The Ten Thousand

by Michael Curtis Ford

  Something snapped inside me, that instinct for self-preservation with which all men are born and which to a greater or lesser extent governs all our activities. At that moment, that instinct died, and I did things that no sane man should do. Throwing my shield up to my face to guard against the thrusting spears, I raced blindly into the Persian lines, slashing at any living being I could find, parrying and blocking in desperation. To my surprise, I suddenly found no resistance, as the enemy troops simply parted to let me pass through, a single maddened Greek being of little consequence to the Persians intent upon rushing the Boeotian fire and screaming camp followers. Each Persian soldier assumed that the man at his shoulder would dispatch me instead.

  I did not let Asteria leave my sight, and although the entire lapse since she had been dragged kicking from the tent could not have been more than a minute, it seemed like an eternity to me as I hacked my way after her. When I had advanced to within several yards, her eyes fixed on me; though it is impossible that she could have known who I was through the helmet and nasal shrouding my face, and the sheets of blood and gore on my breastplate and limbs, a gleam of recognition seemed to spark in her eyes, reviving her from her half-strangled state. Suddenly summoning every fiber of strength remaining to her, her eyes bulging and her face an apoplectic red, she dug her feet once more into the ground, seized the silk fabric that had knotted and bunched around her throat in the guard's grasp, and pulled with all her might, ripping the robe from neck to waist.

  The sudden release of her weight as she fell to her buttocks on the ground threw the struggling guard off balance, and he pitched forward onto his face. I was still several yards away, but just then was confronted by a Persian cavalryman who was startled to realize that a single, armed Greek was racing rampant through the middle of his lines. The man reined in his horse just in front of me, and with an evil grin raised his battle-axe, preparing to split my head like a melon. It was all I could do to tear my eyes off Asteria, who sat panting on the ground, ripping at the shreds of the long robe entangling her neck and legs. The guard who had been dragging her was struggling to regain his feet, hampered by the unwieldy cavalry armor he was wearing and the rushing mobs of men surrounding him and knocking him off balance.

  I turned my attention to the rearing horse in front of me, and putting my head down, dove with every ounce of strength directly into the horse's belly. I felt the metal edge of my helmet crest bite deep into the soft solar plexus, and sensing, rather than hearing, his enormous gasp as the air exploded out of his diaphragm and lungs. I bounced back away from the horse from the shock of the impact and the rider's battle-axe cut through the air, shearing the crimson horsehair crest of my battle helmet. The animal stumbled in its pain, doubling over and writhing on its side, slathery strings of saliva trailing from its mouth and splattering onto my face and neck, its eyes rolling in terror. The horse's tongue, bleeding from having been bitten in the shock of the blow, lolled crazily out the side of its mouth.

  The rider fell screaming beneath the animal, but I too tripped and fell, and spent precious seconds struggling to my own feet, trying desperately to dodge the flailing hooves. There was scarcely any strength left in my arms and legs, and I tottered like an ox after being poleaxed in a sacrifice. I turned frantically toward the spot I had last seen Asteria. There stood her captor, having finally gained his own feet, still clutching a long piece of silk in his hand like a torn banner, looking befuddled and searching for the girl where she had fallen from his grasp. There on the ground was the remainder of her robe, which she had finally disentangled from her flailing limbs and neck. And there, by now ten yards away and increasing the distance with every second, was fleet-footed Asteria, racing stark naked through the middle of the astonished enemy soldiers, wearing only the courtesan's ruby in her navel and an oversized wicker shield she had snatched from a dead Persian, protecting her from both blades and intemperate stares.

  I leaped over the panting horse I had just felled, landing full in the face of its still struggling rider with my hobnailed leather sandals, and tore after her, laboring to slash with my now-deadened right arm, as she burst out of the Persian lines and scampered nimbly through a gap in the flames of the Boeotian engines like a spooked rabbit. I was not so fleet myself, preferring instead to assume my tried-and-true posture of putting my head down and barreling straight through, hoping for the best. Miraculously, the best occurred, and I too was unscathed by the flames.

