The Ten Thousand

CHAPTER FOUR

"FUCKERS NEVER LEARN, do they?" Chirisophus muttered in disgust, chewing on a slice of sphincter and staring up at the surrounding heights. "The troops are starving and this shit-hole has to be taken, but I don't relish the idea of charging women and children."

In the past two weeks of bitter cold we had covered barely ninety miles, harassed by thieving tribesmen the entire way, until after fording a small river we had entered the barren land of the Taochians, a warlike people as hostile as any we had encountered thus far. Provisions had failed us, for the locals had removed or destroyed everything of value in their villages, and we feared we would starve if we did not find suitable supplies soon. Through harsh interrogation of prisoners we had captured along the way, Xenophon had determined the location of the Taochian stronghold, to which all the people of the country had retreated, bringing with them their provisions and livestock.

The place was a mountain fastness, barely habitable except in times of emergency such as these, and it could scarcely be imagined that women and children were holed up on that cruel rock; for a rock it was, a flat, frozen, windswept plateau, surrounded on three sides by a sheer drop of hundreds of feet. The surface was bare of snow, the result of the constantly whining and biting wind, and accessible only by a long, inclined approach consisting of a broad field, unbroken except by several ancient oak trees, and overlooked by a flat-topped ridge on which the defenders had placed a huge arsenal of boulders, logs, and rocks. These they were prepared to roll down on anyone attempting to cross the field to gain access. The stronghold fortifications themselves were of little consequence, nor did they need to be, given the site's natural advantages. The access was protected merely by a low stone wall. Inside the compound, parts of which we could make out from a distance when we stood on an adjacent height, could be seen several thousand people, refugees from the abandoned villages in the region, milling about on the bare rock in apparent randomness. They were sheltered from the wind and inclement weather by only the rudest of stick-and-hide structures.

When we arrived with the rear guard, Chirisophus was already waiting, in some perplexity, and Xenophon looked thoughtfully at the surrounding hills.

"We should have this routine down by now," he said. "Wait till nightfall, then set up a diversionary attack here against the stronghold with the bulk of the army. Send a few squads of infantry and light troops back down the road the way we came, then have them steal up onto the mountain to the enemy's rear. Take them from behind-your Spartans' favorite position, Chirisophus. It couldn't be simpler. The only thing I'm concerned about is when I'm going to get my breakfast."

Chirisophus complimented him sarcastically. "A fine tactic, General-I couldn't have hoped for better from an educated Athenian. Speaking of Athenians: Care for some sphincter?"

Noticing that Xenophon was about to offer an appropriate gesture in response, I quickly interrupted. "So the only question is who gets the honor of stealing up onto the mountain behind them. That could be a bloody affair if the barbarians have finally learned their lesson and posted guards along the back routes."

Xenophon again eyed the barbarians, and decided to take a different approach. "Why not take an interpreter and try to negotiate? Convince them that we're not a conquering army and don't intend to stay."

Chirisophus grunted through his wiry beard. "I already tried to talk to them. There's the entrance, the only one. We shouted that we meant no harm, that we only need supplies and wouldn't kill anyone. But whenever we tried to approach they rolled stones down on us. That's the result." He pointed to a half dozen litters nearby, carrying battered and bleeding men, one with both legs shattered, another with half his rib cage staved in. "They won't even let us collect the injured. They just keep dumping their rubble on us."

Up on the ridge, the Taochians stared down at us in fierce contempt, their levers and boulder carts ready for the Hellenes' next attempt to cross the field. "Let me try something," Xenophon said. "Theo, remember that Pisidian boy, the one we thought was an imbecile? If he only knew how much he taught me."

He called Callimachus, the captain commanding the rearguard that day, as well as Agasias and Aristonymus and a few other officers, all of whom he knew were deeply competitive, and he walked to the grove of trees at the edge of the field, just out of range of the enemies' stones. There he waited in full view of the Taochian defenders, and shouted at them, to be sure that they had taken good note of him and were ready. Then taking a deep breath, he leaped from the shelter of the trees and raced across the field, zigzagging like a rabbit to prevent the slingers and javelin throwers above him from taking aim, and dove to the ground beneath the first of the massive oak trees. Eight or ten cartloads of heavy stones and boulders slammed into the tree and rushed by either side of it in an avalanche, inches from his head. He glanced back over his shoulder at the rest of us standing in safety at the edge of the field, and I could see even from this distance that his face was as white as a priestess' gown. Without giving the enemy time to collect itself, however, he jumped up and raced to the next tree, diving under it and again narrowly missing a lethal shower of boulders. Then leaping away once again, he fled back to us through a hail of arrows and missiles, arriving at the grove breathless and trembling. Chirisophus was furious.

