Memnon

by Oden, Scott

  Omares, at Memnon’s recommendation, would command the infantry in reserve, on a hillock some four hundred yards to the rear. All told, ten thousand horsemen would comprise the Persian front, which would stretch in an unbroken line for over a mile.

  Memnon prayed it would be enough.

  The Rhodian walked to where the Persian horseman waited, attended by one of the kardakes who held the reins of his mount. The disheveled and mud-spattered soldier was a scout. In the gloom Memnon could not tell whose man he was.

  “What did you find?” he asked.

  The scout saluted. “The Macedonians are near. They will be here tomorrow, by midmorning at the earliest.”

  “Could you get close enough to discern their forces?”

  The man shook his head. “They had a screen of light horse well forward of their main column.”

  “Very good.” Memnon gestured to the kardakes. “Escort him to Lord Spithridates, and see that he gets food and wine. Draw them from my own stores.”

  The scout bowed at the waist. “Thank you, my lord.”

  Memnon waved him away and turned to look at the Granicus one last time. The ruddy glow of dusk deepened as the sun sank below the distant shoulders of Mount Ida. Stars flared to life overhead, their light made more sublime by the proximity of the sons of Ares: Metus and Pallor—Fear and Terror. Few would sleep, even among the veterans. Nor was Memnon immune. Tonight, he would dine with his nephews and his officers, followed by a tour of the camp so he could speak quietly with his men, and finally he would retire to his tent with ink and papyrus to write letters to Barsine and the girls in Ephesus. In the small hours before dawn he would pray to the gods of peace …

  For once the sun rose he would again belong to the Lord of War.

  21

  “ZEUS!” HYDARNES MUTTERED, PATTING THE NECK OF HIS RESTIVE horse. The seventeen-year-old son of Artabazus watched the far bank of the Granicus with a mixture of fear and awe as rank after glittering rank of Macedonians took up positions there. Churning clouds of dust drifted downstream on the faint breeze. “How many of them are there?”

  Memnon nudged his horse closer to his nephew. Though Hydarnes’ youth troubled him, it was not his place to deny the boy a chance to prove himself, not when he was here at his father’s urging. All Memnon could do is keep him near, shield him to the best of his ability. “It doesn’t matter. All you need worry about is the one man in front of you. Focus on that one man, Hydarnes. After you kill him, focus on another, then another. Understand?”

  Hydarnes swallowed and nodded.

  “Look,” Pharnabazus said, gesturing with his spear. Like Memnon, and indeed all of the first rank, he had traded his javelins for a heavy eight-foot spear, a hoplite’s weapon, counterweighted with an iron butt-spike. “There goes Parmenion. I guess the little peacock plans to attack after all.”

  Easily, Memnon spotted the old Macedonian general, surrounded by his officers as he galloped into position on the enemy left. He would face Rheomithres and Mithrobarzanes on the Persian right. “Probably his last attempt to preach caution to Alexander,” Memnon said.

  “Alexander is not Philip,” Cophen, who was in formation behind Pharnabazus, said, his voice as severe as his features. “Caution is not a fixture of his personality.”

  “Nor is anonymity.” Memnon shaded his eyes against the late afternoon glare. “Look, there.”

  The Macedonian right wing faced their position, wedges of Companion cavalry flanked by light infantry on their right and battalions of the sarissa-wielding phalanx on their left. A cheer burst from thousands of throats as Alexander, astride the massive Thessalian stallion Boukephalos, took his place at the head of the Companions. Though broad-shouldered and muscular, the young King lacked Philip’s height. He wore armor similar to that of his men—a bronze breastplate and greaves—along with an open-faced Boeotian helmet topped by a red horsehair crest and a pair of tall white kestrel feathers. He stands out, even without Philip’s height.

  The cheering faded; the two armies stood in silence.

  There would be no grand speeches, no boastful promises. The men at Memnon’s back, like the men at Alexander’s, were professionals, grim students of the War God’s murderous academy, their skills honed not from useless dialectic but from the blood and suffering of martial necessity.

  Horses stamped and whinnied.

