As I stared at the melee far below me, I noticed a new element enter the fray. A cohesive, well-organized phalanx of hoplites advanced on the double from the direction of our camp. Who are these guys? I wondered. They were clearly Macedonian infantry but I had thought all of our men had rushed to protect our siege equipment and to attack Memnon’s sortie during the initial engagement and had then become trapped when Orontobates brought out the second, larger force that hit us from the rear. Now, this new Macedonian phalanx was, in turn, charging into the soft posterior of Orontobates’s combined Greek and Persian troops.
“Is that Parmenion leading them?” I wondered.
“What are you talking about?” Kleitos asked.
I hadn’t realized I’d given voice to my thoughts. “Go over there and take a look,” I said, taking over Kleitos’s post by the door and pointing toward the chink I’d made. “See what you think.”
Kleitos peered for a moment and then let out a joyous whoop.
“Keep it down! We’re surrounded by forty blood-thirsty Persians who are discussing how to kill us right now.”
“Who cares? Our guys are in the process of killing all the rest of them.”
“Here, let me take another look.” We switched positions once again. The fight had been joined in earnest. It was now Orontobates’s force that was trapped and getting hit from both sides.
“I know who it is,” Kleitos called from behind my back. “Take that, you son of a whore.”
I turned around in time to see another dead Persian added to our collection. Kleitos, putting his foot on the man’s chest, pulled out his sword and was cleaning it on the dead man’s tunic. “These guys are not very smart, are they?”
“What do you mean, you know who it is?”
“Our guys, the ones who stormed Orontobates from the rear. I know who they are.”
“Who are they?”
“They’re the old veterans and the injured guys left behind to guard our baggage train. Parmenion must have gotten them organized when he saw what was going on.”
“Well, they’re winning the battle now. They’re cutting Orontobates’s guys to pieces. And now, I think Memnon’s troops are also beginning to withdraw back toward the gate.”
“Alexandros will be furious,” Kleitos said.
“What do you mean? He’ll be thrilled.”
“What, at having his ass saved by Parmenion and a bunch of creaky old veterans? I don’t think so.”
As I watched, the retreat of Memnon’s and Orontobates’s troops turned into a disorderly rout. They were throwing away their shields and swords, running as fast as they could toward Mylasa Gate. Some of them stumbled and fell, only to be trampled by their fellow soldiers, desperate to reach safety. The narrow, rickety bridge across the moat collapsed under the weight of the panicked horde. The moat filled up with bodies, with more victims being pushed into the murky mire by the weight of the crowd behind them. Soon, men were able to cross the moat by skipping from body to body, although some of the stepping stones were still astir.
The gate was too narrow to accommodate the tremendous deluge of fleeing soldiers. I could see men getting crushed to death and falling into the roadway, only to have others climb over them. A small group of Persian officers tried to impose some semblance of order. With swords drawn, they formed a cordon outside the gate and tried to stem the flood of soldiers. They were quickly overrun and stomped to death. However, during the brief pause, the soldiers who had made it inside the wall slammed the gate shut. The new arrivals had no place to go, with additional waves of desperate soldiers crushing them against the unyielding walls and the now closed and barred gate.
In the meantime, our soldiers were pressing their pursuit of the fugitives. None of Memnon’s and Orontobates’s troops who had been left outside the gate survived. They were either trampled to death by their own comrades or killed by our men.
They were all dead, that is, except a small group of perhaps two hundred men, who decided to save their lives by running toward the hill which already held thirty or forty of their comrades and the two of us. One of the newly arriving men carried a flaming torch.
“Oh-oh,” I said. “We may have a problem.”
“What is it?”
“There are a couple of hundred Persians outside and one of them is getting ready to set our hut on fire.”
Uncharacteristically, Kleitos was silent. “Well, at least we won the battle,” he finally observed.
I could see the flaming torch leave the Persian soldier’s hand and arc, ever so slowly, toward our hut. Soon, there was smoke seeping in through the thatched roof, followed by a crackling noise, and then small tongues of flame started licking the rafters supporting the thatch. The smoke in the hut was getting thicker and the temperature hotter.