  With my last bit of remaining strength, I raced among the mob of followers, who grasped at me as if I were their saving god, as I searched desperately for where Asteria might have run among the chaotic defenses. I finally found her, against all likelihood, and without a thought for her tattered modesty, assisting a line of women with the bellows powering an engine. I rushed up, threw my blood-soaked and torn scarlet cloak over her shoulders, and then assumed my own place among the line of defenders.

  The single rider's thundering hoofbeats had startled Clearchus' troops out of the mechanical marching rhythm into which they had fallen in exhaustion after their battle.

  They were miles away from the camp, seeking the site of Cyrus' battle, and believing themselves to have been victorious on all fronts. Most were praying that they might avoid further engagement that day, for victory in surfeit can drive a man trembling to his knees as much as can defeat, and the men's only wish now was to return to camp, remove their armor, and rest. No one knew of Cyrus' fate, save those who had witnessed it first-hand, and the Greeks simply assumed that he had been successful in the general charge and was marauding and plundering to exhaustion.

  The horseman, blood-soaked and caked with dust and grime, came racing in among the men and tumbled off his mount in his haste as he shouted for Proxenus. As it happened, Proxenus' squire was immediately at hand, and even he took several seconds before recognizing Nicarchus under the layers of dirt and blood.

  "The Persians!" Nicarchus gasped. "The Persians are plundering the camp! Fetch Proxenus!" The astounded squire could not believe his ears-the king was in our camp? Had we been defeated after all? But what of Cyrus? The squire raced through the milling infantry, bellowing at them to continue marching, and found Proxenus and Clearchus riding together, calmly discussing whether to pursue the Persians further or return to camp for the night. Nicarchus came running up and sputtered his news to them without so much as a greeting. Their eyes widening in disbelief, they galloped over to the troops and found them already shifting their direction toward the camp and picking up their pace to a trot even before being ordered. Clearchus ran on foot at the head of his soldiers, brooding darkly on what this might mean.

  When they arrived, the camp was a smoldering ruin. The camp followers wandered about like wraiths, seeking what shelter and food they might salvage. The king's troops had managed to burn or plunder over four hundred wagons of supplies, including most of the barley and wine we had so painfully dragged across the desert. Rather than the hot meal and sleep the weary soldiers had been looking forward to, they settled for filthy water, what few remains of stale bread had survived the plundering, and a blanketless rest on the hard ground.

  But that was not the worst of it. For what Clearchus' reports soon confirmed to us was that Cyrus-the very reason for our long march, and our hope for guidance and supplies on our return back to Greece-had been killed. The Greeks had lost hardly a man in the battle, but we had lost our precious provisions, as well as our leader and benefactor. It was a long, cold night.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I FIRST SAW the faint moving shadow cast on the wall, even before its source, as the intruder slipped silently into Proxenus' tent and moved cautiously toward my cot.

  So many officers' tents had been destroyed in the attack that Proxenus had invited Xenophon and me to move into his own lodgings until better arrangements could be made. Though his tent had been clearly marked by its pennants as an officer's quarters, it had somehow survived the Persians' rampage, and in this way even seemed to the men t
o be a positive sign from the gods, one of ultimate hope and triumph. As Proxenus passed the night with the other officers at Clearchus' own makeshift quarters, sorting through the day's events and planning their strategy for tomorrow, I lay alone, trying to empty my mind of the myriad thoughts and memories that kept crowding in. It was a weakness of mine, from which I have always suffered. I do not know whether other men experience this as well, for I have always been too ashamed to ask, and if they do, I have no doubt but that they too are unable to mention it for fear of being thought mad. I find that just at those times when I most require a clear head-just as I consciously try to clean away the cobwebs, all those extraneous and unrelated passing notions constantly intruding upon my concentration-it is precisely at those times, as if at a signal set by an impish god, that every possible stray thought, every fear, every memory of childhood shame, every twinge of remorse for friends now dead, every haunting echo of the ancient Syracusan chant that drives me nearly mad, all come rushing back into my skull like wind into a void, shouldering each other aside to come to the fore of my thoughts, jostling and being tripped up and muscled to the back by one another. It is enough to drive one mad, and one can see from the careening and jolting of my syntax that I cannot even logically explain the experience. I had been lying there, my overheated brain at the point of driving me to panic, when I saw through the lashes of my half-closed lids that the tent flap had opened slightly and someone had stealthily entered.

