The Last King of Lydia

by Tim Leach

  When they passed through burning cities, Croesus would steal from the ruins, from the dying and the wounded, gathering gold to bribe others for information about Harpagus, or to buy a night’s protection from one of the soldiers. Gold could buy anything. Even a longer life, if one spent it wisely enough.

  Each morning, Harpagus summoned him, and questioned him about the city they were marching against, asking about water and fortifications, religious customs and superstitions, spearmen and gold. Croesus gave his knowledge, yet he always held something back, only hinting at what he knew of the next city they were to conquer, hoping that his usefulness might keep him alive. Harpagus was a practical man, after all.

  He remembered when he was a boy, sitting on his mother’s lap and enjoying the spicy smell of her hair, as she laid out samples of poison for him to taste and learn. He tried to remember those tastes again, and wondered which one Harpagus preferred. He was always watchful for a knife in the darkness, the bowl of food that had been prepared especially for him, the wineskin that was offered to him first with a smile.

  To his eyes, the encampment resembled the labyrinths of legend, with one exception: there was no path by which he might escape. The only way out was the passage of time. Each day that passed was another step towards the ending of the wars, and their return to the east, to the safety of Cyrus’s court. But with every city that they conquered, his knowledge became a little less valuable. He imagined his life weighed on the scales; the satisfaction of his death placed against the value of keeping him alive. As he woke each morning, he wondered if this would be the day when the scales would finally tip.

  6

  They came, at last, to Pedasus. It fell just like the others that had fallen before it, its secrets betrayed, its army destroyed, its fortifications breached, its people butchered.

  Croesus gave it no thought. He could think only of sleep.

  He could not remember when he had last been able to buy a safe night’s rest. The world, washed out and grey, like a landscape in a half-forgotten memory, no longer made sense to him. People had to repeat themselves many times before he could understand them. Mundane objects became fascinating to him – he could spend hours staring at a candle flame as it shuddered in the air, or running his fingers one way and then another through tall grass, or watching the motion of water over stone. He had taken to keeping a thorn in his hand, so that he could close a fist and force himself awake with the pain.

  He sometimes wondered, in the dull way of someone too exhausted to care, if he might have died weeks before and passed on without noticing. The next world might be a mirror of this one, a world that slowly disintegrated one sense at a time, that rotted like a body, until one was left with only an incomprehensible blankness. Or perhaps he had simply gone mad, and no amount of sleep would return the world to sense. He would be trapped in this half-life for ever.

  He could focus only on knowing where Harpagus was, hoping to retain some illusion of control, but Harpagus had the general’s gift of being everywhere and nowhere at once. Ask half a dozen different people where he was, and you would receive twice as many answers. He was consulting an oracle in the hills, was in a whorehouse in the city, inspecting the cavalry, overseeing an execution and arguing with an emissary, seemingly all at once. Still Croesus continued to ask, like a man picking at a wound, even when he knows it will not bring him peace.

  The night that Pedasus fell, he received, for once, a clear answer. Looking out of his tent towards the end of the day, he asked a passing soldier where the general was.

  ‘The general has gone on already,’ the other man replied. ‘Through the woods with some of the men. We are to follow him in the morning.’

  ‘He’s not here in the camp? You are sure?’

  ‘Yes.’ The soldier smiled dryly at him. ‘Glad to be away from the master’s gaze?’

  ‘More than you can know.’

  The soldier laughed. ‘Sleep well, mighty king, sleep well,’ he said, and walked away.

  Croesus watched him go. He began to think about where he might snatch a few hours of sleep that night. He sat down on the ground inside the tent to rest his legs and eyes for a short time before he went out again. His mind occupied by other things, he leaned back and lay flat on his back.

  He was asleep within moments.

  ‘Croesus!’

  The torch was in his face again, the fire curling towards his mouth. He flinched from it, and woke, his mouth thick with the taste of sleep.

