The Ten Thousand

by Michael Curtis Ford

  Did you have any thoughts for Athens when you murdered a helpless, fettered man, Xenophon? Did you give any consideration to all you had been taught, to the ideals you had learned at the knees of Socrates, to the benevolence of the gods upon whose belief you sacrifice daily? Perhaps not, and in hindsight it was for the best, since your actions, both then and in the days to follow, successfully brought the army closer to its final destination. Men are needed in this world who are able to block out the fear and consequences of their immediate actions, to look beyond the sordidness of day-to-day suffering, warfare and squalor, to commit base deeds for a greater good. Men are needed like Gryllus and Clearchus, for it is by such men that civilization is advanced and the inferior is eliminated, or made beholden to the superior. Such brutal, unthinking men are needed; our most sublime institutions could never have been created without them, at least in some misty past that may be best left forgotten. This is one of the world's darkest, most unspoken secrets, for such is the evil-such the beauty-of war. The Spartans are trained their entire lives to close their eyes and their minds to physical fear and suffering and to seek victory at all costs for the common good. But they are Spartan, and you Athenian, or at least you had been until now; and I suddenly remembered the fervent wish I had expressed to the gods the night after Clearchus' head had been thrown into our camp, and I realized that it had been fulfilled in you.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  XENOPHON DREW A deep breath, holding the air in his chest for a moment with his eyes half shut, and summoned every depleted reserve of self-control to regain his rigor as an Athenian noble and an officer. He then turned his attention slowly and deliberately to the second prisoner, who had watched the entire proceeding with eyes wide in terror. He was shivering violently, his teeth chattering and his knees barely able to support him, both from having stood cloakless for hours under the freezing rain, and from fear; and Xenophon had barely approached him before he began singing like a bird. The man said he would guide the army to an alternate road along which even the animals could travel, which would lead us behind the heavily guarded pass. A separate detachment must precede the main force, however, because the new route also passed under a height that must be occupied first, or nothing else could get by. He also confessed that the first prisoner had denied knowledge of that other route because his daughter lived there with her husband and family.

  Xenophon turned away in exhaustion and nodded to Chirisophus, who called over the senior captains of both the heavy and light infantry to determine whether any of them would volunteer their units to follow the guide and seize the heights. Two Arcadian officers stepped forward to volunteer their two thousand heavy and light troops, and since by now it was late afternoon, they wolfed an early supper and slipped away into the blinding torrents of rain before darkness overwhelmed them completely. The surviving prisoner was bound and gagged and sent with them, while Xenophon and Chirisophus led the heavy infantry of the rear guard forward to the guarded pass we were facing, to draw the enemy's attention away from the Arcadians slipping behind and above them.

  The Kurds had placed huge boulders in our path, and whenever a knot of our men gathered to try to lever the stones out of the way, they became targets for missiles and more boulders, some as large as wagons, hurled down on them from above. Xenophon finally ordered us to pitch camp when it became too dark to shoot our arrows, and he forbade all fires, for that would give the enemy too easy a target for their missiles. We spent a miserable night huddled in the cold, pouring rain with the warm campfires of the enemy clearly visible on the heights above us. All night the Kurds rolled their infernal boulders down among us, adding to the hellish atmosphere.

  Meanwhile, the detachment with the prisoner tramped through the rain and dark and caught the enemy outposts unawares, destroying them utterly and seizing their camp. In the morning, the Arcadians blew a trumpet as a signal that they had taken the hill, and Chirisophus then charged straight up the main road with the bulk of the army, his scouts climbing the cliffs to attack the enemy defenders above, hoisting each other up the sides of boulders with their spears, to unite with the Arcadians on the heights.

  Xenophon and his rearguard backtracked to join the baggage train laboring up the path the Arcadians had supposedly secured the night before. Alarmingly, however, every hill we climbed was occupied anew with enraged Kurds, and we would no sooner chase them off one than more would appear on the next, or on the one we had just left, flowing like water over and around the boulders and rocks, giving us no respite. On our own we could have easily climbed off the path and run the Kurds off the ridges above; but the path was the only means by which we could force the terrified pack animals and baggage through, and so we had a long and bitter struggle that day before the three dispersed units of the Hellenic army were finally united.

  Though this battle was like so many others we fought on the march, I risk the reader's impatience by recounting it, because of a singular event that befell me. Xenophon was leading a charge up a rocky incline while I carried his shield. I tripped over a root, however, and rolled down a steep ravine, twisting my ankle and hitting my head so hard against a rock it cracked my helmet and knocked me momentarily senseless. Xenophon had been looking the other way and had not seen me fall, and when he turned and saw I was not there he became furious, thinking I had deserted him in fear of the rocks rolling down on us from the barbarians above. In part he was right, for I was terrified, as was every man among us that day having to fight boulders rather than flesh and blood warriors we could defeat. But as for deserting him-I was infuriated by his accusation, for in all the battles we had fought together, never once had I left his side, never had I failed to shelter him faithfully behind the shadow of my shield, even at the risk of exposing myself to the enemy. Another hoplite, Eurylochus, saw him standing in the field alone, and bravely ran up to cover him with his own shield.

