Memnon (26 page)

“He is a curious man, the King,” Barsine said. Her dark hair glistened in the fading light. She wore a saffron
chiton,
sleeveless, its hem thick with embroidery. A shawl of similar material complimented the soft olive complexion of her shoulders and neck. Often, Memnon had to force his eyes elsewhere.

Fool! She’s spoken for …

The Rhodian cleared his throat. “Oh, there’s nothing curious about him. Philip’s like Scylla and Charybdis blended into a single ravenous entity, a tentacled Cyclops with an insatiable appetite. Still, for all that, it’s Alexander who frightens me more. The father seeks only power; the son seeks power
and
glory. A perilous combination of desires for one man to have.”

Barsine’s forehead creased. “But, Alexander’s not a man—not yet, at least. Let maturity temper his character and his thirst for glory before you pass judgment on him.”

“Maturity will temper his body, perhaps, but his character is already fully realized,” Memnon said, shaking his head. “You didn’t see him today. The look in his eyes was the look of a man, and a capable man at that. Glory is more than a thirst for Alexander. It’s a flame, fanned by the hope of great deeds and of greater adulation. He won’t be content to stop at the Hellespont, I guarantee you, and any who stand in his way …” The Rhodian dusted his palms together, a dismissive gesture.

Barsine shivered. “We are not in any danger, are we, Memnon?”

“No, of course not. The bonds of guest-friendship are sacred, for Greeks as well as Persians. While we are under Philip’s protection we are as safe as if we were his kin.”

“And when we are no longer under his protection?” Unconsciously, she leaned closer to him until their shoulders touched. “What then?”

The smell of her hair, of roses, drifted up to his nostrils. Memnon resisted the impulse to wrap his arm around her. “We are safe,” he murmured, “and safe we will remain so long as Macedonia and Persia are at peace with one another.”

Despite deepening shadows, Memnon could see the outline of Barsine’s face, inches from his own, as she gazed up at him. Her lips parted.
It would be so easy,
he thought,
so easy just to bend closer …

She, too, fought a battle within herself, decorum versus desire, revealed in the way her brow crinkled and smoothed; restless, her eyes memorized every detail of his features. Barsine shifted. Memnon felt her hand rise, felt the delicate touch of her fingers as she traced the line of his jaw. “I wish …” she began, but lapsed into silence.

“Don’t.” Memnon caught her hand, held it gently. Barsine’s eyes closed. Her head dipped and she exhaled.

“I wish,” she repeated, this time with more force, “you would not paint poor Alexander with so sinister a brush. He is, after all, only a precocious boy.” She sat upright, putting space between them.

Memnon sighed. On the bench, Barsine’s hand remained cradled in his. “Achilles was a precocious boy once, too.”

“More so than Odysseus?” she replied, her eyebrow raised, a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Together, they stood. “I had best go in and check on Deidamia. Good night, Memnon.”

“Good night.” He gave her hand a soft squeeze and released it. Then, rather than allow himself to watch her walk away, Memnon turned and withdrew in the opposite direction, a roundabout course that would bring him to the guesthouse door.

By the time he gained his threshold, Memnon’s anger at himself had given way to dark melancholy. He opened the door and contemplated the silent, empty guesthouse. A clay lamp burned on his desk, its fresh oil salted to lessen the smoke, and an unopened flask of wine sat beside it. A servant, the same who had lit the lamp and brought the wine, had also turned down the bed clothes in preparation for his slumber.

Sleep, though, was an impossibility.

He sat at the desk. Through the window, past a veil of myrtle leaves, he could see the main house, a few of its lights burning behind fretted screens. He imagined Barsine waiting for him in the doorway, her hair unbound, her linen sleeping gown slipping over her shoulders … No! Memnon forced the image aside and reached for the wine flask.

Sunrise found him still sitting at the desk. The oil lamp had burned out, and the wine flask at his elbow lay on its side, drained and forgotten. Memnon’s chin rested on his fist; on occasion he shifted, his fingers smoothing his beard.

