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.Next to him, at the edge of Kineas’s awareness, was Philokles, raining blows without pause on his opponents like Ares come to earth.Like a log jam in a Thracian river in spring, the Macedonians gave slowly.Thalassa went forward a short lunge - a single step.Kineas could only parry, his arms too weak to make the strong cuts required to put an armoured man down in the dust.But there were no blows coming at him to parry.Darius and Carlus had taken his place in the line.He hauled on Thalassa’s reins and let Lot squeeze past him, thrusting strongly.Sitalkes cut down the trumpeter even as he set the instrument to his lips, and Sitalkes snatched the golden trumpet and raised it high, exulting, and died like that with a Macedonian lance in his side.When another Sauromatae knight pushed past him, Kineas sagged and let them all past as the mêlée grew farther and farther away - a few feet, and then an ocean of sound away.He took a blow on the back from a Sauromatae who thought he was the enemy and he reeled, and the man apologized and rode clear with him, holding him against Thalassa’s back.‘You did me no damage,’ Kineas said.‘You are badly wounded,’ the man said.Decorus - he had a name that sounded like that.Kineas couldn’t get his head up.‘No,’ he said.He was, in fact, wounded, somewhere under his shirt of scale armour.High on his left side, something wet had happened and there was a cut on his right side as well, and a lot of bruises.And breathing hurt again - more - more still.‘Go back to it, Dekris.’‘Thank you, lord.’ The young man tipped his helmet down, pulled his lance out from under his thigh and looked right and left.‘Sounds more open over there,’ he said, and plunged away to the left.Kineas sat on his charger, alone, long enough to wish that he had a skin of water.Some random blow had cut the strap to his clay bottle.He got his head up, blew the snot from his nose and looked around.There was still no wind and the hanging dust made the air seem heavy and sick.The prodromoi were still behind the fighting formations.While he took deep breaths, Ataelus came up, and Samahe, and Temerix.They competed to give him water.Temerix had some wine.He felt better immediately.Temerix gave him a piece of sausage with garlic in it - loot from some skirmisher fight, because the Sakje had nothing like it - and he wolfed it down.He hadn’t eaten in hours - so he sat a quarter stade from the hottest cavalry fight he’d ever seen, sharing a sausage with his scouts.His sense of the battle began to return despite the dust.The sun was setting and the air on his sunburned, dirty face seemed cooler.‘Thanks for the sausage,’ he said to Temerix, who grinned.‘Let’s go and win this thing,’ he said, which sounded pompous, but that’s the way it looked to him.The mêlée had left him behind.The Companions weren’t breaking - they were simply losing.All around Kineas, Scythian horsemen and women - not armoured nobles, but simple warriors from all the tribes - cantered up.Some peered at him.A few saluted him and called Baqca, and all threw themselves into the mêlée, often shouting for the prodromoi to join them.But the scouts waited with the discipline of two years of campaigns.This, he knew, was what Zarina had meant.The Scythians had a lifetime of coordinated hunting on the plains.They knew when a beast was wounded, and they rode to the fight, every warrior choosing their own moment.His few hundred were now just the tip of the spear, and thousands of Dahae and Sakje were coming in behind them, riding into the war-storm to fire arrows or thrust with their swords.Many had changed horses after their initial panic, and they were comparatively fresh.The shock was over and they scented victory.Kineas could smell it too, and it smelled like horse sweat and dust, and a hint of apples far away.Thalassa gave a cry and took a step forward - rare for her to move unbidden - and Srayanka came out of the murk.‘Aiiyee!’ she shrieked and they embraced.And then she backed her mare.‘You are injured.’Kineas just smiled at her.Then he reached out with his right hand and pulled her close, her gorget scraping dully against his scales, and they kissed like people who might have lost everything, despite everything.‘We could ride away!’ she said when they parted.Her hand where she had embraced his left side was covered in blood.‘Too late, my love,’ he said.‘I cut that fuck Hephaestion,’ she said, as if passing the time of day.She handed him a javelin.‘A late wedding present,’ she said.Her mouth thinned.‘Lot went down to the grass,’ she said.‘Ahh,’ he said, pain banished for a moment.Trumpets were sounding a recall.‘I put Alexander out of the fight.’ He would mourn Lot later.And then he thought, I will join Lot soon enough, and he hurt, and it was wet, but he chuckled again.His grin was real
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