Memnon

by Oden, Scott

  “You have my word,” he said, releasing her. “It’s time.” Memnon escorted her to the head of the gangplank, handed her down to Cophen. “Take care of yourself, lad, and watch over my most precious treasures.”

  Cophen smiled. “Like they were my own, Uncle.”

  With leaden steps, Memnon returned to the quay. Once clear, sailors drew the plank onboard, cast off the mooring ropes, and prodded Hesione away with punting poles. The captain bellowed for the rowers to “man the ash”; oars emerged from the ports, creaking as an auletes set the rhythm by piping a tune on his flute. The ship backed water. It spun away from the quay, putting its bow to the sea.

  A sudden commotion in the stern caught the Rhodian’s eye. Barsine appeared at the railing. Wind tugged at strands of hair that escaped from beneath her shawl. She raised her fingers to her lips …

  Memnon stood and watched, burning her image into his memory, until Hesione vanished around the headland. “Watch over them, Lord Poseidon. I beg of you,” he whispered. With a sigh, Memnon turned and left the harbor.

  LONG SHADOWS STRIPED THE WALLS OF THE HOUSE BY THE TIME MEMNON returned to the estate. On the portico, golden light filtered through the oak leaves that gave the place its name. A profound sense of emptiness struck him as he crossed the threshold; even the paving stones missed the sound of children playing, the soft tread of Barsine’s slippered feet.

  Voices drew him to the courtyard, where he found Thymondas hunched over the map table. Nor was he alone. To Memnon’s surprise, Pharnabazus stood across from him. Though filthy from weeks of near-constant riding, the Persian flashed a triumphant smile upon seeing Memnon.

  “I pray you bring good news,” the Rhodian said, his mood black.

  Pharnabazus grabbed his arm. “His Majesty has made his decision, Uncle. Letters have gone out to every satrap and garrison left in the West.” “And?”

  “On Father’s advice, the Great King has appointed you supreme commander of the Asian war, on land and sea! He bids you exterminate this Macedonian threat in whatever manner that you deem most expedient, no matter where it takes you. He asks only that you send Alexander to Susa in chains, if the opportunity arises.”

  Thymondas grunted. “This changes things.”

  “It gives us a much needed edge.” The Rhodian exhaled. He felt the fetters of subservience drop from his limbs. This will be my war, my Egypt. “Thymondas, you and I will leave before dawn. Pharnabazus, you’ll bring the fleet up from Egypt and Cyprus.”

  “How many vessels?”

  “All of them!” Memnon snarled. “It’s time we taught Alexander a lesson!”

  INTERLUDE V

  BARSINE’S CONDITION WORSENED WITH EACH PASSING HOUR. WAS IT the emotion involved in reliving the past? Or perhaps it was the advanced nature of her illness coupled with her refusal of the old Egyptian’s concoction? Whatever the culprit, Ariston could only watch in despair as her breathing grew shallow and labored, as sweat slicked her feverish forehead. She lay on her side; Harmouthes sat behind her, patting her back as one would a child’s in hopes of loosening the humors clogging her lungs.

  “Last … last time!” Barsine hissed through clenched teeth, bloody spittle flecking the coverlet. “L-Last time I s-saw him!”

  “Mistress, please!” Harmouthes said, wiping her lips with the sleeve of his robe. “Let me prepare you a draft! I beg of you!”

  “No!” Spasms wracked her body; a fit of coughing not even her silver chest could abate. Her hands knotted around it. “Almost … time!” she croaked. “H-Halicarnassus! Tell him …!”

  Ariston leaned forward. “I know about Halicarnassus, madam. After Ephesus, which Alexander took without a struggle, he marched south to Miletus, reduced it, and set his sights on Halicarnassus. It’s an impressive city. I have been there, seen the ruins of the siege. Some of the old soldiers lived nearby and were eager to tell the tale.”

  “Macedonians?” Harmouthes asked. Ariston nodded. “Then you know but a fraction of the truth, young sir. The flatterers of Alexander have scoured the official records clean of anything derogatory toward their king. His former soldiers have scoured it even from their memories. I am sure they told you that Halicarnassus was an unequivocal Macedonian victory.”

  “To be fair,” Ariston said, “Alexander did take the city.”