"What the hell kind of a lame-ass stunt was that to pull?" he roared. "You're a fucking general, but you have no more brains than the chief ass-wipe for the goat herd, risking your command like that. Ignorant son of a bitch, I ought to chain you up and…" His voice trailed off in disgust as he saw that Xenophon was simply grinning at him. The other officers stared at him wide-eyed.

"In three minutes of running, those idiots on the ridge wasted twenty cartloads of boulders and a hundred arrows on me," Xenophon retorted. "Do you think their supply of ammunition is unlimited? With two or three hotheads out there attracting their fire, we can deplete their entire supply by this afternoon. I could probably ask for volunteers…"

His words were interrupted by the crash of another enormous load of stones that had just been sent racing down the hill and slamming into the tree. Looking over, we saw that Callimachus was already cowering in the first spot to which Xenophon had raced, and was preparing to run to the next tree. When Agasias saw him moving toward the stronghold, with the entire army watching, he could not bear the thought of his rival's attaining glory by being the first in, so he too rushed toward the tree, nimbly avoiding the shower of boulders and tagging Callimachus, who in turn rushed to the next way station. In dismay Aristonymus leaped out to the field and ran past them both, followed by another officer, Aeneas, drawing a deafening thunder of stones from the ridge top above.

Amazingly, not a man of them was touched, and within ten minutes of the captains' racing from tree to tree they were met not by the crashing of boulders from above, but by cries and shouts of consternation from the enemy. They had dropped over a hundred cartloads of stones on the Hellenes down below without hitting a single target, and now had no more heavy ammunition left.

Chirisophus did not waste time. Shouting to his hoplites to advance, they immediately began a brisk charge in formation, picking their way across the rubble-strewn field, while Callimachus, Agasias, Aristonymus, and Aeneas sprinted toward the unguarded entry to the stronghold, to the cries of terror from the women and children inside, certain they were to be murdered in cold blood by the filthy, long-haired attackers.

For decades I have tried to forget what I next witnessed. The women and old men inside the compound, hundreds of them, in their desperation and fear, rushed to the edge of the cliff-and simply jumped off. Not a moment of hesitation. It was as if they had practiced the maneuver their entire lives. Those with children or babies ran to the edge, paused for the space of a breath, then dropped the infants over the cliff first, before following behind. The entire army could see this from our vantage point, and we raised our voices in horror, shouting at the women to stop. The pitiful mothers, however, were mad from fear of being dishonored in front of their husbands watching up on the cliff, with their children skewered or taken as slaves, for such is the custom of the local tribes in warfare. They took our strange-sounding shouts as a cry for blood, and redoubled their efforts to commit mass suicide, some of them slitting the throats of the terrified and screaming children to spare them the agony of the long drop, others leaping into the abyss clutching their offspring or their aged parents to their breasts in a last embrace of death.

The four racing captains, their triumph at being the first to enter the stronghold turning to shock at the sight that met their eyes upon their arrival, rushed to the edge of the cliff themselves, shouting at the women and old men to turn back, that they meant no harm. They drew their swords and swatted at the terrified Taochians with the flats of the blades, beating them back from the edge, but this only threw them into greater panic and they began swarming in attack over the officers themselves. Aeneas spotted an elderly man, who by his dress appeared to be a headman, running furiously to the edge to throw himself over, and the Greek captain leaped to tackle him from behind. At the last moment, however, the frantic old wretch tripped over his vestments, throwing Aeneas off balance, and with his strong arms locked around the man's waist they both went hurtling off the precipice to the distant rocks below.

Chirisophus' Spartans finally arrived and were able, with difficulty, to put a stop to the carnage, but not before terrible damage had been done. Of the several thousand human beings huddled in terror on the boulder just minutes before, hardly a hundred remained. Our troops wandered the smooth, icy surface of the mountaintop in an agony of remorse that they had been the cause of this tragedy. The only sounds were the whimpering of the few children who had escaped the carnage, their mothers' arms being simply too full with their other babies, and the bleating and mewing of hundreds of head of cattle, asses, and sheep that had been left behind. My stricken mind could not even comprehend the emotions of the Taochian defenders watching on the ridge top, those silent men whose families were all dead by a meaningless suicide. We had no way of contacting them. Xenophon ordered all the local prisoners to be released, hoping they would make their way to the defenders in the hills, and tell them that the few children left alive would be taken to the nearest village and deposited with the residents there, with a full store of provisions.

