The Great King (39 page)

In the end, we all decided that we could not go back. I think Cyrus felt we were a little callous about it, but we all have trouble reading foreigners, and Cyrus had trouble reading us.

Brasidas was either in Babylon or caught, by that time, and we had six thousand stades of riding ahead of us, and we tried to avoid the Royal Road.

But for most of the route over the Taurus Mountains and farther west, there
is
no other route. The Royal Road wanders a bit, but it goes over the
only
practical passes. And in places, it is only one or two horsemen wide. Ten men could hold some of those passes for days against an army.

We ended up creeping along valleys, crawling up heights, and then dashing along the road. Horses died, to Cyrus’s intense annoyance. The queen had given him magnificent horses – his gift, which he was burning up protecting us. I doubted very much that Cyrus’s head was on the line.

After ten days in the mountains, it felt as if it was the only life I’d ever known. Some days we bought a sheep or a couple of goats; some days we got warm bread from an oven, or wine. Most days, we ate grain by the handful – boiled until soft. The water boiled before it was hot when we were high in the air, and we had snow one day, all day, and sat and shivered in our summer clothes.

We arrived at Melitene on the upper Euphrates tired and saddle sore and much thinner than we’d left the plains, and the reports of merchants scared me. In effect, in ten days in the mountains, we hadn’t got any closer to Greece. But I didn’t know the terrain, and I certainly trusted Cyrus.

One of the few things I remember of that desperate trip was that I trusted Cyrus and had to convey my trust to the others, every day. Bulis, especially, was constantly on the brink of turning on our escort. And they grew increasingly tired of us – six foreigners who were the cause of all their discomfort. But they were honourable men, and true to their salt – a Persian expression, because salt for them is the sign of hospitality. However much they loathed us, they kept going.

At any rate, we made Melitene and rested for a day. We all bought heavy local cloaks and rolled wool hats, and even the Spartans made some concessions to the weather.

Cyrus sat with me and we shared a cup of wine.

‘I’m going to try the road,’ he said. ‘We have to beat winter into the high passes. Winter is close.’ He shrugged with obvious discomfort. ‘If it comes to a fight – well, there’re not many men who can beat my demons.’

Indeed, after ten days of hunting and riding with Cyrus and his men, I doubted whether there were better cavalrymen in the entire world. It was in the mountains that the quality of their horsemanship became fully evident. They could ride up – and down – slopes I would have said were too steep for a horse even without a rider. I spent a lot of time clinging to my horse’s mane in something very like terror, and at one point Cyrus laughed, slapped my back, and informed me that this was fair repayment for our time at sea.

Our fourth day out of Melitene, we descended sharply down a series of switchback trails to the Royal Road, and then we moved like the wind. With three horses to a man, we rode fast – trot, canter, walk, trot all day, a brief break every hour and then a new horse. I would guess we made almost two hundred stades the first day on the road. We passed the way station without stopping even to use the well.

The next day, we made half again as much, passing no fewer than three way stations. At the third, we stopped, and drank from the well, filled our canteens and rested our poor jaded horses. Cyrus looked grave when he emerged.

‘I didn’t fool the post-master,’ he said quietly. ‘There are still patrols out looking for you.’

He sent a pair of his best men well ahead as scouts, and the next day, at midday, he dragged us all off the road into a narrow pass somewhere in Kataonia. We saw the patrol before we heard them, far off on the road, and we stood by our horses’ heads until they were well past. Then we got back on the road and went as fast as we could.

But it wasn’t fast enough, and of course we left tracks, and the enemy had a rearguard. They must have hidden from us as successfully as we hid from them, but they warned the main body. By late evening, it was clear that we were pursued.

Cyrus cursed. ‘I don’t want to lose a man here,’ he said. ‘Nor do I want to kill men whose only fault is serving their king too well.’

We made the post house, and Bulis suggested that we could poison the well – which caused Cyrus to look at the Spartan envoy as if he were some sort of hardened criminal. ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘would induce me to poison a well.’ He stomped off, his flat leather boot soles making a flapping sound in his irritation.

We slipped away before first light with six men covering us from the heights. The enemy patrol was hot on our heels, probably having ridden all night to close the gap, but they had to stop to water their horses and we slipped away.