  A soldier stood over Croesus, looking down on him, his eyes two dark voids in the shadow of the torchlight. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Harpagus wants you. He doesn’t sleep. That means neither do you tonight. Come on.’

  At his touch, Croesus woke up fully for the first time in months. The world came back into focus, and he understood what was happening to him.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘just one moment.’

  He reached towards the bundle of cloth that held his possessions together. He groped at it, hoping to feel the hard shape of a statue, the thin metal strands of a golden necklace, the round weight of coins, something with which he could buy his life. But there was only worthless fabric beneath his fingers.

  He looked up at the soldier. ‘It must be now?’ he said slowly.

  ‘Yes, of course. Come on.’

  Croesus remembered the morning they came to take him to the pyre in Sardis. He wondered at how calm he felt, now as then. The strange lack of urgency that came from being locked into an unfamiliar sequence of events, shaped by another’s hands and quite out of his control.

  He could not truly believe that he was being led to his death. He kept imagining that each moment might bring a chance for escape or reprieve. His mind would continue to fabricate these impossible escapes, he thought, even as the sword was being drawn, or the noose fastened around his neck. Perhaps, in the final instant, just for a moment, he would truly understand that he was about to die.

  They passed out of the camp, and into the surrounding woods. This will be the place, Croesus thought. Each time he saw the captain rein in his horse, his heart shook. But it was always for some trivial reason – a debate over the route with one of the scouts, uncertain ground that the horses needed to pass over slowly, a brief wait for some lagging member of the column to catch up. A mad desire grew within him to yell at them to get on with it. Anything was better than this, waiting for them to choose a place at random where he might be put to death.

  He heard something. A soft rattle in the woods. The sound of wood against wood. A sound that was almost natural, but not quite; this was wood guided by human fingers, not by the wind or by the passage of an animal. It was a familiar sound, and he tried to remember what it was.

  The first arrows came so fast that it was as though they grew from the things they struck. Cancerous, murderous eruptions, sprouting from the thick earth at his feet, from the flanks of suddenly screaming horses, and from the throats and eyes of the men ahead of him.

  A heavy weight fell against his back and pinned him to the ground. He felt a warmth soaking through his tunic, then hot against his skin. He felt a shudder pass through him as another arrow struck, and the man on his back lay still. He watched as some of the soldiers broke and ran, and others charged into the woods, screaming war cries. He lay against the ground, shaking and weeping in fear. He had never wanted to live more than in that moment.

  Croesus felt the weight lift off his back. He covered his face with his hands, but it was a Persian soldier who pulled him to his feet, and told him to run.

  They ran together, half tripping with every step, barely able to see in the darkness. Behind and around him, Croesus heard the dull sound of arrows striking wood, the skipping rattle as they bounced and spun through the undergrowth. His chest burned, as though he had swallowed the fire of his dreams, and the strength went from his legs. ‘Don’t leave me,’ he said, but the Persian soldier ran on ahead, leaving him alone in the darkness.

  Croesus leaned against the
closest tree, his breath rasping like that of a dying man, his eyes tight shut, as though he could wish the waking nightmare away. He heard the sound again behind him, of arrows in the quiver. He forced himself to keep moving, waiting to feel the arrow bite into his back.

  He broke out of the woods, stumbling in an exhausted half-run, and saw the lights of the camp ahead. Now would be the time, he thought. With sanctuary in sight, now was the time for the arrow to find him, but still it did not come.

  Staggering now on aching feet, driven forward by empty lungs, he made it to the picket line. The Persian sentry yelled at him to stop, seeing only a bloody foreigner charging towards the camp, but Croesus ran on, sinking to the ground before the man who stood over him, spear raised.

  ‘Please,’ he said, clasping his shaking hands together around the man’s knees. ‘Please.’

  7

  Harpagus sat by torchlight. On the heavy table in front of him, parchments concealed a stained, yellowing map so that it could barely be seen at all. A fragment of Egypt, a scattering of Hellenic islands, were all that remained uncovered. He preferred it this way. Soldiers and servants speculated over the contents of the three deep chests that Harpagus kept closely guarded in his tent. They would have been disappointed to discover that they were filled only with paper.

