The Ten Thousand (25 page)

Xenophon finally dropped his gaze and turned back to Mithradates. "We have no Persian hostages," he said evenly, "and Tissaphernes knows that. Everyone traveling with us does so voluntarily. If Tissaphernes is trying to create a pretext for moving against us, then he needn't go to the trouble. Tell him to simply attack, openly and like a man, and then he'll see what it's like to taste Greek iron, rather than holding back in cowardice as he did at Cunaxa."

Mithradates stared at Xenophon wrathfully, then turned on his heels and stalked back out of the camp in the direction from which he had come. His Persian assistants followed, wrapping themselves in as much dignity as they could muster, tramping through the mud and horseshit in their thin pointed slippers. Their stallions had already been disposed of. Chirisophus was still breathing hard, but had calmed down sufficiently to stalk back to his own troops, and had them arranged in marching formation in a trice. The camp followers and rear guard took somewhat longer, but by mid-morning the army was ready, and we moved slowly across the plain, leaving nothing behind but a pile of charred remains emitting putrid black smoke, and the last of our dreams of a triumphant return to Greece through the front door.

MITHRADATES GOT HIS revenge for the disgrace he suffered at Xenophon's hands. We had hardly started off that day when he appeared again at our rear, this time accompanied by two hundred cavalry and four hundred light infantry. His herald bore a flag of truce, and although we did not halt our march to receive him, Xenophon and several junior officers held back and waited for him to approach, neglecting to call any supporting infantry for protection.

This was a mistake, for as soon as a sufficient gap had opened up between Xenophon's group and the army, Mithradates' cavalry whipped their horses along our flanks, seeking to drive a wedge between us and the main body of our troops and cut us down. We galloped frantically back to the safety of our troops, narrowly avoiding being encircled, but Mithradates' near approach nevertheless caught the army unprepared. Both the arrows from the Persian cavalry and the missiles from their well-trained slingers caused a number of casualties among our rearguard before we were finally able to drive them away by sheer force of numbers. We were accustomed to the powerful, body-length bows the Persians used in warfare, which although difficult to handle gave them a range beyond that of our own Cretan bowmen; but we had not counted on the deadly force of the Persian slingers, whose large stones, though not actually killing any of our men, kept them cowering under their shields and exposed to Persian cavalry charges.

Xenophon ordered pursuit, but without sufficient horsemen we could catch none of the Persian cavalry, and even our fleetest footmen could not gain ground against their slingers and bowmen with such a long head start. By the end of the day the army had covered no more than three miles, and the rearguard troops straggled in from all directions over a period of two hours or more, in complete disarray. Our first day on the march without senior officers had been disastrous, and Chirisophus and the older captains made it clear that there was no one to blame for the debacle but Xenophon. He had allowed himself to be drawn out by the Persians to an exposed position, and then risked his own neck to pursue their retreating troops.

He listened to their criticisms silently, a blank expression on his face, and acknowledged his blame, speaking only to humbly thank the gods that his first trial by fire had involved only a small Persian skirmishing force, rather than the full strength of Tissaphernes' army. As we were walking back to our tent, I could see that, rather than looking discouraged, he was busily puzzling something over in his mind.

"The Spartans disdain slingers," he said. "They call their weapons children's toys, unfit to be used by real men with swords and lances. But did you notice how the enemy slingers cowed our troops today, even the Spartans? The Persians were able to stand far beyond our own range, and yet kept us squatting under our shields like turtles. Do we have any slingers in the army to use in the same way?"

I thought for a moment. "The Rhodians are the most famous among the Greeks for their slinging," I answered. "But no, we have no company of slingers. Our Rhodians are distributed among the other companies according to their various skills—a few are hoplites, most are peltasts and bowmen. I know one—I'll ask him if there are any slingers here among his countrymen."

I sought out an acquaintance I had made during the march across the desert, a young scout named Nicolaus of Rhodes, and asked him whether any of his compatriots knew how to use a sling. Nicolaus was a dark, slightly built youth, with delicate, almost feminine features and short-cropped hair, as was the custom on his island. He seemed barely strong enough to draw a bowstring. Political events on his island had conspired to drive him and many others like him into exile at a very young age, but the Rhodians' reputation as effective mountain scouts and crack marksmen had enabled them to easily gain employment with mercenary armies around the Mediterranean. The Rhodians were known for their good cheer and relentless endurance under conditions of hardship. Nicolaus was delighted that I had taken the trouble to seek him out, and he smiled wryly at my question.

