The Ten Thousand

CHAPTER ONE

TO THE ACCOMPANIMENT of the groans and rattling chains of the sweat-drenched slaves wielding the oars, the ship bumped to the wharf at Ephesus, the closest port to Sardis though still more than fifty miles distant. I seized our gear, and Xenophon and I leaped onto the quay, not even bothering to take leave of the ship's brutish captain. We quickly wolfed down a few hunks of steaming flat bread slathered with a spicy lentil sauce that I purchased from a nearby vendor, and after a bit of haggling, I bought two healthy Cappadocian asses to carry ourselves and our baggage. In the echo of our journey to Delphi, we spent three days traveling the "King's Highway," the road that ultimately led to the royal city of Susa, on which Sardis was the most important way station. Climbing up from the coastal route, the road passed over bleak, desiccated hills as barren as Aphrodite's marriage to lame Hephaestus. It descended finally into the Cryon valley before taking up the left bank of the Hermus River, which led us directly into the city. Our original plans had been to inquire immediately into the whereabouts of Cyrus' army, but the sights and sounds of this oriental metropolis, the largest city we had ever seen, were so beguiling that we decided to find an appropriate inn and spend a day or two touring before leaving to visit Proxenus.

Sardis did not disappoint. Surrounded by the fertile vineyards and farms through which Xenophon and I had passed while riding into town, the ancient city rose towering from the flat plain, a massive, rock-walled fortress with battered turrets soaring into the sky. Its clamorous markets, the overwhelming odors of the spices and herbal potions sold on every street corner, and the exuberant, thronging citizens from every nation of the world reminded me of Athens in my childhood, before its devastation and impoverishment. It was so long since I had enjoyed the pleasures of a prosperous, optimistic city that even when alone in our rooms, listening to the muffled street sounds outside, I was exhilarated at the prospects waiting just outside my door.

Some three hundred years earlier Sardis, even then a great city, had been overwhelmed by hordes of pale-skinned barbarians who had swept down from the north in endless numbers like packs of ravenous wolves, devouring all its riches and mingling their wild barbarian blood with that of the refined and delicate natives. It was said that so many men and women were killed during the barbarians' brutal sweep through the city that when the carnage was over, thousands of children were left wandering the streets, homeless and wailing. The offspring of royalty mingled with those of the lowest cowherds, and the children's identities were obliterated through the effacement of their outward customs and manners as they scrounged for scraps in the gutters. It was finally decided that no one could determine their origins with certainty, for every child claimed to have been sired by the king, and so they were simply lined up in the market like so much chattel and auctioned to the highest bidder, as slaves of the barbarians or for adoption by surviving Sardesian adults. Since that time, each baby has been imprinted with a tiny, discreet tattoo shortly after birth, usually along the hairline on the nape of the neck, depicting an identifiable family symbol such as an animal or a letter. When walking through the streets, I enjoyed noticing these small signs on young babies riding in slings on their nurses' backs, with their soft, hairless heads slumped forward in sleep.

Under King Croesus, who was said to own as much gold as Midas but who had been cursed by the gods, Sardis was restored and became even more wealthy than in the past. In the last century Sardis, like the rest of Asia Minor, passed over to Persian control, and despite sometimes heavy-handed governance by the king's satraps and descendants, the most recent of whom was the young Cyrus, the city had over the years continued to prosper.

It was from Sardis that Darius and Xerxes had launched their expeditions against the Greeks almost a hundred years earlier, the former's culminating in his defeat at Marathon, the latter's being fatally delayed by the Spartans at Thermopylae. From here, battles famous in Greek history had been commanded and planned, and soldiers in all three Ionian wars had been drawn chiefly from the region of Sardis and had made their last stand here against Athens' retaliatory raids. We wandered the city's libraries and monuments by day, its taverns and theaters by night, and before I realized how fast time was passing, Xenophon noted that we had spent three weeks, and a considerable quantity of our dwindling supply of silver.

We packed the next day, reclaiming our mules from the stockyard where they had been kept, and within two hours of leaving the city saw the first stockades of the army, fencing thousands of pack animals and their forage, and after that mile after mile of neat rows of military tents, most of leather, some of the cheaper yet more durable canvas now becoming more common among armies. The numbers of troops that had assembled on the plain were astonishing. Proxenus had said in his letter that Cyrus was raising a force to be led by Greek mercenaries to put down an uprising of the Pisidians; but the Pisidians were a backward, barbarian race, and surely their defeat did not require the massive army we saw gathered here before us. This was not the ragtag bunch of worn Spartan mercenaries and hangdog Persian slave soldiers we had expected to see. An indefinable feeling, one of tension and unease, sat low and heavy in the pit of my stomach as we rode through the camp, surrounded on all sides by heavily armed, bearded Persian soldiers who did not even bother to disguise the hostile glances they shot our way.

