CAMPUS SCYTHII--Midautumn
The muster field in the capital was packed with men. They had come in response to their king's call, sent out a month past, shouted in the streets and marketplaces, nailed onto the walls of the holds and chieftains' houses.
Zipoetes, king of the Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans and Maeotians, to his subjects, hail! May the Allfather rain his blessings upon you who read this. The kingdom is grown strong enough that Scythia may now, with the might of the gods behind us, punish the rebels and states that have for so long preyed on us and violated our borders with armies and demands of tribute. We are numerous as the stars in the sky; we are the people of the gods, called forth to great deeds! I do therefore decree that all able-bodied men should come to Campus Scythii with food, bow, four quivers of arrows, and what other weapons and armour he may afford to carry with him. Horsemen will bring their horses with them, if he should live within the boundaries of this province of Scythia, and wish to seek glory and riches for king, people, and gods, and a place in the songs of heroes to be sung through the ages.
Behold the army! They trotted out from their billets, stables, cantonments, out the southern gate of the city, along the road to the south, rank upon rank of men four or five abreast, long-haired and with fearsome looks. Everywhere flapped the orange Scythian banner, its great square emblazoned with the plough, bowl and poleaxe that legend had it their ancestor Kolaksay had snatched from heaven when he came down to earth to father his people.
At the very head of the column was Zipoetes, heavily armoured and with cloak flapping behind him, a highly visible orange cape emblazoned also with the three Scythian treasures. Behind him, another caped figure, the bannerman who carried the uniquely red-bordered Royal Standard that fearlessly. brazenly, marked out the king's position in the battle line, daring the enemy to face him in combat. Zipoetes and his bannerman were followed closely by a thousand well-armoured bodyguard cavalry, their lances glittering, swords by their side, their plate armour of iron and bronze glittering brightly, mirroring the sunlight that accompanied their travel.
More than three thousand horse archers followed after, the backbone of the Scythian armies that had conquered the vast steppes for the orange flag, wearing long pants and leather and furs, saddles bristling with quivers themselve bristling with arrows. Their stout ponies-standard steppe breeds-had tremendous stamina born of long time spent on the boundless emptiness of the steppe, and could sustain long sretches of time at a gallop that would exhaust many of the stronger breeds that the Scythians did ocasionally buy, from the Thracians, or the Parthians, famed horsebreeders themselves. Every horsearcher carried a dagger-a short sword, really-for the close combat that came if ever their enemy could catch them. But their main weapon, their composite bow, lay encased in their gorytos , their bowcases that also doubled up as a quiver in itself. The national weapon beyond doubt, the composite bow fo teh Scythians was small and portable, but capable of sending an arrow as far-or further-than any that an archer on foot could fire, even with his much larger weapon. The horsemen trotted forward unde three great banners, each marked with the name of one of the three battalions they had been assigned to.
The last of the combatants, two archer warbands of two thousand men each, brought up the rear of the graet column on foot, their bows unstrung but ready at a moment's notice, every archer with two quivers or more dangling from waist or slung on back. They carried short swords, like the horse archers-they were the poor of the Scythian society, unable to afford even a horse, that most common of commodities in the Scythian marketplace, but if anyone engaged them in combat, let them not forget they were every one of them experienced hunters in peacetime, as skilful with long knife as with bow, able to skin and gut an animal in minutes and capable of just the same with a human.
Finally, at the very end of the lones of riders and archers, came the camp followers and attendants, driing along the packhorses and carts that carried the supplies needed for the men for a month. Peasants conscripted to guard the Scythian camp when the army had left it for battle or otherwise, Zipoetes did not regard them as being much help in any battle.
At the head of the line, a mile away from its tail just clearing the gates of Campus Scythii, Zipoetes rose, deep in thought. His one worry was what he would face once he entered Thrace and made a beeline for Campus Getae, once they found out he was on their land. Right now, all he had to work with was the fact that Scythia had a bone to pick with Thrace for its intermittent raids across the Dniestr with peltasts and Greek militia horsemen with their javelins into Scythia, which given the scattered nature of resistance before Zipoetes had organised the kingdom into one prepared for war had been unstoppable until the arrival of winter, and that he had a serious shortage of intelligence about Thrace. Well, about every other state on his borders as well, really, except what his merchants reported him, which was more often rumour and hearsay than not.
Zipoetes stretched out a gauntleted arm, waved a bodyguard forward. 'Go to the rear and find me Liapos, my spymaster. Bring him to the front.'
The bodyguard saluted, and galloped quickly to the rear, returning nto long after with a man dressed in hooded cloak, a dagger by his side, mounted on a dark brown pony. 'Zipoetes. You called.' Unlike those who spent long times in the majesty of Zipoetes, most commoners called Zipoetes by his name as befitting a chieftain among them who was merely first among equals, as it was before Zipoetes had united first the Scythian tribes and then the steppe.
'Liapos. You have been to Thrace before. You must go there again, now, to Campus Getae, and find out how large their garrison is, and if need be, whether we may enter the city through the treachery of those within who may support us in return for rewards I will give them.'
Liapos unhesitantly replied, 'In that case I will require one of the army's supply carts, two other men, and a spare horse. Instead of crossing the Dniestr at night by raft like I normally do, I will pass over the bridge the Thracians built, pretending I am doing business in grain and horses in Campus Getae.'
'You shall have what you need, including gold, as long as you make it into the city alive, and leave it alive.' A pause. 'Do business with them, and buy as much of their food supply as you can, and bring it to me. That way they will starve faster.' Zipoetes dismissed Liapos, then turned back to his study of the south, where the bridge over the Dniestr lay, a week's march away, built by Thrace in times gone by when it had needed Thracian friendship to fend off Dacian invasions. Those were the days.
But no matter. Now they would learn how follish they were to erase their friendship and trade it for hostility, and still leave the bridge standing for their own convenience of invasion. Now a different invasion would pass over the bridge.
Driven by Vengeance: A Scythian Campaign Epic
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Interesting story.
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