by Oden, Scott
The Rhodian stirred. “Autophradates, send to Cos and have the balance of the fleet brought over.”
“They will be here before noon,” the admiral assured him.
Memnon nodded. “We’ll start by evacuating the wounded. Orontobates, I’m leaving you with a thousand men to garrison Salmacis and Arconessus, and a flotilla of ships to secure the harbor.”
Orontobates glanced around in confusion. “Leaving?” he said. “What do you mean?”
“Is Halicarnassus not the seat of your satrapy? When I leave, someone will need to stay behind to maintain a Persian presence. Who better than the satrap himself?” Memnon shifted his gaze to the other officers. All save Ephialtes and Amyntas apprehended his meaning, and their faces displayed varied levels of relief. The two remaining Greeks, however, glowered.
“You’re just going to give it to him?” Ephialtes snarled. “Give Alexander the city?”
Amyntas stood and paced. “I didn’t spill my blood here so you could cut and run when things heat up!”
Memnon checked his temper. He looked from one man to the other, from Athenian to Macedonian; both had reason to hate Alexander, but they were motivated by pride—Ephialtes to redress the insult to Athenian supremacy, and Amyntas to advance his own petty ambitions. Neither could see what lay beyond the tips of their own noses. “When King Xerxes marched on Hellas nearly a century-and-a-half ago,” Memnon said slowly, “was the outcome of the war decided in the pass of Thermopylae? No, gentlemen, it wasn’t. But Hellas needed Thermopylae in order to prepare themselves for the victories at Salamis and Plataea. Halicarnassus is no Thermopylae, but it has served its purpose. Nor am I just giving the city to Alexander, as you put it. He’s purchased it with his most precious commodity—the blood of his men. But, what has he purchased my friends? Not a harbor, because we will maintain control of that. Not the harbor forts, because Orontobates will hold those in the name of the Great King. What has Alexander been fighting for control of?” Memnon gestured to the Mausoleum. “That? A gaudy pile of stone housing the corpse of a dead tyrant?”
Ephialtes’ scowl faded; the Athenian chuckled. He swallowed the last of his wine, held out his cup for a servant to refill. “Where will we go?”
“Pella,” Memnon replied. “By way of Euboea.”
The words galvanized his officers. Thymondas gave a low whistle. Ephialtes nearly choked on a fresh swallow of wine. Amyntas stopped pacing. By the look on his face, one could tell he was attempting to make sense of what the Rhodian had said. “Why to Pella?” Orontobates asked.
“Taking the war back to Macedonia is the easiest way to drive Alexander from Asia—and that is my mandate from the Great King. It was never my intention to defeat Alexander at Halicarnassus, only to take his measure. That’s done. Now we move on to the real target.”
“The regent Antipatros and his son, Kassandros, command the Home Guard,” Amyntas said, chewing on his lip. “Antipatros is a staunch King’s Man, but Kassandros hates Alexander …”
“And he’ll hate me after we trounce his father,” Memnon said. Amyntas looked skeptical. Obviously, the renegade held Macedonia’s regent in high regard. No matter, Memnon thought. He’d beaten Parmenion; he would beat Antipatros. “But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves, my friends. Before we can invade Macedonia we must first extricate ourselves from Halicarnassus … and give Alexander a final lesson.”
“Have you a plan, Uncle?” Pharnabazus said. Of all the officers, he and Patron showed the least surprise at Memnon’s dynamism—no doubt they were inured to it by virtue of their long association.
Memnon smiled. “I do,” he said. “And it involves those gods-be-damned siege towers.”
THE SUN ROSE THROUGH A PALL OF DUST. FROM THE TRIPYLON’S CENTRAL bastion, Memnon and his nephews watched as Alexander’s men plodded out to the towers, putting their shoulders to the wheels and moving the massive structures back to their fighting positions. Sappers filed after them, followed by battalions of archers and shield-bearers, Agrianian javelineers and armored Foot Companions. Even from this distance Memnon could sense an air of indifference about them.
“Remember what I told you, Thymondas?” the Rhodian said, turning. “On that first day?”
“Beware complacency.”
