Flood Tide

by Alexander Geiger

  Alexandros pushed his way through to the lifeless body. It was clear from his expression that he was deeply agitated. Whether it was because a young man whom he liked had been gruesomely killed or because the gods had failed to protect someone he had supposed to have been their favorite or because there was something fundamentally unfair about the outcome of the bout, it was impossible to tell. “Demophon, you’re disqualified.” His usually loud and steady voice quaked.

  Demophon stood impassively, saying nothing in his own defense. Even he looked crestfallen and ashamed, seeing the results of his handiwork.

  Alexandros struggled to control his emotions ... and to find a rationale for the disqualification. “That was not one blow,” he finally said, “but a series of assaults.” Only silence greeted his words. “Now get out of my camp!” he screamed. “You have disgraced yourself.”

  Demophon, maintaining his sepulchral silence, spun on his heels and walked away. Alexandros picked up the victory wreath doffed by Asteropaios prior to the start of the bout and placed it on the pale, pulverized, startled face of the once handsome youngster. The festivities were over. No one mentioned any pankration match.

  Chapter 5 – Crossroads

  We were wasting valuable time but Alexandros – normally a swift and incisive leader – refused to budge. Orpheus was covered in shit. Even his lyre sported a coating of guano. The little shrine, meant to protect him, had fallen into disrepair eons ago. There was nothing left of the roof and two of the three walls had mostly tumbled to the ground. He had become the favorite roosting place for seagulls, herons, and egrets. Our invincible commander was appalled.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Alexandros demanded to know. Poor Aristandros was hard pressed to come up with an answer.

  There were cult statues, shrines, and altars at most major crossroads in the ancient world, designed to accommodate the religious needs of travelers anxious to propitiate the local deities. The more dangerous the road, the more frequent these monuments seemed to become. This particular shrine, which stood at the intersection of two major roads, one hugging the coast to Ephesos and then on to Miletos, the two principal ports at the southern end of Ionia, the other leading farther inland toward Sardeis, the capital of Lydia, had evidently been erected by Greek colonists to celebrate the mythical, semi-divine singer from Thrake, who was willing to descend to Haides to recover his beloved. Alas, the perception of Orpheus’s mystical powers, or perhaps the appreciation of his musical talents, must have declined over time, at least locally, because no one had made any effort to maintain his abode for many years.

  Alexandros would rarely forego an opportunity to pay homage to a deity, or even to a singer with mixed reviews, on most days but, in this case, the Orpheus legend happened to be one of his favorite childhood stories. He remained rooted to the spot until we all got busy cleaning up the mess, after which he insisted on observing the usual proprieties and offering a suitable sacrifice.

  Aristandros’s difficulty was of an entirely different order. Alexandros, who was nothing if not superstitious, considered Orpheus’s dilapidated state a bad omen, especially at this moment, when he was trying to decide which road to take. He wished to receive his seer’s reassurance concerning the meaning of the omen and his interpretation as to the direction of travel favored by the gods. Aristandros was unable to answer the latter question, though, because he couldn’t figure out which way Alexandros wanted to go.

  The great soothsayer forged ahead gamely. “The state of this shrine, when you arrived here, great king, was truly deplorable. This can only mean one thing: The great Orpheus has been waiting, patiently, for the man who would restore him to his rightful splendor, just as the oppressed Greek cities of Ionia have been waiting, lo these many years, for the man who would restore their liberty. The message of the gods is unmistakable, sire. You are the man who will free our Greek brethren from the yoke of Persian oppression.”

  Alexandros was beaming. “Thank you, Aristandros.” He sounded genuinely relieved. “Only one more question: To achieve our great victory, should we march toward Sardeis or toward Ephesos?”

  And now Aristandros was stuck. I could see the terror in his face. He had no clue what his patron wanted to hear, which was severely crimping his oracular panache. He temporized. “The answer is clear, sire. The birds that defecate on gods do not know what they do. Similarly, men must choose their path through life by letting their instincts guide their steps. Birds are going to fly and men are going to march, free as the wind.”

  “Just as long as they don’t step where the birds flew,” I added. I couldn’t help myself. Aristandros didn’t seem to appreciate my assistance.

