Brave and desperate though they be, the 7,000 mercenaries were outnumbered, and outnumbered five to one. Surrounded, their flank and rear companies bombarded by Cretan archers, Agrianian javelineers, Rhodian slingers and the missiles of the Thracian and other light cavalry, the 7,000 soon became the 5,000, then the 4,000 and, as the sun set, the 3,000. Still, as the world darkened, they kept on fighting.
“My King, call an end to this slaughter,” begged Parmenion, who reigned in his horse as he reached Alexander’s side. “There is no point to this.”
“Yes there is, Parmenion,” growled the king. “Yes there is. Do you see these stains on my clothing? Those are blood stains. My blood. The blood of more than 30 of my Companions – 30! Men I have known since childhood, now dead. Dead because of these...”
“But sire,” pleaded Parmenion, “it was Persians who shed their blood, and we have made the Persians pay. These are just mercenaries, Greeks, not unlike others in our army. Call off the attack, I beg of you.”
“You may be a great, old soldier, Parmenion,” seethed Alexander, “but I am your King, and the son of a god. To dispute what a king commands is sedition,” he said angrily, “but to dispute what a god commands is blasphemy! Take care, old man,” he concluded with a threatening gesture, “for you are this close to being guilty of both!”
“But, sire,” continued Parmenion, who bristled at the insult but, like the veteran soldier he was, refused to back down, “this must end. Besides, it is already getting so dark that we cannot tell friend from foe, and our men are killing each other in the confusion.”
“Then bring up torches, yes, that's it! Bring up torches!” shouted Alexander. “Hephaestion, have the archers shoot flaming arrows to light up the field! Fire! I will have fire to see my enemies! Zeus, send us your lightning so we can kill the traitors! Parmenion,” he added, his face so close that the old general could smell his hot breath, “I will not say this again: kill them, kill them all!”
Despite the king's harangue, and the light from a hundred blazing torches and impromptu bonfires, the pace of the battle slowed, and finally sputtered out. Men too weary to fight collapsed where they stood, some too weak to put up any resistance when a death blow came. More numerous, better disciplined, and winning, even the Macedonians began to waiver. As mercenary after mercenary fell to their knees, weak from wounds or simply exhausted from the fighting, so did the bloodlust of the Macedonian foot soldiers lessen. To kill a foe in close combat was one thing, but to murder a man on his knees took a special kind of hate...a hate the common Macedonian soldiers simply did not have, or at least could no longer sustain.
Even Alexander himself began to tire, his body pushed far beyond the limit of any mortal man. Hoarse and barely able to maintain his seat upon his stallion, Alexander did not so much order a halt in the fighting as he simply let it come to an end.
Over the next hour or so, men who had only moments before been at each other's throats now began to help each other to their feet. Greek and Macedonian alike, many hard to tell from one another in the sputtering torchlight, so covered in blood and dust and worse were they, walked and crawled and dragged themselves toward the fires, seeking a spot of ground free of corpses to stretch out upon.
Physicians and slaves began to make their way about, bringing water, bandaging wounds, or giving some comfort to the dying. For Klemes, this was his time – the time he hated most, but the time when he was most needed. Although he helped each man he came across, there were two he most sought to aid, if he could only find them.
27
Slavery
“We count the prisoners at around 2,000, give or take perhaps a hundred or so, who are unlikely to live out the day,” the staff officer said in his report to the king. “We have taken their shields and armor and weapons, and the men are raising a trophy made out of the captured arms up on the hill.”
As they had done for centuries, perhaps as early as the Trojan War if Homer was to be believed, victorious Greek soldiers had raised a temporary monument to mark their triumph on a field of battle. Akin to a tree made of spears, decorated with the shields and helmets of the fallen, the trophy was a sacred and revered symbol of their victory. It also served as a tribute to their comrades who had fallen and as a salute to the valor of the vanquished. At the foot of this trophy, moreover, the Macedonians had laid out their own dead, and set them in neat rows, as if in formation.
