The Novels of Alexander the Great: Fire From Heaven, the Persian Boy, and Funeral Games

6

FROM THE HILLS WE climbed to the mountains. We were on the road to Ekbatana. There was no pursuit.

By troops and single stragglers, the remnant of the army caught us up. Soon, if you had not seen what had taken the field, you could have called us a great force. Bessos’ Baktrians were all there, but for the dead. Being headed for their homeland, of course they had kept together. They were still nearly thirty thousand. The Immortals, and Royal Kin, and all the remnant of the Medes and Persians, both horse and foot, were now led by Nabarzanes.

We had, also, all the Greek mercenaries, about two thousand. It amazed me that, fighting only for hire, not one of them had deserted.

The most grievous loss was Mazaios, satrap of Babylon, and all his men. They had held their line, long after the center had broken with the flight of the King, whose life they may well have saved; Alexander, hot in chase of him, had had to turn back and deal with them. Not one of these brave warriors was with us now; they must all have perished.

Only about a third of the women’s wagons had escaped from Arbela; two of the King’s; the rest, the harems of lords who had stayed themselves to rescue them. But not one of the eunuchs had run off without his charges. What their fate was, I have never heard.

All the treasure was lost. But there were vaults of it at Ekbatana; the stewards had wisely loaded up with stores for the march, which we would need much more. Boubakes, I found, had had the King’s baggage wagon all packed since morning. In his wisdom he had loaded a second tent, with a few small comforts for the royal eunuchs.

Even so, it was a hard rough journey. It was early autumn by now; still hot in the plains, but cool in the hills, and already cold in the mountains.

Boubakes and I had horses; three eunuchs rode in the baggage wagon. No more of us were left, except those of the women.

Each pass wound up higher and steeper; we looked down great clefts into stony gorges; wild goats gazed at us from the crags, and were shot for food by the Baktrian archers. At night, short of blankets in our little tent, the five of us huddled like birds for warmth. Boubakes, who had taken me into his grace and behaved to me as a father, shared blankets with me so that we had them double. He favored some scent with musk, but I was grateful. We were lucky to have a tent at all; nearly all the soldiers, their baggage lost, were sleeping under the sky.

From them, I pieced together the battle as best I could. Later on, I was to hear it gone over by men who knew; tactic by tactic, order by order, blow by blow. I have it by heart; I can’t bring myself to go over it all again. To cut it short, our men all started tired, having stood to all night because the King expected surprise. Alexander, hoping for that very thing, gave his own men a good night’s rest, and, when he’d finished his battle plan, turned in himself. He slept like a log; at sunrise they had to shake him. He told them it was because his mind had been at ease.

Darius leading the center, Alexander the right, he was expected to sweep centerwards at the onset. Instead, he wheeled round to outflank our left. The King sent troops to prevent this; Alexander lured more and more of them to the left, thinning out our center. Then he formed up the royal squadron, set himself at its head, gave the note for a deafening war-yell, and came thundering straight for the King.

Darius had fled early, but not, after all, the first. His charioteer had been shot with a flying javelin; when he fell, he had been taken for the King. The first flight began from this.

Perhaps he would have stood in a single fight, as long ago in Kadousia. If he had only seized the chariot reins, and given his war-cry, and dashed in among the enemy! It would have been quick, his name would have lived in honor. How often, before the end, he must have wished it too. But, caught in the panic like a leaf in storm, seeing Alexander on his black horse loom up through the dust towards him, he wheeled the chariot and joined the rout. From that, the plain of Gaugamela became a slaughterhouse.

One more thing I learned from the soldiers. Darius had detailed a troop to sortie behind the Macedonian lines, and rescue his captive family. They had reached the base-camp, shielded by the confusion; freed some captive Persians, and, getting to the ladies, called on them to fly. All had started up, except Sisygambis the Queen Mother. She neither rose, nor spoke, nor made any sign to the rescuers. They rescued no one; the Macedonians drove them off; but the last they saw of her, she was still sitting upright in her chair, her hands laid in her lap, looking before her.

I asked one captain why we were going to Ekbatana, instead of holding out in Babylon. “That whore of cities?” he said. “She’ll open her legs to Alexander the moment he comes in sight. And hand the King over, if she had him there.” Another said sourly, “When wolves are after your chariot, you either stay and fight them, or throw them something out, to keep them busy. The King’s thrown Babylon. And with Babylon goes Susa.”

I fell back to ride beside Boubakes, who did not think it proper I should talk too long with the men. As if he had read my thoughts, he said, “Did you say, once, you had never seen Persepolis?”

“The King never went there since I joined the Household. Is it better than Susa?”