  Alexandros didn’t press the point. Too many people were listening and he didn’t wish to discuss his quandary within earshot of his men.

  *******

  Until the previous night, Alexandros had been clear in his own mind about his immediate plans. His next objective was going to be Sardeis, which had once been the home of legendary King Kroisos, reputed to have been the richest man in the history of the world. Now, two hundred years later, Sardeis was still the capital of one of the richest satrapies in the Persian Empire and the site of one of Dareios’s regional treasuries. Alexandros’s need for money was growing desperate. Since crossing the Hellespont, his men had received only sporadic pay. Alexandros had promptly distributed any loot, ransom payments, or taxes collected since his arrival in Asia but all such income fell woefully short of the cost of keeping the army in the field. My guess was that Alexandros needed perhaps 250 talents of silver per month simply to pay his men. I doubted that Harpalos the Purser had, at that point, more than a couple of talents left in his treasury. This was enough money to make one person comfortably rich for life but not nearly sufficient to pay an army for even a day. The soldiers understood that their pay depended on their success in the field but they were under the impression that the spoils captured from the Persians after the victory at Granikos, especially when added to the loot taken from the cities occupied prior to Granikos and to the ransom payments received from other cities in the Troad seeking to avoid being plundered, was more than enough to cover their regular wages, plus a little bonus on top. Alexandros did not wish to disabuse them of their misimpression, which was the reason why he was anxious to get to Sardeis and replenish the army’s coffers with all possible dispatch.

  Alexandros’s clarity of purpose changed overnight, however, when a Greek defector from Ephesos, named Helbidios, stealthily entered his tent. Helbidios brought startling intelligence: Memnon had turned up in Ephesos. What was more, the Rhodian condottiere did not arrive as some furtive fugitive from the Battle of Granikos. Somehow, Memnon had managed to accomplish the impossible. Not only had he escaped Dareios’s wrath as one of the commanders responsible for the stinging Persian defeat, he had actually convinced the emperor that the reason for the debacle was the failure of the other Persian commanders to listen to his advice prior to the battle. The fact that Memnon’s assertion happened to be true did not lessen the miraculous nature of Dareios’s response.

  Persian tradition, dating back hundreds of years, would have dictated the immediate execution of Memnon, if only to deflect any possible taint of defeat from becoming attached to Dareios himself. Instead of killing Memnon, however, Dareios had listened to his analysis of the causes of the defeat, which included the failure of the Persian cavalry to kill Alexandros when it had the chance and the failure of the conscript infantry to put up any resistance at all. The solution, according to Memnon, was for Persia to utilize its overwhelming advantages in the fight against Alexandros. It was still a contest between an elephant and a mouse but the elephant had to become more agile, if it was going to succeed in squashing the mouse.

  Memnon proposed a two-pronged approach. He advocated continued resistance to the invading pan-Hellenic army but at times and places of Persia’s choosing, coupled with an invasion of Greece and Macedonia by a Persian expeditionary force. He point
ed out that Persia could mobilize more than enough troops to field an army in Ionia that far outnumbered Alexandros’s expeditionary force, while at the same time assembling a second, equally large army to invade the Greek homeland. In addition, he reminded Dareios that Persia enjoyed substantial naval superiority in the Aegean, which meant that it could attack the Greek homeland at will. “Let’s see how long the allies in Alexandros’s pan-Hellenic army stick with him, once their home cities come under threat. And for that matter, let’s see how long Alexandros can keep even his own Macedonian troops in the field here, once Macedonia itself comes under attack.”

  Finally, Memnon suggested, as diplomatically as he could, that Persia needed to recruit every available mercenary in the Greek world, both to stiffen the native, conscript forces and to weaken the military capabilities of the Greeks. Certainly, Persia had the resources to outbid the Greeks for the services of any mercenary.

