Authors: Christian Cameron
Tyrant (60 page)
‘I think it will be here - yes. The road runs to this ford, and this is the best ford for stades - dozens, even hundreds of stades. The king assures me this is true.’ Even as Kineas said this, he considered the assertion. It was untested. He should be exploring himself. The Sakje were superb horsemen, but they were not professional soldiers, and he’d already seen the difference between their observational skills - excellent, and their scouting reports - pitiful. His own sense of fatalism was sapping his professional competence.
Philokles took the wine. ‘So what - Zopryon will just march up to the river, see our camp, and force a crossing?’
Kineas could see Niceas and the smith walking up the hill toward the wagon. ‘It will depend on how badly the next week hurts him. On the spirit that motivates his army. I think he will march up to the ford, and camp, leaving a strong force to block the ford. This will free him from night raids and allow his men to sleep - and if the Sakje have harassed him for a week, that sleep will be valuable. After he’s rested his men and horses for a day - perhaps two - he’ll make his move.’
‘Straight across the ford?’ Philokles asked.
‘Alexander - or rather Parmenion - had two ways to deal with this. One was to force a crossing with the cavalry, and then use them to cover the taxeis when they cross.’ Kineas smiled wolfishly. ‘That would not work against the Sakje. If Zopryon attempts it, he will be beaten swiftly. So rather, the second method - to send the taxeis across with shields locked, push up our bank, and then move cavalry across under cover of the pikes.’ Kineas nodded to himself. ‘I’ve seen it done. It has the added charm of demoralizing the foe - every unit you get across and formed in line seems like another stitch in his winding sheet.’
Philokles finished his wine. ‘So, it will all hinge on Memnon holding the taxeis at the river?’
Kineas shook his head. ‘No. If I have my way, we’ll let him cross unopposed. We’ll let him have our camp.’
Philokles nodded slowly. ‘Are you perhaps more Sakje in your heart than Greek? Is not the loss of your camp the ultimate humiliation?’
Kineas shook his head. ‘Slavery and defeat are the ultimate humiliation. But yes, in this, I am more Sakje than Greek.’
Philokles watched the three men coming. ‘They want to speak to you. Listen, then - I want to fight on foot, with the phalanx. I’m wasted in the saddle, and if you are going to sacrifice yourself for glory, I refuse to watch it.’ His voice was tight with emotion. He looked away, steadied himself, and his voice became lighter. ‘Memnon seems to feel that he could use me to keep some youngsters in line.’
Kineas suspected it was all pre-battle jitters. Even Spartans succumbed. He rested a hand on the iron muscles of Philokles’ shoulder. ‘Fight where you will. I swear I intend no sacrifice. I would rather live.’ He thought of the iron-coloured horse, and the dreams, which grew more frequent. They were true dreams. But he wouldn’t tell Philokles the details.
‘It is almost hubris, this assumption of doom.’ Philokles put his cup down carefully. ‘I tell you, if I can break this - this dream of ill omen, break it I will.’ He grabbed the rib of the wagon tent and swung himself to the ground, brushing by Niceas, and walked off into the evening.
‘You remember Hephaestes, here?’ Niceas asked, jerking his thumb at the Sindi blacksmith.
Kineas swung down with the pitcher of wine. He glanced automatically at the king’s laager and saw a man dismounting, his arms moving feverishly. Kineas made himself turn away and offered watered wine to Niceas, then to Eumenes, whose face had aged ten years in the last day, and finally to the smith.
The smith took the wine cup and set it carefully on the ground. ‘I become man of you,’ he said without preamble.
Kineas pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘Say again,’ he said in Sakje.
The smith nodded. ‘My village is destroyed. I have no family. I will swear
gutyramas
to you.’
gutyramas
to you.’
Kineas looked at Eumenes. ‘I don’t know that word.’
Eumenes shook his head. ‘Some of our farmers hold land by gutyramas. It is more than tenancy - almost like joining a family. A loyalty bond, not just a deal for cash.’ Eumenes shrugged. ‘Farmers bound that way are better workers - and more demanding. Lawsuits, dowries - like I say, they feel they have become family, like being adopted as a cousin.’