  My head instantly cleared. Anyone entering this tent could only have been searching for Proxenus, yet in the soft flickering of the tiny oil lamp perched on my table I could see that it was not Xenophon, as I first thought. Peering more closely, my breath stopped as I recognized the intruder, standing stock-still, profiled in the light in the small space in the center of the tent, her eyes still unaccustomed to the dimness. I pulled back my blanket to sit up, and Asteria, startled, whirled around to face the sound. Her face registered shock as she recognized me, and she stood motionless for a moment, staring at me before stepping silently over to my cot. She was wearing only a light shift and a leather belt, and was barefoot, trembling from the cold, or from the horrors she had seen that day, or from fear as to what would become of her now that her master was dead and she was alone. I could see the dried trails of tears that had streaked through the layer of dust still coating her cheeks as she lay down in my arms, pressing herself to my chest and burying her face in my neck as she emitted a sigh-a long, shuddering, wracking sigh that seemed far too deep for her tiny frame, as if welling up inside her from some secret place, from some time long before.

  I held her tightly, pulling the blanket up over us both and feeling her cold, shivering limbs gently relax and respond to my own body's heat. After a time, the spasms of her sobbing gradually subsided, and she lay quietly in my arms, awake and keeping her own thoughts, her long eyelashes softly brushing my neck with her blinking, and the damp, steamy scent of her breath and hair rising up to my face in the silence. She lifted her head, her face inches from mine in the semidarkness, peering into my eyes, searching my thoughts. By the dim lamplight I could see nothing but the dark silhouette of her long hair, a faint halo of light glowing behind it, the odor of charred wood and crushed flowers from her skin and hair oddly comforting. I put my hands on either side of her face, my fingertips in her hair where I could feel the broken shaft of a small feather, like a shattered lance, which she had woven into the strands, painstakingly sifted from the ashes of her burned possessions in an attempt to salvage some last remnant of adornment. I shifted my body slightly and turned her face into the dim light, to discern her expression. As I did so, I looked intently into the flickering shadows passing before her and revealing her, watching as the penumbra lifted from the depths between her brows and cheekbones. I waited for her eyes to appear from the darkness as does a seer fearfully observing the emergence of the moon after an eclipse, and feeling the same tremors and uncertainty as he would in divining the gods' intent. Eyes like hers had never before been seen, at least not in this world, and in the darkness their coloring, whether blue, gray or green, was unknowable. The true color may have been any or all of them, depending upon the quality of the outer light, or of the inner thought they concealed. Later, in the days to come, I would see them turn as black and unfathomable as the ocean depths when one peers over the side of a ship, and in her sleep, under her half-closed lids, the orbits would gleam a brilliant, gelid white, like a sliver of ice on an eave glinting both refreshingly and deadly in the sun.

  She seemed to be questioning in her mind, divining the oracle, and she apparently received a positive response from the gods, for suddenly she pressed her warm, sweet mouth to mine, harder than I would have thought possible for one seemingly so fragile; and then I felt her moist, flowerlike lips gliding lightly, but with increasing pressure, over my neck and chest as I slipped off her thin garment, which had been tied with a belt holding an enormous, sheathed dagger, and I wrapped my arms around her, and we gave each other much solace.

