The Ten Thousand

by Michael Curtis Ford

  Xenophon accepted Proxenus' jibes good-naturedly, and offered to leave him his perfume while he was away. "You seem to be doing fine, though, without it, cousin-I've noticed no shortage of sheep around your tent."

  Proxenus guffawed. "I'll save one for you!" Then more seriously: "Be on your guard, Xenophon. Clearchus knows what he is about, and has no fear of entering the Persian camp. I trust Tissaphernes and Ariaius to provide him with safekeeping, as we did when Tissaphernes entered our camp. But individual Persian soldiers may hold grudges, and there is nothing Tissaphernes can do if a rogue infantryman determines to avenge the death of a friend by breaking rank and running you through with a spear. Tissaphernes could even 'facilitate' such an event beforehand, and still leave his hands and reputation clean. You and Theo may be targets there. Take heed."

  The next day, as our small party rode to the immense Persian camp, Proxenus' warning remained vivid in my mind.

  Tissaphernes received us like princes of the realm. The reception was magnificent: rare wines and game birds, golden pitchers and lamps, and a multitude of slave girls and boys, several for each guest in fact, such that not a drop of wine was drunk, not a bit of food eaten, that it was not immediately replaced with another, by a servant standing close, ready to fulfill any whim. Before meeting Cyrus, I had never imagined anyone could travel this way, much less a general on campaign, but Tissaphernes was more than a match for the prince.

  Clearchus wasted no time in broaching the reason for our visit. "Lord Tissaphernes," he said gruffly, clearing his throat and belching politely but enthusiastically. "I am grateful for your hospitality. To my mind, that has already answered many of the questions I had when I arrived. I've never doubted your word or your intention to bring us safely back to our homeland. You have entrusted us to your most reliable officers and guides, and I know that no Greek would think to harm even the lowliest baggage carrier in your army."

  Tissaphernes gave him a slow, pleased nod at these words, and Clearchus took another swig of the wine from his goblet before continuing.

  "Although you and I are confident in our mutual trust, our troops watch each other with suspicion and fear, as if we were still enemies. I know that men often hate each other unnecessarily because of slander. That is why I wished to meet you face to face, to resolve these tensions before they erupt in violence."

  He smiled his blackest smile, though the kind words dripped off his tongue like honey.

  "You yourself have no reason to mistrust us, if only because of the oath we swore, which to a Greek is sacred. If I broke my oath, where could I run and hide? Not from the gods, who see and know all, and even less from you, dependent as we are. If we were to offend you, we would have to answer to your king on his own territory, or make our way home across a thousand miles of desert without a guide."

  Clearchus then leaned in to Tissaphernes, and his voice dropped lower, to a conspiratorial tone. Tissaphernes made no attempt to reciprocate, however, and remained erect in his chair, aloof, though smiling wanly, his fingers tented.

  "You, in turn, might also find it in your own interest to keep us safe," Clearchus said quietly. "I know that you face hostilities on your own lands: The Mysians have burned some of your estates, and the Pisidians and Egyptians are making your life miserable. There is not a nation on earth that can stand up to my veterans, and I'd be happy to place my force's strength at your disposal, if this could be of assistance to you."

  At this, he reclined back onto his couch, held out his glass for more wine in a confident gesture of familiarity, and hooded his eyes in such a way that he almost appeared to doze. He looked neither at Tissaphernes nor at Xenophon, but seemed satisfied with his statement, and not particularly concerned at any reaction Tissaphernes might have.

  Tissaphernes observed him thoughtfully for a few seconds, with an expression almost of amusement, gently twisting the point of his beard and smiling paternalistically. Clearchus' offer of our forces to assist him in his own military campaigns was a brilliant gesture; not only would it ensure our own safe arrival home at Tissaphernes' hands, but would guarantee the troops additional employment for the foreseeable future. A man like Clearchus could want nothing more, and in the best case it would give his men the opportunity to fill their empty purses with some rich Egyptian booty before they returned to their homes.

  Tissaphernes then replied, though this time waving away the interpreter. He spoke in fluent Ionian Greek, in language formal and considered.