He sighed and said, “There is no king’s house more beautiful … Once Susa is gone, I doubt they can hold Persepolis.”

We went on through the passes. The road was clear behind us. Alexander had chosen Babylon and Susa. When the column’s pace grew tedious, I practiced archery. Some time before, I had picked up the bow of a dead Scythian, who had fled to the hills and then died of his wounds. He had been a smallish man and I could pull it easily. The first game I got was a sitting hare; but the King was pleased to have it for supper, as a change from goat.

He was quiet of an evening, and for some nights slept alone, till the air grew sharp, when he had a girl from the Harem. He never sent for me. Perhaps he remembered the song of my father’s warriors, that I used to sing him. I do not know.

The high peaks were touched with white, when from the head of the last pass we saw Ekbatana.

It is, if you like, a palace and walled city. But it seemed more like some splendid sculpture wrought from the mountainside. The westering sun warmed the rich faded colors that crested its sevenfold walls, rising in tiers with the slope; the white, the black, the scarlet and blue and orange. The inmost two, which enclose the Palace and treasuries, had a fiery gleam. The outer was sheathed with silver, the innermost with gold.

To me, bred in the hills, it was lovelier than Susa a thousand times. I almost shed tears beholding it. I saw that Boubakes too seemed near to weeping. But what grieved him, he said, was that the King should be driven to his summer palace with winter coming on, and no other left for him.

We entered the city gate, and went up through the sevenfold walls to the Palace above the golden battlements. It was all airy balconies, looking to the mountains. The soldiers, overflowing the town, built themselves huts of timber roofed with brush. Winter came on.

The snow that had tipped the mountains crept lower and filled their clefts. My room (there were rooms to spare, for so small a Household) was high in one of the towers. Each day I could see the white descending; till one morning, as in my childhood, I opened my eyes to the snow-light. Snow lay on the city, on the thatched huts of the soldiers, on the sevenfold walls. A raven lighted on the nearest, loosing a little slide, and there showed under his claws a patch of gold. I could have gazed forever, except that I was freezing. I had to break the ice in my water-ewer; and winter was only starting.

I had no warm clothes, and told Boubakes I must go to the bazaar. “Don’t do that, my boy,” he said. “I have been going through the wardrobe. There are things that have been lying there since King Ochos’ day. I have just the thing for you. No one will miss it.”

It was a splendid coat, of lynx-skin lined with scarlet; it must have belonged to one of the princes. This was good of Boubakes. He may have noticed the King had not lately sent for me, and wanted to make me pretty.

The mountain air was like health after long sickness. I daresay it did more for my looks than the coat; at all events, the King sent for me before long. But he had changed since the battle. He was restless and hard to please; and I felt, as I never had before, that without warning he might turn against me. It put me on edge; I wanted only to get it over.

However, I could understand, and did not hold it against him. He had just had news of how Babylon the Whore had opened her bed to Alexander.

Even against him, I should think those great walls could have held out a year. But the Royal Gate was opened. The Royal Way was strewn with flowers, and lined each side with altars and tripods burning precious incense. A procession met him bringing kingly gifts; purebred Nisaian horses, flower-wreathed oxen, gilded cars with leopards and lions in cages. The Magi and Chaldeans chanted praises, to the sound of harps and lutes. The cavalry of the garrison paraded without their weapons. Compared with this, the welcome to Darius had been like that for some third-rate governor.

Even this was not the worst. The envoy who met Alexander on his march, and put the keys of the citadel in his hands, had been the satrap, Mazaios, whom we had mourned for dead.

He had done his duty in the battle. No doubt in the dust and din he had not known at first that the King had fled. He had hoped for support, for victory. When he knew, he made his choice. He had led back his men at speed, lest he should be too late for Alexander. He had been in time; Alexander had reappointed him. He was still satrap of Babylon.

For all Mazaios’ homage, Alexander had marched warily on the city, in battle order, leading the van himself. However, it was not too good to be true. He had Darius’ gilded chariot brought, and entered in proper style.

I tried to picture this wild and strange young barbarian in the Palace I knew so well. For some reason, perhaps because the first thing he did in Darius’ captured tent was to take a bath (by all accounts, he seemed as clean as a Persian) I saw him in the bathhouse, with its lapis tiles and gold fish, splashing in the sun-warmed water. It was an envious thought, at Ekbatana.

The servants fared well; their quarters had been unchanged for centuries, since the Median kings had lived there all through the year. It was only the royal rooms which, when the empire grew, had been made open and airy, to catch the mountain breezes in summer heats. Snow blew in at the windows.