But later that day, as we wound our way through the Comana valley, they struck. They charged our rearguard – not quite by surprise, but their total commitment was fearsome, and they killed two of Cyrus’s men at the first encounter – and then it was a fight. Bulis and Aritides had doubted whether, when put to it, Cyrus would fight. I never doubted it. But Persians are as given to blood feud as most men, and after the deaths of Altris and Eza, two of our younger Persian escorts, the rest turned to fight with a will.

Cyrus laughed grimly, loosening his sword in its sheath. ‘Mardonius must have offered a mighty reward for you,’ he said. ‘Nothing else would cause these men to risk everything like this.’

They came on recklessly.

For their part, Cyrus’s men waited patiently. No word was spoken for a long time, and even I wondered whether it was possible that we were betrayed – Bulis was growing restless, and Sparthius already had his sword in his hand.

And then, without a word spoken, both sides began to loose arrows, and for a moment we were in a hail of shafts. I had faced Persian archery before, but it was worse mounted – because my horse took two arrows before I had any notion that we were being hit, and she reacted by throwing me over her head.

By Apollo, by whom I seldom swear – that was a heavy fall, from a horse on to rock, and jagged rock, at that. I lay unmoving for too long, and suddenly there was a cavalry melee over my head, and I, the vaunted warrior of the Greeks, was lying on my back almost unable to rise from the pain in my hip where it had struck the rock.

I was stunned. I couldn’t get up.

Hector saved me. He stood his horse right over me, and when the enemy charge came home, he used his spear like a hero, keeping a pair of Medes at the point of his spear – one of them missed a cut with his sword and clipped his own horse’s neck, and his horse bolted – and Hector put the other down with a fine thrust. I was nothing but a spectator.

Nor, to my shame, could I tell the two sides apart at first. Dust rose all around us, and every one of them had their facecloths buttoned across their faces against the biting cold and the blown grit. Sparthius had an arrow in his thigh and was out of the fight, and Bulis and Aristides were swapping swaggering sword-thrusts with a pair of Medes – Bulis, the better swordsman, was getting the worst of it because he wasn’t a good horseman, and Aristides, who had a magnificent horse, was steadily pushing his opponent back, turning him, until the man’s horse stumbled and went over the lip of a gully, never to rise again. Some of the Persians used their bows at point-blank range, instead of spears or swords. Aristides’ servant, Nikeas, took an arrow in the face and went down.

My mare, despite the two arrows in her, had tossed me and then stood stock still, within reach. How like a horse, eh? I must have twitched, because Hector – with a courage few could have emulated –
dismounted
to help me up. He got her reins and handed them to me and I got her head around and with a gut-wrenching wave of pain I got my left leg over her back and turned her to face the next wave of enemy, Babylonian sword in my hand, to drive Sparthius’s opponent off him. He was badly hit and barely in the fight; his strength was ebbing, desperation on his features.

I couldn’t reach his opponent, but I could reach the rump of his opponent’s horse, and I cut down into the horse’s hindquarters mercilessly and the horse gave a great shudder and fell, one leg clawing the air and the other apparently ruined by my cut. I hate to hurt a horse – but Sparthius was about to go down, and I got an arm around him and put my horse into the man fighting Bulis. By ill luck – for him – he’d just turned to deal with Aristides, and I cut him so hard in the neck I almost severed his head, but my Babylonian blade was too flexible for such a cut and it bent – but didn’t break.

He fell dead, and the blade returned to shape.

Hector speared a Lydian who was about to throw his spear into Cyrus’s unprotected back.

And the fight was over.

Horse fights with bows are deadly. Most of the enemy force were dead – or were dead a few moments later when dismounted men cut their throats. We had six dead and another three with mortal wounds – most of them from arrows.

Nikeas, blessed by the gods, had a nasty and disfiguring scar; the arrow had ploughed a furrow along his forehead and torn a length of scalp the width of my hand, so that it hung free – and knocked him unconscious. But the boy’s skull was thick and well formed and turned the point, although we were all treated to a sight of bone itself.

Aristides – Athenian gentleman of many talents – came to the fore. As Cyrus’s men killed their mortally wounded, there was a young man – too young, I thought – with an arrow lodged deep in his chest. He was incredibly brave – sitting with his back against a rock, making jokes.

