Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great

XIX

The dark-haired Mallian horsemen arrived just as we did, at dawn. They were riding in hard from the flatlands, blades raised, eyes blazing with fury at the massacre of their people at Multan. My men surrounded Alexander’s tent just in time to set themselves, draw one arrow, and let fly. The Cretan reputation for bowmanship was fulfilled: five of the Mallians went down right away. The other ten reached us before we could get off another shot. At that point we took the worst of it, since only I had a proper sword, the archers being equipped with daggers. We made a fighting retreat with our backs to the tent, a few of us forming a screen for the rest to use their bows. Three more Mallians dropped as our legs brushed the tent cords.

It took some time before I realized a short-limbed demon was fighting beside me. It was Alexander, his sword flashing, clad only by his own bloody dressings. The appearance of the great Alexander took the heart out of the Mallians. They began to give ground until the arrows flew again. Then, with a final, undecipherable curse, the last one wrenched his horse around and rode away.

The King said nothing during the fight. When it was over he just stood there on uncertain feet, smiled, and collapsed. Critobulus reappeared from his hiding place in the bushes.

“Help me get him inside!”

Fresh bleeding had soaked through the linen wrappings around Alexander’s chest. Cutting the dressing away, the doctor washed off the old and new blood, the poultice of sea salt, and exposed the wound. It was an arrow hole in his left side, surgically enlarged to extract the head. The scab had been ripped in two, no doubt during the exertions of the fight, and the wound issued blood-red foam.

“There is air mixed with the blood, so the lung has not healed,” said the doctor. “but the bleeding is our concern now. Lay this on with your whole weight…use both hands.”

I stood leaning on Alexander with a wine-soaked cloth until Critobulus was ready with another styptic. When it was applied, and we had the King wrapped in fresh bandages, I finally asked the doctor the question I had meant to ask him since I had arrived.

“What happened to your guards?”

“I don’t know. When I got up to check the wound before dawn they were already gone.”

“Where is Hephaestion?”

“I told him to sleep in his own tent last night. He was accomplishing nothing here.”

I dared not leave the King during the day and the night he slept after this near-disaster. That his guards had been withdrawn, and the Mallians made aware of his location, suggested a level of Macedonian duplicity that I had not suspected. For this reason I could not even risk sending word of the attack back to camp, lest it invite another attempt. For this precaution Hephaestion would be furious with me.

Fortunately, there was a lot of work to divert me from these troubling thoughts. Twelve of the Cretan archers had died in the raid, with three surviving their immediate injuries. Despite our best efforts one of these men died from loss of blood. The others lost an arm and an eye, respectively. I heard the survivors boasting hopefully among themselves during the night:

“If those fools in Sogdia got ten talents for climbing a rock, we should get a thousand for saving his life!”

Alexander awoke with no memory of the raid. When I reminded him, and added that his guards had vanished just before the attack, he laughed. He relished the irony of it, that a battle with consequences as momentous as Guagamela had been fought and won for him by an Athenian and handful of bowmen.

“So if it wasn’t for you my torment would be over, Machon! Do you expect to be rewarded for this cruelty?” he asked, indicating to include the tent, the sky-in short, life itself-in his conception of ‘cruelty.’ His attitude changed, however, when I told him that Peithon was rifling through the royal tent.

“Peithon,” he said, weariness creeping into his voice. “why do you force me to act this role? Where is Hephaestion?”

“Exhausted. Shall I send for him?”

“No. I’ll go.”

The physician laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. “You must not rise,” he said.

“I have no intention of rising, dear Critobulus! But we can’t leave our friend here to Peithon’s tender mercies.”

A boat was brought in secret to a place below the knoll. The doctor oversaw the rigging of a stretcher between the wales. In this way, we floated Alexander downstream to the Macedonian camp. The sentries saw him first as he approached, shouting out that Alexander’s funeral barge was on the water. Alexander lay still as his men gathered on the bank, some wet-eyed with grief, some in wonder. Then, at exactly the most opportune moment, the King opened his eyes and raised his fist, proving to all that he still lived.

Aeschines described the scene in his statement. But my opponent is wrong to claim that the King did this simply to prove he was alive. When he raised his arm, the finger on the end of it was pointing straight at Peithon. The officers around the usurper stepped away, leaving him standing alone in his glad silks and golden fillet. He was arrested by Perdiccas’ men, and after a short trial, disappeared. Some say he spent his last days in whatever hole that contained Callisthenes before he died.