Xenophon asked the first officer he saw where we might find Proxenus of Boeotia. He looked at our dusty garments in frank appraisal of our intentions, and cautiously directed us toward the center of camp, to general staff headquarters. We wound for an hour through the narrow alleys of tents and thronging soldiers, a camp that was no less an independent and wealthy city than Sardis itself, with its own markets, taverns, baths, and residential sections. We were finally stopped by two enormous Ethiopian guards, wearing leopard skin tunics and carrying eight-foot spears, who informed us in camp Greek that we could not pass into Cyrus' compound without his permission.

Xenophon inquired after Proxenus, and they pointed us to a tent alley nearby, which I found later to be the Greek quarters, and the first officer we encountered, in the first tent we passed, was Proxenus.

Had I simply passed him in the streets I would never have recognized him, but when he locked Xenophon in that familiar bear hug and flashed his old grin at me, I knew that he was still, at heart, the Proxenus we had known years before.

"Xenophon!" he shouted heartily, and gestured to some of his captains to come meet us. "Are you shaving yet? By the gods, look at those shoulders! Gentlemen," he said to his gathering mates, "this handsome young devil is the cousin I've been telling you about. I babysat him in Athens years ago when he still needed his nose wiped, and now look at him-he's on the verge of growing up!"

The men laughed heartily, for Xenophon had indeed grown since Proxenus had last seen him-he now stood half a head taller and twenty pounds heavier than his boyhood friend. Proxenus himself seemed much smaller than I remembered, or perhaps his own growing reputation in my mind had simply not kept pace with his physical stature; but his years fighting with the Spartans had made him into a wary, hardened soldier, tanned and scarred. Much to my amazement, he was also the general of a battle-tested troop of two thousand utterly devoted men whom he had recruited primarily from among his former brigade in the war with Sparta-fifteen hundred hoplites with their attendants, and an additional five hundred light infantry, all of whom looked to him unquestioningly as their leader.

Xenophon grinned happily, slipped the strap supporting his luggage on the mule, and tossed the heavy bundle to Proxenus, who mock-staggered under its weight. "Thank you for the warm welcome, cousin," he said, glancing around at the tents surrounding him. "Conditions are a mite shabby, but I'm sure you'll correct that. Meanwhile, my quarters, please."

Proxenus feigned an expression of insult and ostentatiously dropped the bags on the ground, but then laughed heartily and clapped Xenophon on the back again. "You are truly welcome, cousin, and you too, Theo the Giant," he said, addressing me. "I thought Xenophon had grown, but by the gods, I'd hate to face an army of Syracusans if they're all built like you!" Then speaking seriously to his friends, "I've known Xenophon since he was a boy, and have followed his military career for years. I'm proud to say he is one of the finest cavalry officers ever to be dismissed from Athens' service, and in this day, it is a compliment to have been dismissed by those rump-humpers now in charge over there. Welcome to our campaign, Xenophon; the prince will be pleased."

At this, the men laughed even harder, to Proxenus' consternation, since he was trying to provide a formal introduction to his friend. The irony soon became apparent, however, when he looked away from Xenophon, whom he had just presented as a fine cavalry officer, to the animal on which he had just ridden in-the dusty, swaybacked mule who just at that moment was attempting to uproot a tent peg. Proxenus grinned. "Come with me," he said. "You can wash up and rest from your journey. I have to see to some affairs with my troops tonight, but we'll catch up on old times tomorrow." He led us to the officers' baths, a serious affair befitting the army of the satrap of Sardis, where we spent the rest of the afternoon washing and dozing until one of Proxenus' orderlies arrived to take us to the tent to which we had been assigned.

The next day, Proxenus gave us a tour of the enormous encampment and explained his role in the army. He had served Boeotia energetically during the war, and was especially well known for his expertise in the construction and use of the Boeotian engine. This consisted of a long, straight log, split in two lengthwise, with the two halves carefully hollowed out, lined with iron or tin and then fitted back together into a hollow tube. An enormous bellows was attached to the nether end, and a large iron cauldron containing a blazing mixture of sulfur and pitch hung from the front. The entire contraption was mounted on a cart covered with a heavy plank roof to protect its drivers from enemy arrows and missiles, and when it had been brought sufficiently near the opposing army or its palisades, the bellows were worked, forcing a stream of air through the long tube over the flaming cauldron at the other end, throwing a murderous, sticky flame over its target. Xenophon and I glanced at each other knowingly. This, then, was the "dragon" that Thrasybulus had applied to such murderous effect against us at Phyle. Since its initial use during the war, Proxenus had managed to make numerous improvements to the engine's design, increasing its efficiency, and had even developed portable models that could be taken on campaign, a formal demonstration of which he was eager to give us.