  Harmouthes glanced at Barsine. Though she wanted to speak, her fight for each breath left her with little to expend on words. Tears glistened in her eyes. Harmouthes sighed, stroked her damp brow. “Alexander did not take the city, Ariston. Memnon gave it to him …”

  HALICARNASSUS

  YEAR 3 OF THE 111TH OLYMPIAD

  (LATE 334 BCE)

  22

  HALICARNASSUS IS A ROCK.

  That thought ran through Memnon’s mind as he walked the high battlements at sunrise, stopping now and again to peer through an embrasure at the deep ditch ringing the landward side of the city. A remarkably defensible location, besides its dry moat Halicarnassus boasted forty-foot walls with towers at close intervals, three fortified gates, a walled acropolis, and two citadels—Salmacis in the west and Arconessus in the east—guarding the mouth of the harbor. Springs and cisterns provided ample fresh water, and so long as his fleet controlled this part of the Aegean Memnon could re-supply the place at will. Not just a rock, the Rhodian thought as he ascended a series of steps to the highest point of the city—the wall above the acropolis, but an atoll poised to wreck the Macedonian advance.

  Spread out below him, the city resembled a theater. Its harbor-side agora was the orchestra (the “dancing floor,” as his men called it), and in a semicircle above rose successive tiers of stone, mudbrick, and plaster—houses, shops, and factories that were shaded by myrtle, boxwood, and scrubby oak. Its beauty, its simplicity, rivaled that of Assos save for one piece of architectural folly. On the terrace above the agora squatted a monolith that, in Memnon’s eyes, represented nothing but raw and unapologetic hybris: the unfinished tomb of Mausolus, the Mausoleum.

  Massive even from the height of the acropolis, the Mausoleum had a podium base of white marble topped by an expansive colonnade and a step pyramid. At its apex one hundred sixty-five feet above the ground a statue group of Mausolus and his queen-sister, Artemisia, riding in a four-horse chariot gleamed in the morning sun. Scaffolds marked where a quartet of sculptors and an army of apprentices carried out their work despite the threat of war. Already, he could hear the ring of hammers, the creak of ropes.

  Memnon shook his head. He had no reservations about pillaging that eyesore of its marble and brick—the dead tyrant’s memory be damned!—should he need it for the city’s defenses. He’d rip up the very paving stones and fling them over the walls himself if it came down to it.

  The Rhodian passed into the shadowed heart of a tower, its cool air spiced with the tang of smoke, sweat, and oiled leather, and took a flight of stairs down to the level of the acropolis. Outside on the grassy sward soldiers assigned to the tower busied themselves sharpening and greasing the heads of stockpiled arrows. Nearby, in the shade of an old boxwood tree, a troop of slingers filed grooves in their lead bullets, etching slogans in the soft metal—‘take that!’ or ‘regards.’

  One fellow, a jolly-faced killer from Cos, separated his bullets into piles, each lot bearing the name of one of the twelve gods of Olympus. “Who should get the extras, sir,” he called out as Memnon passed. “Zeus or Poseidon?”

  The Rhodian grinned. “Ares.” Their chuckles followed him down to the next terrace of the acropolis, where a knot of officers awaited him on the steps of the temple of Zeus Polias. Pharnabazus and Thymondas stood together, talking in low voices; Ephialtes sat on the steps, slicing sections from an apple with his belt knife. Memnon’s fleet commander, Autophradates, a slender Mede with heavy-lidded eyes and sleek black hair, waited with two men the Rhodian barely knew. The first, Orontobates, was a freebooter from Susa who had finagled his way into becoming satrap of Caria; an unassuming man of average height, his serpe
ntine eyes reminded Memnon of Artaxerxes Ochus. The second man, Amyntas, son of Antiochus, was a renegade Macedonian with the pale skin and russet hair of a Lynkestid. If he could be believed, his family’s ties to Philip’s assassin, Pausanias, sparked a blood feud with Alexander. Already, the young king had executed two of Amyntas’s brothers.

  “Gentlemen,” Memnon said. “All is prepared?”

  In unison, the assembled officers nodded assent. “The bulk of the fleet awaits your orders on Cos,” Autophradates said. “Per your wishes, one squadron is moored in the harbor and another is north, across the peninsula, in the Bay of Mendelia.”

  “All of the city’s magazines and stocks are overflowing,” Pharnabazus said. “We have enough supplies in place to withstand a siege of many months, should the fleet be needed elsewhere.”

  “And the men,” Memnon said, “are they ready to fight?”

  “More than ready,” Ephialtes grunted.