“We have to get out there and fight them in the open,” I said.
“Unless we want to burn to death in here,” Kleitos agreed.
“Even if we get outside, the odds might be against us.”
“It’s not a problem.” Kleitos laughed. “All we have to do is take care of a hundred guys apiece.” His laughter was overtaken by a coughing spell.
“Let’s jump out together,” I yelled through the smoke. It was getting very hard to breathe. “Once out the door, you go to the left and I’ll go to the right. Let’s try to ...” My words were cut short by the loud report of a rafter crashing to the ground in flames.
We rushed to the door, armed with a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other, ready to jump over the pile of bodies blocking our way, when we noticed the semicircle of men drawn up on the other side, waiting to catch us on the points of their swords, if and when we started the downward trajectory of our leaps. For a moment, we stood still, trying to suck some clean air into our lungs and clear our minds.
We both knew we would be dead within a moment or two. I guess it’s just the inertia of time, cleaning up some loose ends, I thought ruefully. Surprisingly, I didn’t experience fear or anger, only disappointment. I wish I could’ve found out how it all turns out.
I was brought back to the present by the heat at my back and the sound of Kleitos’s voice. “I never really thanked you for saving my life,” I heard him saying, in a remarkably calm voice, “all those many years ago, at the Dionysos ceremony.”
“Best decision I ever made, my friend.”
“It’s been an honor serving with you, sire.”
“I’m not a sire,” I started to say but Kleitos interrupted me. “On the count of three,” he said. “One, two, three.”
We clambered out and, using the dead bodies as a springboard, launched ourselves into the seductive embrace of certain death. The altitude of our vaults might have surprised the men awaiting our landing. I, for one, came down on the head and shoulder of the man in front of me, instead of his sword, knocking him backward and clearing a small space into which I crumpled, as yet uninjured. I was back on my feet, ready to engage, by the time the men around me recovered from their surprise. Because of the corpse barricade behind us, and thanks to Kleitos’s position to my left, only two or three men could attack me at the same time. I parried their jabs and blows, using my sword and my dagger. Gradually, and without conscious thought, I discerned a pattern in their attacks. I was no longer engaged in a sword fight but, rather, in an intricately choreographed dance. I knew, long before it happened, what their next stroke would be and my arms would move instinctively to thwart their thrusts before they even launched them. Although my sword and dagger flashed through the air too fast to see, melding into a bright blur of indistinguishable blocks, cuts, jabs, and slashes, time seemed to slow to a crawl. I had ample leisure, as I held off the men attacking me, to look over their heads and take in the entire hillside leading up to our hut.
A clamor at the bottom of the hill caught my eye. The commotion started to roll up toward us in defiance of the laws of physics. I lost sight of it for a moment, as I looked back at the swords trying to poke holes into me. The next
time I saw the scrum of screaming soldiers, it had rolled half way up the hill. With a blink of my eye, the mélange of men and mayhem resolved itself into a single armored warrior, atop a very large black steed, slicing through a howling pack of frenzied Persians. The horse was instantly recognizable, by its size and by the white blaze on its forehead and face. The rider, covered in mud and gore, his white plume knocked askew, was equally unmistakable. What’s he doing here?
Alexandros’s unexpected appearance disrupted the autonomous rhythm of my sparring. A sharp, burning pain across my left triceps reminded me to pay attention to the task at hand. However, the rising uproar behind the men trying to kill Kleitos and me started to sap the momentum of their attack. As each man in turn snuck a peek over his shoulder and recognized the man in the middle of the melee, he stopped his assault, turned, and ran to join his mates in their cordial, communal, concerted effort to kill the Macedonian king.
Surrounded by two hundred baying enemy soldiers, cut off from the support of his bodyguard, Alexandros seemed not the least bit discomfited. He twirled the sword playfully in his right hand, then swooped and whirled, leaving a detached head suspended momentarily in midair. His movements were fluid, swift, and economical. Every time the surrounding mob attempted to surge in, Boukephalas and Alexandros, moving as a single fighting unit, cleared an oasis of dead and dying Persians.