  "My dear Clearchus," he said, assuming a kindly and almost avuncular tone. "I am indeed pleased to hear your words reassuring us of your benign intentions, though I personally would never require such a guarantee from you. Clearly you would have been your own worst enemy had you attempted to do us harm during our travels. For my part, if we had ever felt the need to break our own oath and destroy your army, there would have been no shortage of opportunities to do so. And yet we have never shown you any hostility.

  "Though we have so many ways to-dare I say it?-well, destroy you, all without harm to ourselves, we would never choose to offend heaven and man by breaking our sacred oath to protect you and accompany you safely homeward. We are not wicked, General, nor are we foolish. Cyrus trusted you and admired your skills, and sought to put them to good use at the head of his conquering army. I see no reason why I should not do the same. What does it matter which Persian you serve, as long as you are treated fairly and receive your share of the rewards? A wise man once said that only the king may wear a crown on his head, but an honest man may wear one on his heart as well, and I intend to do so."

  At this Clearchus snorted, but then smiled wickedly. "So, Tissaphernes, we see eye to eye. I am happy to hear confirmation of your peaceful intent, though I never doubted it myself. In order to prevent doubts from arising among the men in the future, however, I see no better way than to punish anyone caught trying to spread lies about us or incite each other's troops. Don't you agree?"

  "Indeed," the wily old Persian said, sucking in his breath, after only a moment of hesitation. He remained silent for a moment, as if lost in thought. "If that is our agreed-upon solution, Clearchus, then let us pursue it actively and whole-heartedly, rooting out these sources of tension and destroying them. Come back tomorrow with your captains and officers. I shall do the same, and we shall point out to each other those who have been whispering slander into our men's ears to incite the other side to needless attack."

  This was, of course, precisely what Clearchus had sought in his suggestion that slanderers be punished, for he was absolutely confident of the reliability of his own Greek officers, but had begun to suspect the motives of Ariaius and his men, particularly after the Tigris bridge incident several weeks before.

  As we rode out of the Persian camp that night, Clearchus was silent, but pleased. He had settled the matter of Tissaphernes' suspicions, and had further consolidated his army's status with the Persians for future campaigns. Further, he looked forward to identifying the traitors among the Persians who had been making so much trouble for the Greeks during the past several weeks' march, putting threatening ideas into their heads and wasting their resources. Xenophon had not spoken a word the entire evening, but did so now, cautiously, reluctant to interrupt Clearchus' thoughts.

  "With all due respect, General, are you not concerned that your attempt to draw out accusations might implicate some blameless Greek officer? I would wager that all the plotters in this farce are on the Persian side, but Tissaphernes will hardly be satisfied with our pointing them out to be put to death, without giving him an equal opportunity to see a Hellene or two die."

  Clearchus considered this silently for a moment, with a half smile on his face.

  "No Greeks will die because of this," he finally said, "and I'd be surprised if any of Tissaphernes' goat-fuckers did either. It's not in either army's interest to lose officers in the middle of a campaign. Watch, though-we'll make Ariaius piss his trousers, and then keep him as useful to us in the future as he has
been in the past." He laughed, a short, sterile laugh, and then looked at Xenophon more closely.

  "You look familiar," he said. "I'd almost think I'd known you before this whole fucked-up project began, but I couldn't have. You're barely out of your mother's arms. You weren't in Thrace, were you?"

  "No, General. I've hardly been out of Athens since I was an ephebe."

  Clearchus shrugged, then glanced down at Xenophon's sword. "Looks like a Spartan weapon. You have better taste in arms than your average Athenian," he grunted, and reached across the gap between their horses to pull it out of the scabbard swinging on Xenophon's hip. He inspected the blade and handle in silence for a moment until his glance fell on the deep, crudely engraved Greek letter K, the first letter of his name, and his eyes bulged.

  "Where the fuck did you get this!" he burst, waving the blade dangerously under Xenophon's nose and startling the horses. "This was mine! I exchanged this with that pig-headed Gryllus twenty years ago!" And suddenly an expression of recognition flashed across his face, and he grinned evilly.

