The Ten Thousand (13 page)

From the first, single pluck of the lyre's string she held the men captive and breathless, entranced by her beauty and by the sweet, crystalline purity of her voice. She fingered the instrument's strings almost randomly at first, as if searching for a motif or attempting to identify mood and pattern, then suddenly seemed to be completely absorbed by the music she was playing. Her fingers tumbled over the strings like a vessel floating down a current, pausing here and there to explore eddies and avoid shoals, picking up speed along the straight rapids and then vacillating over the still waters of a heavenly lake shimmering in the moonlight. The girl sang in flawless Greek, a love ode set to a melody undoubtedly of her own device, for it had elements of Persian intervals quite unlike what one might have heard sung in Athens, which were in striking counterpoint to the song's utterly Grecian mood and lyrics. Her face assumed an expression of such utter concentration as to be almost unbearable, like one of those ambiguous masks used in the theater, on which pleasure and anguish meet and coexist, seeming to break over each other alternately like waves against the outgoing tide. I was astonished to find, or perhaps I merely imagined, that as Asteria's gaze swept calmly about the room from man to man while she sang, it seemed to linger on me, so that I felt as if she were addressing me alone. No doubt every man felt the same, for she was trained in the ways of pleasing an audience, and what better measure of success than for each man to feel as if he had been the recipient of a private performance? Still, I was certain her gaze had stayed on mine longer than her childhood music instructors might have dictated.

There is an ancient Greek word, a strange and lovely word rarely used anymore in its earliest sense, which describes the gradual return of a vibrating lyre string to its point of rest and equilibrium after the instrument has ceased to sound. In modern times, a more sinister meaning has overtaken the original. As Asteria's last, sweet note died slowly into silence, calling this ancient word to mind, every man, slave and general alike, held his breath. Then looking up at us, she smiled shyly, stood quickly with a deferential nod to Cyrus, and skipped out the rear of the tent to join her companions. The men's conversation again began filling the room, though more subdued this time, as the raucous mood had been broken and reverie had taken its place. Once touched by the gods, it is difficult for a mortal to return so soon to the toils of the earth. The banquet broke up shortly afterwards, as each man excused himself, thanking the prince and pledging his own assistance in the forthcoming venture. Xenophon and I walked slowly back to our camp, each in our own silent thoughts, each undoubtedly thinking the same thing.

The word, my Muses prod; what is the ancient word I mentioned, with the two-faced meaning? A word connoting aspects of both art and brutality, life and death, beauty and terror, a strange word in its ability to encompass such things simultaneously, a word tragic in the loss of its benign significance in favor of one more searing. Such a word, so fitting in many ways to my own little tale, this word I gingerly lift and expose from its grave one last time, in the hope that its earlier meaning, that of a peaceful resolution of a gently sounding chord, might thereby not be forgotten without at least a wake.

The word is
katastrophe.

ONE AFTER ANOTHER the muttering, swaying seers stood up from their crouching position, their arms bathed in blood to the elbows as they finished examining the entrails of the sacrificed goats and conferred with each other on their meaning. The prince had gathered the entire army at the makeshift drill grounds on the riverbank to watch the omens being taken for crossing the enormous river and proceeding on to Babylon. The men craned their necks, peering at the mysterious doings, their hearts heavy at the thought of either outcome. The seers finally nodded at Cyrus to approach, and with somber expressions they explained to him in low tones the results of their omens. A hundred thousand pairs of eyes were fixed on his face as it slowly broke out in a grin, and he raised his arms in triumph.

"The gods are with us!" he cried. "The omens are good, we cross today!"

Scattered cheers broke out among the troops, and those on the outer edges began to disperse, some separating into the crews that had already been organized and for several days had been working to repair the bridge, while others returned to their individual units to begin breaking camp. All stopped their departures, however, when they noticed what Cyrus did next.

