The Ten Thousand

CHAPTER THREE

WRATH-THUS SING THE MUSES, for not since the days of Achilles has any man felt such wrath as that which tormented Xenophon. After returning furious from the outing with Clearchus, he refused even to tell Proxenus about it; but rather raged up and down the officers' tent, stirring up dust and breezing past Proxenus' maps and scrolls until Proxenus finally threw him out with orders not to return until he had calmed himself. Xenophon stormed outside, his anger like a great, pustulant boil that refused to burst and settle, and I attached myself to him like a physician's leech, trying to calm him.

Half the night he paced the outskirts of the camp, worrying at the insults he had received, and his silence in the face of Clearchus' vile epithets directed at his father.

"At my own father, Theo! And I did nothing to defend him, nothing to challenge Clearchus!"

"You would have been a fool to try anything," I countered. "You know his temper-he was just waiting for you to lose control. He would have run you through with your own sword at the slightest pretext, and smiled as he did it."

"Still, I can't ignore his words. If it were my own honor alone at stake I might swallow my pride, but it is my father's!"

"This is not the time for a private quarrel," I counseled. "Settle your squabbles later. Clearchus is baiting you and you'll give him satisfaction if you give in. The army is in peril, and you must focus your energies on that. Let him act the fool. Call on the gods to give you the wisdom to do what is right."

This seemed to calm him somewhat, and he returned to Proxenus' tent and forced down some cold breakfast. He did not mention the incident again that day, except to inform Proxenus in a matter-of-fact tone that he would not be accompanying him to the peace parley that evening at Tissaphernes' camp. Proxenus raised his eyebrows in surprise, but said nothing.

Just as daylight was fading that evening, Asteria slipped over to the tent where I was tending to Xenophon's kit. I was surprised to see her standing at the door, as in the past we had always made careful plans before meeting after dark, and had not done so now for several days. In fact, her failure to seek me out earlier and now her unexpected arrival by daylight irritated me. I stepped outside the tent and while talking I snapped at her for some trivial remark. She was silent for a moment before turning sadly to leave. I reached for her arm and began to apologize.

"Theo," she said, "It's not important. I came here for just a moment. I can't stay, my friends are expecting me back soon. Please, don't go to Tissaphernes tonight. Don't let your master go either."

I peered into the tent at Xenophon, who was staring absently at the wall. "There doesn't seem to be much chance of that, does there?" I said sarcastically. "The poor brute is in a fury, trying to decide whether to murder Clearchus quickly or devise a more painful method. It doesn't matter. Tonight is just another peace parley, like all the others we've seen."

Asteria looked at me with round eyes, seeming to stare deep into my mind, before shrugging her shoulders and muttering something about lending Xenophon one of her scrolls she had managed to salvage, to improve his mood. Just before turning away a second time, however, she looked at me again, her eyes smoldering in the gathering darkness. "Clearchus is a simple-minded fool, Theo," she whispered, an urgency in her voice. "He is not worthy of Xenophon's anguish. Only an idiot like Clearchus would take Tissaphernes for granted the way he does."

"What are you saying?" I asked skeptically. "He has gotten the better of Tissaphernes every time they've met. What is there to fear?"

Looking around carefully, she dropped her voice until it was barely audible. "Remember who you are, and what Tissaphernes is. He is filled with hate, and treacherous even for a Persian. I know him, Theo, I know him like… like my own father. Do not mistake his olive branch for a gesture of peace. The same wood can be used to kindle a funeral pyre. Please-tell Xenophon."

I brushed off her words impatiently as the sentimental drivel of an overwrought woman, and she slipped away. In any case, I would be spending a quiet evening with Xenophon here in the tent, and was relieved not to be returning to the Persian camp again.

Clearchus took Proxenus and four other generals with him to Tissaphernes' camp, along with twenty other officers and some two hundred men to procure supplies at the market being held that evening. Chirisophus was the only senior officer who stayed behind, having been delayed on a journey to scour some distant villages for cheaper provisions. Some of the soldiers protested that no officers, including Clearchus, should entrust themselves to Tissaphernes' camp, but he laughed this off, saying that such fears were merely a sign of how well the conspirators had performed their work among the soldiery. Proxenus reluctantly left Xenophon behind, and said he'd talk with him when he returned that evening. Xenophon was so deeply self-absorbed that he scarcely noticed his cousin's leave-taking.

He retired early that night, exhausted from his ranting of the night before, and soon fell into a deep sleep. As he recounted to me later, his first memory of that evening was of my voice calling to him as if from a tremendous distance-a faint voice, seeking him out, urging him to leave behind the comforting haven of his dreams. I could see him making a conscious effort to block out my words, but I spoke louder, more insistently, as if I were a hunter making my way closer to a stag in the forest, patiently cornering him where he could not escape. I roughly shook him awake, calling him with increasing urgency.

"Xenophon… Something terrible has happened. You must get up! Xenophon!"

