A single enemy rider met him. His back was to Kineas, and he was bellowing at the Sogdians to stand, stand fast. The man was an officer with a white sash around some Bactrian garment worn over his breastplate. He had a shawl over his head, but Kineas knew him. The Farm Boy.
Kineas grinned and swung his heavy lonche javelin like a two-handed axe, blindsiding him and knocking the Macedonian from his saddle. Then he shouted at his hyperetes, already reining his mount. ‘Rally!’ he called, and the trumpet rang out.
Kineas nodded at Antigonus as troopers fell in behind. ‘Stay together!’ he ordered. ‘Let’s go!’
The trumpet sounded again. Somewhere in the dust, Ataelus would hear it and so would Lot and Srayanka.
Kineas headed into the cloud, following the fleeing enemy.
The grey-brown cloud was suddenly full of horsemen. Kineas was shocked to see how many. Bactrians, he thought, from the heads of the horses and the colourful saddle cloths. And then he was on them.
They didn’t stand, seemed confused, unaware until the last seconds that they were in danger. Kineas didn’t trouble to throw his javelin, but simply unhorsed men to the left and the right with the haft. Behind him, the broadening point of the rhomboid blew through their line and it unravelled like a moth-eaten garment. Men and horses boiled away from Kineas and his escort to vanish underfoot or away into the dust.
‘Rally! Rally!’ Kineas called, and again the trumpet call rang out.
‘Change face — left!’ Kineas called to Antigonus. The Gaul raised the trumpet and the call rang out. Kineas couldn’t see past the next two files, because now the sand and dust moved like a heavy fog full of spirits, but he pivoted his own horse and went from being the point of the formation to being its rightmost flank.
Trust your men. If the manoeuvre had been carried out, his rhomboid now faced directly along the Macedonian flank. In the dust, he couldn’t see anything.
‘Charge!’ Kineas called.
Antigonus sounded the trumpet. The formation moved, gathering speed, and Kineas began to encounter opponents — confused men whirling their horses in the battle haze. The path of the charge and the enemy formation — or lack thereof — left Kineas and his flank without opposition. They rode slowly, maintaining contact with the centre of the formation, which was doing all the fighting.
Samahe knew exactly where to find him, reading his mind as neatly as a shaman, probably riding to the trumpet sound. ‘Heh! Kineas!’ she called as she came out of the dust.
Kineas called out. ‘Samahe! On me!’
‘For fucking like gods!’ Ataelus’ grin was so wide that it split his round face in two as he cantered out of the dust behind his wife. ‘Hah! I own them all!’ He waved his uninjured arm. ‘I ride all the way around their flank. Craterus is for retreat. Yes?’
Kineas had to grin at that. ‘I’m going to the north,’ he shouted.
Ataelus shouted ‘Yes!’ and rode back into the dust.
‘Halt!’ Kineas called to Antigonus, and waited while the trumpet sang. ‘Face to the right!’ Kineas said, and again the trumpet’s brazen voice carried above the dust. He couldn’t hear very well and he couldn’t see ten horse-lengths. He had only his last glance at the battlefield and his guess to go by.
He was again the point of the rhomboid — if there was a formation at all. ‘Trot!’ he called, putting his knees to Thalassa. She was calm as ever and she carried him easily. He put a knee in the middle of her back and sat up for a moment but could see nothing and almost lost his seat as she flowed over an obstruction.
When he felt that enough time had passed, he began to angle towards the west, leading the formation — if he had any formation — into a gradual wheel along the river, but a stade north, sweeping for the Macedonian cavalry.
The dust began to clear. In as many strides of his horse, he could see his hands on the reins, see a clump of grass in his path, and then he was clear and could see the dust cloud and the squadron of Sogdian horse waiting with obvious indecision just clear of the rising column of dust. The dust of the battle haze was so thick that it rose into the air as if the grass itself were afire.
Kineas unwrapped the sweat scarf from his throat where he wore it to keep his cuirass from chaffing against his neck, and wrapped it again, sweat stinging his face, around his mouth.
He kept angling west. He looked back.
The rhomboid was still there. Carlus and Antigonus and Diodorus emerged from the wall of sand behind him, and then Hama, Dercorix and Tasda, and behind them four more. The spacings were far from perfect and there seemed to be a whole wing missing — perhaps ten men — but after two blind facings and a charge, it was like a miracle.
The other two troops were nowhere to be seen.
The Sogdians to their left front had only just seen them. They were moving — the subtle movement of men and horse like a wind through tall grass that betokens indecision and fear.
Kineas whirled, keeping his seat. ‘Straight through them!’ he yelled.
His men gave a weary shout. They gathered speed.
Out of the dust to their left, a single rider on a black horse emerged like a dark thunderbolt. Kineas knew it was Leon from the moment he saw the bull’s-hide shield on the man’s arm.
Leon shot straight at the Sogdians. Their leader, a big man with a grey beard, wheeled his horse at the last moment, as if he hadn’t expected the Numidian’s charge to go straight home — and he was too late. Leon’s thrown javelin hit him low in the gut and knocked him to the earth, and Leon’s big gelding crashed past the other horse and right into the front of the Sogdian formation.
The local men were as stunned as if a real thunderbolt had levelled their chieftain. Leon vanished into them. Their standard-bearer, another big man on a grey horse with a bronze bull’s head on a pole, shouted shrill orders and the Sogdians began to close their ranks. Arrows leaped out of their formation and fell towards Kineas.
Ten strides away, Kineas cocked his light javelin back. Five strides out, he threw, and just as his horse’s head passed over the corpse of the chieftain, he lowered the point of his heavy spear to unhorse the man with the bull’s-head standard. Thalassa knocked the man’s horse flailing into the sand and sprang over, and Kineas lost his javelin in the man’s corpse.
The fleeting moments of clear sight were gone, and again they were deep in the haze of Ares. Kineas reached for his Egyptian sword, gripped it and it wouldn’t budge from the scabbard. He raised his bridle gauntlet to block a blow and took it in the side. Pain, like rage, exploded. Thalassa whirled under him.
Another blow against the scales of his corslet and then he was free in the swirling grit. His side hurt, but the daimon of combat was on him and he pinned his scabbard between his bridle arm and his side and ripped the sword free, almost losing his seat in the desperation of his efforts.
He was alone. He turned Thalassa’s head in the direction he thought was right and urged her forward.
Carlus emerged from the dust, his heavy spear dripping gore. ‘Hah!’ he grunted in greeting.
Behind him, Hama pressed forward. ‘This way, lord,’ Hama called.
The three of them rode into the veil of swirling sand.
A man with a cloth wound around his domed helmet crashed his horse into Thalassa, and Kineas was back in the melee. He cut and parried, ever more conscious of the pain in his side and the rising tide of sound. This was a stand-up fight, not a rout. The Sogdians were no longer giving ground.
The Olbians weren’t winning. He could hear their calls and the growing shouts of the Sogdians.
He pushed Thalassa straight into his opponent’s horse and cut three times, sacrificing finesse for brute force and speed. One of his blows got through and the man reeled, his hands across his face as his horse twisted, all four legs plunging for balance. Kineas was past him.