Gathering together his elite bodyguard of six hundred cavalry, he calmly and deliberately rode down to the bank of the river, and without pausing, urged his mount in, followed closely by his troops. On they splashed, as the broad river became gradually deeper, to the horses' knees, to their bellies, to their withers. The men stood silent, some muttering questioningly to themselves as they wondered how the prince would swim his horse safely across the fast-moving stream, and even if successful, how he would expect a body of a hundred thousand troops, most of whom could not swim, to follow him, laden with weapons, armor and the enormous baggage train.

The horses continued wading forward, and had now reached the middle of the brown river, the water swirling about their flanks. Even at this distance we could see the desert-trained Persian ponies hesitating, their eyes rolling in terror, but the disciplined cavalry soldiers, sitting bolt upright and looking straight ahead at the opposite side, kept a firm grip on their reins. Suddenly, with all eyes upon Cyrus, we saw that his horse's belly had emerged from the current—then its tail and its hocks. With a final flourish the prince urged his mount into a canter and the entire six hundred pranced through the shallows on the other side, frothing the water in a cloud of spray and raising a distant cheer that we could clearly hear over the din of a half mile of water flowing in front of us.

We reciprocated with an ear-splitting roar—every man raising his fists, his spear, his helmet, in jubilation at the most remarkable omen we had yet seen from the gods: the mighty Euphrates, considered by the locals as being impassable without boats, had given a sign that Abrocomas' vicious burning of the bridge had been a wasted effort. Even the river itself had made way for the prince's army.

As we marched, we kept the Euphrates on our right, though at times because of the roughness of the terrain we were forced to divert ourselves away from its course for miles, even days. For a month after the crossing we picked our way silently across that accursed terrain, where the Persian sun god Ahura-mazda tormented the land with a blinding light and oppressive heat by day. By night, he was replaced by some evil lunar deity who took advantage of his colleague's temporary absence from the skies to send darkness as gelid as a Scythian winter to torment the troops in their sleep. The wood of the wagons grew so dry and shrunken that pegs and joints fell out of their own accord, and the spokes rattled and spun dully in their hubs, unless tied with green hides or secured with pebbles wedged into the gaps. The land was as flat and hot as an armorer's anvil, the heat rising in waves on the horizon, forbidding even trees from growing, for nothing could survive save twisted, stunted little shrubs not sufficient even for small cooking fires for the army, and pitiful, ground-hugging little herbs.

For thrice a hundred miles even this sparse forage failed us completely, and dozens of baggage animals starved to death. The ground was bare, and the men ran out of grain. The market that Cyrus' camp followers maintained charged exorbitant prices—certain of them had a knack for business, and were wiser in the ways of provisioning than our own quartermasters. Even a rancid donkey's head could scarcely be bought for sixty drachmae. We were beggared long before we emerged from the desert, and most had resorted to gnawing the thin, stringy meat of the mules and pack oxen that died of starvation or thirst along the way. Only the camels in Cyrus' train appeared content, if camels can ever be said to be so, evil-tempered creatures that they are.

Xenophon was philosophical about the situation, and once I even caught him smiling as he listened to a Spartan captain, Chirisophus, complain bitterly about the price he had just been forced to pay for wheat.

"What are you laughing about?" the officer asked, astonished.

"I was thinking about a friend of mine in Athens, Charmides," Xenophon replied.

"I remember him," interjected Menon, who was passing by and had stopped to listen, "from Socrates' chats in the agora. The man actually used to boast of his poverty—said he was so proud that he was no longer a slave to his wealth."

"He was a fool," Chirisophus said. "How could anyone imagine it better to live like a pauper than a rich man?"

Xenophon laughed. "It was just for the sake of argument, really." The notion of argument for argument's sake was way beyond the ken of the impatient Spartan. "Socrates praised the notion of poverty. 'A most worthy asset,' he would say. 'It causes no jealousy or rivalry, requires no protection to keep it safe, and it only improves from neglect.'"