  “Morale,” Thymondas added, “is as high as I’ve seen. Some of the citizens, though, grumble and complain that we are heavy-handed tyrants and should be supplanted.”

  “Orontobates?”

  “I will root them out, General,” the Persian said, glaring at Thymondas.

  “See that you do.” Memnon turned and looked out over the city. He gestured to the tomb of Mausolus. “There is a certain irony at work here. The bastard buried under that monstrosity was responsible, in a round about way, for my father’s murder. Now I’m defending his city from Alexander.” He turned to Orontobates. “How well did you know the commander of Sardis?”

  “Mithrenes?” The satrap shrugged. “Not well.”

  “So you’re not one of those malcontents who would betray your rightful king for a whore’s wages?”

  “Do not be absurd!” Orontobates bristled, his face darkening in anger. “Who are you to question my loyalty to the Great King?”

  “Your lord and master, by the grace of His Majesty, and your executioner should I sense the slightest air of perfidy about you!” Memnon stared at his other officers, especially Orontobates and Amyntas. “The same warning applies to every man under my command, so bear witness: play me false and I swear—by the shade of my murdered father and by the foul waters of the river Styx!—you will not live to enjoy it! Understood?” With no dissent forthcoming, the Rhodian gave a curt nod. “Dismissed. Pharnabazus, Thy-mondas, I would speak with you.”

  The other four headed off to their commands—Orontobates to Arconessus, Ephialtes to Salmacis, Autophradates to the harbor, and Amyntas to the main gate. When they were alone, Memnon turned to his nephews. “Any word from Patron?”

  “Nothing yet,” Pharnabazus replied. Memnon frowned. He had sent the Phocaean to Crete, to meet with emissaries of the Spartan king, Agis; the Rhodian knew he would need the red-cloaked warriors of Sparta if he hoped to invade Macedonia. But could he trust them? That was the gist of Patron’s mission, to gauge Spartan disgust with Alexander’s rule of greater Hellas and to see if they were amenable to an alliance.

  “I want to know the moment he returns. This—”

  A noise interrupted the Rhodian. The sentry on the tower above raised an alarm by striking with the butt of his spear a bronze shield hanging from a tripod. Other sentries along the circuit of the wall took up the alarm, until harsh clanging resounded over the city. Sparta would have to wait …

  “To your posts,” Memnon said, his lips curled into a mirthless grin. “Our guests are arriving.”

  DUST. IN THE DRY HEAT OF BOEDROMION, THIRTY THOUSAND MEN, THEIR animals and machines, kicked up billowing clouds of it, a choking yellow haze that hung over Alexander’s army like a shroud. Little detail could be discerned save the flash and glitter of their weapons as the column wound its way through the hills east of Halicarnassus.

  Memnon watched their progress from the acropolis tower. A constant stream of aides and messengers reported to him or hurried off on their assigned tasks. From Ephialtes came word that scouts had been spotted surveying the land outside the eastern gate—called the Mylasa Gate after the town twenty-five miles inland that Halicarnassus had supplanted as capital of Caria. Memnon ordered Thy mondas to bring up two peltast battalions, over a thousand light troops, to reinforce the Mylasa Gate and the adjacent wall connecting it to Arconessus. He sent Pharnabazus to marshal platoons of heavier troops, hoplites and kardakes, in the agora, making them ready to move to wherever the fiercest fighting would be.

  The sun traversed the brilliant blue sky. By midday excitement had abated; wary, soldiers stood at ease, their weapons never more than a hands breadth away. Memnon walked the wall from the acropolis to the Mylasa Gate. He stopped often, talking with the men of the different tower garrisons, the archers and slingers and crewmen of the dart-throwing katapeltoi. He had a polyglot of Greeks and barbarians under his command—veterans of the Granicus alongside green recruits of the Carian hills, proud patriots fighting for their homeland standing elbow to elbow with mercenaries lusting for plunder. Memnon welcomed renegades of every stripe: Thebans burning to redress the destruction of their polis, Macedonians who could not stomach the rule of a half-Epirote bastard, Athenians whose wounded pride would not accept submission. Though divided by ideology and culture, the soldiers defending Halicarnassus shared one thing in common: a belief that Memnon the Rhodian would deliver them from the son of Philip.

  A belief Memnon was loath to discourage.

