‘Will you take Bagoas with you?’ Stateira asked with just the slightest hint of malice.
‘Yes,’ replied Alexander. ‘I find him amusing and he manages to pull me up even when I am oppressed by troubles and cares. He dances and sings enchantingly.’
‘And he is also very handsome,’ said Stateira. ‘His hips are perfect, the envy of even the most graceful of maids, and his skin is as smooth and soft as a rose petal. I suppose you can consider him as my gift to you because I was the one who gave him to my father.’
Alexander held her in a long embrace and then he helped her climb into her carriage, ‘If you should realize that you are pregnant, let me know immediately, wherever I may be, with the fastest messenger in the city. I have written to Harpalus, my treasurer, telling him to put all you need at your disposal.’
‘What I need is you,’ replied the girl, ‘but one cannot have everything. Be careful, do not always be the first to put your life in danger. I could never bear losing you,’ and she kissed him again on the lips, while the sun rose from behind the high peaks of the Hyrcanian Mountains.
At that moment there came the sound of thousands of hooves, the shouting of mule drivers and a great squeaking of wheels. Alexander turned and saw an interminable line of carriages similar to the one on which Stateira was about to set off, and this convoy was manoeuvring to tag on immediately after the last divisions of the army, escorted by armed Persian horsemen.
‘But . . . who are they?’ the King asked the Persian officer who was leading the escort.
‘Your concubines, my beloved husband,’ replied Stateira before the officer even managed to open his mouth. ‘Three hundred and sixty-five – one for each day of the year, each with her own entourage, naturally.’
‘My concubines? But I am off to war and—’
‘You cannot travel without them. Each of them is the daughter of a king who is our ally or of some powerful leader of the tribes of the steppes. You must not make enemies of them, for this would force them into an alliance with Bessus.’
‘No,’ replied Alexander with concern in his voice. ‘Certainly not.’
33
THE ARMY SET OFF eastwards not long after, proceeding over rolling highlands covered with rich vegetation. The news that the entire Persian court, apart from Princess Stateira, was now following the expedition soon spread throughout all the divisions. The reactions ranged from sarcasm to worry and even derision in some cases. More than once Hephaestion found himself about to unsheathe his sword to defend his King’s honour, but Ptolemy and Seleucus had positioned themselves by his side and immediately calmed any challenges and fights that could easily have degenerated into much worse trouble.
After twenty days’ march, while the guides were about to head north towards Bactriana where Bessus had taken refuge, news came that Satibarzanes and Barsaentes, satraps of the provinces of Aria and Arachosia, had rebelled and were preparing an army to take the invaders from behind.
Alexander immediately called a war council and appeared at it dressed in Greek armour, but no one failed to notice that as well as the ring with the Argead star, he also wore one with the Persian royal seal.
‘Friends,’ he began, ‘you will have heard that our march must now change direction – we have to head south to quash the rebellion of Satibarzanes and Barsaentes. This is what we will do: while Craterus follows with the infantry, I will set off with the cavalry. Philotas, Hephaestion, Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Leonnatus will all follow me. Perdiccas and Seleucus will remain with Craterus. We will attack the rebels as quickly as we possibly can, before they realize that we have changed route, and we will wipe them out. Craterus will provide us with support as soon as he arrives, if we need it. If anyone has any better idea, please let me hear it now.’
No one spoke, no one laughed or joked or made any wisecrack as they normally did. There was a strained atmosphere of discontent and embarrassment. Everyone had heard how the King had treated Cleitus at Zadracarta when he had criticized him for his clothes. Everyone was thinking, without saying anything, about how much work was involved in escorting the enormous entourage of concubines, servants and eunuchs who slowed up the march pointlessly. Everyone had tales to tell of continual episodes of friction and mutual intolerance between Macedonian and Persian troops.
Alexander searched their faces one by one, for expressions of friendship or of understanding, but they all lowered their eyes, almost ashamed to make any display of the positive feelings they had nourished for him over so many years.
