They camped across the ford, and every man slept with his weapons to hand, his horse ready bridled – they had pickets over a stade from camp. They woke in the darkness before dawn and rode south and west now. Melitta sent Scopasis and half her tribesmen back along the river, prowling due west, looking for contact with the enemy.
Satyrus rode up every ridge. The ground was flat – increasingly agricultural. They were on the high plains of central Anatolia, and when they camped again, Scopasis rolled out of his blankets as if stung by a scorpion, and came to Melitta, wonder on his face. In his hand was a pair of arrowheads – carefully cast bronze points, tiny trilobate heads such as only the Sakje used.
‘Our people have been this way before,’ Scopasis said.
‘Oh, yes,’ Melitta said. She sang them one of her mother’s songs, of the Great Ride against the King of Phrygia.
Draco sat with his back against Satyrus’s, polishing the blade of his dirk. ‘She’s quite something, that sister of yours,’ he said.
They were off with the sun again. Satyrus sent one of his horse marines back along the chain of guides – a chain that now stretched almost six hundred stades. They’d started to get guides back but Satyrus wanted a progress report.
Mid-afternoon, and Satyrus climbed a low ridge – shallow and long, ten stades across. There were wild grapes all along the crest, hard riding, and he had to dismount; he heard his troopers curse him.
But at the western edge of the ridge there was a mound, and below it was a bluff, and the ground fell away to the south and east. To his right, he could see Melitta and her scouts as puffs of dust on the path across the lower ridge.
And way off to the east, twenty stades away or more, was a line of dust that rose to the heavens like burnt offerings from a hundred altars.
At his side, Draco gave a whoop.
Sophocles had long since given up on catching Satyrus. He had no intention of trying to follow the King of the Bosporus into the Seleucid army. It was the sort of thing that men did in Persian songs, but Sophokles intended to live to old age.
So he rode north, around the King of Babylon. He had to stop for two days when his guts rid themselves of the last of the farmer’s-wife’s poison. His thugs deserted him, and stole all but one of his horses.
But they didn’t kill him, and he thanked the gods for that, and rode north again. It rained so hard he couldn’t see.
All in a day’s work.
It took him four days to find Antigonus’s army, and another whole day to get an idiot cavalry officer to lead him to the old man himself. He gathered from the men who held him – gently but firmly – that Demetrios had joined his father just the day before.
By the time he faced the father and son, his news was nine days old. But it was valuable nonetheless.
Demetrios had heard of him. And Neron. Neron came. And then the serious questioning began.
Sophokles had made his decision before riding in. He was changing sides. He no longer knew – or cared – which side Phiale was on. He needed the protection of a side, and all the signs and portents he could see shouted that Antigonus – with the bigger army and the giant herd of elephants and the brilliant son and the bottomless well of Asian riches – would win.
And Sophokles had had enough of obeying people with bad intelligence.
So, patiently, he told everything he knew.
And he knew a great deal.
Neron asked him questions all day – a full day, with two tattooed barbarians standing by. Sophokles didn’t like torture any more than the next man – and he kept pointing out that he’d have more value as an agent than as a tortured corpse.
Finally – after a day – Neron came over and gave him a bowl of soup. ‘One more time – you were after Satyrus of Tanais?’
Sophokles, who had answered this ten times, shrugged. ‘Yes.’
Neron looked angry, but Sophokles had figured out long since that he, Sophokles, was not the target.
‘And you lost him?’ Neron asked.
‘Twice. Lost him at the edge of the Euphrates – Zeugman – twenty days ago. Then I shadowed Seleucus for a few days, until … well, I had a wound. Then I lost him again. He went north.’
Neron put his face in his hands. ‘Satyrus of Tanais sailed around our fleet to join Seleucus. And then he left Seleucus riding north. That’s what you are telling me. Satyrus is the linchpin between their armies. And he went north.’
Sophokles found the soup more interesting than the theory. He made the sound men make when they don’t care to speak.
Neron left him for a while, and then returned.
‘We want you to go back to Seleucus,’ he said. ‘And spy.’
Sophokles shrugged. ‘Better Seleucus than Lysimachos. None of his easterners will know me, and my Persian is pretty good.’ He finished the soup. ‘And kill Satyrus?’