Alexander wept and wept openly as he slowly walked the line of corpses. To those whose names and faces he had known, he bent low to touch their cheek, to place a hand on their shoulder, or to kneel and deliver a kiss on their forehead.
“I want each of these brave men to be remembered!” said Alexander tearfully to his officers. “I want artists brought forward, to draw their faces so that sculptors and bronze-workers can create statues of them. Those statues I will have set in a garden back home, so that they and their sacrifice shall never be forgotten!”
Perplexed staff officers looked about, wondering where to find such artists on a bloody battlefield 20 miles deep into Persian territory, but to their credit, such men were, somehow, found. When Alexander – or any king – made a wish it was the same as if he had issued an order, and that meant it must be made so.
“As for the Persian dead,” said Alexander as he turned away from the Macedonians who had fallen in his service that day, “find some local holy men so that they may bury their nobles with the rites befitting their station. But first,” he added wryly, “strip them of anything of value – if the men have not done so already. I want their armor, however, even if that means buying bits and pieces back from our own soldiers who have beaten us to it. Send every city in Greece a fine suit of this armor, so they can put it on display for all to see. But, for Athens,” he added with a rather sly grin, “send 300 suits – all as offerings to the goddess Athena, in recompense for the burning of her temple by the Persians so many years ago.”
“That will tweak their sharp noses a bit,” Parmenion laughed.
“As I intend.”
“May I make a suggestion,” interrupted Hephaestion. “Perhaps we could be a bit more diplomatic about that and still accomplish the same thing?”
“And how would you go about that, my dear Hephaestion?” asked Alexander.
“Send the armor back, but with it displayed on wooden crosses, as if the armor was being worn, and in formation. And then have them mounted on large carts, on each of which we inscribe these words: 'Alexander, son of Philip and the Greeks (except the Lacedaemonians) dedicates these spoils, taken from the Persians who dwell in Asia.'”
Alexander nodded his head in agreement and, smiling, added “very good, Hephaestion. We remind the Athenians of our cause, and let the Spartans stew in their own juice. They wouldn't even let a corporal's guard leave their precious Laconia to join us, and so they shall be reminded that they have no share in this glory. Parmenion,” the king added, “when I said send armor to every city in Greece, make it every city save Sparta.”
“Yes, my King,” replied the old general. “And what of the prisoners, Lord King,” asked Parmenion, “shall we send them home with the captured armors as well?”
“No,” the king replied sternly. “The prisoners are all dead men – at least dead to me, to their families, to their home cities – and to all Greeks. You should not have allowed them to surrender. I told you to kill them all.”
“My King, do not ask me to kill unarmed men – men who have surrendered. I gave them my word that...”
“Yes, you gave them your word – and disobeyed mine by letting them surrender. But I shall not make you break your word – again. They may live, but on my terms. They have dishonored us all, and so they shall work to cleanse themselves of that stain. Theirs shall be a never ending task, like Sisyphus, that they shall die trying to accomplish. As Sisyphus labored in Hades, so shall I send them to the closest place like that on earth – the mines. They can rot there for all I care.”
“But Lord
,” objected Parmenion, “these men fought honorably. At least let us ransom them back to their families and cities.”
“No!” said Alexander sharply. “They would only be an embarrassment to their relations and neighbors. To send them home or even to sell them back would only encourage others to take Persian gold Darics to march against us – and to rise up to strike at our backs as we drive into the empire.
“Parmenion,” added Alexander sternly, “since you care so much for these traitors, I leave them to you. Place them in shackles, and stake the shackles to the ground. Feed and water them, or do not, that I leave to you.”
“Sire,” sighed Parmenion, “where am I to find shackles for 2,000 men?”
Alexander did not bother to respond, but stalked off toward his tent, calling loudly for wine.
