Memnon replied in the negative to both requests. “No, gentlemen. I need my bodyguards, my good luck charms, about me. You will both have plenty of targets to shoot at and spear through when the time comes. I need men I can trust with my life to guard my back, and you two have shown your worth in that regard.”
Klemes gave out a rather unpleasant harrumph, but the general simply turned to him, put his hand on the physician's shoulder and gave him a knowing look. “Do not worry, Klemes, I have not forgotten about you. I owe my life to you even more than I owe it to your brother and his friend. I want you by my side as well.”
“No,” said Klemes rather brusquely.
“No?” remarked the general, quite taken aback and caught off guard by the unexpected answer.
“No, General,” continued Klemes. “I am a physician, a healer. You are not so sick or injured as to require my constant presence and attention, but there are many who are – and many more who will become so. My place is not by your side – but by theirs, in the hospital. Your duty is to defend the city,” he added. “Mine is to heal and save the lives of those you risk in doing so. Speaking of which, I believe I have stayed up here, on the wall, overlong. I should attend to my patients, and make ready for the new ones you and Alexander are going to send my way.”
With a slight nod of respect, Klemes gathered up the hem of his robe and draped it over one arm, turned and walked down the steps that led to the courtyard of the citadel.
“Well, that was unexpected,” said Memnon. “But,” he sighed, “the physician is right. We all have our assigned duties, and we all have our part to play in this little drama of Alexander's making. So,” he added as he put one hand on a shoulder of each of the two Thebans, “let us take our place on the stage. To the city wall, men, to the city wall.”
The city wall of Miletos was the second of the three lines of defense that guarded the city. Alexander had already taken the outermost wall, and from there his artillery were well in range of the main line of defense – the city wall. That wall was pockmarked from the heavy stones thrown by Alexander's siege engines, splattered by the heads of captured Greeks, and singed by the fireballs, all of which had also been fired by the siege artillery. Many of the crenellations along the top had been knocked down or broken by the boulders, and here and there cracks could be seen in the masonry of the main wall itself. Rather than offer the Macedonians easy targets, Memnon had left no more than a handful of men on those battlements – just enough to give Alexander the impression that it was still manned in full by the defenders.
For the rest of the day and well into the night, the battering continued. Just before dawn of the next day the sounds from the bombardment changed – as to the thwang of enemy weapons and bang of boulders hitting the wall was added the sound of falling stones. Whole sections of the wall began to crack, crumble, and finally give way, the debris tumbling down to leave massive gaps in the wall.
That was the sign Alexander's engineers had been watching for. The chief engineer sent a runner to the king's tent to give him the news, and within moments trumpets were blaring all through the camp, calling the men to arms. The time had come to assault the wall.
The tempo of the bombardment increased to a level no one on either side had ever seen before, not even Parmenion or Ephialtes, the two oldest generals on the field. Where walls had been cracked and crumbling, they were now brought down. As the infantry advanced toward those openings, Alexander rode along with them. Every hundred yards he came to a halt and had the men carrying a large red banner unfurl it and wave it with great animation. That was the signal for the siege engineers to increase the elevation of their weapons, to lengthen the distance they would shoot, and to hurl their ammunition not against the wall but over it. The resulting rain of high-arcing fire proved devastating to the defenders – and to Memnon's plan.
The lines of archers and spearmen arrayed behind the now collapsing walls became the victims of this blind fire. Instead of the massive stones used to batter the walls, the Macedonian engineers now let loose with baskets of smaller stones, clay pots stoppered and filled with oil and tar, and compact balls of straw, soaked in oil and set afire a moment before they were launched. The number of casualties caused by this barrage was not great, but its impact on the organization, the morale and the attention of the men under fire was devastating.
Soldiers broke ranks to scatter for cover. Others huddled in tight groups anywhere they could find shelter from the deadly rain. Too many of those who tried to hold their position were struck by the stones or set afire by the bales of straw that ignited the oil pooling on the streets from the broken pots. Officers who tried to get the men back into formation were ignored. As Alexander advanced, the red banner went up again, and again another hundred yards after that. After each such stop, the loads fired by the war engines got smaller and lighter, in order to reach deeper into the city, but no less devastating than their predecessors to the courage of the defenders.