  Reaching the Mylasa Gate, he found Thymondas leaning against the battlement, watching the Macedonians through the veil of dust, a half-mile distant and tugging his beard in thought. Ephialtes joined them from Salmacis on the other side of the city, the Athenian’s bull-like shoulders clad in bronze, the head of Medusa in raised relief on the chest-plate of his armor.

  “What are they doing?” Memnon asked.

  Thymondas shrugged. “Well, they’ve reconnoitered the walls. Mostly the engineers have kept their distance, but one of the bastards tried to get close to the ditch. He scuttled off before the archers had a chance to drill him. Otherwise, they look to be erecting camp.”

  “No heralds? No offers to parley?”

  Ephialtes grimaced and spat. “Why would the little shit-stain waste his breath? Hades’ teeth! Lure him within arm’s reach and I’ll plant my spear in his bunghole—though I’d likely have to kill that boyfriend of his just to make room!”

  Memnon fixed the Athenian with a look that could scorch iron. “You’re here to fight Alexander, not to malign him.” The Rhodian remained silent for a time, watching Alexander’s men through squinted eyes. Finally, he turned to Mentor’s son. “Do you know what the greatest enemy of both besieger and besieged is, Thymondas? Complacency … the boredom of repetition. When you perform a task enough times you become numb to its dangers. Alexander thinks we will wait behind our walls for him to launch the opening salvo.”

  “Will we?” Thymondas said.

  “No. I think we’ll remind him how dangerous this business of war can be.” Memnon clapped his by-blow nephew on the shoulder and descended from the Mylasa Gate. He dispatched runners to the agora, to the fortresses of Arconessus and Salmacis, to the acropolis, and to the main gate with orders to stand ready. Something was about to happen …

  Memnon assembled a mixed force—a thousand light troops, slingers and archers, around a core of five hundred hoplites; two hundred mounted kardakes would guard their flanks. To the cavalrymen, Memnon ordered that torches be distributed. “Get in, wreck havoc, get out,” the Rhodian said, striding up and down the column. “Burn what you can, even if it’s just a pile of brambles. Men, horses, stores, tents—everything is fair game. Keep hammering at them until you hear the long note of the trumpet. After that, disengage and get back to the city. Understood?” Soldiers rattled their weapons in approval.

  The setting sun flooded Halicarnassus with ruddy light. Memnon looked up to the battlements atop the Mylasa Gate. “Thymondas! Any change?”

  “None!” The son of Mentor leaned over where Memnon
could see him. “The dust is settling. They’ve kindled their cook fires.”

  “Good.” Memnon drew his sword. “Open the gates!”

  Ropes snapped and hinges creaked as mule teams dragged the portal open. As with the two other gates of the city, the Mylasa Gate had sixteen-foot doors of ironbound oak, studded with bronze roundels and daubed black. Simultaneously, men atop the battlements lowered the wooden bridge that spanned the dry moat. Speed was of the essence. Chains rattled on stone. Voices yelled warning as gravity caught the bridge and brought it crashing down; before it could settle into place, Memnon and his troops surged out and across.

  A half-mile separated the walls of Halicarnassus from Alexander’s camp. With the sun at their backs, the Persians came into missile range before the Macedonian pickets raised the alarm. Memnon heard their shouts, heard the blare of a salpinx.

  “Fan out!” he bellowed. “Fan out!” His horsemen spurred their mounts to a gallop, torches crackling, fanned by the breeze. Sling bullets hummed. Archers drew and loosed, targeting the pickets who stubbornly held their ground and died on it. Memnon saw a lead bullet take a trumpeter in the throat, silencing his salpinx in a foaming rush of blood.

  His cavalry converged on the outskirts of the camp, tossed their torches into tents, into stands of sarissas. Flames erupted. Black smoke belched into the air, masking the fading light and adding to the chaos. Memnon sent his hoplites forward; archers softened their advance with volley after volley. The slingers used a more surgical approach by targeting individuals: men stumbling from tents, half-armored soldiers lunging for their weapons, officers roaring orders.

  Memnon hung back from the fighting. He focused his attention on the heart of the camp, on where the inevitable counterattack would originate. Soon, Alexander would realize the limit of this sortie and mobilize his entire corps. His officers would rein in their men, their iron discipline would reassert itself, and they would seek to push the Persians back. Better yet, the Companions would try to cut off their retreat, reach the Mylasa Gate before it could be closed. Memnon could not allow it. His men had one more minute before he ordered their withdrawal.