Chirisophus simply stared at us uncomprehendingly. "Who in the hell is Socrates anyway?" he asked, and stalked away, shaking his head at our ignorance.

It was Cyrus' habit to consult with each of his senior officers individually when he anticipated a major encounter, knowing that they would feel freer to express their true opinions to him singly than they would in a group. When his scribe was incapacitated one day by illness, Proxenus asked me to accompany him to a meeting called by Cyrus. Entering the prince's tent, with which I was now familiar, I waited a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, and then began glancing around eagerly, but unobtrusively, for a glimpse of Asteria. I was promptly rewarded by a quick smile from the corner, where I spied her sitting quietly on a cushion, engaged in sewing a delicate bit of embroidery with her needle. She was almost invisible in the shadows, her olive complexion blending almost seamlessly with the smoke-darkened canvas of the tent walls. Only the whites of her large, limpid eyes occasionally betrayed her presence, as she intermittently focused them alertly on the conversation at the front of the tent before turning them back to her work.

"I understand, Proxenus," said Cyrus, after some preliminary banter, "that you had occasion to battle some Persian mercenaries on one of your Ionian campaigns. Was there anything you learned then that you think might be of use against the king?"

Proxenus thought for a moment, as I divided my attention between rapidly scribbling notes on my wax tablets and glancing at Asteria behind the prince. "With all due respect, sir," he said, "I didn't really fight the Persians, but rather interrogated one we had captured, who happened to be a former member of the king's personal bodyguard, one of his Immortals. He had been disgraced for some reason or another and was hiring himself out for service as an officer. We actually became friends, to a point."

Cyrus straightened in interest.

"As you know," Proxenus continued, "the king's Immortals are highly trained—possibly the best trained guards and horsemen in the world. That's both their strength and weakness, however. According to this fellow, the Immortals are so disciplined, they are inflexible. They are paralyzed without explicit commands from the king."

Proxenus let this sink in for a moment. Cyrus was familiar with the Immortals, of course, having himself been trained and raised with them, and having his own band of them as bodyguards, but this was an aspect he hadn't considered.

"The entire world is terrified of the Immortals," said Proxenus, "and King Artaxerxes has six thousand of them—utterly loyal to their master, ready to die for him at a moment's notice. The only way of dealing with them is to kill the head, the king himself. One bold strike to take out the king—even by a smaller force, perhaps one carrying out a suicide run—and the entire band of Immortals will be immobilized, and seeing that, the whole Persian army will turn tail."

Cyrus sat frozen, deep in contemplation. Asteria's needle was working more slowly, her eyes now fixed unblinkingly on the prince, much to my irritation. Proxenus was not yet through, though.

"The same goes for the king's general, Tissaphernes," he said. Cyrus started, wrenched out of his reverie by mention of the hated name. "I understand that for all his bluster, he's basically a coward. He likes to take credit, to look good, but when faced with a determined force, even a smaller one, he cringes like a boy facing his father's belt."

There was a sudden movement from the corner behind Cyrus, and I saw Asteria ruefully sucking her finger where she had pricked it with the needle. Her concentration was broken, but before she returned back to her sewing I saw her shoot a glance not at me or at the prince, but unmistakably at Proxenus, who was standing to Cyrus' side. Even through the partial darkness of the tent, I could see that her eyes were full of venom.

The prince remained thinking in his seat for a long time without uttering a word. Asteria did not look up from her sewing again, however, and Cyrus finally dismissed us.