"Take me to Xenophon," he said, fishing out a long, tangled sling from deep within his pack, and seizing a walking stick, "and round up a half dozen sheep to be butchered tonight for the troops." As we trotted back, he whistled to several of his friends billeted in the units through which we passed, all as boyish-looking as himself, and shouted to them in his guttural Rhodian dialect to follow along and bring their slings and sticks.

Arriving at Xenophon's tent, I staked the sheep to the ground in the adjoining field, and while Xenophon and I watched, the Rhodians measured off a distance of one hundred paces from the sheep and stood waiting for us. We looked at the distance skeptically.

"You think you can hit a sheep from this distance?" Xenophon asked doubtfully.

Nicolaus smiled. "One hundred paces," he said, "is the distance from which Tissaphernes' Persian slingers can hit a sheep with those fist-sized rocks they use."

I was astounded. Rocks that size were big enough to knock a shield out of a hoplite's hand, and they could easily dent a man's bronze helmet into his skull. No wonder our men were being pounded by the Persian light infantry. The Rhodians stepped off another hundred paces, while we followed in even more doubt.

"Two hundred paces," said Nicolaus, "is the distance at which a Rhodian slinger can hit a sheep using a small river stone found on the ground."

I looked at Xenophon, who was beginning to think this show of bluster a waste of time. Nicolaus stepped off an additional hundred paces, a total of three hundred yards. By now the sheep were at a ludicrous distance, beyond the range even of our archers, and the Rhodians were laughing and elbowing each other as if this were a joke.

"And this is the distance from which I can hit a sheep using a lead bullet and my 'walking stick.'"

Nicolaus produced from a small bag around his waist a collection of what he called lead bullets, each perhaps the length of a man's thumb and twice the thickness, formed in the shape of an acorn, tapering to a point on one end and blunt on the other. He explained that they were called
balanoi
in his dialect and he kept them for hunting, a practice he had indulged in since boyhood, but he had very few such pellets left. I began to see now why the Spartans disdained such a weapon as these insignificant, soft metal pellets. At the same time, I recalled that it was Nicolaus who had bagged the army's only ostrich during our march across the Syrian desert months earlier. At the time I had not even wondered how; now I was beginning to become interested.

Xenophon shrugged in resignation. "Well," he said, "you've dragged us out this far. Show us your target practice." Nicolaus deftly slipped one knotted end of his sling into a notch on the tip of his walking stick, which he called a "sling-staff." He chose a bullet, placed it into the leather pocket of his four-foot sling, then looped the other end of the sling, which was considerably longer, around a small burr on the end of the staff and down the shaft to his hand. Whipping the entire contraption around his head two or three times, he let fly the bullet.

None of us could see it after it left his weapon, but we could hear the device humming evilly through the air for a moment like an angry bee. The sheep scarcely had time to look up in question at the odd sound before we saw the eye of one of them explode in a burst of blood and brains and the animal drop in its tracks without so much as a twitch. The remaining sheep stared dumbly at their fellow, but did not have long to wonder at his fate, for the other Rhodians had limbered up their slings and sticks and sent their own pellets whizzing, straight and true, at their heads. All the sheep dropped as if struck by lightning, in a small puff of blood and fleece, except one that had been hit on the upper neck rather than the head. That one struggled gamely back to its feet and began hopping and bucking about in pain like an untrained horse, as the blood from the deep hole spurted over its dirty white fleece. The Rhodian that had fired that pellet apologized for his clumsiness, calmly loaded another bullet and let fly again at the madly prancing animal, this time striking it square in the face, despite its frantic movements, and dropping it as dead as the others.

Xenophon's jaw dropped. "By Zeus!" he said at last, "How many Rhodians are you in the army?"

"No more than two hundred, sir, but all of us can fire a sling."

"Gather them all here in a quarter hour. I have a proposal."

Nicolaus looked at me, his eyes sparkling gratefully. "I'm in your debt," he said.

"Nonsense. It's proper recognition for the only man in the army able to kill an ostrich."

He grinned happily, and ran off to search for his countrymen.