  When Xenophon later saw my swollen ankle and bloody head as I limped into camp, he understood and promptly apologized; I am not sure that I, however, have ever forgiven him his unfounded suspicion, which drove another thorn into my heart, contributing to the widening gulf being created between us.

  BOOK NINE

  THE RHODIAN SCOUT

  Listen closely to me. Heed what I say.

  Of all the creatures that move and breathe in this world,

  Mother Earth breeds nothing more feeble than man.

  As long as he prospers, has strength in his knees,

  He believes no thing can harm him, nor evil befall him.

  But when the same blessed gods bring him sorrow,

  Man must endure it, come what may, and harden his very heart.

  – HOMER

  CHAPTER ONE

  THAT NIGHT I lay alone on a coarse, moss-filled mattress in the stone hut I had commandeered for Xenophon and myself, unable to sleep, my mind troubled. At about midnight he walked quietly into the room, pausing to let his eyes adjust to the lamp's low light and glancing at me to see if I was awake. From the lateness of the hour and the sounds of soldiers carousing in the village, I would have expected him to be smelling of wine and feeling in high spirits. He was completely sober, however, and stood motionless, gazing out of the tiny, plaster-edged window punched through the thick stone walls, while the drizzle fell softly outside.

  Moisture seemed to hang in the very air, drops accumulating and falling lazily from every surface as if counting the slow passage of time. I thought of the rain falling on the white, sightless eyes of the fallen soldiers we had been forced to leave behind, washing the blood and grime from their faces and hands, like weeping Niobe grieving over the stone-dead bodies of her children. I envisioned her tears gently caressing their lifeless faces, as white and cold as the marble in the Parthenon, as expressive in their final agonies as plaster masks hung in the theater. Though the bodies were abandoned by the living, unable to be prepared for Charon's crossing of the river, no mere army priest, no crone in black bearing myrrh and incense, no trained
undertaker could have washed and caressed and blessed the remains of the fallen Greeks more carefully than did Nature herself. Even if a soldier is returned home, his most likely resting place is merely an abandoned cemetery, where after a few years he lies unsung and unhonored by those who have forgotten to cherish their dead. Perhaps in the absence of a mother's tears or a wife's embrace, a sodden field in a hostile land is the most appropriate monument to the fallen, for the rain conveys just as sacred a blessing on the brow of a dead son. Even more so, for the caress of the rain, with its qualities both destructive and life-giving, derives from the very gods themselves, a fact that has both comforted and terrified men since the beginning of time.

  Xenophon stared out the window for a long time, knowing I was awake and watching him, yet saying nothing. Nor did I break the silence, for I had no desire or willingness to talk. Finally he turned and faced me, peering at me, though unable to see my face hidden in the shadows. Giving up, after a moment, his attempt to read my eyes, he slumped back against his wall and began to talk, to muse really, in a voice that was barely audible.

  "Sometimes, what you most want in the world is within your grasp, there for the taking, like a peach hanging on its twig so ripe it is ready to drop," he said. "You pause a moment to savor not its taste, but rather its potential taste, the anticipation of possessing it and making it your own and consuming it, because anticipating a pleasure is the better part of pleasure itself. But then some unforeseen event-a sharp wind, a clever thief, a destructive worm, a more worthy friend-slips in front of your hand and steals away the object of pleasure before you are even able to realize the anticipation. You are left worse off than before, for knowing what might have been."

  He stared at me, but I remained silent. After what I had seen today, words, Xenophon's words in particular, had little meaning; his sentiments were shallow. If he were trying to console me with cheap philosophy, I was not about to be bought so easily.

  He sighed and paced across the small room several times before finally settling down on his own cot to prepare for sleep. His face had hardened again.

  "I almost forgot to tell you. Nicolaus the Rhodian wanted to see you." He stared at me with a strange expression.

  Despite my weariness I was relieved at having the opportunity to occupy my mind again with other thoughts and to escape his presence. I buckled my sandals and threw a cloak over my shoulders as he quickly explained the location of the cluster of buildings in which the Rhodian slingers were billeted. Seizing the single oil lamp, I stalked out of the door in silence, rudely leaving him in darkness. He didn't say a word.

  The muddy streets of the little town were deserted and the soldiers' laughter and merrymaking had by now died down to silence, with only an isolated guffaw floating out of the tiny windows here and there. The steady rain and the sagging, soggy vegetation lent a dismal, funereal aspect to the village, and to nature itself. I limped down the road, my ankle stiff after my hours of inactivity, and the route led me out of the main concentration of buildings to another collection of low-roofed peasant huts hard by the river, two or three hundred yards away. This secondary hamlet consisted of several tiny huts for the farmers or fieldworkers, a half dozen small, beehive-shaped stone shelters for poultry and other animals, most of which had already been slaughtered and eaten by the hungry Rhodian boys, and a large granary, where the bulk of the slingers were lodged. I knocked on the door of the hut that Xenophon had told me housed Nicolaus, and entered.