  Dareios, who was a capable soldier, immediately grasped the strategic brilliance of Memnon’s proposals. Instead of killing Memnon, he appointed him supreme military commander, charged with the responsibility of repelling the Hellenic invasion and, more importantly, consolidating Persian hegemony on both sides of the Aegean. The emperor and his new commander in chief agreed that the first point of Persian resistance would be Ephesos, a strategically located port on the western coast of Anatolia, with stout walls, a strong akropolis, and a fine harbor. What’s more, if the Persian navy could keep the sea lanes to Ephesos open, then the chances of a successful siege of the city by Alexandros would be greatly diminished. And if Ephesos did eventually succumb to the invaders, the Persians would fall back to Miletos, with its own strong walls, formidable akropolis, and easily defensible harbor. And if, by some mischance, Miletos too should fall, then there was always impregnable Halikarnassos, farther down the Anatolian coast. And while Alexandros was occupied trying to sack Ephesos and Miletos and then, if necessary, Halikarnassos, the Persians would be busy putting together their two armies for the return engagement that would destroy the pan-Hellenic expeditionary force once and for all and that would carry the conflict to the Greek mainland. Never again would the upstart Greeks threaten the mighty Persian Empire.

  Orders were dispatched that same day to the naval forces of Phoenicia and the subject islands of the eastern Aegean to sail for Ionia with all possible speed; to all garrison commanders in Karia to place their forces at Memnon’s disposal forthwith; and to all the satraps throughout Anatolia, specifying the numbers of fully equipped and trained troops each had to supply to the imperial armies by next spring. In addition, in the course of the next few days, recruiters, heavily laden with treasure, fanned out across the Persian and Greek worlds, with the urgent mission of recruiting every brigand, pirate, cutthroat, and soldier of fortune willing to enlist with the imperial armies. Memnon himself made his way to Ephesos to take over the defenses of the city. Meanwhile, Dareios set out for Damaskos in order to be closer to the action while he oversaw the war effort. No longer was Dareios taking anything for granted.

  When Memnon arrived in Ephesos, he commandeered one of the finest private residences in the city as his headquarters. It happened to be Helbidios’s house. The ethnic Greek merchant, whose family had been among the leading citizens of Ephesos for generations, entertained his uninvited guest and his entourage lavishly, loosened their tongues spirituously, and made his way to Alexandros’s camp expeditiously.

  Alexandros spent half the night interrogating Helbidios. He spent the other half issuing orders. He sent Parmenion, with a small detachment, to occupy nearby Daskyleion. He appointed Parmenion’s son Nikanoros as commander of the small pan-Hellenic navy, comprised mostly of vessels contributed by Athens and manned by allied sailors (Macedonians were no mariners) and ordered them to establish a blockade of Ephesos. He appointed Alexandros of Lynkestis commander of allied cavalry and instructed him to remain behind and maintain control of Hellespontine Phrygia. The only thing he couldn’t decide was whether to march on Sardeis first, and then on to Ephesos, which was the rational course, or march directly against Ephesos, which was the lion-hearted route. And Aristandros was of no help at all.

  *******

  On another royal road, heading west south west out of Ekbatana, Dareios’s harem was also on the move. Barsine, carrying her son strapped to her back, and surrounded by her three little girls, was trudging along on the dusty, uneven, and unyielding surface of the highway, keeping a weather eye out for the piles of excrement left behind by assorted beasts of burden (including the two-legged kind) marching ahead of them; for the callously whistling whips of slave drivers urging the procession along; for the flying fists of officious eunuchs pounding back and forth on their mules; for sudden rain squalls and unexpected sandstorms; and for that elusive glimmer of deliverance.

  Dareios, his court, and his bodyguard of ten thousand Immortals had left only a day before the harem’s departure but the emperor’s caravan had quickly outdistanced the women’s procession. Dareios’s endless column of dignitaries, knights, infantrymen, servants, and slaves, traveling on foot, by horse, and in all manner of wheeled vehicle, and accompanied by horse-drawn wagons, camels, innumerable other pack animals, and human porters, carrying the emperor’s and his retinue’s weapons, armor, baggage, and treasury, moved at a stately but steady pace, covering twenty miles or more each day.