Demetrios the golden, in his second-best breastplate and with his helmet under his arm, came in. ‘Absolutely not. If I hear that he was assassinated, I’ll see you cut in quarters and burned. Am I making myself clear? I am the man who will kill Satyrus – in single combat. I have dreamed it. He is the worthy opponent of my story, and I will not have him killed.’
Neron raised an eyebrow.
Demetrios sighed. ‘Neron, I know you have our best interests at heart. But we have more than two hundred elephants, fifty thousand hoplites, and the finest cavalry in the world. And Pater, and me. Don’t you see?
We want this battle
. This is where we get them all together and we smash them like a pot. With just a little luck, we kill Seleucus and his idiot son and Lysimachos and Satyrus. The lot. Cut the heads off the hydra, and we’re done.’
Neron shrugged. ‘I understand the plan. I feel it is … optimistic.’
Demetrios beamed his golden smile. ‘Neron, sometimes I wonder which one of us works for the other. Are you the tool of my imperial ambition? Or am I the tool of yours? This is a command. Please obey.’
Neron turned to Sophokles. ‘There, you heard it from your prince. Observe, spy, and report. Do not kill Satyrus, or anyone else.’
Sophokles nodded. ‘Of course. In the meantime, might I have more soup?’
Satyrus rode up to Seleucus in the middle of his column, with dust rolling over them like storm clouds, and the plains of High Asia stretching on either hand, rolling land as far as the mountains.
Antiochus saw him first, and left the column with a whoop, and then Satyrus was abreast of Diodorus, and they clasped hands.
‘Where, by all the Titans, did you come from?’ Diodorus asked.
‘The west.’ Satyrus felt his heart swell to see them all – to know he’d done it. He’d ridden all the way around Antigonus in twenty days, and unless Lysimachos was asleep, the juncture of the armies was only a day or two away. ‘Lysimachos should be on the Sangarius by now.’
Antiochus had a parchment map. Satyrus got his out of his shoulder bag – it had wine stains, food stains, water stains, but he knew it as if it was his own body.
‘Antigonus is in Arginousa. His rearguard was at Kotiaeio two days ago.’ Antiochus slapped Satyrus on the back again, looked over his shoulder. ‘There’s a woman!’ he said.
‘My sister,’ Satyrus said. ‘The queen of the Assagetae. The Sakje scouts on your right flank are ours, and there will be more coming in.’
‘You all know each other,’ Seleucus said. His normally serious expression was replaced with humour, as Melitta embraced Diodorus and then Crax.
‘Party in the prodromoi camp tonight,’ Crax shouted, ignoring the presence of the King of Babylon. Most of the prodromoi of the Exiles were Sakje tribesmen.
Seleucus put his head down over the notes on the paper. ‘I need to press north up the Doryleaion road,’ he said after a moment. ‘That shortens Lysimachos’s route to me and puts pressure on Antigonus so that he can’t press down the river valleys and fight Lysimachos alone.’ He smacked his fist into his palm. ‘It’s ours to win, now.’
Suddenly, the tribe of rich, aristocratic Macedonian officers around Seleucus came into their own. Seleucus decided his arrangements in seconds, and sent his son and Diodorus north with his guard cavalry, the Exiles, and the cream of his Persian cavalry.
‘As fast as you can go – up the throat. I care not whether you win or lose but I want you to engage his men
today
.’ His voice snapped like a whip, and a dozen young Macedonian noblemen rode away with particular orders – to the satraps, to the most trusted Persian nobles, to the Exiles and the Aegema and the Companions. The rest of the army – even the elephants – turned almost as one man and left the road. In ten minutes, there was nothing to show but eddies of dust, and then the cavalry came – most of them moving at a fast trot, six files wide, filling the road, their harness making the music of Ares as they went. The Exiles were already twenty stades north. The Aegema had to ride up from the rearguard, the elite regiment changing horses on the march. The Persians were the best mounted and most colourful – four thousand picked riders.
Melitta broke free from Sappho to whisper to her brother. ‘We should go back east,’ she said. ‘Lysimachos needs to know.’
‘The king and queen of the Bosporus shouldn’t have to be messengers,’ Seleucus said. ‘And the Exiles are, technically, your troops.’
‘Thankfully, I am not paying their wages,’ Satyrus said. ‘And Melitta and I know where to go from here. Your scouts might waste a day.’
Seleucus waved to Crax. ‘Tell me the towns north of here – and their distances.’