OUR ANIMALS SUFFERED tremendously on the march, dying in droves, though the desert somehow provided sustenance for thousands of wild creatures. It would have been a hunter's paradise, though few of us had the energy to stalk the beasts. We were constantly watched, and even accompanied, by troops of fleet-footed wild asses, bustards and gazelles, as well as ostriches, which the men avoided after one of them was killed by a kick to the head. Our native guides even told stories of a mysterious village of pig-faced people in the desert, from which lost travelers never returned sane. Such peasant myths I ignored, but several times I gave chase to the asses, which would appear to be the easiest target of all the local beasts. They ran much faster than our horses, however, often so outstripping me that they would suddenly stop and stand still for a moment, as if laughing and daring me to approach closer. As soon as I did, however, they would streak off again, remaining just beyond bowshot. By hard trial and error, we found they could be killed if horsemen positioned themselves at intervals and hunted in relays, until the ass being targeted simply dropped from exhaustion. In the process, however, we would also exhaust five or six of our own horses and men, hardly an effective means of obtaining meat for the army.

One such chase after a troop of wild asses led me miles away from the main body of the army, into rugged terrain and down a steep ravine, where my horse tripped in a hole. Her leg snapped like a straw and she threw me over her head onto some sharp rocks. I must have lain unconscious for some time, for when I awoke the sun was low in the sky and my companions were nowhere to be found. We had strung ourselves out in the relay hunting technique and they had probably not realized until hours later that I was not among them. My head was pounding like a hammer on an anvil, from both my fall and the heat that had been beating on me all afternoon, and in one very ill-considered moment, I emptied my entire water bag, swilling greedily for a minute and then pouring the rest of the brackish Euphrates water over my aching head, to little relief.

The horse was lying on the ground nearby, screaming like a child and in spasms from the heat and pain of the compound fracture in her leg. She had to be killed, which I did regretfully and with some difficulty, by crushing her skull with a rock. I then climbed to the top of the ridge to take my bearings, and in the last light of the day, I thought I could discern the cloud of dust raised by the army in the distance as it marched across the desert. I struck out in that direction at a trot, accompanied by my ever-lengthening black double, and doggedly kept up the pace for most of the night. I guided myself by the stars, pausing only briefly for rest near the half-buried skeletons of three mules from an earlier party of travelers, the bones so white and clean that they seemed almost incandescent in the moonlight.

The next morning, as the sun rose, I saw again the cloud of dust—but realized to my dismay that it was at the same distance as the night before, and that in reality it was not dust at all, but only the normal smudging of the horizon caused by the waves of heat rising from the sand and rocks. By now I was afraid, and deathly thirsty, for after trotting all night I still had not drunk anything since swigging my last water the previous afternoon. Toward midday I felt I could go no farther, and finding a sparse shelter from the fierce sun in a small rocky ditch, I sank down and prepared to die.

The next morning I awoke to the faint tinkling of bells. My mouth tasted foul and wool-like, and my skin hot and sensitive to the touch. I realized vaguely that I was suffering from fever, and that I must have been for some time, perhaps hours, for in my delirium and irritation I had scratched off the scant garments I had been wearing and they lay shredded in the dust beside me. I stared for a time at the vast, sterile sky, trying to clear my mind, to gain my bearings, wondering why I was not yet dead, when I heard the sound again, the distant tinkle of bells.

Rising shakily to my feet I looked around but could see little from my cramped position in the ditch. My knees wobbling, the impulse to retch rising up in my throat, I consciously and carefully placed my feet in natural toeholds in the slope and pulled myself up to the top. The distance was no higher than a man's head, but for all my weakness it seemed the summit of Mount Olympus. Flopping there on my belly, I rested for some minutes, my eyes struggling to focus, until I was able to lurch to my feet and blearily scan the surrounding area for the source of the sound.

It was not difficult to find. Thirty yards away milled a small flock of yellowish sheep, their filthy coats deeply encrusted with the dust and burrs of the desert, their eyes peering dumbly from beneath unsheared locks of fleece falling over their faces as they meandered calmly down a barely visible trail in the gravel. The powerful, musty smell of their unwashed fleece wafted toward me, an oddly comforting sensation. The sheep were unaware or uncaring of my presence, and continued their soft bleating and clanking of tiny bronze bells as if I were of no greater account than a stump or a wizened desert bush.