The men of Parmenion's brigade were not happy with their assignment to shackle, tie up, guard, and care for the prisoners. They had marched all morning and afternoon, had drunk no more than a few handfuls – literally handfuls – of wine, and that while waiting for the battle to start. They had then waded their way across a river, climbed a rugged bank, run across a plain, and then charged up a hill, all the while under fire from arrows, javelins, slingers' bullets, and then had fought a bitter hand-to-hand combat against the Greek mercenaries. While others in the army celebrated by looting the Persian dead and their camps, getting drunk or gorging on captured provisions or simply falling asleep, exhausted, the men of Parmenion's brigade had been given one last task to do...and they took out their resentment on their charges.
Even Parmenion was too exhausted to oversee the treatment of the prisoners of war whom he had tried to save. An old man – some said the oldest in the army – Parmenion was even more worn out than his men, and left it to his senior officers to see to the captives. They, in turn, passed that duty on to the junior officers, who in turn did the same to the sergeants and so on. The treatment of the mercenaries in their charge was as haphazard and as careless as it was wholly inadequate and often unnecessarily cruel. It was a cruelty not born of malice but of bitterness – a bitterness the Macedonian soldiers had for the task, more than for the men they were to guard.
Dimitrios had been one of the lucky ones. One of the 2,000 who were allowed to surrender rather than be butchered in their serried ranks. So, too, had been Aristophanes, who had stayed close to his friend throughout the fight. Both had suffered cuts and bruises and a number of other minor wounds, which were made only worse as they were roped in strings of 20 along with the other mercenaries. As Parmenion had explained to Alexander, there was no way to find enough shackles for even a tenth of the captives, so he had his men make do with ropes to tie them up, and then stake the ropes to the ground with tent pegs. Although here and there a small camp fire burned to warm the guards, most of the captives were left lying about in the dark, virtually unattended.
“Halt. Who goes there?” said a rather bored, very tired and barely caring sentry, as a tall man in a long robe came into the light of his fire.
“Just a physician,” said Klemes. “An officer told me to see to the prisoners,” he added with an intended grumble. “Just when I was about to enjoy some wine and a bit of supper,” he added in an obviously unhappy tone. “Damn officers – can't let us have a moment's peace, am I right?”
“Aye,” agreed the sentry, in an equally unhappy voice. “As if it's not enough to fight and beat these damn mercenaries, now we have to guard them...”
“...and play nursemaid to them,” the physician added, holding up a bag which by his motion the guard understood to be packed with surgical instruments, salves, and whatever other medicines an army physician would need. Alexander's army had hundreds of such men in the baggage train, back with the sutlers, farriers, armorers, army wives, whores and other camp followers. So did the Persian army and especially its Greek mercenary corps, but as Klemes was obviously a Greek, the sentry just assumed he was one of their physicians.
“Go ahead, sawbones, do what you can for the prisoners, not that it will matter much. You won't be doing them any favors.”
“How's that?” replied Klemes.
“Because rumor has it that they are to be marched off back to Macedonia, to the mines, to work off their treason as slaves. If it was me, I think I would rather be left here to bleed out than suffer that fate. Almost makes me feel sorry for them – almost,” he added with a slight grin.
Klemes was shocked to hear of the plan to send the prisoners as slaves to the mines, but kept that shock to himself. Waving to the guard, he picked up a brand from the fire and with some cloth torn from his robe made himself a torch so as to light his away among the field of captive Greeks. Lest he draw the attention or suspicions of the guards, he stopped here and there to treat a wounded man, or at least make him more comfortable. Each time he did, however, he asked of that man and those nearby if any knew of his brother, and if he had even survived. After about six or seven stops, one of the men responded in the positive.
“Yes, I know him,” said the man, whose broken arm Klemes was attempting to set in a sling made from straps. “He was by the general when Clearchos laid down his spear in surrender, as was I. Clearchos is somewhere over there, in the middle of this field, I think. If your brother does still live, he will be there, with the general.”
