‘Apollo!’ he shouted.
All around him in the battle haze, he heard the shout taken up, and ahead of him: ‘Apollo!’
He could see the horsehair crests on some of his men off to the right — just a glimpse as a fitful breeze whipped the flying dust. He bellowed ‘Apollo!’ again and pressed Thalassa with his knees. She responded with another surge of strength, bulling over another rider without Kineas landing a blow. Then a small man who seemed to be covered in gold landed a spear thrust straight into Kineas’s chest. The scales of his mail turned the thrust — the man had over-reached. Kineas cut at the shaft, failing to break it but swinging the head wide, so Kineas was in close. He grabbed the haft with his bridle hand and pounded the Medea head of his pommel into the man’s face and their horses engaged, so that the two men were pressed breast to breast as their mounts whirled like fighting dogs, biting and kicking. Kineas reached his bridle hand around the man’s back — he was heavily armoured. Kineas’s left hand closed on the man’s sword belt and he wrenched the blade of his own sword up from where it was pinned between their chests — up and up again with each heave of their mounts. Thalassa rose on her hindquarters, biting savagely at the other horse’s rump and striking with her front hooves, and Kineas turned his wrist so that the Egyptian blade came up under the other man’s jaw…
A spray of blood, and the gold man fell away, dead weight that almost carried him off Thalassa, and a blow against his helmet…
Carlus roaring like a mad bull at his side, propping him up. Apollo! Hama on his other side and Leon’s shield coming out of the suffocating haze. He sat up, pain ebbing, muttered unheard thanks to Carlus and Hama.
He’d lost the sword. He loved that sword — the sword Satrax had given him.
Stupid reason to die, though. Antigonus was pressing through the haze.
‘Rally! Sound “rally”!’ Kineas said. His voice sounded odd. He’d lost his helmet.
He glanced down, hoping to see the glint of Medea’s face on the golden grass at his feet. Instead he saw the blood running over his thigh from somewhere under his corslet.
The world became a tunnel. At the far end, Antigonus — or was it Niceas? — was shouting ‘ Rally! Rally! ’
Niceas turned around as if the world had slid sideways and the ground rose to meet him. Then there was a skull, speaking from a wall of sand.
‘Listen, Strategos. We will turn the monster south, away from the sea of grass. Let him play with the bones of other men! Your eagles will rule here, and the life of the people will be preserved. That is my purpose, and your purpose, too.’
Kineas shook himself. ‘I am no man’s servant.’
‘By the crooked-minded son of Cronus, boy! You could die. Pointlessly, in someone else’s fight — a street brawl, defending a tyrant who despises you. Or from a barbarian arrow in the dark. It’s not Homer, Ajax. It’s dirty, sleepless, full of scum and bugs. And on the day of battle, you are one faceless man under your helmet — no Achilles, no Hektor, just an oarsman rowing the phalanx towards the enemy.’
He heard himself — a younger and far more feckless man — speak the words.
The skull spoke with the voice of Kam Baqca, as if they sat together in the sun-dappled contentment of Calchus’s paddock. ‘That would have been your fate — face down in the slime of a street brawl, the tool of vicious men. And you are better. ’
Kineas found himself stitching away at a headstall — dear gods, he thought, I seem to have spent my entire adult life repairing horse-leathers. He was facing one of the commonest annoyances of a man sewing leather — he was just three stitches from completion and he was out of thread. Almost out of thread. He would have to stitch very carefully, taking the needle off the thread at every stitch to get it in again at the end. Even then, he wouldn’t make it — he could see that.
The handsome warrior leaned over and pulled at the dangling thread, and it lengthened — just a fraction. ‘You were a mercenary, and you chose to be something better. Go and die a king…’
It was dark. He was Kineas. The babes were crying and Srayanka’s hand was on his hand.
‘Oh, my love,’ she said in Sakje. She pressed his hand hard, so hard that the pain in his bones almost matched the pain in his left side.
‘I gather we won?’ Kineas asked.
She kissed him again. ‘I almost lost you,’ she said.
‘But we won the victory?’ he asked urgently.
‘Eumenes rallied the Olbians and came into the fight on your flank, breaking the last resistance. My Sakje harried the Macedonians for thirty stades. Some of my warriors are still riding.’
Well satisfied, Kineas slumped back into sleep — sleep free of skulls or any dreams.
And the next morning, so stiff that he could scarcely mount and needed Philokles to get on Thalassa, he rode to say goodbye to many friends as the two columns parted, and their women and children and many warriors turned east or west.
Even without his wounds, the partings would have been painful, and there were a few — Diodorus and Philokles — who tried to argue that he should go west with the column. But the wound in his side was mostly just cracked ribs — the new armour had held. He had cuts on his thigh and cuts on his arms, but so did every man who had been in the action.
And every muscle in his body hurt.
The same was true of every trooper. Kineas was not of a mind to turn west.
Rosy-fingered dawn brushed every gold trapping and made them kindle. Silver and steel were stained the delicate pink of new flowers and the grass itself wavered like new-forged bronze. The wagons of the Sakje were already rolling, their dust stained the same smoked pink as the sky and the farther clouds. Above and to the right, an eagle of good omen circled, searching for prey in the first light.
At the edge of the last watercourse before the Polytimeros, Kineas stood by Thalassa, surrounded by his friends — Srayanka and Philokles on either side of him, supporting him: Diodorus with Sappho mounted at his side; Coenus and soft-handed Artemesia with Eumenes and Urvara resplendent in her gold gorytos and a necklace of gold and lapis; Antigonus and Andronicus standing silently, their gold torcs like bands of lava at their necks; Sitalkes in his Getae cloak, Ataelus and Samahe supporting him; and Parshtaevalt, resplendent in a captured Macedonian breastplate of muscled bronze; Leon quiet and still in an Olbian cloak; Nicanor weeping openly. Nihmu watched them with a stillness that belied her youth, as if her young eyes could record every moment like a scribe’s wax tablet. Temerix stood a little apart, braiding leather with his fingers even as he accepted the farewells of Sappho. The Sindi smith had been her ally in helping Philokles.
Only Darius was missing of all of Kineas’s closest companions, still out somewhere on the sea of grass, looking for Spitamenes.
One by one those who were going west kissed those who were riding east. Coenus would command. Eumenes would lead the Olbians and Urvara the Sakje, with a tithe of the best warriors. With them would go Nicanor and Sappho, and Artemesia and Andronicus would go as Eumenes’ hyperetes.
Coenus embraced Srayanka. Then he came face to face with Kineas. ‘My heart tells me that I will not see you again,’ he said.
Kineas wiped hurriedly at his tears. ‘No, my friend. If what I have seen in the gates of horn is true, we will not hunt together this side of the Elysian Fields.’
Coenus was an aristocrat and a Megaran. He stood straight, his face unmarked by tears. He even managed a grin. He took both of Kineas’s hands.
‘I honour the gods, Kineas, but after them I honour you. May Moira see fit to leave the thread of your life uncut that we may hunt the valleys of the Tanais together. I will dedicate a temple to Artemis, and I will never cease to think of you. And if the thread of your life must be cut, let it be a worthy end.’