  Alexander, Memnon decided, stared right at him; the Rhodian stared back, eyes narrowed. He wanted to ride over and ask the young man why … what hurt had the world done to him to make him desire its subjugation? Why was he hiding behind this fiction of Greek vengeance? More than that, though, Memnon wanted to know what happened to the inquisitive child who had sat with Artabazus and questioned him at length about Persia’s inner workings. But Memnon knew there would be no answers. There would be only blood. Blood and suffering.

  Between them, the Granicus swirled and bubbled.

  Memnon exhaled. Up and down the line leather creaked, bronze clattered as men shifted in the mounting tension. Beside him, Pharnabazus cracked his knuckles, one by one. Ariobarzanes rattled his sword in its sheath for the hundredth time. In the second rank, Cophen muttered a prayer. And Hydarnes—seventeen-year-old Hydarnes, whose sweat-drenched face was as smooth as Alexander’s own—panted in terror and tried to keep his breakfast down. Was I any different at Lake Manyas?

  Across the river Alexander raised his hand, dropped it. Behind him a Macedonian salpinx wailed. A vanguard of three cavalry squadrons—two of light horse and one of Companions—began their advance, followed by a battalion of the phalanx. They raised a din, shouting curses and war cries against the Persians holding the far bank against them. Reaching the Granicus, the cavalry plunged into the river, leaving the phalanx to struggle in their wake.

  “Do your best!” Memnon said to his nephews and his men in earshot, recalling his brother’s words to him on the cusp of battle at Lake Manyas. “Fight with heart and with honor, and leave the rest to the Fates!” He raised his spear to the heavens and shouted, “For Zeus Savior and Victory!”

  “Zeus Savior and Victory!” his men thundered.

  From the rear of Memnon’s formation a trumpet sounded; the first volley of javelins lofted into the sky. He glanced up as the missiles arched over their heads. They seemed to hang motionless in the air for the span of a heartbeat before weight and gravity brought them slicing down into the Macedonian ranks. A second volley followed, and a third.

  Chaos erupted in the riverbed.

  Horses screamed and thrashed, toppling their riders into the foaming waters of the Granicus. Men lost their footing and were dragged along by the current. The light horse faltered; the Companions, protected by heavier armor, weathered the storm of javelins and surged up the treacherous bank, into the teeth of Memnon’s cavalry.

  “For the King!” the Rhodian bellowed, rising on his thighs and thrusting his spear into a snarling Macedonian face. Blades licked out down the line; javelins flew thick and fast, cast from the middle ranks to rip pointblank into enemy flesh. Again and again Memnon stabbed down into that seething mass of men, some on foot, others on horseback, thwarting their attempts to ascend the bank. It was butchers’ work. Iron grated on bronze, on bone. A miasma of churned mud, sweat, and damp leather could not mask the coppery stench of mingled human and equine blood rising off the Granicus.

  No one could maneuver, so tightly were the horsemen of both armies compacted. It was thrust and draw, thrust and draw, all while trying to stay mounted. Javelins hissed over Memnon’s shoulders; to his left, he watched a sarissa blade gut the horse of one of his kardakes, sending man and beast toppling down the bank. The mortally wounded animal crushed enemy soldiers under its flailing hooves, while the rider regained his footing and sowed havoc with his short spear until the weighted butt of an infantryman’s pike shattered his skull.

  On either side of him, Pharnabazus and Ariobarzanes fought with maniacal fury, their spears ripping into the morass of flesh until their arms ach
ed from sheer homicidal exertion; Cophen slung his javelins with the accuracy of a man spearing fish in a net. Hydarnes, too, kept pace, drawing and casting the ash-and-iron missiles with manic urgency.

  “Hold the line!” Memnon called. “Check your interval!” Over the din of slaughter—the screams of rage and fear, the crack of javelins and spears on shields, the splash of blood-fouled water—came a new round of trumpet calls, orders played on a Macedonian salpinx. Memnon glanced out over the field, expecting to see a fresh wave of troops bearing down on his position. Rather, amid shouts and invocations to the War God, he watched as Alexander wheeled the Companion cavalry half-right and charged the Persian center at the oblique. Rhosaces’ inferior cavalry would receive the brunt of the Macedonian’s main assault.