“Indeed. Complacency is the insidious enemy of siege warfare. It’s like a disease, striking without regard to allegiance or loyalty.” Memnon led the way as the trio descended down to the level of the parapet. All stood in readiness—every man knew his place, what was expected of him. In the shadow of the Tripylon Gate, Amyntas and a thousand lightly armored Greeks bearing torches and incendiaries awaited Memnon’s signal.
“Your targets are the siege towers,” Memnon had told the Macedonian renegade. “Archers will cover you from the walls, but it’s still going to be like walking into a threshing machine. You’ll have to rely on speed, nimbleness, and prayer.”
“We’ll burn those bastards down!”
A second wave would come on their heels. Ephialtes with another thousand Greeks—the heavy infantry, hoplites in full panoply bearing nine-foot spears and broad shields—would pour out, form a phalanx, and strike Alexander’s flankers while their attention rested on the burning towers.
“Your sole purpose is to kill,” he said to the hulking Athenian the night before. Upon hearing this, Ephialtes’ face had lit up like a man in love.
Finally, when the chaos reached its crescendo, Memnon himself would lead out the final wave: two thousand kardakes in close formation. If all went as planned they would split the Macedonian ranks like a hammer and wedge.
If, Memnon thought, leaning against an embrasure and watching the towers roll closer. How can such a small word encompass so many possibilities? Yet battle plans were tenuous by their very nature; even if his men failed to split the enemy apart, at least they would spill a great deal of precious Macedonian blood in the attempt. Memnon straightened. His hip burned, but adrenalin masked the pain of it.
“To your posts,” he said to Pharnabazus and Thymondas. “It’s almost time.” Thymondas would command the archers on the wall of the Horn, Pharnabazus at the Tripylon Gate. Of his remaining officers, Orontobates was overseeing the restocking of the harbor fortresses while Patron and Autophradates loaded the wounded, and any excess equipment, on the ships.
No trumpets heralded the commencement of the day’s fighting. As the towers lumbered into range the archers on the wall loosed their arrows—a drizzle at first, then a rain, and finally a hail. Iron-heads struck the timbers and hidebound planking of the towers with a dull crack, punctuated by cries as the occasional shaft threaded a chink in the wood and nailed flesh. Sling bullets whirred and clacked, ricocheting off bronze or wood, shattering into lead fragments that peppered the attackers on the ground.
Sporadic at first, Macedonian archers matched volley for volley once the towers found their marks and the wheels were spiked down. The men inside those infernal machines turned their attention to the rams, and within minutes the walls of Halicarnassus resounded with their thunderous crashes. Each paired impact sent vibrations running through the parapet.
Finally, the katapeltoi engaged the walls, their stones and darts aimed for positions on the flanks of the siege towers in an effort to negate the Persians ability to shoot down on the men behind them. By midmorning, all of Alexander’s assets were about the task of reducing the ramparts of the city.
Only then did Memnon give the signal for the assault to begin.
A horn blasted, the trumpeter holding it for a long note. Atop the Tripylon, Pharnabazus ordered the bridge lowered; the gates crashed open and Amyntas, howling like a madman, led his men out, their fiery brands held aloft.
Arrows sheeted from the battlements. Disdaining cover, Thymondas’s archers stood and loosed with reckless abandon. Most were Cretans, men who crawled from their mothers’ wombs bow in hand and who could shoot eight iron-heads in the span of a minute. On this day, their skill rivaled that of the Archer, Apollo. Ev
en the Persians, themselves no slouches with the bow, kept the Cretans’ furious pace, creating a storm of slaughter among the Macedonians.
Though Memnon could not gauge their progress from the ground, he gave Amyntas to the count of one hundred before he loosed the hoplites. Ephialtes, with the fearsome visage of snake-haired Medusa in bas-relief on the chest of his cuirass, held his spear aloft, bellowing, “Kill the sons of bitches!” Then, in two columns, he and his men marched at the double through the Tripylon Gate and into battle.
Skeins of smoke drifted from the siege towers; embattled soldiers plied the salpinx, its desperate howl echoed and redoubled by those battalions in Ephialtes’ path. It was a cry for help.
Memnon turned from the sounds of fighting and walked among his kardakes. Many of them were survivors of the Granicus, hard-bitten men who burned to avenge that slight on their honor. In their ranks, though, stood silver-haired veterans of Lake Manyas, soldiers who remembered Artabazus’s rule and who were with the old satrap and his family at Dascylium. In their eyes it was Memnon who sprang from Zeus’s loins, not that upstart, Alexander.
