The Ten Thousand

CHAPTER SIX

THE MEN'S NERVES were already on edge when the riot broke out. For days our scouts had been reporting signs that the king's forces had recently passed along the road before us. The forward troops were soon tramping through the droppings of several thousand horses, which were so fresh they had not yet even been coated by the layer of fine dust that settled on everything from food to a sleeping man's face if left exposed for more than a few hours. Villages and orchards we encountered were still smoldering from having been recently torched to prevent our procuring supplies. Deserters from the king's forces began appearing in increasing numbers, but interrogating them yielded contradictory accounts. Clearchus was of the opinion that they had even been sent purposely by the king with orders to exaggerate the numbers of his forces to create alarm among our troops. The men maintained a state of heightened alert, which combined with their growing anxiety at being hundreds of miles from the sea, and their physical exhaustion, greatly raised the level of tension in the army.

When a fistfight broke out between several of Menon's and Clearchus' soldiers, Clearchus broke it up; after hearing their dispute, he decided that Menon's men had started it and had one of them severely flogged. This did not sit well with them and later that day, when Clearchus was trotting his horse through the camp, one of Menon's men threw a hatchet at him. The blade buried itself to the haft in the horse's flank, causing the lamed horse to rear in pain and spill Clearchus to the ground. Uninjured but furious, he stood up stiffly, and was astounded to see that several other men from Menon's troops had gathered, not to assist him, but rather to stone him while he was down. Clearchus bellowed like a bull, seized an enormous stick lying nearby and swinging it like a cudgel, nearly killed one of his tormentors with a tremendous blow to the neck, even further infuriating Menon's men.

Fortunately for Clearchus, who though unrivaled as a fighter was no match for the number of gathering Thessalians, one of his captains nearby heard the tumult. Thinking that a skirmish had broken out with a squad of the king's soldiers, he summoned some Thracian infantry, who rushed over in battle formation. They linked their enormous oak shields in a phalanx behind Clearchus, while a detachment of Spartan cavalry stormed into Menon's camp just behind, cornering the now-terrified Thessalians against a rock wall with their skittish mounts, lances poised to kill.

Proxenus, Xenophon, and I, who were nearby, came running up unarmed and surprised, as did Menon, who flushed pale in his fury at seeing forty of his troops on their knees begging the Spartans for their lives. Clearchus was in a rage.

"Did you see these madmen?!" he roared, stalking back and forth before Proxenus and me, spittle flecking his beard and an enormous swollen blue vein throbbing visibly on his forehead. "These fucking traitors?! By the holy gods, I'll dice their balls like apples and send them home in a dung-cart before they betray the entire army in its sleep some night!" He raised his cudgel as if to strike and all forty of Menon's disarmed Thessalians simultaneously winced and cowered in terror.

Proxenus, though subordinate to Clearchus, assumed a commanding air. "Let go the club, Clearchus, and call off your men. Let's settle this privately between officers, not here in the presence of camp followers and knot-headed Persians." He glanced over at the growing number of native troops gathering on the side, watching expectantly, attracted by the prospect of seeing the Hellenic troops beat each other into the dust.

Clearchus was in no mood for discussion. "I was practically stoned to death by these stinking, camel-lipped bastards!" he sputtered. "They lamed my horse! They were still in diapers when I was killing their goat-fucking fathers in Thessaly, and I'll be damned if I'll allow the entire god-damned army to have its throat slit in the night by these cowering dogs who attack unarmed officers…"

Just then Cyrus and eight of his bodyguard came thundering up, roughly pushing the onlooking men to the side with their horses and forcibly shouldering past Clearchus' steady-eyed troops, still with lances poised to slaughter Menon's entire company the second their general gave the word. Cyrus' face was flushed with anger as he surveyed the scene in silence. Clearchus slowly lowered his club, but retained his defiant expression.

Finally the prince spoke, in a voice that was steely, yet so soft the men went silent and instinctively leaned forward to hear what he said. "Clearchus and Proxenus, and all the rest of you-you have no idea what you are doing. I have over a hundred thousand men under my command, but if I lose my ten thousand Greeks I have nothing. If there is any dissension among your ranks, the unity of my entire army is threatened. You'll see then that the wrath of the king will be nothing compared to that of the men surrounding you now." We looked up to see that thousands of Persian troops had gathered, and were continuing to flock to the site of the dispute in expectation of some dreadful event.

At this Clearchus' eyes lost their fanatic gleam, and he came to himself. He sullenly ordered his men to dress arms and return to camp. The terrified Thessalians stood up and shamefacedly made their way back to their individual tasks, and the crowd began to disperse. Cyrus looked at Xenophon and me, and shook his head warily, as if clearing his mind of a dreadful dream. "I'm glad the Greeks are ready to fight," he muttered as he climbed back on his horse. "I think we'll be able to make use of some of that excess energy in a day or two."