Despite hints that verged on outright denunciation, I could not convince Alexander that Craterus, Perdiccas or Ptolemy had a hand in Peithon’s crimes. His resistance to this idea seemed to have a practical purpose: with Arridaeus still incapacitated, and Philotas, Parmenion, Cleitus and now Peithon gone, the King’s circle of experienced commanders was shrinking. But I also believe there was the usual strand of Euripidean fatalism in his attitude-a conviction that his time was short, and someone strong needed to be left to pick up the reins. For their part, then, Perdiccas, Ptolemy and Craterus suffered nothing from allowing Peithon to overplay his hand. A potential rival was removed, and they had an opportunity to make a display of their loyalty to the King.

Aeschines, you are mistaken in another way. You say that all the Macedonians rejoiced when they saw Alexander in the boat, throwing blossoms and money at him. In fact, while some cheered his appearance, the response was not overwhelming. The ambivalence showed painfully on many faces, for Alexander to have survived his wound would mean there would be much more fighting and dying before they reached home. Many of these deaths would be against petty tribes like the Mallians. After the stupendous achievement of conquering the Persian Empire, to risk themselves that way, pacifying primitives in marginal places, seemed a task less than worth their lives.

Pushing south, we watched the Indus grow wider, and its waters rougher, until many of the boats were forced to find shelter along the banks. But when the men returned to where they had beached their craft, they found that the river’s level had risen while they were away, and their boats had floated off. Moreover, the Macedonians were confounded to watch the great river do an about-face and flow north. This inspired great unease among them, for they thought nothing mortal could make such a large river reverse its current. Some whispered that it was a signal of the gods’ displeasure that the army had pressed so far into unknown lands.

Alexander sacrificed a spotless white heifer to Poseidon and to the Indus. Upon the performance of the ceremony, the Indus slackened and reversed her current again, so that the Macedonians believed the sacrifice had pleased these gods. But the complete cycle of flooding and ebbing happened again the same day; the flood, moreover, was composed of salt water, which could only have come from the sea.

This phenomenon of the tides is known only on the shores of Ocean. Proceeding a few miles south, the Macedonians saw at last the great mouth of the river, and the infinite waters beyond. To commemorate their safe arrival, Alexander ordered a great trophy to be built of square-cut blocks, and more sacrifices. A hecatomb of Aambhi’s gift oxen were slaughtered offshore and the meat distributed to the men on the beach; so much blood was poured into the waters that the sea’s foam washed up red at the men’s feet.

Aristander reported the auspices to be favorable for the King’s next project: a voyage of exploration along the southern coast of Asia to the Persian Gulf, under the command of Nearchus. To prepare the way for this journey, Alexander sent parties of men into the eastern desert to stockpile supplies and dig wells for the sailors. When a number of these parties did not return, the King blamed the natives for their disappearance. Punitive action brought these people-principally the Arabitae and the Oreitae-into line; as penance, he ordered the tribes to bring all the stores they could gather to the coast. Though the people had little to spare, they obeyed, so that Alexander gave permission for Nearchus to proceed when his fleet was ready.

He ordered the bulk of the army, including all the Foot Companions, half the hypaspists, the elephants corps, and all the native auxiliaries, to follow Craterus to Carmania along the safe route west, through Arachosia. The rest of his men, amounting to about 6,000 infantry and 1,000 horse, plunged with him into the Gedosian desert. Alexander had heard that entire armies of Persians and Babylonians had been swallowed up there; in former crossings, an army of the Babylonians had been reduced to twenty men, while another of the Great King had lost all but seven. Naturally, it became Alexander’s intention to succeed where these others had failed, and become the first to lead a force through the desert intact.

I went with Craterus, so I did not witness the ordeal that was in store for Alexander and his men. The outlines are clear, though: for two months the expedition struggled through such infernal wastes as to make the trip to Siwa in Egypt seem easy. Though they were never far from the ocean, they found little fresh water except deep underground, and that only after expending more sweat and effort than the meager flows would replenish. They found no animals, and no plants except a kind of nettle that, for all the sustenance it provided, might have been made of bone. Though Alexander had intended to lay up supplies for Nearchus, he could spare none, and feared that the desolation of the coast would doom his fleet as well. Autumn came but the sun did not relent, forcing them to travel at night. This further confused his guides, who already contended with the disappearance of their landmarks under the shifting sands. Days and weeks were added to the march as the expedition drifted on and off the trail.