“We have to do something, General,” Dimitrios remarked worriedly to Memnon. “The men can't take much more of this – they are starting to waiver...”
“Hell, they're not just starting to waiver, whole groups of them have broken. It's time for me to leave this safe perch and take charge on the ground.”
“But General, sir, if you get hit...”
“Dimitrios,” Memon said as he strapped on his helmet and motioned for his shield and spear to be brought forward, “there are times when a general has to stop being a commander, and become a fighter. This is that time. Either I lead from the front, or I will have no men left to lead. So, are you up for some exercise? Feel like guarding my back as we go spear some Macedonians?”
Dimitrios nodded and gave a grim smile as he, too, motioned to Ari to hand him his shield and spear. As the two prepared to leave the safety of the citadel, Memnon turned to Ephialtes, who had also begun to gird himself for battle.
“Ephialtes, old friend, stay here.”
“What!” boomed the veteran soldier. “Stay here with the old and the lame...no offense, Ari...when there is fighting to be done!”
“There is no need for both of us to go down there,” added Memnon. “Besides, if I am down at the breach, who will command the defense of the city? No, Ephialtes, I need you here. If the Macedonians break through somewhere else, it will be up to you to see it and to send reserves to block them. The men need to see me, it may be the only thing that keeps them in the fight, but we all need someone to watch our backs and flanks. That someone, Ephialtes, is you. There is no one else to whom I would entrust the safety of the city – or the life of my soldiers, or myself.”
The old general grumbled, hurled his helmet down and then kicked it across the stone floor of the tower from which they were watching the battle. As it banged and clattered, he gave out a growl of reluctant acceptance, and through gritted teeth told Memnon to go.
“Go, go down there and kill enough for both of us. I would rather be down there, by your side, but I will obey your command. Just know that I am not happy about it, but I will do as you order, at least for now.”
Memon reached out and clasped Ephialtes by the arm, nodded and strode off, Dimitrios close behind. As they headed off to the fray, Ephialtes turned to Aristophanes and grabbed his shoulder. “I know you want to go and protect your friend, but I need you and your bow here, with me. You should begin to find some targets soon enough, when the Macedonians come through, as I'm not sure even Memnon will be able to hold them back.”
As Memnon and Dimitrios ran down the stairs and out into the courtyard, they were met with a rain of stones and fire. The clang and clatter hit the shields they raised over their heads like hailstones on a roof – but with fire at their feet as the barrage of incendiaries only seemed to redouble. Memnon did not scurry for shelter, but instead ran out into the open area immediately behind the crumbling wall and called out to his men.
“It's just a little hard rain,” the general said with a loud if forced laugh. “Come out an
d get wet with me! You can't stop the Macedonians coming through the breach if you are hiding from the rain!” he bellowed.
In ones and twos, and then in small groups, the soldiers came back out into the open. They came slowly. Those with shields held them above their heads. Those without hunched over, all the time looking up at the sky to see what next would fall down upon them. Memnon formed them up and sent them forward, closer to the ruble that had been the main city wall. As Alexander advanced, his engineers again extended the range and increased the arc, this time to fire not in the esplanade behind the wall, but deeper into the city. What had been a bombardment to breach a wall had become a barrage to harry the troops behind it, but no longer. Now the engineers unleashed an onslaught of terror upon the civilian population. As the defenders came forward to face the Macedonian infantry coming through and over the walls, the city behind them would burn – and echo with the screams of the women and children caught in the deluge of fire.
And come up, over and through the walls, the Macedonians did. They hit the wall with the force of a tidal wave – and an angry, bellowing, monstrous wave at that. Like water seeking the path of least resistance, hundreds flowed through the breaches into the city. Hundreds more, unable to find a path and too frenzied and impatient to wait their turn, scrambled up the piles of rubble and tumbled over the ruined defenses, screaming their war cries as they came. The fury and savagery of their charge was enough to unman even the bravest defender, and would have done so had not one man stood in their path.