  I lay awake most of that night, watching as the fear and worry gradually left her tense face and her features relaxed into a blissful dream, or perhaps merely into nothingness, into an empty place where the absence of pain and fear, even of love, is the greatest happiness of all. I drifted off for a few minutes at a time, waking at the slightest noise, the discreet coughing of a sentry pacing outside, and then falling back again into a fitful dream. I was asleep, or so she thought, when she finally arose an hour before the first hint of dawn had lit the eastern sky. I watched as if in a dream, through barely opened eyes, as she pulled her shift back down over her slender body and tightened the leather belt around her waist. To this day, I am unsure whether I continued to watch, or had slipped back into dreaming, when she silently drew her knife, considered it closely for a minute in the semidarkness, and then carefully, noiselessly, not daring to touch me with her hand or sleeve for fear of waking me, brought the razor-sharp tip up to the pulsing, blue vein in my neck just below the jaw. Whether truly awake or merely dreaming, I feigned the deepest sleep, fearing that the slightest gesture or flicker of my eyes, the softest catch of my breath, would cause the dagger to be plunged into my throat. She held the tip there for what seemed like minutes, as motionless as one who has seen a gorgon, staring into my just-closed eyes, daring the slightest response. My soul slipped away from my body and floated through her, behind her, to the ceiling of the tent, and I could see her from above, leaning over my frozen body, the tendons in her wrist tense and quivering from the strain of holding the knife in perfect stillness at my neck.

  A small drop of blood appeared on my skin just below the tip of the knife, pure and clean, virginal in comparison to the gushing, grime-filled gore I had witnessed the previous day, and seemed just about to slowly make its streaked path down the side of my neck, when it paused, as if to consider whether this was the best course of action, and began slowly to coalesce and gel. This I could see, by all the gods I swear I could see, as if I were a third person in the room, watching helpless and voiceless from behind her back. The drop quivered and hung, like a bead on a necklace, its increasing inner weight straining against its thickening surface, and my eyes from above were unable to focus on anything other than that tiny, malignant, reddish black globe, reflecting, upside down, the wavering flame of the lamp and the oddly distorted and magnified face of the girl. I could see from the reflection that her eyes, too, were focused on the drop as if in a trance, considering all the implications to her life and to mine that were represented in that silently swelling little mass, that tiny, pregnant bulb, which itself appeared to be endowed with growing life, rather than merely reflective of it, and of death.

  Without warning she straightened up, bringing the knife again to her eyes and examining the reddened tip for a moment in the soft lamplight, before shaking her head as one does when waking from a deep sleep, and slipping the knife quickly back into the sheath at her belt. She bent down again, silently licked the tiny red
drop from my neck with her hot tongue, and just as silently kissed my dry and trembling lips. She then slipped back out to the cold coals of her campfire, as wraithlike as she had entered, and my soul came rushing back into my body, leaving me gasping for breath and shaking in cold perspiration, sitting up alone in the cot as if waking from a nightmare. We had said nothing to each other the entire night, indeed we had never yet spoken a word to each other, but I felt my fate as entirely in the hands of this woman as of the gods, and I realized what an extraordinary, and damnable thing that can be.

  BOOK SIX

  CLEARCHUS

  His white head and gray beard in the dust,

  breathing the last of his strong soul, bloody

  entrails grasped in his beloved hands…

  – LYCURGUS

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT WAS THE stench that finally roused me from my fitful dreams that morning-a smoky, sweet odor not unlike that of meat roasting for the sacrifice, but with an indefinable rankness, as of the burning of tainted flesh, of meat lacking in fat to absorb the heat and flame and allow the fire to cook the substance gradually, rather than rapidly charring it. I rose groggily from my cot, splashed a handful of water on my face from the skin hanging on a peg by the door, and stepped outside.

  The morning sky, by contrast with the usual whitish blue palette that spawns and accompanies the desert heat, was today a glowering, malignant yellowish gray. The air was fouled by a vile, stinking smoke that hung low to the ground and drifted as if alive, swirling slowly in small circles, dissipating and coagulating, meandering serpentlike in futile paths that began in death and ended in reluctant oblivion. The churning haze effaced the life-giving rays of the sun, rendering it a dull scab-red in color, pulsing squat and malevolent in the sky, as if loath to make any greater effort to rise or to shimmer. For miles in all directions lay the flat, immeasurably dreary expanse of the desert, stretching unbroken to the horizon with hardly a tree or a range of hills to break the monotony. I had failed to notice earlier the dreadful endlessness of this terrain, forsaken of the gods, bereft of all interest, even as I had marched through it only days before.