Kineas spread his hands. ‘I have no land to give you, smith. I hold no land.’
The smith rubbed the back of his neck. ‘We broke men,’ he said, and he pointed down the hill at the other Sindi refugees from the north. ‘Some of us, the Cruel Hands accept - others, no man’s man are. No family, no farm. Gone, in the smoke.’ He looked up, met Kineas’s eye. ‘They take me for leading. Yes? I have nothing. I offer it, and them, of you. Me, I seek death, but for them, I seek life. Am I speaking so that you hear?’
Kineas nodded, wishing he had Ataelus, but Ataelus was pursuing his dream of a horse herd with Srayanka and the Cruel Hands. To Niceas, he said, ‘Can we feed them?’
‘Fifty men? I expect we can. What would we do with them? Camp servants? We have enough.’ Niceas raised an eyebrow.
Kineas nodded. He gestured to the smith. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Temerix,’ he said, then frowned.
‘The Sindi form of Hephaestes,’ Eumenes put in.
‘Come with me, then,’ he said. Finally, an excuse to go to the king.
He walked up the hill to the king’s laager, followed by Temerix and Niceas. Nobody challenged them at the gate of the laager, and the king sat on the tongue of his wagon, straightening arrows with Marthax. Kam Baqca sat on the grass, her leather skirts gathered around her, sipping tea.
‘Kineas!’ the king said, getting to his feet. His pleasure was unfeigned.
Kineas stopped and gave a military salute, and then led the smith forward. He explained the situation in a few words, and the king watched him carefully, and then asked the smith sharp questions in unaccented Sindi.
The smith answered in single words.
The king turned to Kineas. ‘If you do this thing, you may create tension with the Cruel Hands - these are their people. It seems to me that they’ve been allowed to fall through the cracks in the pot while we carried on the war. This man says you rescued his band, and he wants to swear his oath to you.’ The king’s displeasure was obvious. ‘If I let him swear to you, I make you a lord,’ he said. ‘I am not sure that I am prepared to make you a lord - and I suspect I would insult my cousin. Srayanka will not forgive either of us. Knowing that, will you accept his oath, and be his lord?’
Kineas shook his head. ‘I do not desire to be any man’s lord.’
The king was visibly taken aback. Then he said, ‘Just when I think I know you Greeks, you shock me again. That you must vote to make a war that is already upon you - that you will own a slave but will not take a man’s oath of service.’
Kineas held the king’s eye. ‘I will not be his lord,’ he said. ‘I will take him and all his men in service, as psiloi, and I will pay them a wage and see that they are fed. And when Srayanka returns, I will see that those who wish her lordship receive it.’
The king nodded and rubbed his chin. He spoke again in Sindi, and after a while the smith nodded. He offered Kineas his hand, and they shook. And then Niceas took the smith away, to find him and his band a place to camp, instead of the wet river bank where they had been in hiding for days.
‘What news?’ Kineas asked, when they were gone.
The king glanced at Marthax, and then at Kam Baqca. The three held each other’s eyes, excluding Kineas. Then they all turned to Kineas together. ‘We wondered how long you could remain absent,’ the king said.
Kineas took an arrow from the king’s pile and held it up to the sun. The arrowhead had three blades, each wickedly barbed on the back, cast in bronze. ‘I have to act the hipparch,’ he said finally. ‘What we did in the assembly - the effects will linger a long time. In effect, we deposed the archon.’
‘Who may already be dead,’ Kam Baqca said in her odd, Ionic Greek.
‘You have seen it?’
‘I see nothing but the monster on the sea of grass. But people tell me tales.’
The king nodded, and the distance Kineas had felt on the ride back from the Getae campaign was there, and deeper, too. There was pain in the king’s eyes. ‘I, too, have to act. I have dead this day, Kineas - too many dead. Because, as you said, Zopryon learned quickly. Thessalian cavalry smashed the Patient Wolves - a simple trap. A hundred empty saddles, and an angry clan.’
Kineas bent his head.
The king went on. ‘Your tyrant killed those men. If you had been here to advise, they would not have ridden off so eagerly, so blindly, the second time.’