She’s spoken for! Mentor’s prize …

This litany ran through his head throughout the long night, illuminating one thing with brilliant clarity: to stay would be to risk temptation. Last night proved almost more than he could handle. Better to remove himself from the situation before he lost control and did something he—and she—would regret later. He would leave, but where would he go? The sea-lanes south were open. Perhaps Mentor needed someone he could trust to watch his back?
But, can he trust me? Have I betrayed him by lusting after his bride?
West, then, to Sicily. Surely Patron could use another fair hand …

Sound intruded. Memnon glanced up as a hand scratched again at his door. “Memnon?” It was Pharnabazus.

He roused himself. “Yes?”

“You have a visitor.”

“Can this wait, nephew?” Memnon barked, in no mood to be civil. He heard muted voices.

“No, Uncle. May we enter?”

The Rhodian sighed. There was nothing for it. “Yes. Enter.” Memnon rose as Pharnabazus pushed the door open. The younger man gave him an anxious look.

“Have you slept at all?”

Memnon waved off his concern. Pharnabazus stepped aside, making room for his companion. The fellow was Macedonian, of that Memnon was certain—a powerfully built man in a somber red tunic, broad-shouldered and thick-waisted.

“Memnon,” Pharnabazus said. “This is Parmenion, Philip’s general.”

“Your reputation precedes you, Rhodian,” Parmenion said, speaking southern Greek with a harsh accent. Scars seamed his flesh, white and puckered against his burnished hide, some nearly obscured by the coarse hair grizzling his arms, legs, and chest. Gray flecked his beard, his bristling black brows; Memnon guessed him to be in his mid-fifties.

“As does yours, General,” Memnon said. Nor was it hollow flattery. In the Macedonian highlands, Parmenion would have been a king himself, a warlord who ruled through iron and fear; under Philip, he wielded a far more subtle power. “How may I be of service?”

“I ran into this Persian pup,” he caught Pharnabazus by the scruff of the neck and gave him a good-natured shake, “in the agora. He told me you were in from Egypt, and that you’d been in for most of the year. I thought you might be getting bored with all this soft living and looking for a way back into the field.”

Memnon smiled despite his mood. “Why is it when a soldier’s in the field, he dreams of nothing but home; when he’s home, he dreams of the field?”

“Because home is the field, the place where a soldier feels most like himself. I need a trustworthy man to lead my native light cavalry when I return to Thrace in a few days,” Parmenion said. “Short notice, I know, but the bastard who served for me last season got his fool head split in a clan feud yesterday. I’m done relying on hillmen. I need a Greek, and I’ve heard Artabazus speak highly of you.”

Memnon blinked. Silently, he praised the gods for their providence. He turned back to his desk; through the window, he caught sight of Barsine emerging from the main house and into the morning sun, the younger children in tow. She was taking them to the stables so they could feed tidbits to the horses. For an instant, he imagined their eyes locked.

Mentor’s prize …

“It’ll be a mercenary’s work, but you’ll be well compensated,” Parmenion added, thinking him wavering. Memnon nodded suddenly and turned back to the Macedonian.

“Pharnabazus comes with me, as my lieutenant.”

Parmenion assented, thrusting his hand toward the Rhodian.

“I’ve been casting about for a war I could win,” Memnon said, grasping the general’s hand. “Thrace seems as good a place to find one as any.”

13

 

“Q
UIET!
” M
EMNON HISSED.

Surrounded by two-score soldiers, the Rhodian crouched in the high summer grass, javelin in hand, as he strained to pick out sounds arising from the enemy palisade fifty yards off. Carefully, he rose on his haunches and risked a glance at their intended target. His men—a mixture of allied Thracians and coastal Greeks—kept low to the ground; some glared at the young soldier who had cried out when he put his hand down on the back of a harmless grass snake. The boy’s face burned with shame.

