Coenus pointed behind them. 'Eumeles is dead. You are the king. I ought to get you off the field.'
Satyrus shook his head. 'No king worth following would quit the field until it was won. Upazan's still on the field,' he said, 'and Nikephoros. Find me that trumpeter and rally the Olbians. We need to help somebody. My money is on Ataelus.'
Coenus found the hyperetes, and the trumpet calls to rally rang out over the rout of the centre. Melitta heard the calls and she slowed Gryphon. She was unwounded, and he was still as strong as he'd been when she mounted in the morning. She patted his neck and looked for Scopasis – right at her elbow.
Behind him, Laen and Agreint and Bareint and all the rest of her knights. No one seemed to be missing.
No brother.
'Where's my brother?' she asked.
Scopasis shook his head. His full-faced Thracian helmet made him look sinister, a monster with a beard of bronze. 'I saw him remount,' he said. 'Coenus put him up on Eumeles' horse.' He shrugged. 'You ride away. I follow you.'
The Sindi waved an axe. 'We broke them!' he shouted.
She wished she had her own trumpeter. The Olbian hyperetes was sounding a recall, but he was a stade behind her and half of the centre was with her, the rest far down the field.
'We should go to the left,' she said.
No one questioned her. So they turned their horses east, ignoring the call of the trumpet. Men formed on her household – many of them Sakje, like Parshtaevalt, who came and rode with her as they turned.
'Lady!' he said.
'Parshtaevalt!' she called. 'I need to know what's happening on the left!'
She borrowed his trumpeter and together they rallied much of the centre and faced them to the left. It took time, and she could hear fighting – heavy fighting – in the haze to the east.
Kairax went himself, and came back when they had three hundred knights, all facing east with the setting sun at their backs.
'The Greeks are spear to spear and breast to breast,' Kairax said. 'No one will give a step. The farmers carry all before them, but they will not try the flank of the phalanx. And who can blame them?'
Melitta took a deep breath. With one order, she would expend her last throw of the dice. Could her three hundred break Nikephoros?
They had failed the day before.
She rode out a pace and turned her horse so that she faced the Sakje knights.
'We will go right into the back of the phalanx,' she said. 'There must be no hesitation. No warning. There will be no second time and no arrow rush. Are you ready?'
Most men nodded, tipping the plumes of their helmets so that they seemed to ripple.
'Let's do the thing,' Parshtaevalt said. Satyrus felt the pain in his gut spreading to his limbs, and he wondered again if there was poison, or if cowardice was spreading to his groin like the pain. While the Olbian cavalry rallied – slowly, because they were not his father's men, for all they claimed the title – he had time to think about his wound, and Coenus's willingness to take him off the field. To lie in a tent and wait for news.
The battle was won. Nothing here to fight for, except reputation.
What if he was poisoned?
Satyrus sat on the horse of his dead enemy, surrounded by corpses. If I am poisoned, he thought, it is in my blood, and these are my last hours.
His head came up, and he straightened his back. He was a son of Herakles, and Kineas, and he was not going to ride away and die in a tent, of blood poisoning.
When the Olbians were rallied, he put them in a rhomboid – a formation they knew – and they walked their horses west into the setting sun, moving slowly, looking for a new foe.
In a stade, they found one. Upazan had not routed Ataelus – but he had numbers and he had arrows, and only Ataelus's rage and ten years of bitter resistance sustained Ataelus's outnumbered riders. They fought like demons – like dead men. And when their backs were to the river and they couldn't run, they died.
Satyrus didn't see Ataelus fall. Upazan put him down with an axe, from behind, while the little Sakje commander put an arrow into Upazan's tanist in the swirl of the melee.
Satyrus didn't see Graethe die. The wolf lord went down covered in wounds, and when he fell the men of his household stood over his body and died with him.
Nor did he see Urvara die, almost the last warrior standing as her banner was swamped by enemies determined to ride down the flank and win back the battle. She, too, died on the blade of Upazan's axe, her arms too tired to parry it one last time.
But their warriors didn't break. Some of their horses were up to their hocks in the river, but they fought on, desperate, often out of arrows, sword to sword, axe to axe.
Satyrus heard the shouts of Greeks before he ordered the charge, and he knew that Abraham was leading whatever he could from the camp by the river into Upazan's flank. It had to matter.
Satyrus had put himself at the point of the rhomboid. He smiled, despite the pain in his gut. He heard the fighting, and he knew the shouts were Sauromatae, and he didn't need scouts to find the next fight.
He raised his sword. 'Ready!'
The Olbians shouted his father's name and charged, and then they were into Upazan's men.
Satyrus struck and struck again, neither weak nor godlike, but merely the warrior he'd been trained to be, and his father's sword flashed like fire in the red sunlight and his helmet took a blow here and there, but he fought on, looking for Upazan's golden helmet. That was his goal now.
He had too few men. He could feel it. Just a few hundred more and the Sauromatae would have broken from his impact, but the Olbians were too slow and too few, and although his wedge went deeper and deeper into the horde of Sauromatae, they were not breaking.
He could hear Abraham and Panther now. They were less than a stade away, all but surrounded, and their charge, too, had lost its impetus, so that they were being pressed back to their camp.
Satyrus could see it, as if he was above the battle – could read the sounds, the shouts, the screams. Ataelus's flank had held long enough. Upazan might win here, but he could no longer win the day.
Tired men swung heavily at tired men. The Olbians were better armoured and fresher.
It wasn't quite enough. But for a while, it was better than nothing, and the Olbians were lifted above themselves, possibly just because they were the men of Olbia, who had once been Kineas's men. They pushed forward, even when they should have been stopped.
Satyrus cut a man down – the man had a wolf-tail banner, and Satyrus could only hope it was Upazan's. His sword arm was bloody to the elbow. His shoulder was weak, the muscles burned with the effort of a thousand overhead cuts, and he could barely manage his captured horse.
But he could feel Herakles at his shoulder.
I am going to die well, he thought.
He blocked a blow, catching a heavy axe blade far back in its cut, and his blade slipped down the haft so that the head caught him a weak blow in the left shoulder. Most of it fell on the yoke of his corslet, but the axe blade still sliced his skin. He got his bridle hand up and on the shaft of the axe, and his sword went up and over the haft, only to have his wrist grabbed by the axe-man.
Upazan.
Their eyes came together as they caught each other's attempted death blows – arm to arm, hand to hand.
Upazan rose on his horse's back, trying to use his immense strength to bear Satyrus down.
At a great distance, Satyrus heard Greek singing and wondered what it meant. Then his full attention was on Upazan. He met him, strength for strength, and their horses moved under them, and then Satyrus's arms began to break Upazan's hold. Upazan redoubled his effort, and he gave a great shout as he threw his weight on Satyrus.
Satyrus held him and bore him back.
He lost Upazan's left hand – their horses were pulling apart – and he snapped a short cut with his sword. It went home, cutting deeply into Upazan's left arm just as Upazan rammed a dagger with his own left, so that it cut right into Satyrus's sword arm and he dropped the Aegyptian sword to dangle from its chain around his wrist.