Far down at the bottom of the hill, a score of cavalrymen appeared. I recognized Perdikkas, Philotas, and Seleukos among them. They were resolutely slashing their way up to their king but Alexandros, disdaining their assistance, continued his rapid progress toward us. The gap between them remained stubbornly large. I know how they feel, I thought, having tried to keep up with Alexandros’s reckless charges into the thickest fights once or twice myself.
The few enemy soldiers still possessing the power of locomotion melted away. Alexandros reached Kleitos and me before the rest of his men caught up to him.
“Nice fighting, sire,” Kleitos said, by way of a greeting. “Thank you for saving us.”
Alexandros laughed. “We never leave one of ours behind, Melas. You know that. Besides, I owed you one ... from Granikos. Now we’re even.”
“Yes, sire. Although you never owed me anything. I was simply doing my duty and, if I was able to help you in the process, that made it a special privilege.”
Alexandros smiled and turned toward me, mischief tugging at the corners of his eyes. “But I’ll be damned if I know why I saved you.”
“It wasn’t my time to die, sire.” I laughed. “And you were the instrument of my destiny.”
“Careful now, Metoikos. It’s not too late for me to become the instrument of your destruction.”
“Aye, aye, sire. I’m well aware of that.”
“Aware of what?” Perdikkas asked, his group having finally caught up to Alexandros.
“Aware that you’re painfully slow on that nag of yours.”
Everybody roared, at Perdikkas’s expense. He seemed a little dubious at first but finally joined in the laughter. The Macedonian army had somehow snatched victory from certain defeat and we all knew it. And I laughed the loudest of all. I’m still alive, I thought in wonder.
Chapter 10 – Mopping Up
It had been a close call. But for the timely intervention of Parmenion and the veterans, Alexandros’s expedition might well have ended under the wall of Halikarnassos and Alexandros was a good enough soldier to know it. We withdrew back into camp and spent the rest of the day licking our wounds. There was no singing, no celebrations, no banquets, only the painful work of gathering the dead and wounded, getting the former ready for cremation and tending to the latter.
When night fell, most of us sat or lay in front of the tents, looking at the stars and marveling at our survival. It was a cold, breezy, cloudless night, silvered by the luminance of a full moon. And then, as the great sidereal disk wheeled inexorably toward midnight, the cool ambiance of the night gradually picked up a warmer, orangey undertone when fires began to blaze up in the city. As we watched, bonfire after bonfire sprang to life in the open squares and marketplaces of Halikarnassos, the flames licking the sky. Must be some kind of celebration, I thought but then the first of the houses joined the cavalcade of conflagrations.
“What are they doing?” Kleitos asked. We all had the same question and none of us had a good answer. Then we saw the ships. Taking advantage of the outgoing tide and the bright moonlight, ship after heavily laden ship left the harbor.
“They’re evacuating the city,” Seleukos said quietly, “and destroying anything useful that they can’t take with them.”
Kleitos started jumping up and down. “Hey, everybody! We’ve won! They’re running away.” His cries were picked up by the men around us and gradually rippled out through the camp. Soon enough, there was rejoicing everywhere.
We were summoned for a meeting in the king’s tent. Once assembled, we found a glum Alexandros sitting quietly on his stool. “The bastard is getting away once again,” he said in lieu of an opening statement. “I guess we could’ve used a navy just now.”
Hephaistion hastened to reassure him. “They can flee to the ends of the Earth, Aniketos, but they can’t escape your wrath.”
“Well, they’re doing a pretty good job of escaping just now,” was Alexandros’s dry response. “And I imagine Memnon is among them.”
Hephaistion persisted. “You’ll get him, Aniketos, that’s for sure.”
Aristandros joined in. “You’ll be strolling into the Mausoleion tomorrow, sire, before the full moon begins to wane.”