Memnon held himself upright a second longer, then sank back to the earth. Dawn was not far off; already, the eastern sky was aglow, a veil of high clouds diffusing the golden light of the Sun God’s chariot. No one moved along the palisade; from the village beyond came only the typical sounds of a community stirring, making ready for another day of heat and sun. With an exaggerated hand gesture, Memnon let his men know they were as yet undetected. Sighs of relief whispered through the grass. The Rhodian paused to wipe sweat from his eyes. Their enemies on this raid, a village of Thracians of the Odrysae tribe, were legendary for their ability to sniff out an ambush, and infamous for their brutality. “Crush them,” Memnon told Parmenion a week ago, before leaving Doriscus for the Hebrus Valley, “and you deprive the Thracian king of a valuable ally.” Now that they were near their target, Memnon prayed the Odrysians would take the bait, that Pharnabazus and his Greek cavalry could goad the wily Thracians into action.
It is on you, my nephew.

Memnon surveyed his soldiers by the growing light. Like his men, he, too, wore a
lineothorax,
a cuirass made of layers of linen stiffened with glue and reinforced with plates of dull gray iron on the chest and back. Hours of belly-crawling through the field left behind a patina of dust, stiffening hair and beards, and turning to mud in the sweat-damp creases of eyes, noses, and mouths. Most bore a trio of javelins—two to throw and one to keep for close-in fighting. A few of the Greeks had slings, their plum-shaped bullets cast of lead and wickedly filed, imparting a spin to their flight; on impact, they drilled through flesh like a shipwright’s auger.

In range now of the palisade’s only gate, Memnon gestured to his left and right, giving the signal for his men to fan out. The young soldier whose inadvertent cry had halted their forward progress made to edge out to the left, in the front ranks, his face transformed into a mask of determination. Memnon had seen that look before—the suicidal look of reckless bravado. He nudged the boy with the butt of his javelin and shook his head.

“No, Callinus.” The Rhodian mouthed the words. “You’re with me.” They would fight as a
dyas,
like Castor and Polydeuces. That way, Memnon reckoned, the boy might live to see this day’s end.

Rolling over onto his belly, Memnon inched through the grass, Callinus in his wake. All around, he saw evidence of drought: deep cracks in the soil and yellow tussocks of grass crisped by the relentless sun. Through the still air he could smell the village middens, their stench thick with rotting animal carcasses and soured barley mash, fish-guts and olive husks. This summer—his second in Thrace—Memnon had seen outbreaks of plague spread up from the coast and into the highland villages, a spear-borne pestilence fed by the miasma of war. Given time, the blighted arrows of Apollo might do what Philip’s forces so far could not: conquer the Odrysians and their king, Kersobleptes.

Time, though, was an unaffordable luxury.

A horn brayed in the distance. Memnon stiffened; he knew its source.
Merciful Zeus, watch over him!
From inside the palisade came shouts and cries of alarm, a cacophony of voices made all the more chaotic by barking dogs and the screams of women and children.

In his mind’s eye, the Rhodian watched the attack unfold. His horsemen, led by Pharnabazus, would attack the palisade wall on the opposite side of the village from the gate, loosing volley after volley of fire arrows from the safety of the tree-line; some of the more nimble riders would venture closer to hurl oil flasks against the desiccated timbers. In the smoke and confusion, the Odrysians would waste little time opening the gate and sending out their own cavalry—a wild wave of red-haired Thracians, their bodies covered in intricate blue tattoos—to circle the village and fall on the foolhardy Greeks like hounds on a wounded stag.

Or so Memnon hoped.

The Rhodian gathered his legs under him and tightened his grip on his javelin. He glanced at Callinus beside him. The boy blinked rapidly, sweat dripped from the end of his nose and he wiped at it with a trembling hand. Memnon wanted to whisper a reassuring word to him, but before he could the explosive creak and pop of hinges consumed his attention.

The gates were opening.

