The Ten Thousand

CHAPTER TWO

THE SIGHT OF their still-living king revived the Persians' hopes, and officers began forming them again into battle array. The king, now recovered from his fall, personally led a large contingent across the field, searching for the main body of invaders that he knew must be in the vicinity, but which in the chaos of the moment he had lost sight of.

Proxenus had ordered Nicarchus and me to gallop to a small hillock a mile or two distant from our troops, to survey the overall scene and attempt to determine where we could be of most use. Suddenly, from out of the dusty confusion, we saw several hundred Persian riders break away and begin streaking in the direction of our own camp. The realization struck us both at the same time like a blow to the face-Tissaphernes! The Greeks had left the camp unguarded in the rush to prepare for battle, assuming that the enemy forces would never be able to slip behind our lines, and that if we were forced into a retreat, we would simply fall back directly to the camp we had left behind, to defend our provisions and camp followers. We wheeled our horses.

"Ride to the camp!" Nicarchus screamed, as he raced his horse back down the steep slope. "Round up the camp followers behind the supply wagons! Do your best to hold!" He tore off to Clearchus' troops, hoping to intercept them before they had marched even farther from the camp, and tell Clearchus to turn around to defend our precious stores.

It was a contest I was destined to lose. Though the Persians and I were racing to the camp from opposite sides, the rough terrain I encountered hampered my horse, and I knew there was no chance of warning the camp ahead of the hordes about to sweep down on them. My horse descended a shallow gully and followed a dry stream bed for several hundred yards, during which time I lost sight of the camp. By the time I ascended several minutes later, I was too late-the cloud of dust had swept over Cyrus' followers and baggage train, and was now hovering there like a tornado stalled over the one spot where it inevitably does the most damage.

Some of Ariaius' native troops positioned near Cyrus had also rushed back to defend the camp when they realized the Persians were targeting it, but their heart was not in a fight to the death with their own countrymen. They were easily repelled, bouncing off Tissaphernes' marauders like a ball thrown by a boy at a stone wall. They fled as far back as the previous day's camp, twelve miles down the trail, taking nothing with them but what they wore on their backs.

I continued riding, hoping to assist the hapless camp followers, and plunged blindly into the dust and chaos, ignorant even of whether I was entering the Persians' side of the fight or ours. Those in the camp were, in fact, acquitting themselves far more bravely than had Ariaius' troops. They had hastily arranged their meager defenses in a circle, surrounding their scant supplies and improvising the use of the Boeotian engines as they had seen the troops practicing. Amazingly, the ragged mass of sick men, prostitutes, cooks and mule drivers repelled Tissaphernes' attacking cavalry with frightening efficiency. Flames shot out in all directions from the terrorized mob, who had all gathered in a tight, wailing throng behind the engines, some hurling rocks ineffectually at the Persians, others desperately seeking shelter-behind tents, animals, and even fallen bodies-from the volleys of arrows and missiles raining down upon them from the riders. Mounds of Persians and frantic horses were stacked writhing in front of the engines, many burned black by the fire, some roasted alive in their heavy armor as the oily flames poured over the metal of their breastplates and helmets.

Dismounting to better pick my way through the chaos and slaughter, I saw a sight that chilled my blood to the marrow. Tissaphernes himself was among the marauders and had dismounted. Stalking through the rampaging troops in his heavy cavalry armor, he had seized Cyrus' beautiful Phocaian mistress by the hair as she ran terrified from Cyrus' flaming tent. The general handed her off to his battle squire to be taken behind Persian lines, then ordered three of his guards to race through the oily black smoke into the portion of the prince's tent that had not yet caught fire, to seize any battle plans or plunder they might find.

What they found was all the more valuable, and terrifying-for emerging a moment later, two of them carried scrolls and maps in their arms that they had blindly snatched up in a race against the flames, while the third was dragging Asteria by the collar of her robe. Tissaphernes froze as he watched her fight like a Fury, digging into the dirt with her bare feet and scratching the guard with her nails. She finally sank her teeth so deep into his wrist that he roared in pain and rage. He let go her collar momentarily and swiped her across the side of the face with his forearm hard enough to lift her bodily into the air before she landed, nimble as a cat, on all fours, spitting blood from her broken lips and glaring at him with hate-filled eyes.