  "Are you the son of Gryllus the Athenian?" he asked hoarsely, leaning so close that his putrid breath made Xenophon feel nauseous. Clearchus wore the same expression of curled-lip disdain that Gryllus had the day he watched the pancration training. Xenophon stared straight ahead, concentrating on holding his horse's pace even with that of the general's animal.

  "Yes, sir, I am," he said evenly. "My father is a great man, or was anyway, for I don't know whether he still lives. Still, he contributed greatly to Athens' glory. I am proud to be the son of Gryllus."

  "Proud," Clearchus smirked. "Proud! And how proud would Athens be now, how proud would your father be, to see his spawn marching under a Spartan's command, after righting for a Persian's family feud? Wasn't your sorry-ass puke-hole of a city exciting enough for you under Spartan control, that you had to come all this way to become a Spartan yourself?"

  "He didn't approve at all. I'm sure it killed him when he discovered what I did."

  "And the world would be better off for it," Clearchus hissed. "That man, your father, blocked me every time I was ordered to deal with him, stymied me in every treaty I was sent to negotiate with him. I would have cut him down at the knees if I had been allowed, and he knew it. He set my career back ten years."

  "I'm not to blame or praise for my father's conduct. He served Athens, and if his actions were to your detriment, they were to Athens' benefit. I am my own man, and I make my own decisions."

  "And that, little Xenophon, son of Gryllus, is to your detriment. I cursed your father to Hades many times, for he was my enemy. But at least he knew what he was. The only thing worse than an Athenian is a traitor, and even an Athenian traitor is no friend of mine. Get out of my sight. It makes me puke to think of you fighting beside me."

  Xenophon spurred his mount forward, his face composed but his eyes stinging in anger and his mind a torrent of emotion. If it wasn't Gryllus tormenting him as a boy, it was Clearchus doing so when he was a man, and both for the same reason: because he was Gryllus' son.

  "Wait, Athenian!" Clearchus called just as Xenophon had begun to draw away. He spurred his own mount forward to Xenophon's side. "Take this," and he shoved the sword back into the scabbard. "It'll remind you of your betters."

  CHAPTER THREE

  WRATH-THUS SING THE MUSES, for not since the days of Achilles has any man felt such wrath as that which tormented Xenophon. After returning furious from the outing with Clearchus, he refused even to tell Proxenus about it; but rather raged up and down the officers' tent, stirring up dust and breezing past Proxenus' maps and scrolls until Proxenus finally threw him out with orders not to return until he had calmed himself. Xenophon stormed outside, his anger like a great, pustulant boil that refused to burst and settle, and I attached myself to him like a physician's leech, trying to calm him.

  Half the night he paced the outskirts of the camp, worrying at the insults he had received, and his silence in the face of Clearchus' vile epithets directed at his father.

  "At my own father, Theo! And I did nothing to defend him, nothing to challenge Clearchus!"

  "You would have been a fool to try anything," I countered. "You know his temper-he was just waiting for you to lose control. He would have run you through with your own sword at the slightest pretext, and smiled as he did it."

  "Still, I can't ignore his words. If it were my own honor alone at stake I might swallow my pride, but it is my father's!"

  "This is not the time for a private quarrel," I counseled. "Settle your squabbles later. Clearchus is baiting you and you'll give him satisfaction if you give in. The army is in peril, and you must focus your energies on that. Let him act the fool. Call on the gods to give you the wisdom to do what is right."

  This seemed to calm him somewhat, and he returned to Proxenus' tent and forced down some cold breakfast. He did not mention the incident again that day, except to inform Proxenus in a matter-of-fact tone that he would not be accompanying him to the peace parley that evening at Tissaphernes' camp. Proxenus raised his eyebrows in surprise, but said nothing.

  Just as daylight was fading that evening, Asteria slipped over to the tent where I was tending to Xenophon's kit. I was surprised to see her standing at the door, as in the past we had always made careful plans before meeting after dark, and had not done so now for several days. In fact, her failure to seek me out earlier and now her unexpected arrival by daylight irritated me. I stepped outside the tent and while talking I snapped at her for some trivial remark. She was silent for a moment before turning sadly to leave. I reached for her arm and began to apologize.