“Do you hear those horns?” Memnon began, his voice carrying despite the din of battle that poured through the still-open gates. “Do you? Have you ever heard such wild and off-key bellowing? Fear fills their lungs and they blow their horns from want of succor! Those horns will bring Alexander to us!” Spears clashed on shields; Memnon’s sword flashed in the sun. “Let’s go forth and greet him in a manner he won’t soon forget! Forward by column! At the double!”
An aulos flute marked cadence as the Persian soldiers hustled out the Tripylon Gate. It clanged shut behind them, only to be opened when Pharnabazus heard the signal to withdraw. Beyond the walls, Memnon could see better the havoc his men wrought. The base of one siege tower burned; the other two smoldered, needing only the application of an incendiary to burst into open flames. Amyntas’s men tangled with Alexander’s light troops while the archers on the walls dueled with their Macedonian counterparts. Already, Ephialtes’ phalanx scythed through the unprepared battalions of Foot Companions, driving them back, their advance angling left to engage the siege engines, as well.
Memnon guided his kardakes into the gap between Ephialtes and Amyntas. Dust and smoke cloaked the field, choking friend and foe, alike. In the chaos, whole companies intent on rescuing the siege towers passed in front of the Persian spearmen. The kardakes struck mercilessly, splitting their ranks wide open and scattering men in all directions.
The battle raged throughout the day. The fires died out, quenched in part by the blood of the slain. For hours, the Persians had the upper hand as their archers kept the Macedonian cavalry from entering the fray; nor could Alexander bring reinforcements from the other gates—the young king feared catastrophic sorties from those points, should he turn his back on them. He had to contain the assault with the troops at hand.
Ephialtes took the Persian left as far as the line of katapeltoi. The Athenian’s hoplites slaughtered the engineers, wrecking several of the machines before they were hit with a Macedonian counterattack. Alexander’s veterans, men of Philip’s era, cursed their younger brethren as whelps and cowards even as they engaged the Greeks—phalanx against phalanx, sarissa against spear. The longer Macedonian pikes proved their worth once again, driving the hoplites back toward the Tripylon.
The Rhodian felt the timbre of the battle change. His left compacted; the soldiers his kardakes faced, a mix of Thracian peltasts and Macedonian hill-fighters, fought with redoubled fury as the veterans spiked into the Persian ranks.
A screaming Thracian leapt on Memnon’s shield, dragging it down as a second man, a blood-spattered Macedonian, came at him with axe and knife. He didn’t even take two steps before a kardakes over Memnon’s shoulder rammed his spear straight into the Macedonian’s sternum. Bone shivered and cracked. The Thracian, realizing his ploy had failed, looked up as the Rhodian’s blade sheared through his skull.
The tide of the battle definitely turned. They were being forced back, Memnon reckoned, and with mounting casualties. We can do no more. Content with the enemy blood soaking the ground, Memnon called for his trumpeter to sound withdrawal …
TWILIGHT’S MANTLE LAY OVER HALICARNASSUS. STARS BLAZED, COLD AND aloof, their patterns shaped by the deeds of gods and men. By their thin light Memnon took measure of the dead. Of the four thousand men who fought in the assault, fifteen hundred still lay on the field. Another thousand bore wounds, a third of those serious. A quarter of the seven hundred Cretans atop the walls would never return to their sea-girt island. The balance of them displayed with pride the marks of arrow, stone, and fire.
Ephialtes died fighting Alexander’s veterans—Philip’s men—those very soldiers who had shamed his polis on the field at Chaeronea. By all accounts, the hulking Athenian took a few of them with him on the long road to Tartarus.
Amyntas, too, was slain—his head hacked off by a pair of rival clansmen who recognized him. Memnon could do nothing to recover his body or even to prevent it from being dishonored. Such was a renegade’s fate, and Amyntas well knew it. Ephialtes at least would be buried with the rest of the Persian dead, for that was Alexander’s way. Not so Amyntas. Memnon said a prayer for the Macedonian’s shade.