He sat up groggily, struggling to focus on my face, to grasp the meaning of my disorganized spill of words.

"Come quickly! Nicarchus has returned from the Persian camp, alone. Proxenus and the other officers are still there. Something is wrong."

He stumbled outside as I pointed to where Nicarchus the egg-farmer, one of the lower officers who had accompanied Clearchus to Tissaphernes' camp, was sitting on the ground ashen-faced, surrounded by a growing body of shouting men, a frothing and blood-soaked horse pawing the ground nearby, unattended. As we approached Nicarchus, I saw that a stain of dark blood was spreading blackly in the sand beneath him. He looked at Xenophon with a mixture of horror and unutterable sadness, and when he spread his hands away from his sides in a gesture of resignation and futility, Xenophon nearly choked on his bile, and the fuzziness immediately left his brain. The man's belly had been split open from navel to groin, and what he had been calmly holding in his hands was a glistening, ivory-purplish coil of his own intestines, which had spilled out of his abdomen. Nicarchus tried desperately to hold them in, but shiny, thin loops kept slipping out between his fingers and slithering into the dirt.

Xenophon shouted frantically for someone to fetch a camp surgeon, but with his loss of blood and the corruption of his spilled bowels, it was clear that faithful Nicarchus had but a few minutes of life left to him. I hastily laid a cloak on the ground behind him and helped him to recline in a more comfortable, almost fetal position that would not put too much strain on what must have been an extraordinarily painful wound. How the man bore it as long as he did was beyond my comprehension.

"Nicarchus, by the holy gods, speak! What happened? Where are Clearchus and the other officers?"

By this time, word of Nicarchus' arrival had spread through the neighboring tents, and a growing crowd was pressing in on us, shouting and gesturing.

"Xenophon… they're gone! By the gods, they're gone, all of them!" Nicarchus struggled to keep focused, to hold his gaze and stay conscious. "Clearchus and the captains went in the main tent, and the rest of us stayed outside…"

He choked on the blood rising up in his throat, spilling out blackly from the corners of his mouth, and gasped for breath again.

"There was a signal, and then the Persians all drew swords and cut us down. I… I managed to flop across a horse and ride back here, but the others…" Poor Nicarchus by this time was weeping soundlessly, his voice growing fainter. "I should have stayed with them! Maybe I could have helped…"

I squeezed the dying man's hand and reassured him that without his brave return, our camp could never have been alerted, and might have been destroyed in its sleep. As grievous as Nicarchus' condition was, we had no time to spare. Xenophon was staggered at the shock of what he had just seen and heard. He shouted to the surrounding men. "Battle stations! Everyone assume battle stations! Form a box around the baggage and wagons, heavy armor in front, camp followers in the middle. Engine men! Light coals and place the Boeotian engines in the front!" He arranged what few bowmen and targeteers were available at the entrance to the camp to serve as an early warning, and then I helped him to strap on his own cuirass and helmet before clambering up the makeshift lookout tower to see what might be happening at the Persian camp. It had not even occurred to him that he hardly had the rank to be ordering an army of ten thousand men into battle position; but he saw no other superior officers available, and the men, in their shock at the news, were desperately seeking someone to take charge, and to assign them tasks to keep busy.

In the distance, toward the Persian camp, hundreds of torches and fires had been lit. No enemy forces were advancing that I could see, but great numbers of horsemen were galloping about in random patterns, and periodic shouts, cries of jubilation, and screams of agony were faintly carried over by the wind. I saw that most of the activity appeared to be centered near the river, where the nightly market was held, and I feared the worst for the two hundred soldiers who had gone to the Persian camp to procure supplies for the army.

The Hellenes remained at post, terrified of an imminent attack which did not, in fact, materialize. What did arrive was a body of three hundred horsemen, who suddenly broke out of the chaos and fire of the Persian camp, and galloped towards us, heavily armored and in battle formation. Xenophon stalked over to the sentry posts at the front entrance to the camp, and raised a flag of truce to stop them and discover their intent.

As the party of cavalry approached I saw that they were led by Ariaius, Artaozus, and Mithradates, Cyrus' closest friends among the allied army. Xenophon's interpreter, who had arrived breathless behind me, also pointed out Tissaphernes' brother, who kept his face shadowed in a visor and helmet behind Ariaius, but who seemed to be in communication with him and the other two officers. The band drew up their horses in front of Xenophon, looked down disdainfully, and then called for a captain to whom they could deliver the king's message.

Xenophon stared at Ariaius with scorn, that he could have so faithlessly betrayed his Greek comrades, and then sent the interpreter into camp to identify any captains who might have remained behind when Clearchus departed. He came running up a few minutes later with Cleanor and Sophainetos, who had been busy arranging the engines and troops and had not seen the approach of the horsemen. They were the only captains remaining in the camp.