Tissaphernes reacted in rage. He drew his jewel-encrusted scimitar and stormed to where Asteria crouched in terror and fury. Looking down at her, his face black and contorted with anger, he raised the glinting blade high above his left shoulder, and I felt the world grind to a halt. All the commotion and chaos around me seemed to freeze, as if time had become fragmented. The screaming of wounded men and terrified horses, which had risen to a deafening pitch, now thundered into silence, and the stench of the acrid black smoke and burning flesh was pushed into an odorless vapor in the back of my mind. The space between moments seemed to stretch, to become extended, and all my senses focused in utter concentration, to the exclusion of anything else, on the dream-slow trajectory of that lethal blade. It hesitated at the peak of its arc for an instant, quivering, and I held my breath, as the eyes of Asteria, the guard and myself all converged on its tip, each of us willing it with all the strength of our being in a direction to be ultimately decided only by Tissaphernes and the gods themselves. The world moved slowly, trancelike, as Asteria agonizingly raised her thin arms to ward off the blow and I involuntarily did the same, even though distant from the blade by many yards, by a lifetime.

My senses came crashing back to me with a roar, the mayhem that surrounded me bursting and flooding back into my consciousness and the din of the battle nearly knocking me off my feet by its sudden ferocity. My eyes did not waver from the blade. Tissaphernes, whirling quickly, slashed it viciously through the air almost faster than the eye could see, slicing off the head of the guard who had struck Asteria, as a gardener lops off a wayward branch from his fruit tree. Two thick streams of blood rose writhing and snakelike from the stump of the neck, crossing and twining about each other as they curved in a smooth arc to land with a spatter in the dust at Tissaphernes' feet. The dead guard stood upright for an instant, incephalic and spouting, stiffened and propped by his heavy cavalry armor, before his knees buckled and he slowly toppled into the dust, blood bubbling like black broth from the still-quivering flesh of the stump of his neck and mingling with the black, sour-smelling pools forming under his feet. Tissaphernes glared at the knoblike head lying several feet away, the helmet knocked askew from the impact, exposing the unfortunate guard's eyes and mouth, which were wide open in his now perpetual astonishment.

Tissaphernes then dropped his sword arm, and barely glancing at the cringing Asteria, shouted something to another of his guards standing nearby, and then strode back to his horse. The new guard roughly seized the girl by the collar and began dragging her again. She flopped jerkily like a fish being drawn in on a line, clawing desperately at her collar to relieve the pressure on her throat and keep from being garroted as she was finally forced behind the Persian lines.

Something snapped inside me, that instinct for self-preservation with which all men are born and which to a greater or lesser extent governs all our activities. At that moment, that instinct died, and I did things that no sane man should do. Throwing my shield up to my face to guard against the thrusting spears, I raced blindly into the Persian lines, slashing at any living being I could find, parrying and blocking in desperation. To my surprise, I suddenly found no resistance, as the enemy troops simply parted to let me pass through, a single maddened Greek being of little consequence to the Persians intent upon rushing the Boeotian fire and screaming camp followers. Each Persian soldier assumed that the man at his shoulder would dispatch me instead.

I did not let Asteria leave my sight, and although the entire lapse since she had been dragged kicking from the tent could not have been more than a minute, it seemed like an eternity to me as I hacked my way after her. When I had advanced to within several yards, her eyes fixed on me; though it is impossible that she could have known who I was through the helmet and nasal shrouding my face, and the sheets of blood and gore on my breastplate and limbs, a gleam of recognition seemed to spark in her eyes, reviving her from her half-strangled state. Suddenly summoning every fiber of strength remaining to her, her eyes bulging and her face an apoplectic red, she dug her feet once more into the ground, seized the silk fabric that had knotted and bunched around her throat in the guard's grasp, and pulled with all her might, ripping the robe from neck to waist.

The sudden release of her weight as she fell to her buttocks on the ground threw the struggling guard off balance, and he pitched forward onto his face. I was still several yards away, but just then was confronted by a Persian cavalryman who was startled to realize that a single, armed Greek was racing rampant through the middle of his lines. The man reined in his horse just in front of me, and with an evil grin raised his battle-axe, preparing to split my head like a melon. It was all I could do to tear my eyes off Asteria, who sat panting on the ground, ripping at the shreds of the long robe entangling her neck and legs. The guard who had been dragging her was struggling to regain his feet, hampered by the unwieldy cavalry armor he was wearing and the rushing mobs of men surrounding him and knocking him off balance.