A harsh Thracian voice cracked like a whip, and Memnon heard the clatter of harness as horsemen cantered out the gate. He waited, listening, slowly drawing in a deep breath through flared nostrils. Timing was crucial …

In a single smooth motion, Memnon rose up from the grass, his first javelin cocked behind his ear, his eyes searching for a target. Fifty paces distant, dozens of Odrysians rode past in loose formation. They were oblivious to the men on their flanks.
Now!

“Zeus Savior and Victory!” Memnon bellowed, his javelin leaving his hand even as his soldiers bolted upright and loosed their missiles. Bronze and iron flashed in the hazy morning air; sling bullets hissed, striking flesh with the sound of air bladders popping. Blood sprayed as men twisted, clutching at the ash shafts sprouting from their bodies as if by magic. Horses reared and collapsed. As he readied for a second cast, Memnon saw a sling bullet split apart the head of an enemy Thracian, his startled features blotted out by a curdled mass of blood and brain. Bone snapped as the man’s terrified horse staved in the chest of a fallen rider.

Survivors of the first volley milled about, suddenly leaderless. Some reached for their bow cases, others fought to control their mounts. That moment of hesitation proved their undoing as a second flight of javelins tore through their sundered ranks.

A handful of Odrysians at the tail end of the pack managed to wheel and ride for the safety of the gate, screaming for their comrades inside the palisade to cover them. A spate of arrows arched over the walls to land haphazardly among Memnon’s men.

The Rhodian grunted as he hurled his last javelin. The iron-headed dart reached the apex of its flight and descended, missing the rider leading the retreat but burying itself in the spine of the man’s mount. The horse collapsed like a child’s rag doll and snarled the legs of the animals in its wake. A sudden explosion of dust obscured the wreckage of man and beast. Memnon straightened and ripped his sword from its sheath.

“Take the gate!”

The allied Thracians in Memnon’s command howled like wolves and threw themselves at the opening with single-minded purpose. The men of this village—Memnon could not even remember its name—had preyed upon them for years, slaying their kin and shaming their women. They relished the chance for vengeance.

The gate was a simple affair: two doors of heavy timber reinforced with bands of pitted bronze. Both valves sat poorly in their hinges, causing their outside edges to churn a furrow in the dirt as the village defenders sought to bar them against Memnon’s onslaught. Attacker and defender shoved against one another, each hoping by brute strength to snatch victory. One of Memnon’s Thracians, too close to the opening, took a spear in the throat; the man beside him snagged the blood-slimed shaft and hauled the defender into the open, exposing him to a trio of sling bullets. Inch by inch, life by life, the allies gained ground. With a final shove, they threw the gate open and swarmed over the last few defenders, the women and older children, who fought back like feral animals.

A pillar of black smoke rose from the rear of the village, drifting east toward the Hebrus River and obscuring the face of the sun. Memnon, with a handful of his Greeks, hung back, giving his Thracians a free rein over the Odrysians. There would be no quarter.

Memnon found Callinus unscathed and standing over a dead man, one of the first Odrysians slain in the brief fight. Like all his men, the boy marked his javelins with a distinctive symbol—a letter, perhaps, or a tiny image relevant to the wielder’s personality—where the head met the shaft or on the butt. Memnon’s bore an Egyptian falcon. The boy recognized the javelin standing out from the center of the corpse’s chest as his own.

“Your first kill?” Memnon said softly.

Callinus swallowed hard and nodded. “It … It must be, but I don’t remember throwing it.” His fingers curled around the shaft. Iron grated on bone as he tugged the javelin free, stared at the bloodied blade. “I remember your voice. I remember standing, feeling the ground lurch under my feet. The rest …”

Memnon laid a hand on his shoulder. “All that matters is that you handled yourself well. You followed orders, did nothing rash or foolhardy, and lived to fight on. This is the moment you should remember, Callinus. Be proud, but don’t forget to give the gods their due.”