Not so their mistress, however. The young girl, who was wearing a flowing and dirty garment the color of her animals, with a thin linen rag tied loosely over her head as shelter from the sun, could not have been more than twelve or thirteen years old. She had been accompanying her flock on the side parallel to my ditch, and now stood no more than fifteen feet away from me, staring in dumbfounded astonishment at the enormous, glassy-eyed giant who had reared up before her stark naked, seemingly from the ground itself. I had not even the presence of mind to cover myself with my hands, or to gesture to her for a swig of water from the sack I saw hanging across her shoulder, for the blackness closed in on me in a rush from the sides of my vision, inexorably narrowing my sight to a mere pinprick of a tunnel, a tiny circle centered on the sweating water bag before me. I stumbled toward her blindly with my hands outstretched, hearing her gasp and scream as if from a tremendous distance, and then even my needle-eye view of the bag went black and disappeared.

I woke as if returning from that same impossible distance, the girl's wail of anguish still ringing in my ears, and I lay motionless for a long time, my eyes closed, attempting to judge my location by the feel of my shoulder blades beneath me and the weight of the fabric covering me. My mouth felt as if mice had nested in it, given painful birth, and died. The wailing continued and I cautiously opened one bleary, bloodshot eye.

The greased leather tent was small and bare, and I could see through the open flap that it was just becoming dusk. A low fire of dried sheep patties smoldered just outside, and I heard the comforting sounds of people shuffling about slowly and chatting as they moved between their chores. The wailing was not a sound of fear or anguish, as I had first suspected when coming to my fever-charged senses, but was rather the serene humming of the girl, who sat calmly in the far corner of the tent, gently pounding some substance with a small stone pestle. I stared at her in the dim light without moving, this time noticing her long black hair braided in a complicated pattern and wrapped around her head, and her loose-fitting robe, the same as I had seen her wearing earlier. The garment completely covered her shoulders, back and legs, so unlike the light and airy
chiton
Athenian women wear on summer nights. The girl's face was just beginning to show the leaner lines of the woman she was becoming, yet she still retained the soft, trusting innocence of a child. Her expression, as she softly scraped and pounded, was one of deep absorption in the simple task she was performing, and contentment at her progress. I rustled slightly, and her humming stopped as she looked over at me, staring for a moment as if startled for the second time that day to see me before her. This time, however, her face broke in a delighted smile, and she quickly stood up and approached me, kneeling by my side on the floor. She picked up the water skin lying nearby, and pulling out the bone plug, she held the opening up to my mouth in offering. I seized the skin and gulped greedily, but she pulled it away from me with a laugh, exclaiming softly in what sounded like remonstration, and then took the skin with her as she slipped out the door.

I heard excited voices outside and then the tent flaps were lifted open and several people stepped into the tiny room. They were short and thin, and all of them, men and women alike, wore garments of the same rough, dirty weave. Most strangely, their hands and faces were completely covered in stained rags, as if in protection against the heat and dust of the desert. Only their dark, piercing eyes were visible through the complicated wrappings. They chattered softly in their incomprehensible, guttural language as they stared down at my body prone beneath the blanket. An old woman entered, the only one with her face uncovered, displaying a visage at first glance as wrinkled and prunelike as the Pythia's. As she bent over me in the dim light, however, and I peered at her more closely in my feverish fog, her face took on a horrifying cast: dark, glittering eyes set not over a nose, but rather over two open nostrils, like the end of a boar's snout, and teeth bared in a hideous grin, as if protruding so far that the narrow lips were unable to cover them. I clenched my eyes shut and willed myself to regain lucidity, to emerge from this vision of pig-people, as does someone who is dreaming, yet knows he is dreaming, and in his dream commands himself to awaken.