  The vanguard was a feint, Memnon realized, his respect for the young king growing. He attacked our left knowing Spithridates or that fool Arsites would draw from the center to reinforce the flank. We played right into his hands!

  But Memnon had no time to dwell on Alexander’s tactics. As the Companions charged the Persian center, the balance of the Macedonian line also rushed to attack. Now, his cavalry had to contend with archers and javelineers from Alexander’s right flank, men of Crete and the Agrianians who could clear swaths of the bank to afford their allied horsemen a bridgehead.

  Memnon ground his teeth in fury. If he could hold them here, perhaps Alexander would overextend himself …

  The Rhodian’s horse shied from the gory sarissa blades; onto that sliver of ground a Macedonian clawed his way up from below, a heavy shield on his left arm. Javelins caromed off its oak-and-bronze bowl. One of his mates thrust a broken sarissa into his hand, and the valiant soldier stayed in a crouch, sweeping the weapon low and wide as he inched forward, hoping to hamstring a horse, to break a foreleg. Two more shielded men clambered up behind him.

  “Stop them before they form a wedge!” The Rhodian raked his spurs back along his horse’s flanks. The terrified animal started, hooves stamping. Memnon leaned out and put his weight, and the weight of his skittish horse, into a murderous thrust of his spear. It deflected off the first Macedonian’s shield to skewer his left-hand companion in the neck, snapping shaft and vertebrae. Blood spewed.

  Bellowing, the lead Macedonian brought his sarissa up in a wild slash at Memnon’s head. The Rhodian saw it coming. He twisted, throwing his broken spear-shaft into the path of the blade. Wood cracked and splintered. The impact, which would have split his skull, helmet and all, numbed Memnon’s arm to the shoulder. His attacker stumbled, shield dipping mere inches. Inches were all Memnon’s men needed. Iron flashed. Two javelins punctured the Macedonian’s torso and sent him cartwheeling back onto the pikes of his fellows.

  A single man remained.

  “Spear!” Memnon roared, dropping the remnants of his shattered weapon. From the second rank, someone—Hydarnes, maybe—pressed a javelin into his palm. Whirling, Memnon flung the dart with such ferocity that it punched through the bronze cheek-piece of the Macedonian’s helmet, ripping through flesh, bone, and brain until its point burst out behind his opposite ear. The corpse vanished in the wrack. Weaponless again, Memnon tore his saber from its sheath.

  The archers on the far bank found their range, sending a hail of arrows into Memnon’s soldiery. From closer quarters, sarissas and javelins were emptying saddles as the Macedonians attacked with renewed vigor, maiming horses and destroying the cohesion of Memnon’s front ranks. Inexorably, the Companions and the men of the phalanx forced their way onto the bank. He would have to give ground.

  Memnon held his sword aloft. “By ranks, fall back and reform! Fall—”

  The Rhodian recoiled. An arrow glanced off his helmet even as the breeze from a wickedly barbed Agrianian javelin fanned his beard, missing him by a hairsbreadth. He heard it crunch through the armor and flesh of the man behind him. Recovering, he called out: “Trumpeter! Fall back and reform! Sound the order!” The horn skirled; slowly, the Persians began disengaging.

  Memnon glanced to either side. Pharnabazus and Ariobarzanes, though slashed and bloodied, held their positions along with the remainder of the first rank—they would screen the withdrawal, giving the rear time to pull back a hundred yards and reform. He spotted Cophen’s red-spattered face farther down, wielding a dead man’s spear and filling his space in the line. Memnon looked for Hydarnes …

  That son of Artabazus he found slumped against his horse’s neck, the barbed iron-head of an Agrianian javelin buried in his chest. Gore-encrusted hands clutched at the shaft. Hydarnes looked up; his eyes held the most piteous expression, like a child in shock, unsure of what had just happened. “U-Uncle?” he managed, ropes of blood drooling from his mouth.