‘You don’t seem very enthusiastic,’ he said in a deliberately humble tone. ‘Have I perhaps treated you badly? Have I disappointed you in some way? Come now, speak!’
Hephaestion piped up, ‘They’re too frightened to say it, but they’re afraid. Look at them! Now they are rich and they hope to enjoy life, they’re afraid. They are critical of you because you dress too luxuriantly, because you have this following of Persian soldiers and all those girls, but they would like to do the same things, perhaps comfortably billeted in some fine palace located between here and the Phoenician coast. They have forgotten the promises they made to follow you wherever, even to the ends of the earth. Isn’t that so, men? Isn’t that it? Come along, say something . . . or has the proverbial cat got your tongues?’
‘That’s enough, Hephaestion,’ Craterus said. ‘I am ready to give my life for the King, here, right now, and all our companions are ready to do the same thing. It is not only a matter of clothes or concubines: the men need to know when this war will finish. They need to know where it will end and how much time is required to reach that point. They cannot continue discovering day by day, at the very last moment, that there is to be yet another stage, and then another again. Northwards . . . no, southwards . . . or perhaps we shall head westwards now? They need to see something familiar in you, Alexander, to know that you are still their King. They are willing to follow you, but they can no longer live in such conditions of uncertainty, living day by day without hope, without any sort of security.’
Alexander nodded without saying anything, as though taking in a situation that he could not even have imagined just a month previously. Hephaestion spoke once more at that point: ‘But what have you all told your men? You, Philotas, you are now commander-in-chief of the cavalry, what have you told your hetairoi? Are you still telling them that Alexander would never have succeeded in doing anything without the help of you and your father? That he has become spineless? That every night his only concern is to watch his concubines parade naked before him and to choose the one who will look after his dick? That he no longer reads, that he’s no longer worried about his men and their fate?’
‘These are all lies!’ shouted Philotas, his temper flaring. ‘I never said anything of the kind!’
‘Whatever,’ replied Hephaestion, ‘but these are the rumours one hears and they were already doing the rounds in Cilicia after the Battle of Issus, and in Egypt following our return from the Oasis of Ammon.’
‘It’s all untrue! Lies! Bring me the person who said these words, find just one person to support openly what I have been accused of, if you have the courage. Yesterday came news that my brother Nicanor was wounded at Zadracarta, struck by an arrow during a patrol on the Hyrcanian mountains, and no physician has as yet been able to cure him: I ask you now if anyone has bothered to ask after him? Has it occurred to anyone that my father, having already lost his youngest son, now runs the risk of losing another one? Have any of you heard me ask for leave to stay with him and help him?’
‘You are commander-in-chief of the cavalry and this role is important enough in itself to make you forget all about poor Nicanor,’ Hephaestion retorted sarcastically.
Philotas stood up and made a move as though about to attack Alexander’s friend, but Ptolemy blocked him and then turned to look Hephaestion straight in the eyes, ‘Stop it!’ he shouted. ‘It is not right to speak of Philotas in this way. Nicanor is dying, I had news just a short time ago from a messeng
er, before this council started. He might already be . . .’
A grave silence fell over the council tent and for one endless moment all that could be heard was the whistling of the wind across the highland – the disconcerting voice of an infinite solitude – together with the flapping of the royal standard against its flagpole. Philotas covered his face with his hands; Hephaestion had lowered his eyes and knew not what to say now. Seleucus and Ptolemy exchanged worried looks, each looking in vain in the other’s eyes for some idea of how to unblock the unbearable tension. Peritas, who had curled up at Alexander’s feet, lifted his nose towards his master and whined. It was as though he felt the weight lying on Alexander’s soul.
Alexander stroked him, then he stood up and said, ‘I am sincerely sorry for Nicanor, but I must know if I can count on all of you.’