We rode several miles out of camp to a barren place Proxenus used as a testing ground for his engines, far from the stares and comments of the other troops and the city's onlookers. There, a handpicked group of thirty men were responsible for maintaining and firing the engines, the latest version of which consisted of a barrel about twenty feet long and one foot in diameter. They rolled it to the edge of camp, where a training palisades had been set up in imitation of an enemy fortress or barricade. At Proxenus' count, the bellows were expertly inserted and the cauldron hung. While a wooden cap was placed on the front end, the bellows crew pumped a dozen puffs or so into the log to build air pressure. When the pressure had built up sufficiently, it blew the cap off, and as the forced air rushed out, a terrifying stream of flame shot forty feet across the field to the barricade, setting it on fire and scorching the grass along the way, to the bare earth.

Proxenus grinned. "What do you think?"

I was as amazed as I had been the first time, at Phyle. With three or four properly trained and armored troops handling it in close combat, the engine had the destructive force of thirty men.

Xenophon, however, remained skeptical. "But the war is over. What do you intend to do with it-and with your two thousand men? Cyrus surely doesn't need all your Greeks, along with a hundred thousand of his native troops, simply to put down a local uprising?"

"This is just the beginning," Proxenus replied, evading the question. "With a half dozen of these dragon machines, no enemy force will be able to hide from my hoplites behind shields or palisades, especially after they've been softened up a bit by the targeteers. As for the war-you don't think I brought you all this way just for a demonstration, do you?"

As we watched the maneuvers, Xenophon pressed him for more details.

"Prince Cyrus engaged my troops to take on the Pisidians, who are wreaking havoc in the western regions of his province. And we aren't the only Greeks he's recruited. Xenias is already here with another four thousand men-at-arms, and Sophainetos, Socrates the Achaian and Pasion are coming soon with a few thousand more. The 'war with Sparta,' as you call it, did nothing but impoverish us and destroy our morale-and our alliance won! I can't imagine the effect it had on you Athenians. By marching on the Pisidians, with Cyrus and his Persians at our side, we Greeks will have a chance to put aside our past enmity and regain our honor-and we'll fill our pockets besides." Proxenus winked at us, and eyed our mules. "What do you say? Looks like you could stand to capture a new horse, and Theo the Giant here probably wouldn't mind snatching a Syrian dancing girl or two. And you can be sure of getting a proper introduction to Cyrus if you stick close to me."

Xenophon pursed his lips thoughtfully and watched Proxenus' grim, tight-muscled Boeotians maneuvering their engines. He gazed at the hillside in the far distance whence we had ridden that morning, the upper slopes hidden in the dust raised by a hundred thousand head of cattle, horses, goats and sheep, the gently undulating foreslope black with the tens of thousands of the army's massed tents. The destructive potential of the vast array of troops was overwhelming. Cyrus had assembled an enormous mercenary force of battle-hardened and war-hungry veterans, and he was preparing for glory.

As we trotted back to camp in the blazing heat, so different from the damp chill of Athens on the day we had left, Xenophon questioned Proxenus more closely about the prince's intentions.

"As it turns out," Proxenus said, "Cyrus does have one weapon that puts even my engines to shame. Did you know he recruited Clearchus?"

Xenophon looked surprised. "Clearchus-the Spartan general? I'd heard the Spartan Council had sentenced him to death."

"It appears Cyrus has rehabilitated him," Proxenus said dryly.

"Is he at Cyrus' camp now?"

"No, he's collecting additional troops farther east." Then noticing my puzzlement, Proxenus volunteered further information on this mysterious character.

"Clearchus is an exiled Spartan general whom Cyrus much admires for his military skills. He's a military genius, but the biggest asshole in the army. You'll find out why when you meet him. Physically he's a giant, bigger than you, Theo, and is in an evil mood that never ends. He spends all his time stalking about camp and takes pleasure in punishing violations of military discipline. He looks like hell and smells even worse-he munches garlic cloves like grapes and always keeps his pockets full of them. 'Clears the head and fends off the plague,' he says, and the stench of his breath could color the air around him. Before a battle, he spends half a day braiding and oiling his hair, which hangs to the middle of his back. I can't say it improves his appearance any, for all the work he puts into it."