  By contrast, the women’s procession – consisting of palanquins, which were more like small, portable, human-borne houses, for the emperor’s mother and his wives; smaller litters and sedan chairs for the concubines; carts for the decrepit and the exceptionally concupiscent; mules for the eunuchs; perambulation for all the rest; and a baggage train that rivaled in length the emperor’s own entourage but was powered mostly by oxen, mules, and donkeys – was lucky if it advanced five miles in a day.

  They were all headed for a small town in Lowland Assyria[9], near the eastern tip of the Mediterranean, which Dareios had chosen as his administrative seat for the duration of the campaign against Alexandros. He wanted to be near the action in Anatolia but not too near. His lines of communication with Memnon would be relatively short but at the same time his court, his harem, and his treasury would be safely out of harm’s way. At his current pace, Dareios expected to arrive at the dusty, sleepy town of Damaskos in about forty days. It would take the harem four times as long to get there but there was no rush. Although Dareios was confident of the ultimate success of the plan that he and Memnon had devised, he realized that it might well take months, perhaps even a year, before Alexandros and his army were totally eradicated and even longer before Persia succeeded in establishing its control over the Greek mainland. While wishing to exercise close supervision over the upcoming military operations, Dareios saw no need to deprive himself of the usual comforts of court, including ready access to his harem. And, being as cautious as he was hedonistic, he made sure that Memnon’s family remained in captivity and close to hand, a precaution that was not lost on Memnon.

  Barsine was only vaguely aware of the progress of the war. No one ever bothered to update the inmates of the harem on current developments in the outside world and, in truth, many of the women couldn’t have cared less. They lived in a severely circumscribed universe, where the only things that mattered were the emperor’s satisfaction with his sexual encounter or encounters of the previous night, the current stage of each woman’s menstrual cycle (through some strange magic, their cycles tended to synchronize over time), their devoutly hoped for parturiency, and their resultant standing in the rigid pecking order of the harem.

  Some of the women did manage to retain a vestigial interest in life beyond the walls. A favored few were able to glean occasional tidbits of gossip from the eunuchs, while submitting, whether willingly or otherwise, to their nocturnal attentions, which morsels of information they then traded as precious currency during their daytime gabfests. They understood that some savages from Greece had invaded the Ionian coast of Anatolia but, except for the h
andful of women from that corner of the empire, they wasted absolutely no mental energy worrying about the outcome of that localized conflict. They had much more important concerns: One of the concubines had missed her menses for the second month in a row.

  Barsine knew, from a terse, coded note smuggled to her from Memnon, that there had been a battle and that her husband had survived. She also understood that more battles would be coming. Memnon promised her that, after the Greek invaders had been defeated, she and their children would be released from the harem and they could once again live together as a family. She spent her time, as they plodded along mile after endless mile, daydreaming of the moment when their captivity would end. She also spent considerable time plotting their escape.

  Their confinement was necessarily less secure while on the road. Barsine believed that it should be possible for her and the children to disappear during some moonless night. No tall walls surrounded them and the eunuchs had to spend at least as much time worrying about external threats as they did maintaining the absolute separation between the inmates of the harem and the outside world. The farther west they marched, the closer they came to her father’s ancestral lands. In two nights, it would be the new moon and they would be very near Adhorbaigan. If she was ever going to make good their escape, that would be her chance.

  But then, she had second thoughts. Did the Phraortes family still occupy their homestead? Would they be willing to shelter Artabazos’s daughter and Memnon’s wife? What would the eunuchs do to her, and to her children, if they were caught? What would Dareios do to her husband if his family disappeared from the harem? She had two days to make up her mind.

  *******

  In Pella, Olympias was peering idly into the courtyard from the second story gallery that served as the entranceway to the women’s quarter of the royal palace. She had been spending a lot of time standing and staring in the weeks since her son’s departure for Asia. This particular afternoon, her persistence was rewarded by the appearance of a dust-covered rider in the gatehouse. She recognized the man as one of Alexandros’s soldiers and her heart skipped a beat. She tried to read the messenger’s expression – for she had correctly surmised his mission – as she ran down the stairs leading into the courtyard. The man’s name flashed into her mind: Iphitos. He seemed downcast as he alighted from his lather-covered mount and handed the reins to one of the guards but she couldn’t tell whether he was dejected or simply tired.