  His captains complained incessantly (behind his back, thinking that he did not know) about the reports they had to deliver almost every day. Exact inventories of weapons, food stocks, the condition of armour, state of morale, reports on praiseworthy soldiers and troublesome individuals. His spies were instructed to produce reports with the same precision. The exact height of walls, depth of wells, consistency of soil. Here in his tent, with the army itemized and inventoried, the next city reduced to a few sheets of parchment, he could create a world on paper. A world that he could conquer.

  He heard footsteps approach, fast and hard. He expected a messenger or a scout, but when Croesus entered, unannounced and unescorted, he did not react. He took in the blood and dirt on Croesus’s clothes, the angry, fearful look in his eyes. He laid down on the desk the paper in his hand, and waited for the other man to speak.

  ‘I am here now, if you want me dead,’ Croesus said. He felt tears fill his eyes, and angrily blinked them away. When his vision cleared, Harpagus still gazed at him impassively.

  ‘Not that you will believe me,’ the general said, ‘but I really don’t understand.’

  ‘Who were the archers in the forest?’

  ‘Archers?’

  ‘They killed most of your men. They almost killed me.’

  Harpagus paused. ‘Bandits,’ he said after a moment. ‘Or men from Pedasus, looking for revenge.’ He smiled thinly. ‘No doubt they saw you being escorted by the soldiers and mistook you for someone important.’

  ‘Stop treating me like a fool!’ Croesus shouted. The sound seemed to hang in the air like a living thing.

  ‘You have come close to death,’ the general said slowly. ‘You have forgotten yourself. I forgive you for it. Come back tomorrow. We will talk then.’

  ‘No. We will talk now.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Harpagus turned away and picked up a wineskin. With his back still to Croesus, he poured out a cup.

  ‘Here,’ he said, turning around and offering the cup. ‘Take some wine. It might calm you down.’

  Croesus looked at the wine and hesitated. Harpagus’s smile widened, and he drank deeply. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘So you believe the stories.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I?’

  Harpagus shrugged, and gestured to a chair by the table. ‘Sit down.’ Croesus didn’t move. ‘Come on, don’t be a fool. Sit.’

  Croesus followed this command. They stared at each other in silence. A pair of flies wound in spirals through the air, trying to alight on Croesus’s bloody clothes. Each time he twitched them off with a shrug of his shoulders, like a beast in a field. He did not take his eyes from Harpagus.

  ‘Have you heard about how I came to serve Cyrus?’ the general said suddenly, breaking the silence.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cyrus. How I came to serve him.’

  ‘I don’t see how—’

  ‘Just listen, will you, Croesus? You talk too much for a slave. The story may give you a little understanding.’

  Croesus nodded slowly. ‘Very well.’

  ‘I served Astyages, when he was king of the Medes. Did you know that?’ Croesus shook his head. ‘Your brother-in-law trusted me more than any. One day he complained about a dream to me. The soothsayers and prophets were consulted, and they all agreed. His daughter’s child would take his kingdom from him. She was married to a Persian nobleman, and she had just given birth to a son. Astyages asked me to kill the child. I agreed, of course. I had no choice. The Spartans expose hundreds of children each year, I thought, those who are weak or malformed. I was sure that I could manage to let one child die for the good of the kingdom.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I am not a sentimental man.’

  ‘I would not have guessed.’

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t anything to do with the child. Perhaps I did it just for myself, to spite Astyages. He was a cruel man, you know. Ruthless and stupid.’

  Croesus nodded. ‘Yes, I know. I always pitied my sister, having to marry him.’

  ‘And yet you went to war to recover his empire for him.’

  ‘I think we both know that isn’t why I went to war. Come on, finish your story.’