  Before Memnon could react, though, a wall of Macedonians swarmed up the bank, sarissas and sword blades flashing, their charge preceded by a storm of arrows and javelins. Memnon’s horse screamed and crumpled as a pike ripped through its neck. The Rhodian toppled backward. He struck the ground hard, his saber jarred from his grip. His attacker wrenched his sarissa free and clambered over the thrashing horse, his pike raised for a killing blow. Whatever exultation the Macedonian might have felt was short-lived as Ariobarzanes rammed his spear through the fellow’s side.

  “Move, Uncle! Move!” he heard Ari scream. Memnon clawed for his saber; he stood and staggered out of the fighting. Behind the clashing lines, he cast about for Hydarnes. The youth lay on his side in the trampled grass a dozen feet away, unmoving, his horse nowhere in sight.

  “No!” Memnon rushed to his side. “Hydarnes!” Kneeling, he gently rolled the boy onto his back. Hydarnes’ mouth hung open; lifeless eyes stared at the sky. Memnon’s shoulders slumped. He leaned down and kissed his nephew’s forehead. “I give you into Zeus’s care,” he whispered. “Go to the gods as a man.” But, Memnon had little time to mourn. Alexander’s charge had smashed the center of the Persian line; the flanks were breaking and the Macedonians threatened to overrun their position.

  Memnon stood. A gesture brought a pair of kardakes to him. He recognized both men, despite their patina of blood and grime. “Mardius, Azanes, take my nephew’s body and fall back to Omares’ position. We will make our stand with the infantry.” He looked about for a horse.

  “Take mine, sir,” Azanes said, dismounting. “I will find another in the rear.”

  Memnon nodded. “My thanks, Azanes.” He studied Hydarnes’ face, so pale and youthful in death, as Azanes handed the body up to Mardius. He wondered how he was going to tell Deidamia that he’d gotten one of her sons killed. For an instant, he prayed it would only be one …

  The Rhodian vaulted onto Azanes’ horse and gathered up the reins. Time to extricate the others. “Trumpeter!” he called. “Sound retreat!”

  THE INFANTRY, FIVE THOUSAND GREEK HOPLITES, WAITED ON A HILLOCK a quarter of a mile from the Granicus. Omares knew the tale of the battle before Memnon arrived, having heard it from the Persian cavalry streaming past him in flight. Alexander was driving home his advantage but the sheer press of enemy horsemen slowed his advance. Dusk would fall before he could engage the infantry.

  “I heard most of the satraps are dead,” Omares said by way of greeting as Memnon and the sons of Artabazus cantered up. They had thrown the Macedonians back once more, hurling them back into the Granicus; in the brief lull, they had made good their escape.

  “From whom?”

  “Their men, as they hightailed it past us. Mithrobarzanes, Rhosaces, Spithridates … they all left their positions and rode against Alexander. The boy slaughtered them. Arsites and Rheomithres each scampered away with a handful of men. I don’t know about Arsamenes. It seems the chivalry of Persia is leaving their loyal infantry in the dust without the slightest hint of regret.”

  “We’ve come to stand with you,” Memnon said.

  Omares glanced over his shoulder to where Mardius and Azanes stood vigil over Hydarnes’ body. With his own hand he had drawn out the killing dart. He had composed the boy’s limbs
and washed the blood from his face with water from his own canteen before draping his cloak over the corpse. Still there was no kindness he could do that would begin to repay the debt he owed Artabazus. Save one. Omares turned back to Memnon as Cophen and Ari went to their brother’s side, cries of anguish wrenched from their breasts. Pharnabazus remained on his horse, head bowed. “You can’t stay with us, Rhodian,” Omares said.

  Memnon shook his head. “No, my friend. I won’t leave. I led you and your men into this and I’ll lead you all out or I’ll spill my blood next to yours.”

  “A fine sentiment,” Omares replied, “but useless. If you die here, the Great King will appoint some Iranian bugger to wage his war for him. He’ll bungle it and a lot of good men will die needlessly. You’re the only one in my reckoning who has the wherewithal to stop Alexander. This battle’s lost. It’s on you to win the war.”

  “He is right, Uncle,” Pharnabazus said, looking up. “Darius will realize his mistake in not putting you in supreme command, and he will move swiftly to rectify the matter. Only through your generalship do we have any hope of recovering the Hellespont. But to lead us, you must live …”