  The single room was smoky and dark, with a small peat fire burning in the corner, billowing acrid smoke into the room with every gust of wind from outside. My eyes required no adjustment, as I had already been walking with only the dim light of my tiny oil lamp to guide me. I immediately picked out Nicolaus from among the half dozen young squad leaders reclining on the floor in front of the fire, chatting quietly over a small scrap of a map they were examining. Nicolaus stood up solemnly, slightly favoring his uninjured foot, the flickering light of the fire on his smooth, olive skin making him seem even more the adolescent boy than he actually was. I wanted nothing more than to be away from their company, and with an irritated grunt I told him that Xenophon had sent me.

  Nicolaus glanced warily at my eyes, as if trying to guess my mood before speaking to me. I stared back at him unblinking, giving him no satisfaction on that score, and he slowly squatted back down close to the fire, squinting through the light at his comrades as he hastily finished off the conversation he had been having with them. His words died off, and he tossed the scrap of papyrus onto the coals, where the edges caught fire, turning black and curling, creating a small bluish tongue of flame that grew and intensified the flickering shadows in the room, emphasizing the deep silence that had enveloped the boys. Nicolaus again thoughtfully stared at me.

  "Come," he said, nodding in my direction and slipping out the low door, which caused even him to stoop as he passed into the freezing rain. I seethed at this unforeseen delay, for I had not anticipated that Nicolaus' message would require me to wait for him, or to perform a task before I would be able to depart. He led me around the large granary, from which I could hear muffled snores and low voices, to the small collection of coops and outbuildings. Taking me to the smallest and farthest one, apparently a chicken coop for its tiny entrance that stood no higher than the middle of my thighs, he pointed to the door and said simply, "In there."

  I stared at him uncomprehendingly as his gaze flitted back and forth between the entrance and my face; then he gave me a wry smile, turned and splashed through the mud back to his hut.

  I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Was this some kind of a prank? I smoldered at Nicolaus' growing impertinence and lack of respect, and at my own foolish indiscretion in having confided my fears to him the other day. I was no doubt the butt of every joke among the Rhodian camp. Finally, however, my curiosity got the better of me, and dropping to my hands and knees in the mud and pushing my lamp along the ground ahead of me, I crawled carefully through the hole in the tiny stone structure. The Fates, in their exaggerated zeal to bring me to this spot, roughly shouldered past me, becoming over-cooperative emissaries and leaving me completely unprepared for what I was to find inside.

  Because of its domed shape, there was room to stand in the tiny structure, though scarcely sufficient horizontal space to lie down, and the room was completely empty save for a narrow stone shelf built into the far wall about two feet off the packed earth floor. It was dry inside, though the cobwebs brushing my skin from every side at first gave the sensation of mist or tiny streams of water trickling down on me from the porous stone above. I stood up before even taking the time to look around, and after carefully clearing away the cobwebs from the ceiling in the middle of the room, the only spot high enough for me to stand erect, I extended my arm with the dim light, to shine it on the dark shadows occupying the low stone shelf.

  In a flash of understanding I realized why Nicolaus had brought me here, for it was as if the gods themselves had descended in all their radiance and glory and possessed this crumbling, miserable hut. My knees buckled and I knelt down, the lamp dropping from my hand into the dirt, extinguishing itself and leaving the small, close room in darkness. I stretched my hands out in front of me, hardly daring to credit my own senses, and clutched Asteria's yielding body tight against my chest.

  "How…?" I blurted, trying to speak, but she stifled my words, pressing my face tightly to her warm breasts, cloaked in the rough fabric she was wearing. Her grimy Rhodian tunic enhanced the pleasure of the anticipation, like Xenophon's peach, and it was only after many moments that I was finally able to lessen my grip. I nuzzled her smooth throat as she clasped her hands behind my neck, murmuring wordlessly, and the rain outside continued to fall silently on the rough stones as the feathery cobwebs lazily brushed our skin.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AFTERWARDS, AS THERE was no room to lie down on the stone bench, I remained simply as I was, leaning back against the rough masonry as she straddled my
thighs, gathering my cloak around us both, to keep out the night chill. Aphrodite and Hephaestus, Hephaestus and Aphrodite. There is no more doomed and mismatched a pair of lovers in history, the exquisite goddess of Beauty and the irascible god of Fire. My indulgent reader must forgive the heavy-handed reference to the old myths. The allusion is excusable, however, for who could overlook the true divinity of Asteria's body beneath her coarse tunic? Or the fact that I myself was as filthy and smoke-begrimed as the blacksmith, not to mention lamed like him by my earlier fall? Every chorus in Athens would lift its song to Aphrodite were that goddess half as beautiful as Asteria, and that is as it should be, though the jealous deity suffers rivals impatiently. Even mere mortals, however, must occasionally glimpse heaven's threshold, and in this stone hut I drew near it, for though unfortunate Hephaestus lost his beloved to War, I would not so lose my Asteria.