The young Greek nodded, again. Memnon thumped his shoulder and sent him off to help look after the wounded. As he did, a squadron of cavalry came round from the far side of the village, Pharnabazus in the lead. Dust frosted horse and rider, and Pharnabazus’s helmet was gone. Blood dripped from a gash in his forehead to streak the side of his face.

“What happened to you?”

Pharnabazus touched his brow and winced. “One of their brats tried to bounce a rock off my skull. By the great god, Uncle! Your plan worked!”

“Casualties?” Memnon said.

“Cuts and bruises mostly. That fool Pentheus wandered too close to the palisade and had his horse shot out from under him. Went down hard. Snapped his leg like a twig. He should live, provided it does not fester. You?”

Memnon glanced over his shoulder. The fight for the gate had been the worst of it. “Twelve dead, so far. Another dozen wounded. There was the only flaw in the plan,” he said. Anger flashed like summer lightning. “I should have thought to bring up shields and a ram crew. Hades! We could have ripped the gate off its hinges with rope and a team of horses!” Memnon turned back and spat in the dust.

Pharnabazus dismounted. “It is done, Uncle, and thanks to you it was done well. Foresight is wisdom; hindsight is but fruitless daydreaming. You recall whose words those are?”

“Yes, yes! They are my own, and had I known I’d be forced to dine on them at every turn perhaps I would have sweetened them with honey.” Memnon exhaled. He squinted at the wound in his nephew’s forehead. “Get that cleaned and bound, then make sure the horses are rested and watered. I’ll see about salvaging a wagon for the wounded before Berisades and his whoreson Thracians burn everything. We can’t tarry here. This smoke is going to draw every scavenger in the Hebrus Valley.”

“Are we returning to Doriscus?”

Memnon shook his head. “Parmenion should be at Aenus, on the east bank of the river, by now. We’ll rejoin him there. For this next offensive, the Macedonians are going to have to throw caution to the winds and strike at the heart of Kersobleptes’ kingdom, before Athens decides it’s not in its best interests to have Philip so close to the Hellespont.”

Pharnabazus chuckled. “Is this a point the Athenians feel they need to debate? Truly, I will never understand how those handwringers defeated Great Darius at Marathon.”

“Those were different times, nephew,” Memnon said. “Get moving. Tell the men they have one hour.” The Rhodian’s face hardened into a stern mask as he turned and headed for the village gate. Inside, muffled screams rose and fell, punctuated by peals of raucous laughter.

“Where will you be?” Pharnabazus called after him.

“Bringing the hounds to heel.”

 

W
IDE AND SLOW MOVING, THE
H
EBRUS
R
IVER WOUND LIKE A GREAT BROWN
snake through the foothills of the Rhodope Mountains. Groves of oak, ash, and elm shaded the river’s bank from the relentless sun, while errant cypresses stretched forth their roots in an effort to reach the Hebrus’s drought-ravaged waterline—so low in places that the river’s stony bed lay exposed. Near the banks pools formed, stagnated, and dried out in the oppressive heat, leaving behind the reek of mud and rotting fish. A breeze out of the north ruffled leaves but brought little relief to the column of cavalry that rode along the river’s edge.

Memnon drove his men mercilessly over the next few days, stopping only to rest and water their horses, swallow a crust of bread, and perhaps snatch a few hours sleep. Outriders forged ahead, alert for any sign of a potential ambush, while Pharnabazus brought up the rear along with the trundling wagon of wounded Greeks and Thracians. Among them sat Pentheus, who hurled a colorful litany of curses at the driver each time the wagon jarred over rock or root.

On the fifth day, with the sun already below the western horizon, Memnon led his soldiers across the Hebrus, fording the river above where it widened into its marshy delta. He was on the verge of ordering them into camp when one of his outriders brought welcome news: the vanguard of the Macedonian army was barely two hours south of their position. Despite the sky above turning to star-flecked indigo, Memnon decided they would push on. “They’ll have better food, at least,” he said. He sent the outrider on ahead with orders to make contact and warn the Macedonians of their arrival.