I turned my attention to the rearing horse in front of me, and putting my head down, dove with every ounce of strength directly into the horse's belly. I felt the metal edge of my helmet crest bite deep into the soft solar plexus, and sensing, rather than hearing, his enormous gasp as the air exploded out of his diaphragm and lungs. I bounced back away from the horse from the shock of the impact and the rider's battle-axe cut through the air, shearing the crimson horsehair crest of my battle helmet. The animal stumbled in its pain, doubling over and writhing on its side, slathery strings of saliva trailing from its mouth and splattering onto my face and neck, its eyes rolling in terror. The horse's tongue, bleeding from having been bitten in the shock of the blow, lolled crazily out the side of its mouth.

The rider fell screaming beneath the animal, but I too tripped and fell, and spent precious seconds struggling to my own feet, trying desperately to dodge the flailing hooves. There was scarcely any strength left in my arms and legs, and I tottered like an ox after being poleaxed in a sacrifice. I turned frantically toward the spot I had last seen Asteria. There stood her captor, having finally gained his own feet, still clutching a long piece of silk in his hand like a torn banner, looking befuddled and searching for the girl where she had fallen from his grasp. There on the ground was the remainder of her robe, which she had finally disentangled from her flailing limbs and neck. And there, by now ten yards away and increasing the distance with every second, was fleet-footed Asteria, racing stark naked through the middle of the astonished enemy soldiers, wearing only the courtesan's ruby in her navel and an oversized wicker shield she had snatched from a dead Persian, protecting her from both blades and intemperate stares.

I leaped over the panting horse I had just felled, landing full in the face of its still struggling rider with my hobnailed leather sandals, and tore after her, laboring to slash with my now-deadened right arm, as she burst out of the Persian lines and scampered nimbly through a gap in the flames of the Boeotian engines like a spooked rabbit. I was not so fleet myself, preferring instead to assume my tried-and-true posture of putting my head down and barreling straight through, hoping for the best. Miraculously, the best occurred, and I too was unscathed by the flames.

With my last bit of remaining strength, I raced among the mob of followers, who grasped at me as if I were their saving god, as I searched desperately for where Asteria might have run among the chaotic defenses. I finally found her, against all likelihood, and without a thought for her tattered modesty, assisting a line of women with the bellows powering an engine. I rushed up, threw my blood-soaked and torn scarlet cloak over her shoulders, and then assumed my own place among the line of defenders.

The single rider's thundering hoofbeats had startled Clearchus' troops out of the mechanical marching rhythm into which they had fallen in exhaustion after their battle.

They were miles away from the camp, seeking the site of Cyrus' battle, and believing themselves to have been victorious on all fronts. Most were praying that they might avoid further engagement that day, for victory in surfeit can drive a man trembling to his knees as much as can defeat, and the men's only wish now was to return to camp, remove their armor, and rest. No one knew of Cyrus' fate, save those who had witnessed it first-hand, and the Greeks simply assumed that he had been successful in the general charge and was marauding and plundering to exhaustion.

The horseman, blood-soaked and caked with dust and grime, came racing in among the men and tumbled off his mount in his haste as he shouted for Proxenus. As it happened, Proxenus' squire was immediately at hand, and even he took several seconds before recognizing Nicarchus under the layers of dirt and blood.

"The Persians!" Nicarchus gasped. "The Persians are plundering the camp! Fetch Proxenus!" The astounded squire could not believe his ears-the king was in our camp? Had we been defeated after all? But what of Cyrus? The squire raced through the milling infantry, bellowing at them to continue marching, and found Proxenus and Clearchus riding together, calmly discussing whether to pursue the Persians further or return to camp for the night. Nicarchus came running up and sputtered his news to them without so much as a greeting. Their eyes widening in disbelief, they galloped over to the troops and found them already shifting their direction toward the camp and picking up their pace to a trot even before being ordered. Clearchus ran on foot at the head of his soldiers, brooding darkly on what this might mean.

When they arrived, the camp was a smoldering ruin. The camp followers wandered about like wraiths, seeking what shelter and food they might salvage. The king's troops had managed to burn or plunder over four hundred wagons of supplies, including most of the barley and wine we had so painfully dragged across the desert. Rather than the hot meal and sleep the weary soldiers had been looking forward to, they settled for filthy water, what few remains of stale bread had survived the plundering, and a blanketless rest on the hard ground.

But that was not the worst of it. For what Clearchus' reports soon confirmed to us was that Cyrus-the very reason for our long march, and our hope for guidance and supplies on our return back to Greece-had been killed. The Greeks had lost hardly a man in the battle, but we had lost our precious provisions, as well as our leader and benefactor. It was a long, cold night.