"Hellenes, you dogs!" shouted Ariaius. My neck bristled. "Clearchus broke his oath and the truce, and has now been justly punished with death! But Proxenus and Menon, who faithfully reported his breach and his plot, are even now being honored by the king! The king demands, and Proxenus and Menon support him in this, that you lay down your arms immediately and surrender the camp. All that you have is his, says the king, for it belonged to Cyrus, who was the king's brother and slave."

At this, the Hellenes roared in outrage, the sentries clattering their shields with their spears and raining insults down on the heavily armed Persians. The situation had the potential to evolve for the worst. Finally Cleanor raised his shield and bellowed for silence, as ranking officer present:

"You goat-fucking wretch of a Persian slave, Ariaius! You dare to come riding here with your shit-eating ass-kissers, to the Greeks who saved your hide at Cunaxa, and demand that we surrender to your treachery? Have you no shame before real men? Do you not fear the gods, for having broken a solemn pledge, for having betrayed us to your monkey-faced Tissaphernes and his eunuch of a brother? You murdered the very man to whom you swore allegiance, and joined our enemies! May you die a filthy and godforsaken death at the hands of those you betrayed!"

Ariaius smiled thinly at Cleanor's threats, and I could see Tissaphernes' brother muttering something to him from behind, his eyes glittering in a cold rage. Xenophon raised his hand for quiet and spoke up in an effort to ward off the imminent riot. "So Clearchus has been punished. If he did betray his word, then he deserved his punishment. But what about Proxenus and Menon, Ariaius? They are our generals. If they are truly safe, send them here-they are friends with both sides, and it is they who should be negotiating any surrender of the Hellenes to your forces."

The Persians discussed this among themselves in their barbarian tongue, in voices so low that our interpreter could not catch their meaning. Then they rode away without saying a word.

Xenophon stared bleary-eyed at the bundle tossed at our tent the next afternoon by a lone Persian rider, who had swiftly turned heel and raced galloping back to his camp. Hellenic informants from the Persian camp had told us that morning that rather than being honored by the king, Proxenus and Menon had, in fact, been hog-tied, dragged by their feet behind horses to the king's tent, flayed alive of what little skin was still left on their bodies, and beheaded. The two hundred soldiers procuring supplies at the market had suffered a somewhat quicker fate, as they had been cut down almost immediately upon a signal, by armed Persian soldiers manning the market stalls.

Half mad with grief, surrounded by confused and terrified men, wondering what would befall us next, Xenophon asked me to slit open the parcel. We found to our horror that it contained Clearchus' head, his long Spartan braids coiled around it, and obvious signs of his having been brutally beaten before his death. After a day in the hot, humid weather, covered only with a thin papyrus wrapping, the head was already badly disfigured, the eyeballs shriveling, the lips bluish, and the skin swollen. The perpetually angry scar on his temple that had so terrified his men was now pure white on the bloodless skin. Flies buzzed about lazily, waiting for me to again leave them to their business. I felt an unutterable loneliness and sadness. The Syracusan chants from my childhood, which had not tormented me for some time, welled up inside; they were threatening and pressing, and it was only with great effort that I was able to push them aside, shunt them off to a corner of my mind, and focus on the terrible business at hand.

After securing the camp the night before, our immediate task had been to put the souls of the murdered men to rest-which would be difficult, as we were unable even to place the customary obols in their mouths to pay the boatman Charon, or to oil their bodies for burial. The Persians kept their remains and no doubt performed atrocities on them, as they had on Clearchus'. We held a hasty ceremony, improvising eulogies, sacrificing a precious ox in their honor, and burying a single effigy in a grave, representing all the men who had died that evening.

Oddly enough, despite my grief at Proxenus' death, I felt my thoughts returning again and again to Clearchus, and to the terrible loss we had suffered by his treacherous assassination. I had not loved the man; he was incapable of giving love, and would have viewed receiving it as the worst of weaknesses. In fact, I hated him for his arrogance, his testiness, his complete inability to accept compromise and any philosophy other than "might makes right." Nevertheless, I had worshiped him in a way, as one does a harsh god, as a small boy does an overly severe father. I had thought the man to be practically immortal or indestructible, and I was unable to reconcile my mind's vision of Clearchus with the bruised, rotting head lying like a discarded cabbage in a sack in the dust.

In any land but Sparta he would have been crowned king, and have been remembered in history as one of the greatest and most brutal. But he was from Sparta, the only land in the world where such men are in surfeit, and he was Clearchus, the only man in the world more Spartan than even the Spartans, and therefore destined, perhaps, to a death more tragic than Sparta's itself. As unlikely as an encomium to such a man may be, Clearchus, no less than any other of the personages populating this halting record, deserves to be remembered for his accomplishments and excused for his shortcomings, even if belatedly by fifty years. His body was dead, but I prayed, for the sake of our very survival, that his spirit would remain with us some while longer, and settle on a man worthy of bearing it.