"War isn't a beauty contest," Xenophon chided his cousin. "I don't care if he looks like a Cyclops, so long as he frightens the enemy."

"No need to fear there," Proxenus continued. "The enemy will be pissing on their sandals if he comes within a hundred yards of them, especially if he's upwind. As repulsive as he is, there's no man on earth as competent in battle."

He rode on in silence for a few minutes.

"You think I'm fond of war," he continued, "because I signed on with Cyrus without even a pause after Athens and Sparta made peace. Well, Clearchus has been moving from war to war for the past thirty years. The man can't live without war. He eats war and sleeps it. His men are terrified of him, but they follow him blindly and defend him to the death against any comments by outsiders, so watch what you say about him in front of others. You should thank the gods you'll be serving under me-Clearchus and his officers refuse even to use tents. They sleep in the open in the foulest weather, live on rancid bread and that disgusting Spartan 'black broth,' and ignore women, whether camp prostitutes or their own wives. His men use their shields as pillows and sleep with their spears, and each other, for comfort. I asked him about that once, thinking he was putting himself through hardship just for show, to keep up that insufferable Spartan image. He's Cyrus' top general, after all; he doesn't need to sleep in the mud. He scoffed at this. 'Shit,' he said, 'every lame-assed water boy with a grudge and every harem wench pissed off at Cyrus for sleeping with a different harem wench knows where to find him at night. That's why Cyrus needs thirty guards around his tent. And who can trust the guards? Thanks, I'll sleep in the mud.'"

"So how did Clearchus fall in with the prince?" Xenophon interrupted. "From what you say, there are no two men on earth more unalike."

"It's a bit complicated. Believe me, there is no love lost between those two, but they exploit each other for their own purposes. Clearchus approached the prince a year ago, about the same time I did. He was looking for a patron, and Cyrus knew that he was a brilliant soldier, and even better, that he was an outlaw-no chance of him losing heart and running back home to Sparta for his mother if things got tough. Cyrus gave him ten thousand darics"-here both Xenophon and I gasped, as this was a huge fortune-"to recruit a mercenary army, and Clearchus didn't spend an ounce of it on himself, although the prince would hardly have minded if he had. When word spread that he was paying good money for veteran soldiers, recruits began showing up in droves from every corner of the Greek world-every exiled, disillusioned, disgraced, hard-bitten Greek veteran that wanted a new start in life applied to Clearchus. He picked the cream of these men, paid them in advance, and trained an army, supposedly to suppress the Thracians, who had been marauding some of Cyrus' cities in the northwest. The Spartan elders sentenced him to death for pursuing an unauthorized war in disobedience of their orders-in Sparta that's a charge tantamount to treason. Clearchus didn't give a shit. He's like a hound tearing at a boar, he's unable to stop making war, and Sparta doesn't have enough wars to fight to keep him busy anymore.

"In any case, you've already seen some of his troops. He outfitted them all in new bronze helmets with horsehair plumes and scarlet cloaks-they all look like Spartan Peers. He armed them with those wicked short swords, new bronze shields and breastplates, and imported some drill sergeants from Sparta to put them through field training. Damn near killed them, and half of them were mustered out as being unfit. But within six months Clearchus had whipped the remainder into the strongest standing army in the Greek world short of Sparta's itself, and you can bet that young Cyrus is pleased. Everywhere the troops march the people fall on their knees and call them 'Cyrus' Greeks.' Well, Cyrus' Greeks whet their blades by destroying the Thracians, and now Clearchus is up-country collecting more soldiers. We'll be meeting up with them later on the march."

We rode along silently, digesting this portrait of our future colleague. I knew that Xenophon would be torturing himself with the irony of the situation. He had enlisted in the only viable Greek army short of Sparta's, at least partially with a view to redeeming his and his father's names-only to find himself serving with a man who was one of Athens' most hated enemies, a man whom Gryllus would sooner have spit on and cursed to three generations than have his son fight under. How strangely the gods ordain things, that the destinies of men as disparate as Clearchus and Xenophon are made to cross paths. One wonders whether Zeus had such a circumstance in mind when he offered Xenophon such favorable omens for traveling to Sardis. It is difficult to imagine that it was not foreseen.

Within three days of our arrival at Cyrus' camp, Proxenus had officially enlisted Xenophon as an officer and his personal aide-de-camp, and I was fitted for light cavalry armor and weaponry, and assigned the duty of bearing his brigade's pennant, a black flag depicting a snake shooting flame from its mouth. It was a role with which I was very pleased.