  "Theo," she said, "It's not important. I came here for just a moment. I can't stay, my friends are expecting me back soon. Please, don't go to Tissaphernes tonight. Don't let your master go either."

  I peered into the tent at Xenophon, who was staring absently at the wall. "There doesn't seem to be much chance of that, does there?" I said sarcastically. "The poor brute is in a fury, trying to decide whether to murder Clearchus quickly or devise a more painful method. It doesn't matter. Tonight is just another peace parley, like all the others we've seen."

  Asteria looked at me with round eyes, seeming to stare deep into my mind, before shrugging her shoulders and muttering something about lending Xenophon one of her scrolls she had managed to salvage, to improve his mood. Just before turning away a second time, however, she looked at me again, her eyes smoldering in the gathering darkness. "Clearchus is a simple-minded fool, Theo," she whispered, an urgency in her voice. "He is not worthy of Xenophon's anguish. Only an idiot like Clearchus would take Tissaphernes for granted the way he does."

  "What are you saying?" I asked skeptically. "He has gotten the better of Tissaphernes every time they've met. What is there to fear?"

  Looking around carefully, she dropped her voice until it was barely audible. "Remember who you are, and what Tissaphernes is. He is filled with hate, and treacherous even for a Persian. I know him, Theo, I know him like… like my own father. Do not mistake his olive branch for a gesture of peace. The same wood can be used to kindle a funeral pyre. Please-tell Xenophon."

  I brushed off her words impatiently as the sentimental drivel of an overwrought woman, and she slipped away. In any case, I would be spending a quiet evening with Xenophon here in the tent, and was relieved not to be returning to the Persian camp again.

  Clearchus took Proxenus and four other generals with him to Tissaphernes' camp, along with twenty other officers and some two hundred men to procure supplies at the market being held that evening. Chirisophus was the only senior officer who stayed behind, having been delayed on a journey to scour some distant villages for cheaper provisions. Some of the soldiers protested that no officers, including Clearchus, should entrust themselves to Tissaphernes' camp, but he laughed this off, saying that such fears were merely a sign of how well the conspirators had performed their work among the soldiery. Proxenus reluctantly left Xenophon behind, and said he'd t
alk with him when he returned that evening. Xenophon was so deeply self-absorbed that he scarcely noticed his cousin's leave-taking.

  He retired early that night, exhausted from his ranting of the night before, and soon fell into a deep sleep. As he recounted to me later, his first memory of that evening was of my voice calling to him as if from a tremendous distance-a faint voice, seeking him out, urging him to leave behind the comforting haven of his dreams. I could see him making a conscious effort to block out my words, but I spoke louder, more insistently, as if I were a hunter making my way closer to a stag in the forest, patiently cornering him where he could not escape. I roughly shook him awake, calling him with increasing urgency.

  "Xenophon… Something terrible has happened. You must get up! Xenophon!"

  He sat up groggily, struggling to focus on my face, to grasp the meaning of my disorganized spill of words.

  "Come quickly! Nicarchus has returned from the Persian camp, alone. Proxenus and the other officers are still there. Something is wrong."

  He stumbled outside as I pointed to where Nicarchus the egg-farmer, one of the lower officers who had accompanied Clearchus to Tissaphernes' camp, was sitting on the ground ashen-faced, surrounded by a growing body of shouting men, a frothing and blood-soaked horse pawing the ground nearby, unattended. As we approached Nicarchus, I saw that a stain of dark blood was spreading blackly in the sand beneath him. He looked at Xenophon with a mixture of horror and unutterable sadness, and when he spread his hands away from his sides in a gesture of resignation and futility, Xenophon nearly choked on his bile, and the fuzziness immediately left his brain. The man's belly had been split open from navel to groin, and what he had been calmly holding in his hands was a glistening, ivory-purplish coil of his own intestines, which had spilled out of his abdomen. Nicarchus tried desperately to hold them in, but shiny, thin loops kept slipping out between his fingers and slithering into the dirt.