‘Prumnessos – six stades. You can see the roofs. Then Akroinos – just a border castle. And then Ipsos. About ninety stades.’ He shrugged. ‘But the road curves.’
Seleucus put the point of his dagger on Satyrus’s stained map. ‘Akroinos,’ he said. ‘Ipsos if Antigonus hesitates this afternoon.’
‘Akroinos or Ipsos,’ Satyrus said. He clasped the King of Babylon’s hand.
‘Day after tomorrow dawn,’ Seleucus said.
It was odd to leave the army. But Satyrus was beginning to enjoy the war in the spaces between. A war that depended on stamina and navigation. It was like fighting at sea.
‘This is what the Sakje do,’ Melitta explained. ‘We ride the Sea of Grass, and we come and go. We know where we are – and no enemy knows as much.’
They were back over the long low ridge from which Satyrus had seen Seleucus in the morning. They had fewer than two hundred tribesmen, and fifteen of Draco’s men. Draco had had to bow out.
‘Too damned old,’ he said. ‘It burns me, but I’ll just slow you down.’
Satyrus left him with Sappho.
Nightfall – the hardest day yet. Two hundred stades. Satyrus had used all four of the horses he had behind him. They were edging north of their easterly back trail, looking for the men Melitta had sent upriver with Scopasis.
Scopasis’s scouts found them at last light, at the confluence of the Parthenios and the Sangarius. The water roared away, and the Sakje were on the other side of the river. Satyrus prepared himself to ride east to the ford but the Sakje threw ropes to each other, put a line of horsemen across the river to break up the heavy flow, and Satyrus rode across, cooled if not refreshed.
Now they were on the north bank of the Sangarius, with six hundred horsemen.
Scopasis led them to a fire and gave them koumis. Satyrus thought that it tasted so foul that he usually avoided it, but tonight everything was delicious, and he drank deep.
‘Antigonus has horsemen all across the plains to the west,’ Scopasis said, waving his eating knife in the last light of the red sun. ‘They scout like children playing a game – they only ride the easy paths.’
‘Today or tomorrow there will be a fight due west of here,’ Satyrus said. ‘Where is Lysimachos?’
Scopasis sighed. ‘Somewhere behind me. They are so slow, we wish to fight without them.’ Scopasis pointed north. ‘They should be at the ford tonight.’
Satyrus wanted to go to sleep but he was haunted by the idea that after all their work, Antigonus could end up engaging Seleucus alone, because the man had boldly lunged forward to save Lysimachos.
‘If you two took all the Sakje straight west along the river – before first light – moving like Sakje …’ He drew it in the dirt, by firelight.
Scopasis saw it first. ‘With luck, we appear on their flank when they face Diodorus. With no luck, we alarm their sentries and cause them to act like ants in a nest when the bear comes.’ He nodded.
Melitta stretched. ‘Why wait until dawn?’ she said.
They were gone into the moonlight before Satyrus was done with his barley soup.
Satyrus wandered over to his troopers. ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘I’m not riding until dawn.’
That got him a cheer.
Two hours after dawn, and he was embracing Apollodorus, and Charmides.
‘You ride too fast for me,’ Charmides said.
‘I’m getting you ready for a nice Sauromatae bride,’ Satyrus joked. ‘Pack up, gentlemen. The battle is now.’
That stirred them.
‘Where?’ Apollodorus and Anaxagoras asked together.
‘A hundred stades from here.’ Satyrus shrugged.
Apollodorus ran off. Nikephoros came up, heard the news, and ran off to the Apobatai.
Satyrus didn’t dismount. He rode to Prepalaus, who was inspecting his Macedonians, gathered his staff, and Lysimachos. He spent ten minutes explaining. The scraps of his map were redrawn on virgin parchment.
Satyrus writhed in an agony of their indecision for as long as it took a smith to pour a bronze ingot. They were quite a contrast to Seleucus.
He debated saying something – he, the youngest, and by far the least of them – but the one who knew the terrain.
But he sensed that Prepalaus wanted an excuse to delay battle, and that the man’s dislike of him could be the excuse.
Satyrus rode down the column and fetched Stratokles, who was with the mercenaries.
The man embraced him like a long-lost brother. Satyrus was surprised at the Athenian’s enthusiasm.
‘I need you to shepherd the alliance,’ he said. ‘Every minute counts.’