Alexander (Vol. 2) (22 page)

He thought of Cleopatra and the warm, fragrant night in which she had welcomed him to her bed. A night just like this one.

After all, he felt, victory was always possible if determination was greater than the adversity faced, and like all drunks he believed he was invincible and believed he could give substance to his dreams. And in his dream he saw Alexander lining up the assembled army to honour him and to have the heralds declaim a solemn commendation for the conqueror of Halicarnassus.

He went back into the tent with a deeply troubled expression on his face and said quietly, so that only those nearest him could hear, ‘Gather the men, we are going to attack the bastion.’

‘D
ID YOU SAY
we’re going to attack the bastion? Is that really what you said?’ asked one of his officers.

‘That’s exactly what I said,’ replied Perdiccas. ‘And this very night everyone will see whether you really have the guts you’ve been bragging so much about.’

Everyone started laughing. ‘Are we ready then?’ another one started shouting.

Perdiccas was incredibly serious in his drunkenness: ‘Go to your divisions, there isn’t much time. A lantern raised above my tent will be the signal. Bring up the ladders, the hooks and the ropes – we will attack in the old manner, in silence, without the assault towers and without catapults. Get a move on!’

His companions looked at him, their faces a mixture of amazement and incredulity, but then they obeyed because Perdiccas’s tone left no room for negotiation, his expression even less so. Shortly afterwards the lantern was raised above his tent and they all approached the walls in a tight formation, silently, towards the breach through which they could see the improvised bastion built within the city, like a sort of unifying arch.

‘Keep close to the walls which are still standing right up to the last moment,’ ordered Perdiccas, ‘and then, on my signal, start the attack. We have to surprise the sentries on their rounds before the support troops have time to reach us. As soon as we have taken the battlement, we will sound the alarm with the trumpets to call the King and the other commanders. And now . . . forward!’

The officers passed on the order and the troops advanced in the darkness up to the two edges of the breach, then they rushed towards the base of the bastion, a distance of about one hundred paces. But as they were just about to start climbing up, putting the ladders in position and swinging their grappling hooks, the silence of the night was torn by sharp trumpet blasts, by shouts and the clangour of weaponry.

The battlement was teeming with soldiers and other warriors in full armour came streaming out of the side gate and the Mylasa Gate, taking Perdiccas’s divisions by surprise from behind and crushing them against the bastion, from which the bolts and arrows rained down in sheets.

‘Oh, by the gods!’ exclaimed one of the officers. ‘We’re in a trap. Sound the alarm, Perdiccas, sound the alarm! We need help from the King!’

‘No!’ shouted Perdiccas. ‘We can still do it. Push back the attack on our flank, while we climb up the bastion.’

‘You’re out of your mind!’ shouted the officer. ‘They’re all over us. Sound the alarm or I’ll do it myself, damn you!’

Perdiccas looked around and the instinct of self-preservation injected a flush of fire into his veins. His mind suddenly reacted to the drunkenness and he realized that disaster was imminent.

‘Follow me!’ he ordered. ‘Everyone behind me! We’ll clear the way right up to the camp. The alarm! Sound the alarm!’

The trumpet ripped into the still air of the summer’s night, echoed against the walls of the huge natural bowl and bounced back to Alexander’s camp as a long wailing noise.

‘It’s the alarm trumpet, Sire!’ shouted one of the guards as he burst into the royal tent. ‘It’s coming from the bastion.’

Alexander leaped from his bed and grabbed his sword. ‘Perdiccas . . . that stupid bastard has got himself into trouble. I might have known it would happen!’

He ran outside shouting, ‘To your horses! To your horses, men! Perdiccas is in danger!’ and he himself set off at a gallop followed by the royal guard which was always ready for battle at any time, night and day.

In the meantime Perdiccas was leading his men in their retreat and was making ground, fighting furiously to open up a way out. But Halicarnassian troops had gathered on the battlements above the breach and they had an easy time of it, given the superior nature of their position, while the Macedonians had to clamber up through the rocks and the rubble of the ruin.

The trumpeter continued to blow his sharp, anguish-ridden calls, while Perdiccas, his hands and knees bloody, battled his way to the breach and sought to fight through the enemy lines with all the courage and the strength that comes with sheer despair.

When he heard the galloping of Alexander’s cavalry, he had already opened up a passage and was leading his men behind him down to the other side towards the camp.

Memnon’s troops closed ranks in a compact line, effected an about turn and stood with their backs to the bastion. The terrain before them was littered with the corpses of Macedonian soldiers, led to their deaths in a suicidal attack by the irresponsible enthusiasm of their commander.

Alexander appeared before his men suddenly, as if born out of the night – the glow of the torches illuminated his face with an intense bloodlike warmth and his hair curled on each side of his face like a lion’s mane.

‘What have you done, Perdiccas? What have you done? You led your men to slaughter!’

Perdiccas fell to his knees, exhausted by the battle and by his despair. Alexander’s cavalry took up position to face a possible enemy attack. But Memnon’s experienced men held firm on the breach, shoulder to shoulder, in close ranks, waiting for their opponent’s next move.

‘We will wait for dawn,’ said Alexander. ‘To make any move now would be too dangerous.’

‘Give me more troops and let me attack . . . let me redeem myself, Alexander!’ cried Perdiccas, completely out of his mind.

‘No,’ replied the King, his voice firm. ‘We cannot afford to make any more mistakes. You will have your moment, Perdiccas.’

And so they waited in silence for the rest of the night. Every now and then the darkness was rent by a burning arrow fired to illuminate the space in front of the breach. The flaming missiles flew through the air like meteorites, quivering and sizzling as they stuck fast in the ground.