That night, the entire army camped silently in grief for wives and children not even theirs, in the small enclosure of the flat mountain top. When I stole away from my duties to seek out Asteria, I had difficulty finding her. After searching for a time among the Rhodians' camp, I finally asked Nicolaus discreetly if he had an idea as to her whereabouts, and he pointed me in the direction of the cliff face behind the camp.

I soon found her, wedged into a dark gap between two large boulders, overlooking the site where the Taochian women had dashed themselves and their children onto the rocks. The sides and bottom of the cliff were now lit by flickering shadows cast by the enormous funeral pyre built below by the Cretan mountaineers whom Xenophon had assigned to collecting and burning the bodies and arranging for an appropriate marking. Asteria looked drawn, and acted nervous and uncommunicative.

"I brought you something," I said, trying to inject a note of consolation into my voice. I paused, waiting for a reaction that did not come, and unable to think what else to say I unwrapped from an oilcloth rag a bit of stale bread dipped in honey, which had been one of her favorite treats on the march. What simple things now satisfied her, after the rich existence she had once lived.

Asteria winced when she saw the food, and turning suddenly I heard her retch into a small cavity in the rock behind her, gasping for breath when she was done and then slowly turning around again to face me. From the close smell I noticed when I sat beside her, I realized she had been in here for some time.

She looked at me in a way that reflected, if not outright dislike, something only slightly more than indifference and far less than I had expected. She quickly composed her features into an expressionless mask, but the barren glance I had seen in that instant before she did so had said everything. I sat in silence, gazing out into the darkness.

"I'm not well, Theo," she finally murmured. "My belly is churning. Female problems." She cringed involuntarily when my shoulder brushed against hers, as if her skin had become overly sensitive, as after a severe sunburn.

I wrapped the bread and offered to bring her something more soothing. "Soup? The Rhodians have just killed a goat and are boiling it up…"

Asteria blanched and turned her head away. Again I remained silent, wondering what words I should use, then finally decided to simply unburden myself, for with her I had said everything, and had nothing left to hide.

"Asteria, I've accepted your services to the Rhodians. I've acknowledged your skills. I've violated my duty to the army for you, destroyed a fellow Greek for you. Yet still you shrink from me-are you truly so burdened by this betrayal of your father? I need to understand."

She paused for a long time, and I struggled to see her eyes and face in the growing shadows cast by the rocks in which she sat. Her voice came from far away, so softly I had to lean forward to hear, and she spoke almost without moving her dry, cracked lips.

"I'm far beyond concerns of my father. I mortally betrayed him and could never return to him. He knows what I've done, he's cursed me, and he's punished me by proxy, through the deaths of those close to me."

"Who? How do you know these things if he is not here? How can he even know of such a betrayal, or you of his punishment?"

"You cannot see the distant sniper in the dark, yet you feel his silent intent when the arrow buries itself in your throat. You cannot see the plague, yet you witness men swelling and turning black. So it is with my father."

I peered at her again in puzzlement. Still unable to make out her expression, I extended my hand to touch her face, thinking perhaps she herself was suffering from a fever, wondering at the changes I had seen in her recently. She shook my hand off in irritation with a brief wince as if from some deep pain.

"Theo, I don't expect you to understand-but I must be alone right now, rather than in the company of… men. I'll be fine for the march tomorrow."

I nodded. How can anyone know what passes in the hearts of women? They are more fickle even than the gods. Though Zeus is lord of Olympus, who is it that rules his actions, if not Hera and her rivals? As I began picking my way back down the path to the encampment, I turned back once more to look at her. She had already returned to her own thoughts, pushed me far from her mind, as if my feeble attempt at reconciliation had never taken place. I was struck by the fragility of her thin, bare legs extended in front of her without so much as a blanket for warmth, by the vulnerability of her defeated posture, in sharp contrast to the shorn hair and rough tunic of a Rhodian slinger.

In the light of the pyre, I saw in her face an ineffable sadness, even a longing, as she gazed down at the burial party tending to the dead mothers and babies below the cliff, and I watched as with tense and tormented fingers she clutched at her own burning belly.