“What now, my lord?” a soldier asked, his face unrecognizable beneath a mask of blood. Memnon clapped him on the shoulder and walked on, through the heart of the agora as it quickly filled with troops. The wounded had gone to the ships; seeing the whole of the fleet anchored off Halicarnassus, the rest of the garrison milled about, waiting for orders. They sensed a change.
Pharnabazus and Patron wrangled a couple of blocks into the agora’s center, creating a makeshift plinth. The Rhodian ascended to it. At a gesture, his trumpeter sounded assembly. Men pressed closer, listening. His words would be relayed to every corner of the agora.
For a moment, Memnon said nothing. He looked out over the sea of upturned faces, some bandaged and bloody, all covered in the dust of a city not their own. In every visage, he read a tale of bone-crushing weariness, grief, and pain. What did they read in his?
“There was a time,” he began, “when I could spool off a speech faster than an Athenian demagogue. My father was an orator, you see, and men claimed I inherited his gift. Perhaps, perhaps not. For myself, I make no such boast. If I speak well it’s because of you, my brothers; your deeds have given me a foundation on which to construct a flimsy tower of words. By all the gods, you make me proud! All of you!” They responded in kind, cheering the Rhodian on until he raised a hand for silence.
He continued. “This city came under my custody bearing a price for its walls, a price quoted in blood! Not ours, my friends, but Alexander’s! He’s met that price, and then some! Now, we must relinquish Halicarnassus to him!” Cries of “no!” and “stay and fight!” erupted from the assembly. Memnon raised his hands again, shouted over them. “He’s bought it, friends! Paid for it with his most precious possession—Macedonian blood! And he can have it! Aye, he can! For you and I, my brothers, have greater things to accomplish! What’s this one city compared to the whole of the Aegean?”
The agora exploded in wild screams. Sword hilts and spear shafts clashed on shields, on armor. Soldiers chanted Memnon’s name until the stones threatened to crack. Let the whelp have Halicarnassus! They would seize the Aegean, perhaps Hellas itself! It took another blast of the trumpet to bring them under control.
“We’re done here, brothers!” Memnon said. “When Alexander rises tomorrow we’ll be long gone, and his men will be able to see for themselves what their comrades died for.” The Rhodian pointed off to his right, to the massive Mausoleum. Laughter rippled through the crowd. Slowly, they broke up and filed down to the harbor, placated; they would board the ships secure in the knowledge that their own sacrifices at Halicarnassus were for a greater good.
Pharnabazus helped his uncle down from the plinth. The wound in the Rhodian’s hip reopened during the day, leaving his band
ages sodden with blood, and the pain a deeper throb than ever before. “The gift is there,” the Persian said. “No matter how much you deny it.”
Memnon sighed, looked up at the stars. It was the time of night he missed Barsine most. “Will the gift ever be for peace, I wonder?”
INTERLUDE VI
“HALICARNASSUS WAS A MACEDONIAN VICTORY ONLY IN THE STRICTEST sense,” Harmouthes said. “Alexander occupied the city, yes. But at a terrible price.” The Egyptian looked at Barsine. She slept restlessly. Her eyes flared open every little while as she fought to breathe. Her struggles ebbed, growing less frantic.
Ariston pursed his lips. “Is she …?”
“She is in Lord Osiris’s hands now. We can do nothing more.”
“I’m sorry, Harmouthes.”
The Egyptian gave the young man a sharp look. “I will not mourn her yet,” he said. “She fights the summons into the West. She may yet save herself.”
Ariston sighed. “What became of Memnon’s plan to transfer the war to Euboea?”
Harmouthes rose from Barsine’s bedside and went to the window, cracking it a little so he could inhale the cold night air. Stars shone through jagged rips in the clouds. “He pursued it after Halicarnassus, but uprisings against him on Chios and Lesbos threatened to delay his plans. No one knew how long the fickle Spartans would wait for him, so he spent the winter retaking those islands, reinstalling their garrisons and delivering crushing retributions; fighting when he should have been healing.” Harmouthes pulled the window shut and returned to his bedside vigil. He stroked Barsine’s brow; she murmured in her sleep. “Chios proved as effortless as before, as did four of the five cities of Lesbos, thanks to his cousin, Aristonymus.” The Egyptian sighed. “Mytilene, though …”
MYTILENE
YEAR 3 OF THE 111TH OLYMPIAD
(EARLY 333 BCE)