Craterus looked at his companions, then he stood up in his turn and walked towards Alexander, ‘How can you doubt us? Have we not always been with you? Haven’t we always fought to the very last, haven’t we received all sorts of wounds in our battles? All we wish to know is what you want from us, but above all else what you want from the men who have followed you this far.’
‘I want to be understood,’ replied Alexander, ‘because I have not changed. What I do are things that must be done.’
‘May I speak?’ Leonnatus asked him at that point.
‘Of course.’
‘The men are afraid that you want to become a sort of Great King, that you want to force them to behave like Persians and force the Persians to behave like them.’
‘If I had wanted to become like the Great King, do you think I would have burned the palace at Persepolis and the throne room there? Tomorrow we set off on our march once again: Eumolpus of Soloi has informed me that Satibarzanes is now at Artacoanta. We leave at dawn. Whoever feels he doesn’t want to continue may leave now with his men.’
‘But Alexander, we . . .’ Leonnatus sought to reply, but the King simply stood up and left.
Philotas raised his head and looked around at his companions, ‘He has no right to treat us in this manner. He has no right.’
Alexander in the meantime reached his tent and entered. Eumolpus of Soloi was waiting for him.
‘Is there any more news of Satibarzanes?’ he asked, sitting down on a chair.
He is preparing for battle, but his troops are disheartened: I don’t think they will fight to the bitter end. How did the council go?’
Alexander shrugged his shoulders.
‘Don’t let it get to you. They simply have to come round to the novelty of the situation. They are all very much attached to their own traditions and in my opinion they’re also jealous – they’re afraid that you are somehow moving away from them, that they are no longer as close to you as they once were.’
‘You seem to know them very well.’
Well enough.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean that after Issus, when I started working for you again, I took an interest in your friends as well. Who do you think put the girls in their beds?’
‘You. But I didn’t . . .’
‘Ah! Nonsense! If a job’s worth doing . . . and then pillow talk is my speciality. You know that men are inclined to talk much more freely after a good fuck? Interesting point, don’t you think?’
‘Stop it.’
‘And the girls told me everything.’
‘My friends would never betray me.’
‘Perhaps not. But some might be more easily led into temptation than others. Philotas, for example, your commander-in-chief of the cavalry – a man with an important role.’
Alexander was suddenly much more alert: ‘What have you heard about Philotas?’
‘Not much – but back then he was telling everyone that you were simply a presumptuous little boy, that without him and his father you would never have won any battle – neither at the Granicus, nor at Issus – and that you treated them unfairly.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about this immediately?’
‘Because you wouldn’t have listened.’
‘And why should I listen now?’
‘Because you are in danger. You are about to cross through completely unknown lands, to face savage peoples. You have to know who you can count on and who you can’t count on. Be careful of your cousin Amyntas as well.’
‘I have had him kept under discreet surveillance ever since that first episode when I had him arrested in Anatolia. He has always behaved valiantly and has always been loyal.’
‘Indeed – a loyal and valiant prince. If you should ever fall out of favour with your men, to whom would they turn?’
Alexander stared at him in silence and it was Eumolpus who gave verbal expression to the answer he read in the King’s eyes, ‘To the only survivor of the Argead dynasty. May the gods grant you a peaceful night’s sleep.’
He stood up, nodded gently and then, having made sure that Peritas was not following, set off towards his own tent.
34
ALL ASIA UNFOLDED before Alexander’s army, and its landscapes became ever harsher and more desolate; these now were rocky terrains, realm of scorpions and snakes, rendered arid by the sun as it shone relentlessly. Here and there thorny bushes grew in dried-up riverbeds and ponds, all bordered with vast expanses of salt deposits. For days on end the soldiers marched in silence without any relief, without a single breath of wind bringing any freshness to the suffocating heat.
The very sky itself was empty and incandescent, as dazzling in its brightness as a polished bronze shield, and whenever they spotted the slow movement of wings off in the distance, the birds always proved to be vultures drawing circles around pack animals that had lost their way or had already given up in the battle against death and were now laid out for the scavengers among the deserted rocks.