‘Or they would have,’ Marthax said with a harsh shrug. ‘Don’t make too much of it, Lord. We have dealt raking wounds and taken a bee sting in return.’
The king swung to Kineas. ‘Just as you predicted, he learns quickly. Now the boat is fully in current, is it not? And I must ride it until it washes up at my destination or smashes on the rocks. This battle - it is close now, is it not?’ He glared at both of them. ‘I am now committed to the battle you wanted.’
Kineas stood still. He looked at Kam Baqca, and she swirled the tea in her cup and looked at the last leaves there. He could smell the resin and pine odour of her drug on the wind - there was a brazier lit at her feet. She raised her head and their eyes met. Her eyes were huge, deep, and brown, and in them . . .
he could see the column moving across the sea of grass, as he swooped lower and lower, and he could see the bands of Sakje spread around the column for stades in all directions. The Macedonian column came on like a man’s boot kicking an anthill, but the ants rode in closer, bolder than real ants, and every ant dealt a wound. But the seeing faded into another seeing, and the Macedonian column became a snake with a huge head, or a giant maggot, eating everything in its path and spewing wreckage out the tail - chewing on Sakje and Olbians, on triremes and city walls, exuding the excrement of burned homes and fields of stubble, fresh graves and unburied corpses.
he could see the column moving across the sea of grass, as he swooped lower and lower, and he could see the bands of Sakje spread around the column for stades in all directions. The Macedonian column came on like a man’s boot kicking an anthill, but the ants rode in closer, bolder than real ants, and every ant dealt a wound. But the seeing faded into another seeing, and the Macedonian column became a snake with a huge head, or a giant maggot, eating everything in its path and spewing wreckage out the tail - chewing on Sakje and Olbians, on triremes and city walls, exuding the excrement of burned homes and fields of stubble, fresh graves and unburied corpses.
And she grimaced at him, a very male look on her made-up face. ‘It is all I can see,’ she said. There was pain in her voice. ‘You too?’
‘Yes,’ said Kineas. ‘It comes to me awake, now.’
She nodded. ‘It will come more and more often. You are a strong dreamer.’ She looked at her tea leaves. ‘For the first time, I begin to hope for death, because I cannot bear to watch the monster cross the plains - the defiler, the tyrant. Everything it touches is polluted, stripped, killed. It will take me, soon enough.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘My body will be dung for the monster,’ she whispered.
Kineas glanced at the king, and Marthax. Marthax seemed to pretend he had heard nothing. The king turned away, embarrassed or saddened.
‘It is all I can see,’ she said again. ‘I am no use to the king, and I fear to tell him anything lest I rush him to this battle. I have raised the spirits that will fight - I have done what I can. Now I just sit and drink tea and wait for doom.’
Kineas nodded. ‘It is close,’ he said. He found that, despite everything, he wanted to comfort her.
She looked at him across her teacup, and her eyes drew him again. He looked away rather than fall back into the dream. The smell of her drug was powerful. She said, ‘Kineas - it is all balanced on a knife edge.’
The king ignored her and waved at the plains. ‘We haven’t slowed him as much as we hoped. His vanguard will be here tomorrow - or the next day at the latest.’
Kineas nodded.
The king gave a small shrug. ‘Since we began to harass him, he has pressed harder. His army is wounded - as Marthax says, we have hit hard. The faster he moves, the more stragglers he has - and no straggler lives to see another dawn. But he is moving fast, now. Another day - perhaps two. He’s leaving everything behind to make speed.’
Kineas nodded. ‘Best recall the clans. We want the army on this side before Zopryon closes the ford.’
The king gave him an angry glance. ‘I’m doing my best, Hipparch.’
Kineas leaned forward. ‘Let me help.’
The battle was closer - closer by a week than he had expected. A week less of life. When he allowed himself to think about it, he was neither completely committed to the idea of death, nor had he thought through all of the ramifications of his dream. The battlefield, for instance. If his death dream was accurate, the battle would not be fought at the Great Bend. This thought had tripped across the stage of his mind before, but this time, fresh from the king and riding a surge of excitement and worry, Kineas elected to do something about it.
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