Alarmed, Alexander sent scouts to seek the help of the native people of the area. His riders returned with discouraging news: the barbarians of the coast were too backward to possess towns, weapons, or buildings of any kind. The natives, whom the Persians called the Fish-eaters, went about mostly naked, with hair and nails left uncut over their whole lives. They lived in holes dug in the sand, roofed over with fish-bones and seaweed. The only moisture to pass their lips was dew collected on seal-skins they left unfurled by night, or the blood of the creatures that swam in those waters. They had no word for “rain” in their language.

“Have the barbarians acknowledged our sovereignty over them as the Lord of Asia?” asked the King.

“My lord, the Fish-eaters lack knowledge even of chiefs, let alone of kings that might reign over them from afar. We did not think to demand their submission.”

“Ignorance is no excuse for their disrespect.”

Alexander sent a force of cavalry to demonstrate his authority. The troops returned without suffering any losses, and bearing the finest tribute the Fish-eaters had to offer: a handful of sea-shells. This gift Alexander accepted as gladly as any from the wealthiest of his subjects, for he was not unreasonable, and could only expect the things thought most precious in the lands he conquered. The King returned their gift with a dozen javelins, for use in fishing or any other purpose they wished.

The real dying began when the guides lost the trail again. With hopelessness spreading through the ranks, men straggled, fell behind the pace, and disappeared into the night. They went by twos and threes, until Alexander had lost more men than to any human enemy. There was a look of despair on his face, they say, that had never been seen there before; no doubt he took pity on the faithful Macedonians who had followed him, and received only death for their trouble. This expression worried his men as much as the desert, for if the indomitable Alexander lost heart they were certainly doomed.

That Alexander understood this is clear from a famous story most of you already know. Some of his men had dug a deep pit and managed to collect a helmet-full of fresh water from the bottom of it. When they brought the water to their King, he was tempted, but in the end refused to drink, pouring it on the ground. His men were comforted by this, knowing that Alexander expected no more of them than he was willing to suffer himself. Many of the survivors attest that this gesture gave them the will to go on. Alexander had therefore worked a kind of miracle: he had made a single helmet-full of water enough to satisfy an entire army.

At length Craterus, who was waiting for them on the borders of Carmania, saw a party of burnt skeletons emerge from the desert. When Alexander joined him, he had the appearance of a dust-covered reptile, but a smiling one: the Persians had lost all but seven men, and the Babylonian queen Semiramis all but twenty, but Alexander saved more than three thousand, or about half his force. Thus the King triumphed over his rivals in history, if not over the desert itself.

Thanks to Peithon’s example no one was willing to assume Alexander was dead until they laid eyes on his corpse. Craterus, instead of taking the diadem for himself when the King was overdue, just followed orders. Indeed, he led the army more sensibly than Alexander himself, for in his lack of imagination he simply led us from point A to point B, without turning aside every few miles to overawe every feathered native he saw.

Harpalus was unique in failing to share in this good sense. As Aeschines has said, he was a personal friend of the King’s, his treasurer at Ecbatana. In a fit of what may have been grief at Alexander’s death in the desert, but was probably just greed, Harpalus abandoned his post and fled to this city with a fortune of 6000 talents. My opponent misleads you, however, when he makes wild accusations based on some moneylender’s records of 1000 gold darics due for my collection. That money was not a bribe from Harpalus, but Alexander’s reward to me for saving his life in the Mallian raid.

Nor is there much significance to the fact that the payment was made in darics: a great deal of the Great King’s fortune, out of which Alexander issued all his rewards, was minted in that coin. This is not a secret. If Aeschines had bothered to check with any of the other Greeks who have come home with money from Alexander, he would have found many of them were paid in darics. Aeschines furthermore neglects to mention that Harpalus was expelled from the city on the order of the Assembly, and then murdered at the instigation of his own bodyguard, Thibron the Lacedaemonian. Yet wasn’t Harpalus supposed to be allied with…dare I say his name…Demosthenes? So much for the vaunted influence of Aeschines’ personal bugaboo!