Not even the journey to the Oasis of Ammon had been as anguish-ridden as this because the dunes of the desert had their own majestic beauty with their sharp crests, their clear contrasts of shadow and light – the purity of their graceful, changing shapes, sculpted by the wind. Like some golden ocean that had suddenly been left motionless by a gesture from some god’s hand, the dunes had been a grand and solemn setting for an imminent epiphany.
These rock-strewn lands, however, inspired thoughts of nothing but death, of empty solitude, of immutable desolation, and in his heart each of the men nurtured some deep nostalgia, a harrowing desire to return home. There was no objective, no meaning that gave any sense to their endless fatigue, and they took each step with growing reluctance, overwhelmed by the dread of that limitless, featureless landscape in which their local guides’ only certainty appeared to be knowledge of some destination beyond the shimmering horizon. The most glorious days of their enterprise now seemed so very far away, and many of the men appeared to regret having responded positively to the King’s call. None of them could understand what he was looking for so far inland, in these wastelands that provided sustenance only to occasional villages with homes made of mud bricks covered with camel or sheep dung.
Then, gradually, the landscape began to change and the very air became fresher and sharper. Highlands appeared, watered occasionally by the rains and covered by a light green veil of vegetation, nourishing here and there a solitary tree or small herds of shaggy dromedaries or bristly-haired horses. They approached a river valley and then the banks of a huge lake on whose waters they finally saw a reflection of the walls and towers of Artacoana, the capital of the Arians, the fortress of Satibarzanes.
The army did not even have enough time to spread out before the doors of the fortress were flung open and a squadron of horsemen rushed out to attack, shouting loudly and lifting a cloud of red dust that billowed up over the plain. Philotas and Craterus had the alarm trumpets sounded and the hetairoi spurred on their tired and thirst-stricken horses.
Immediately after the initial clash they seemed to be having the worst of it. Their opponents were rested and fresh. Nevertheles
s they fought valiantly as they moved in measured retreat, always seeking support from their comrades who ran forward in waves to join them as the trumpets sounded.
Alexander then sent the Persian soldiers into the attack. Up until that moment he had kept them in reserve to protect the carriages and the entourage of courtiers and concubines. Their Parthian horses, more inured to bear the heat and the fatigue, threw themselves into a gallop with just as much impetus as their adversaries. The Median and Hyrcanian warriors, together with the last remaining Immortals, keen to make a good impression before the King, drove into the enemy ranks, opening up breaches and spreading confusion as they went. Dressed in similar fashion to the enemy, they did not stand out and this was a great advantage as they struck with devastating force during that first charge.
The intensity of the battle gradually lessened, the front fragmented into smaller clusters of furious fighting and the horsemen of the Vanguard, who up until that point had not taken to the field, mounted their steeds and rushed towards the enemy’s flank, led by the King in person. Satibarzanes’ men were hit hard and pushed backwards, enough of a shock to leave them suddenly disheartened, and at that point Perdiccas unleashed the Agrianian foot soldiers, armed with their knives and their long, sharp hooks. The thick dust protected them as they moved like ghosts, singling out their victims and striking with precision so that none of their blows was wasted.
On seeing that his attack had failed, Satibarzanes had the horns sounded for their retreat and his troops turned back, not without more losses, through the walls and into the city. Soon a wind rose up, sweeping away the dust and revealing hundreds of bodies scattered over the field, many of them already fatal casualties, but some of them wounded, crying out for help in their pain.
The Agrianians moved from man to man, cutting the throats of all the enemy soldiers and stripping them of their weapons and ornaments – all of this under the eyes of the women who looked on from the top of the walls, tearing their hair and crying out heart-wrenchingly to the sky.
Alexander (Vol. 3) (Alexander Trilogy) Page 21