That evening Xenophon organized the army's company of slingers, promoting Nicolaus to captain them and promising to pay them double wages for their services after we had returned home safely. In return for this, he gained their permanent gratitude and unquestioning loyalty. That night also, a cartload of axes and tools were confiscated from the camp followers for their lead cores to be melted down into uniform bullets for the slingers. The camp's blacksmiths were ordered to stay up all night if necessary, to produce sixty
balanoi
for every man. Nicolaus himself taught the blacksmiths how to cast them, and added the further innovation of having them carve a shallow spiral groove around each bullet, running from the tip to the back and around the pellet five or six times. Such a groove was chiseled into the soft metal after the cast bullets had cooled, and left rough-edged burrs that could cut one's hand if they were not handled carefully. When I complained to Nicolaus about the considerable additional effort it took to perform this step, he grinned and added mysteriously, "It makes them sing." The Rhodians themselves, when they each received their allotment of bullets, joyously took out their knives and began personalizing the missiles with small marks or carvings, the better, they said, to be able to reclaim them after target practice. Some of those who could write even carved taunting inscriptions—
Die, dog
or
Eat this
—the impact of which would certainly be lost on any enemy soldier in whose throat such a bullet might be buried.

Meanwhile, twenty horses were scavenged from among the pack animals, and additional baggage was eliminated to make up for the loss of their carrying capacity. Cavalry fittings were improvised from various leather scraps and blankets. When combined with the thirty horses that had been confiscated from Mithradates and his men the day before, as well as a few strays remaining from Cyrus' household guard, Xenophon found that he now had a squad of almost a hundred cavalry at his disposal, over which he appointed a young friend of his, Lycius the Athenian, as commander. A hundred cavalry, almost half of which were swaybacked pack animals, was ludicrous in comparison to Tissaphernes' ten thousand, but it would have to do.

We did not have to wait long to test the mettle of our newly appointed slingers and horse troops. The next morning the army departed at daybreak, forgoing breakfast. We had to pass through a narrow ravine during the day, and hoped to arrive before the Persians. Mithradates, meanwhile, had been encouraged by his success against our troops the day before with such a small number of men. He convinced Tissaphernes to give him a thousand cavalry and four thousand light troops, promising the surrender of the entire Greek army and the delivery of Xenophon's head by nightfall. At least, so said Mithradates' herald later that afternoon, when insolently demanding our surrender.

This time Xenophon had spent a great deal of time discussing with Chirisophus and the other older officers exactly which troops would be allowed to range out, which would be required to stay with the rear guard, and the precise role of our slingers. The Spartan hoplites were not informed of our experimental tactics until just before Mithradates' approach. When they saw the young, delicate-featured Rhodians, with their boyish physiques and "children's weapons," move into position, the scarred, muscular Spartans hooted in derision, some even turning away in disgust that Xenophon would risk the army's safety by assigning these hairless Ganymedes twirling overgrown sandal-laces to the front lines.

Mithradates did not bother with a complicated plan of action, as successful as his method had been the day before. When his troops caught up with our rear guard, we let their cavalry and slingers approach in a mass within the confines of the ravine, until their missiles began to inflict damage. At a signal from Xenophon, our heavy troops parted, and the two hundred Rhodians stepped through the front lines, wearing light armor and helmets but carrying no shields, and oblivious to the Persian arrows darting past them. At that close range the Persians were practically point-blank targets for the skilled Rhodians, and as planned, the Rhodians did not even attempt to fire through the enemy's heavy bronze breastplates or helmets. Instead, they aimed their deadly lead "bees" directly at the unprotected necks and flanks of the horses, and we watched with a mixture of admiration and horror as the rough-edged pellets drilled deep holes into the horses' neck muscles and windpipes. The spiral grooves on the balanoi had the "singing" effect Nicolaus had intended—a terrifying, high-pitched scream as the burrs on the missiles spun rapidly through the air. The combined effect of a hundred of these eerily whining bullets at a time, and the moist, thwacking sounds they made as they slammed into their fleshy targets, drove the enemy horses into a frenzy. Within seconds the Persian lines had reverted from the confident march of cavalry and infantry bent on destroying the foe and returning home in time for supper, to utter chaos and devastation. Horses reared and fell, toppling and trampling their riders, and the Persian bowmen and slingers were unable to maneuver their large and ungainly weapons in the close quarters and crush of men.

The Spartan hoplites shook their heads in wonder. As the enemy finally managed to flee back into the ravine, our new cavalry troops doubled out in pursuit, followed by the Spartans, trampling and slashing at the terrified Persians they encountered along the way. Xenophon and I watched the rout in admiration and delight.