“Assuming the ashes cool down enough to walk on.” I wasn’t speaking to any one in particular but I kept my hand on my sword, just in case Aristandros proved incapable of taking a joke.
“The Mausoleion isn’t burning,” Seleukos observed. “They’re not trying to burn down the city; only the supplies that might be useful to us.”
Alexandros interrupted our by-play. “Get everybody ready. I want us through the gates at first light. Perdikkas will be in charge of breaking down the Myndos Gate, Parmenion will get through the Tripylon, and I’ll take the Mylasa Gate.
“Ptolemaios, you and Kleitos will stay behind and secure the camp,” he added flatly, almost as an afterthought. But his understated manner couldn’t mask his evident irritation. “And organize some details to police the battlefield. I want all the loot collected, the enemy corpses stripped and burned, and our own fallen ready for the funeral rites by the time we get back. And make sure all the wounded are well cared for.”
“Yes, sire,” I said briskly, before Kleitos could protest, giving his tunic a little tug as I spoke, to make sure he got the message. This might have been a punitive assignment but we deserved it for getting into a pickle requiring Alexandros’s deliverance, if nothing else. My wise-ass comment to Aristandros probably hadn’t helped.
“And somebody go alert Queen Ada. I want her to enter the city with me.” Alexandros was quiet for a moment. “And one more thing. Let’s be careful tomorrow! You never know who might be lurking behind every corner and inside every house. All right, no time to waste.” And with that, we were dismissed.
The anticipated door-to-door combat never materialized. When our troops arrived, garlanded with the first streamers of dawn, they found the gates unguarded and unbarred, ready to swing open at the slightest push. Once inside the walls, they entered a deserted and largely destroyed city. Perhaps the defenders intended only to burn militarily useful materiel but, with the aid of the stiff breeze, they managed to burn down almost every dwelling in the city. Only some of the larger, marble-clad public buildings survived. And the Mausoleion still towered over the smoldering ruins in all its gleaming magnificence.
Unlike the city itself, however, the three fortresses were far from empty. It turned out that, while the civilians might have been evacuated, the troops simply withdrew to the akropolis, the Salmakis Fortress, and the King’s Castle and settled in for a long siege.
> Alexandros’s plans for restoring Queen Ada to her throne had to be scaled back for now. Instead of a grand banquet at the royal palace, which was inaccessible for the moment because of its vicinity to Salmakis, he organized a modest, open-air feast in the scorched agora, attended by Ada, her retinue, and a few of Alexandros’s officers.
“She should feel right at home,” Perdikkas was overheard whispering. “This is even more chintzy than the party she threw for us at Alinda.” Fortunately for Perdikkas, Alexandros was too engrossed in his conversation with the queen to overhear his comment.
After all the wine had been consumed (there was hardly enough to get anyone drunk), Alexandros called for his scribe. “Kallisthenes, take down this official proclamation.”
There was a brief delay, while Kallisthenes desperately searched for his lump of ink, which had somehow disappeared from its pouch. “There is plenty of soot around, Kallisthenes,” Hephaistion suggested helpfully. “Just scoop up a handful.”
Kallisthenes eventually found his block of dried, vegetable-gum-infused carbon black, broke off a small piece, dissolved it in water, sharpened his reed pen, unrolled a fresh sheet of papyrus, and looked up expectantly at his boss. Of course, Alexandros had long since lost patience and was strolling with Queen Ada toward her new official residence, trailed by his usual phalanx of aides, sycophants, and hangers-on.
“I’m ready, sire,” Kallisthenes yapped, trying to catch up to the group.
In due course, the proclamation was reduced to writing. In it, Alexandros, in his capacity as liberator of Karia, restored Queen Ada to her throne and ordained the installation of popularly elected local leaders in all the towns and villages of her kingdom, provided the candidates were approved in advance by the queen and, tacitly, by Alexandros. “Have sufficient copies made, Kallisthenes, so we can dispatch messengers to read it in every agora in Karia.” There was no pressing need to address the governance of Halikarnassos itself, given the current lack of available inhabitants subject to administration.
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