The woman passed her hand over my face and forehead, just above the surface of my skin but not touching it—feeling, I suppose, for signs of my fever. When I anxiously opened my eyes again, however, I saw not a woman's hand, but rather the rounded, stumpy foot of a pig, discolored and misshapen, passing in and out of the shadows over my face. She apparently detected the feverish heat emanating from my skin, for turning to the girl who was hovering at her shoulder, she said something in a sharp tone that sent the girl scurrying out. Next the old pig-woman gently drew the thin blanket off my body, leaving me again exposed in a state of nature, to the evident amazement of the observers in the tent, whose eyes ranged up and down my limbs as their voices dropped to whispers. I sat up and feebly attempted to pull the blanket back over me, but a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea swept over me, and I lay back down quickly, resolving simply to endure the nightmare until the comforting light of morning.

The girl returned a few minutes later with an earthen jar bearing a substance redolent of vinegar, but with a sharper, ranker odor. This she proceeded to pour liberally on some freshly laundered rags produced from a basket in a corner. Oblivious to my feeble protests, the girl gently swabbed my entire body with this potion, lifting limbs and mopping out folds and crevices, as the pig-woman gave her instructions. The mysterious healing substance left my irritated rashes feeling cool and comforted, as when you climb wet out of the bath and feel a chilling breeze on your damp skin. They chatted quietly to each other as they performed their task, the woman pointing out places the girl had missed and laughing softly at her wondering questions, while I alternately clenched and opened my filmy, swollen eyes in fear and curiosity, trying desperately to recover clear vision. I finally resorted to my other senses, my ears particularly, attempting to divine what the women might be saying. The girl repeated a word constantly while looking at the woman, a vocative I took to mean "grandmother" or something of the sort, while the old woman repeated a word back to her in return: the girl's name, Nasiq.

Thus I lay for two days and two nights, though I know this to be true only because I was informed later by my comrades. My own reckoning of time was confused, floating as I was between delirium and lucidity, terror and exhaustion. Nasiq faithfully dampened my body with the cooling substance several times a day, while two of the men, whom I took to be Nasiq's father and brother, peeked in occasionally to check on my progress. Sometimes their faces were covered, other times their own boar-snouts were exposed, as they asked questions of me in their tongue, to which I was unable to respond, and offered pieces of charred lizard or coarse flat bread. Grandmother scolded them away in irritation, enforcing on me her regimen of small doses of water, supplemented by spoonfuls of a kind of gamy broth administered by Nasiq. The grandmother's kind yet brusque method of healing, nurturing yet never touching, contrasted with the girl's lingering glances and cool fingers resting gently on my forehead after my bathing. Several times, however, the old woman spoke to her sharply, causing the tears to well in her eyes as she stood up and left the tent to do her grandmother's bidding. Weak and confused as I was at the time, I am hard pressed now to know how much of what I remember is true, and how much a mere feverish dream.

The afternoon of the third day I awoke to the pounding of hooves and shouts of men. This first flurry of activity outside the tent, however, was followed shortly afterwards by further shouts, this time of dismay, accompanied by the sound of the quick departure of the horses who had just arrived. My fever had broken by now and I was feeling much more alert, yet terribly weak, when I thought I heard Proxenus' gravelly voice calling me from a distance. With great effort, I raised myself to my elbow. The tent flap flew open and Nasiq rushed in with a worried expression on her face. Feeling my forehead for fever and peering into my eyes for a sign that I had regained my senses, she seemed satisfied for the moment and helped me to drink from the water skin. After that, chatting softly in her language, she motioned to me to rise, which I did painfully and trembling. I was surprised to observe, as if I were an outsider objectively viewing the scene, that I had lost all traces of my former shyness at being naked in the young girl's presence. She, however, stared at my body as if noticing it for the first time, and clucking as if in reproach, snatched up my blanket and wrapped it modestly around my chest under my armpits, securing it with a bone pin she pulled from her hair. She then motioned for me to stoop down and emerge from the tent.