Klemes made his way toward the center of the field, as the man with the broken arm had indicated. He stopped twice more to help injured and wounded men, as he knew it might look odd to a guard if he went directly to that spot. When he did get there, Klemes did indeed find the general – and his brother, who was cradling Clearchos' head in his lap.
“Klemes! Thank the gods you live!” said Dimitrios in surprise and joy, a joy which quickly turned to worry as he added “but why in Hades are you here? Why didn't you flee with the others while you had a chance?”
“What, and leave my little brother behind?” said Klemes kindly. “At the very least I had to see if you were dead, to give you a proper burial. The gods know this Macedonian king wouldn't.”
“Well,” Dimitrios responded, “as you can see I do not need burying. So get yourself out of here while you can.”
“I will not leave you, brother,” said Klemes reassuringly. “Where you go, I go...and with a little luck you can go free.”
“How? They have some of us chained up, although me, they only tied my foot to a stake in the ground, so I could at least tend to the general here. He's in a pretty bad way, I'm afraid, the old coot. He is too old for this kind of thing.”
“His injuries don't look all that bad,” said Klemes, as he did a cursory inspection. “Nothing a few stitches, some ointment and clean bandages won't take care of.”
“I think it is more than that, brother,” replied Dimitrios. “I think having to surrender broke something inside him, as did seeing so many of our men cut down. The weight of that has taken a heavy toll. He would rather have gone down fighting than yield, but he also knew that his was the only voice that Alexander's generals would respect – or at least listen to. It cost him a lot to beg for mercy from them.”
“But in so doing at least some of you were spared,” interjected Klemes. “Thanks to him I am not winding a funeral shroud around you, but only a bandage around his leg.”
“Speaking of legs, have you found Ari? The last I saw of him he was trying to hold a shield over one of the wounded, hoping to save him from a frenzied Macedonian.”
“No, Dimitrios, I have not. Let me cut your bonds and together we can go look for him.”
“But what about the general?”
At that, Clearchos stirred, opened his eyes, moaned and mumbled something.
“What did he say?” asked Klemes.
“I said,” coughed the general, “I said do not worry about me. Go find your friend and if you can escape from here, do so, by any means.”
“But, General...”
“Think of that as an order, Captain. It is the last I will ever give – and definitely the last
as a free man.”
“General, I cannot leave you here. At least come with us...”
“No, Captain. I am old. I am tired. I would only slow you down. Besides, I must remain with the men. They are still my men. Whatever fate they must face, I shall face with them. I could not bear to be free while they labor as slaves, if that indeed is what Alexander has in store for them. No, Captain,” he said even more forcefully, or with as much force as he could muster, when Dimitrios started to object, “do not press me further. Go. We Spartans do not like to repeat ourselves. Such is not in our nature. I have already talked far too much for one of my kind. Perhaps,” he paused to cough, “perhaps I have been around you Thebans and other foreigners for too long, that I forget my training, my upbringing, and that laconic form of speech for which my countrymen are famed – or chided,” he continued with a smile, which ended with another fit of coughing. “Go. Find your friend. Then find Memnon. Tell him how we fought. Tell him where we are to go. And most of all, I charge you,” he said emphatically, punctuating his speech with another fit of coughing. “I charge you to tell him of the courage and nobility of Omares. He should know that at least one Persian stood with us to the very end, though it cost him his life. Perhaps when the heat of battle has cooled and the flush of victory has ebbed, Alexander may see reason – or at least accept a ransom, if Memnon offers it.”
“General, if I can get free, where should I go to find Memnon?”
“Alexander will surely head for Sardis; it is the key to this and the other satrapies. Memnon will go there. But I doubt he can organize enough of an army to hold the city. He will go there first, however, before heading for the coast. Alexander will want to sweep up the coastal cities. He must do so if only to guard his back. He surely also expects to find supplies and recruits in those cities. By taking them he will also secure the naval bases, thus forcing our fleet to fall back. If there is anywhere on the coast that can be held it is Ephesus. Memnon knows that. I am sure that is where he will make his stand.”
A Captain of Thebes Page 18