I caught Cyrus looking at him, and he turned away. ‘He knows the mercy stroke is coming,’ Cyrus said, and he choked on the words.

But Aristides, who was crouched over Nikeas, looked up. ‘What?’ he asked. He left his hypaspist on the ground and went to the Persian boy. He made a measurement with his fist laid against the centre of the boy’s chest – and looked back at me.

There was a man – Amu. He was the largest of Cyrus’s men, with a big hennaed beard. I had spoken to him several times, mostly to hear the tales of his life in the East, because he came from the mountains above mystical India. He stood behind the boy with a wicked knife in his hand – and frowned.

Aristides looked right at Amu. ‘No!’ he said.

Amu spoke no Greek. Arisitides spoke no Persian.

But Cyrus was there, and he shouted ‘Hold!’ in Persian and leaped to put his hand on the big man’s arm. Amu paused. Every one of the surviving Persians looked at Arisitides.

‘I can save him,’ he said.

He opened the boy’s jacket. Without warning, he struck the arrow – hard – with the palm of his hand. The head burst out the boy’s back, and there was blood – but not too much blood, I felt.

Every head followed Aristides as he moved around the boy, holding his shoulder. He leaned the boy forward. He was chatting away in Greek – I have told a poor story if you don’t know that Aristides never chattered, but now he spoke of the weather, the trees, the boy’s bravery . . .

I knelt down and translated it all. The boy watched me as if I were a priest of his god of light, and suddenly Aristides said:

‘Tell him, “Be brave. There will be a lot of pain.”’

I repeated his words. With Amu’s help, Aristides seized the arrow and cut it at the entrance wound with a tool they used for horses’ hooves, and then pulled by the head – unbarbed, by the gods – and it came out with a wet sucking noise.

He pushed honeyed wine into both ends of the wound and put pads of combed flax – which we had in abundance – on both entrance and exit wounds.

The boy’s eyes never left mine, and he never uttered a squeak. Amu sat down by him – knife carefully sheathed – and praised him.

‘It’s his son,’ Cyrus said. ‘Pactyans, from Argosia. Hard men.’ He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Tell your Athenian I thank him. We all thank him.’

I watched Aristides, now sewing up his hypaspist’s scalp. ‘We got you into this,’ I said.

Cyrus shrugged. ‘We say
co istādehi daste oftādeh gir
in the north.’

It was an expression I’d often heard. ‘
As long as you are standing, give a hand to those who have fallen
.’

He shrugged. ‘Yes. But also, it is hard to see which comes first. Mardonius is my master’s enemy – and a man whose actions are, I believe, bad for the Great King and bad for the empire.’ He met my eye. ‘But I sense that we are soon to be foes.’

I could tell you some marvels of that trip – the monster we killed in the high passes of the Antitauros Mountains, and the spiders of the high plains of Cilicia – but that is not tonight’s tale. We rode for fifty days from Melitene, nor did we escape winter unscathed, and those shivering nights along the Paroreios come back to me on cold nights here, lying under three blankets with the wounded boy between me and Amu; hiding for a day in a highland village because Sparthius’s wound had become infected and Aristides, who’d become our doctor, wanted honey to put on it. The mountains seemed full of armed men – the reward offered for us must have been immense enough to engage the interest of every bandit in the hills.

I have never been so cold. But as the boy Araxa fevered, grew worse, and then – very slowly – began to recover, Amu grew closer to us, and then the natural bonds of a fight and shared food saved us, and by the time was saw the green fields of the upper Kogamos, we were comrades – Spartans and Athenians and Persians all together, and Sparthius’s recovery – he was emaciated but growing stronger by the day – was as much a cause for cheer to Karesna, one of the Persians, as the boy Araxa’s recovery had been.

By a quirk of fate, we were all hale – aside from some virulent head colds and a lot of coughing – as we rode down out of winter into the green valley that led to Sardis.

Two days later, I stood before Artapherenes.

He looked terrible.

He had circles under his eyes and his skin looked grey. His face was puffy, and he had a paunch, and he clearly found movement difficult. His son – also Artapherenes – waited on him – and glowered at me.