“Shields, up!” roared Memnon, now in the center of the front rank of defenders set to block the exit from the largest breach. “Spears, out!” he roared again, as nearly a thousand men obeyed, the gleaming, sharp points of their weapons aimed directly at the howling mass hurrying toward them.
“Archers!” cried Memnon, his deep booming voice somehow rising above the hellish din so the line of bowmen behind the ranks of spearmen could hear. “Loose!”
At his signal, five hundred archers lifted their bows and let fly. Each quickly drew another arrow, notched it and shot again, and again, the third arrow being made ready before the first even hit the ground – or a Macedonian at the wall.
Now it was the turn of the Macedonians to be under fire and to feel the fear and terror of death from above. Scores and scores in that rushing mob of men fell with an arrow in their neck, shoulder or chest, but those at the front were ignorant of their loss – or simply too enraged with bloodlust to care. Into Memnon's wall of shields and spears they crashed, bounced, and crashed again. The Macedonians recoiled a second time, but, shoved forward by thousands more coming up from behind, they flowed forward again, many in the front ranks carried forward by the rising swell.
“Hold the line! Hold the line!” roared Memnon, his face and arms smeared with Macedonian blood, his feet seeking steady purchase amidst the gore beneath them. “Hold the line!”
Dimitrios fought hard, too, doing his utmost not just to skewer the attackers but also to use his shield to cover the general. That was no easy task, for Memnon did not simply hold his spot on the line of battle, but kept dashing forward, out of the shield wall, to stab and sweep with his spear, and to be seen by his men as he did so. His example emboldened the Greek mercenary hoplites who held that line, and their steadfastness encouraged the Persian archers behind them. The Macedonians came on, along with their Thracian and Thessalian allies, but as they struck the unyielding line they began to falter. The unexpected courage of the defenders, as well as the bodies piling up from the spears at their front and the arrows falling from above, cooled the bloodlust quickly. The sheer exhaustion of running across the broken ground, scrambling up, and over, and through the rubble, and then fighting for their lives against a determined enemy, also took its toll. Now only the push of the mass of men still coming up from behind could convince the front ranks to go forward, but their fury began to subside under the storm of Persian arrows.
The mercenary line held. The invading tide began to ebb. The city would be safe.
Or so Dimitrios and those about him believed.
But they were wrong...and Aristophanes was the first to realize it.
54
Miletos
The Isle of Lade
Although he had been promised he would be plinking arrows into the mass of Macedonians from his perch high above them in the citadel, not even as skilled an archer as Aristophanes could draw back his bow far enough to hit a target at that range. Ephialtes was fuming and pacing about, his eyes locked on the life-and-death, back-and-forth struggle at the town wall some 1,500 yards to the south. Ari could not pick out Dimitrios or Memnon from the mass of tiny specks. Nor could he hear the sounds of battle, as the rushing winds and crashing of the waves on the rocks to the north and sides of the tip of the peninsula upon with the citadel was built drowned out the distant noise.
But then he heard a different sound. Something indistinct, but different. Something coming not from the wall, or the city, much of which was now ablaze, but from off to the right, and from the water. If Ephialtes heard it, he did not react, as the general's thoughts and attention were fixed upon the battle at the wall. Yet Ari was curious, a trait for which most of his family and friends had often warned would get him into trouble. So he moved about the citadel to get a better sense of what was making that sound. As he reached the western battlements of the tower, the sound grew louder in his ears, and when he looked down and out into and across the harbor he saw what was making that sound.
Scores of ships, their rowers straining at the oars, were racing across the water from the Island of Lade. While Memnon, Ephialtes and the rest of the defenders were focused on meeting the threat at the town wall, they were unaware of a second, and now even greater threat coming from the sea. Nicanor had loaded up much of the 4,000 man garrison Alexander had sent to protect the fleet anchorage and base at Lade upon his ships – and he was bringing them across the water and towards the city.