We got shutters made, with fifty carpenters at it, and filled the place with braziers. But nothing could really warm it. I could see how it irked the King, to think of Alexander basking in Babylon’s mild air.

The Baktrians, who have hard winters at home, would have been well clad, had they not stripped down in the heat of Gaugamela and then lost their baggage. The Persians and the Greeks were no better off. The men from mountain satrapies went hunting their own furs; others bought in the bazaar, or rode into the country and robbed the peasants.

Prince Oxathres, and the lords and satraps, had quarters in the Palace. Bessos laughed at the cold through his black beard; but Nabarzanes noted we had tried to give him some comfort, and thanked us civilly. He was one of the antique school.

The soldiers had been paid from the Palace treasury. They brought the town trade; but being short of whores, caused much contention over honest women. When I went out riding, I soon learned to skirt the barracks of the Greeks. Their repute for liking boys is not unearned. Though they must have known I served the King, they would whistle and call, without any sense of propriety. However, it was their custom; and I respected their fidelity in disaster.

The last leaves fell from the lean and spiky trees, stripped by the wind even of snow. Drifts closed the roads. Each day passed like yesterday. I shot at a mark for pastime, and practiced my dancing, though it was hard to warm up and save myself from sprains.

The King’s days passed heavily. Oxathres his brother was hardly thirty, unlike him in looks and mind, and would be gone for days on hunting-trips with other young lords. The King would entertain the satraps and nobility by turns to supper; but he would sink into his thoughts, and forget to invite their conversation. He got me to dance, I think, chiefly to relieve him of the need to talk. But the guests, who had few diversions, were gracious and made me gifts.

I thought it would not have been out of place to invite Patron, the Greek commander. But it never entered his head, to have such people indoors.

At last it thawed, and a messenger got through the half-flooded roads; a horse-coper from Susa, who came for the reward. We depended on such people now; they were always well paid, however bad their news was.

Alexander was in Susa. The city, though without the fulsomeness of Babylon, had opened its gates at once. He had taken entire the treasure, hoarded reign after reign; a sum so vast that, when I heard it, I could not believe there were such riches in all the world. Truly, enough to keep the wolf from the chariot.

As winter hardened, closing the roads again, shutting us up together week after week with only the muddy town or the barren hillsides, men grew prickly or dull or sour. The soldiers fell into tribal factions, reviving old feuds from home. Townsmen came up to complain that their wives, or daughters, or sons had been debauched. The King would not be troubled with such trifles; soon all petitioners sought Bessos or Nabarzanes. Yet idleness made him moodier; it fell on one man or another mostly by chance, but everyone was on edge from it. All that befell later, as I believe, was hatched in those long white empty days.

One night he sent for me, the first time in a long while. I saw Boubakes, as he withdrew from the Bedchamber, signal discreet congratulation. But from the first I was ill at ease with myself, uncertain of the King. I remembered the boy before me, packed off for being insipid. So I tried something which had amused him once at Susa. Suddenly he pushed me off, fetched me a great slap on the face, said I was insolent, and ordered me out of his sight.

My hands were shaking so, I could hardly get my clothes on. I stumbled down cold corridors, half blinded with tears of pain, anger and shock. Putting my sleeve to my eyes to wipe them, I ran clean into someone.

The feel of his clothes told me he was a lord. I stammered an apology. He put both hands on my shoulders, and looked at me by the light of the wall-sconce. It was Nabarzanes. I swallowed my weeping in shame. He had a biting turn of mockery when he chose.

“Why, Bagoas,” he said with the greatest gentleness. “What is it? Has someone been ill-using you? That lovely face of yours will be bruised tomorrow.”

He spoke as if to a woman. It was natural; yet, fresh from humiliation, I found it too much to bear. Without even dropping my voice, I said, “He struck me, for nothing. And if he is a man, then I reckon so am I.”

He looked down at me in silence. It sobered me; I had put my life in his hands. Then he said gravely, “I have nothing to say to that.” While I still stood rooted, feeling my words’ enormity, he put his finger-tips to my stinging cheek. “It is forgotten,” he said. “We must all learn to hold our tongues.”

I would have prostrated myself, but he raised me up. “Go to bed, Bagoas. And don’t lose sleep over your future, whatever may have been said. He will forget it, no doubt, tomorrow, or the day after.”

All night I scarcely closed my eyes; but not from fear for myself. He would not betray me. At Susa, I had grown used to the petty court intrigues; to office-seeking, backbiting of rivals, the endless play for favor. Now I knew that I had looked into far deeper places. He had not hidden his contempt; and it was not for me.

When my bruise was gone, the King sent for me to dance and gave me ten gold darics. But it was not the bruise, that hung about my memory.