  ‘Well, in any case, I thought it over some more. In the end, I found that I didn’t want to murder a child because Astyages had overeaten at the dining table and given himself nightmares. I gave the boy to some shepherds to raise, and talked to the cooks about reducing the richness of the king’s diet. I tried to forget any of it ever happened.

  ‘Well, he found out, many years later, when Cyrus was a boy. It was obvious to anyone with eyes in his head that he was not a peasant’s son. He resembled his father a little too well.

  ‘Astyages summoned me and asked me if I really had let Cyrus die all those years before. I could see that he already knew the truth and so I confessed. I hoped that if I did so, he would at least spare my wife and son. I expected him to order my immediate execution, but he smiled at me, and told me that he was glad to hear it. That he had always regretted giving that order, and it had been preying on his mind for years. He clapped me on the shoulder and asked if I would come and have dinner with him.

  ‘I ate with him that night. I wondered if the meal would be poisoned. But after a time, when there was no apparent taste of poison on my lips, I began to think that he really had forgiven me. So I tried to enjoy the meal, which wasn’t hard. It was a good meal. But he didn’t touch any of it. Just sat there, drinking wine and talking and watching me. I asked him why he didn’t eat. He laughed, and reminded me that I had told him to be more careful about what he ate.’ Harpagus paused, remembering. ‘It was a rich stew.

  ‘When I was finished, he asked me if I would like some sweetmeats. He always laid a good table, so I said yes. They brought in a covered platter, and he reached to lift the lid himself as soon as it touched the table. That is when I knew that something was wrong. Astyages never did anything that a servant could do for him. Not even wiping his mouth at the dinner table. He reached over so fast, setting his hand to the lid, that I knew that something terrible lay under it. Do you know what was there, Croesus?’

  Croesus shook his head.

  ‘He raised the lid, and underneath was the head of my son.’

  Croesus stared at him. ‘It is quite true,’ Harpagus said. ‘Astyages asked me if I had lost my appetite. I told him that I had. He asked me if I knew what I had just eaten. I said that I did. He asked if I had learned my lesson. “Yes,” I told him.’ Harpagus fell silent.

  ‘Astyages always liked that story,’ Croesus said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The story of Tereus. One of the old kings of Thrace. His wife did that to
him, after he betrayed her for another woman. Astyages was always asking the poets to recite it. That is where he got the idea.’

  Harpagus nodded. ‘What does he say?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What does Tereus say in the story, when he discovers what he has done?’

  Croesus thought for a moment. ‘ “I am the tomb of my boy.” ’

  ‘Yes,’ Harpagus said. ‘That sounds right.’ He gave a ghost of a smile. ‘Never make an enemy of an educated man, Croesus. History is a fine teacher of cruelty.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘He let me live. I suppose he expected me to kill myself, after that. My wife did, when I told her.’ Croesus winced at this. Harpagus continued, ‘But I knew that I had to live for as long as I could, in the hope that I would have my chance at revenge.’

  ‘And Cyrus was that chance?’

  ‘Yes. Astyages spared him too – apparently the soothsayers decided the boy was no threat, having been raised as a peasant. He even let him return to his real parents, and take his place as a Persian nobleman. I encouraged Cyrus to lead his people in rebellion, and I betrayed the army of the Medes when it marched out to meet him.’

  ‘And how did you feel, when he took Astyages as his advisor?

  ‘How do you think?’

  ‘So you had him killed.’

  Harpagus shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

  Croesus shook his head. ‘You said this story would reassure me.’

  Harpagus leaned forward. ‘If I told you I didn’t kill him, would you believe me? No? So why bother saying either way? But if I did kill him, it wasn’t because he was my rival. I killed him because he was a murderer of children. Of my child. You are safe from me, Croesus. Surely, that is what you really care about. What does it matter if I killed him or not?’

  The silence grew heavy between them. Croesus reached forward and took the wineskin, then poured himself a drink.

  ‘What is the worst thing you ever did to someone?’ Harpagus said after a time. ‘When you were a king, I mean.’