As the sun rose, the King ordered Perdiccas to conduct a roll-call of his men to see how many of them were dead or missing. Of the two thousand he had taken with him on the attack, only one thousand seven hundred men responded. The others had fallen in the ambush and their bodies lay unburied, between the breach and the bastion.

The King sent a herald to ask for a meeting with Memnon.

‘I have to negotiate for the return of our soldiers’ bodies,’ he explained.

The herald listened to the conditions the King was proposing, then took a white drape, mounted his horse and set off towards the enemy lines, preceded by three blasts on the trumpet, the signal for a truce.

From the breach there came another three blasts and the man moved forward slowly, at a walk, to the base of the rubble.

Some time passed by and a second herald came down on foot from the top of the breach – he was a Greek from the colonies with a marked Doric accent, probably from Rhodes.

‘King Alexander asks to negotiate the return of the bodies of his fallen soldiers,’ said the Macedonian herald, ‘and he wishes to hear the conditions imposed by your commander.’

‘I have no authority to negotiate any conditions,’ replied Memnon’s herald. ‘Nevertheless, Commander Memnon is prepared to meet your King in person, immediately after sunset today.’

‘Where?’

‘Down there,’ and the Greek pointed to a wild fig tree growing near a monumental tomb along the road that led in the direction of Mylasa from the city gates. ‘But you must move your army back by one stadium – the meeting will take place at exactly half-way between the two lines. Commander Memnon will have no escort with him, and he expects the same of Alexander.’

‘I will report your words to the King, and if I do not return to you immediately then it means that the King accepts.’

He mounted his horse and started back towards Alexander. The Greek waited for a moment and then climbed back up the rubble and disappeared among the rows of soldiers on the battlement.

Alexander had his army move back the required distance; then he returned to the camp and waited for sunset in his tent. For the rest of the day he ate no food and drank no wine. He was taking the defeat personally, and Memnon’s formidable ability to reply in kind and with awesome force humiliated him. For the first time in his life he felt a frustrating sense of impotence and profound solitude.

The triumphs he had enjoyed up until that moment now seemed remote and almost forgotten – Memnon of Rhodes was a millstone that blocked his way forwards, an obstacle which with the passing of time seemed ever more insurmountable.

He had given orders to the guards not to let anyone in and not even Leptine had dared approach during the day. By now she could read his expression, she could see the light and the shadow in the depths of his eyes, as if they were a sky carrying portents of a storm.

But as sunset approached and Alexander was getting ready for his meeting with his enemy, the noise of an argument reached him in his tent and then, immediately afterwards, Perdiccas burst in, brushing aside the King’s guards.

Alexander nodded and his soldiers left them alone.

‘I deserve to die!’ exclaimed the distraught Perdiccas. ‘I have cost so many brave soldiers their lives, I have brought dishonour on our army and I have forced you into a humiliating negotiation. Kill me!’ he shouted, holding out his sword.

His face was haunted, his eyes red and troubled. Alexander had not seen him in this state since the siege of Thebes. He studied him without batting an eyelid, and then pointed to a chair: ‘Sit down.’

Perdiccas continued to hold out the sword, his hands and arms trembling wildly.

‘I told you to sit down,’ Alexander ordered again with a slightly higher, even firmer tone of voice.

His friend collapsed into the chair and the sword fell from his hands.

‘Why did you attack the bastion?’ asked Alexander.

‘I had been drinking, we had all been drinking . . . it seemed feasible to me . . . a dead certainty even.’

‘It was because you were drunk. Any man in his right mind would have realized that it was tantamount to suicide – at night and on that terrain.’

‘There was no one on the battlements. Total silence. There weren’t even any sentries.’

‘And you fell for it. Memnon is the most formidable opponent we will ever come across. Understand? Do you understand that?’ he shouted.

Perdiccas nodded.

‘Memnon is not only a valiant fighter – he is a man of extraordinary cunning and intelligence who watches us night and day, studying our every lapse in concentration, every false step, every unthinking move. Then he strikes with devastating force.

‘Here we are not on a battlefield on which we can unleash the superior power of our cavalry or the phalanx. What we have before us is a rich and powerful city defended by a well-trained army which has a strategic advantage over us because of its location, a city which suffers none of the difficulties normally associated with a siege. Our only chance is to open a sufficiently wide breach in their walls to succeed in overwhelming Mem-non’s defences. And this can only take place in the full light of day.

‘It is our strength against theirs, our intelligence against theirs, our prudence against theirs. Nothing else. Do you know what we will do now? We will remove the rubble, we will clear the stone from the breach until we free the terrain completely and then we will send in the towers against the semicircular bastion and we will destroy it. If they build another one, we will eliminate that, we will continue in this manner – methodically – until we have driven them all into the sea. Do you understand, Perdiccas?

‘Until then you will obey my orders and my orders alone. The loss of your men is sufficient punishment. Now I will bring back their bodies. You, with your division, will pay the funeral respects, you will placate their tormented souls with sacrifices. The day will come when you will be able to repay your debt. For now, I order you to live.’

He picked up the sword and offered it to his friend.

Perdiccas accepted it, sheathed it and stood up to go. His eyes were full of tears.

T
HE FACE OF THE
man who stood before him was hidden by a Corinthian helmet. His bronze breastplate was decorated in silver, and he carried his sword hanging from a chain-mail baldric. Over his shoulders was a cloak of blue linen which the evening breeze filled like a sail.

Alexander instead wore no helmet and had walked to the designated point leading Bucephalas by the bridle. He said, ‘I am Alexander, King of Macedon, and I come to negotiate the ransom for my fallen soldiers.’

The man’s gaze flashed for an instant through the shadow of his helmet and in that moment Alexander recognized the light of the eyes that Apelles had succeeded in capturing in his drawing. The voice was metallic as it rang out from the cavity of the sallet: ‘I am Commander Memnon.’