As Alexander's attack on the wall had become fiercer and fiercer, more and more of the guards along the other three sides of the peninsula had been recalled from their posts and sucked forward into the maelstrom at the wall. Only a handful of what had already been but a scattering of watchmen remained on guard on the three sides of the city that faced water. Some had already spied the approach of the Macedonian fleet. A few rushed forward, racing to set up some kind of resistance at the points the enemy were about to land. Others ran to raise the alarm - and to look for help.
Aristophanes turned about and moved as fast as his game leg would allow to get back to where Ephialtes was still fuming, the general's attention still solidly locked on the fight he could barely see to the south.
“General! General! Come quick!”
“What are you blathering about, lad. 'Come' where? Don't you see I'm busy...or at least I should be,” he added with a grumble.
“It's the harbor! The Macedonian fleet is attacking!”
Ephialtes' jaw dropped as he turned about, stunned by the news. For days he, and Memnon, and everyone else had been focused so tightly on the threat from the south that they had ignored the potential threat from the sea. The Macedonian fleet had done nothing but sit on blockade, hiding behind the Island of Lade, not even daring to take up the challenge of engaging the Persians at sea. Now, of course, that their source of water had been cut off by Hephaestion's raid on the Meander, the Persian fleet of necessity had left their rude base at Mycale, skirted Lade and gone farther south, to Halicarnassos.
Only a handful of scout ships remained, mostly to smuggle in a steady trickle of food and information, and to serve as couriers to maintain contact with the rest of the empire. That left Nicanor with no enemy to face, and left the garrison on the island with nothing to defend against. Alexander had foreseen this, and only a few hours before he launched the infantry assault on the wall, he had sent signal men to the top of the Old Citadel. When they saw the red banners go up in the assault waves, they waved their own red b
anners from the top of the hill. That was the signal Nicanor had been told to act upon, and act he did.
While his triremes could each carry at most thirty soldiers, he had other ships for cargo and transport available. These he packed with as many men as he could, and launched them as a second wave behind the warships. The triremes and quadriremes would dash into the harbor and disembark their marines, who would secure a landing spot at the docks and jetties. Other warships would demonstrate to keep what few Miletian vessels remained in the harbor from sallying forth to disrupt the landings. Those two forces did their job and did it well. Although three or four Miletian warships did launch, they were too few, and too late, to stop Nicanor from getting his main force into the harbor.
Ephialtes saw them coming, thanks to Aristophanes, but in his heart knew it was too late. Nevertheless, he hurried down the steps of the citadel, bellowing out for runners to alert the reserves.
“My lord General,” one young militia officer responded when the grey-haired, grey-bearded Greek came tumbling into his post, “the reserves are gone. Memnon called them to bolster the wall.”
“All of them? Surely not all of them went south?” cried the old general, gasping for breath from his run down the stone stairs.
“No, but most of them,” replied the officer.
“Well, that means some of them are still around, doesn't it?” grumbled the now angry as well as exasperated general. “So go find them, whoever they are, and have them assemble at the harbor.”
“Err, which harbor, my lord? The commercial one or the military one?”
“At the commercial harbor, you idiot. That is where the landings are taking place!”
Miletos, long a naval base, did have two harbors. The military harbor poked deep into the northwestern tip of the peninsula, like a long pointer finger. Its entrance was narrow, however, and well guarded with a chain and strong artillery towers at either side. Nicanor could not have landed there if he tried. But the commercial harbor, that was wide and broad, with many docks and jetties. It had almost no defenses to speak off, except a low sea wall meant more to keep out water than warriors. It was that sea wall which was Nicanor's target, as from there he could drive into the city, cut across the narrow neck of the peninsula and sever Memnon's line of communications to the citadel. From there Nicanor could charge north, through the upper city, past its temples and agoras, to assault the citadel, or south, through the lower city, and hit Memnon's line from the rear. Or he could do both. Whatever Nicanor chose, the city was doomed...unless somebody could hold him at the seawall.
A Captain of Thebes Page 33