead.

  So Kineas had a different look about him as he took his place at the head of the hippeis and led them out into the streets, through the gate and along the edge of the market to where the priests of Apollo waited with the phalanx — all the men of the city. There were gaps in the phalanx just as there were in the hippeis, but in his present mood, Kineas was glad to see that there were also men back standing in the ranks who had ridden into the city in the wagons of wounded.

  Every morning another two or three of the wounded tried on their armour and either crept back to their pallets defeated, or fought their way through a fog of dizziness and weakness to attend the musters. The recoveries had peaked now. Kineas, who visited the wounded twice a day, had little hope for the men who continued to lose weight, or whose wounds were still fevered.

  Sitalkes, the Getae boy, was one. Coenus had been another — with light wounds that had suddenly festered — and he had been down since the army left Marthax. If he had recovered, there was still hope for the rest.

  Movement in the Sauromatae camp roused him from thought. Prince Lot was mounting a captured Macedonian mare. He waved to Kineas, and Kineas waved back. A glance over his shoulder showed him that Memnon was some minutes from having the phalanx in order. He pressed his knees against his own captured Macedonian charger and cantered painfully across the short-cropped grass, his hip burning with the rhythm of his unnamed charger’s hooves.