Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great

by Nicholas Nicastro

  “The sundown watch must be coming on,” he told me. “Look—the Third battalion of footmen still can’t pitch a straight line of tents.”

  “Shall we get back?”

  He sighed, and putting his weight on my shoulder, remarked, “It’s always there, is it not? Somewhere around me like the Furies. Jealousy, Blood Avenger, Unceasing Pursuit! Other men had gone abroad, explored foreign lands. I must take an army with me to see new places! The original blunt instrument! I love them so much I would run away right now. I wonder if you understand, dear Machon.”

  I thought it best to say I did not. But he continued to walk with me as we descended the mountain, Bagoas and Rohjane stumbling behind us in the twilight. As we proceeded it became clear that we had waited too long to start back: the light was failing, and the path was little more than a deer track. We lost our way, but pressed on down the slope. Finally the ground leveled, and we came upon the outskirts of a village we hadn’t passed on the way up. Alexander called for the little column to halt.

  “Is this Nysa?” he asked.

  “I doubt it,” I answered, “but I may not have seen it from this side.”

  “There—someone’s coming,” Bagoas pointed.

  Three women appeared. They were neither girls, nor particularly old—young mothers, perhaps. Their heads were covered with parti-colored cloths, their hands hidden behind the folds of their dresses. They were approaching a flat stone scattered with flowers and spice-leaves. Spreading a cloth on the ground there, one of the women dumped a handful of small objects in the center—in the gloom it was hard to see what, but they appeared to be either chickpeas or some kind of nut. As the woman in the middle set about picking chaff out of her nuts or peas, the other two looked reverently at the flat rock. It occurred to me then that they may have come together to a village shrine for some kind of observance. To be watching them secretly therefore seemed to be something of a transgression, though of what faith I had no idea. I swallowed my qualms, though, when it was clear that the others would not move on.

  The woman in the center began to speak in a language I couldn’t understand. Cocking her ear, Rohjane gave a little gasp, then a smile of recognition. We all looked to her.

  “She is not speaking Sogdian, but I understand some of it. They are performing the rite we call ‘Miserable Peas.’ It is done by women only, in times of trouble in the family. I used to see it done by my grandmother. We also used chickpeas.”

  As the woman spoke, the others knelt by her, giving affirmations now and then, though they did it somewhat perfunctorily, as if they had heard her words many times before.

  “What’s going on now?” asked Bagoas.

  “There is a tale that must be told before the peas are purified and given away. In my father’s kingdom the story is about the wise daughter of a goatherd. There was a drought, and there was no food for the girl, her father, or the goats. The goatherd prayed to Ameretat for aid, and the yazata appeared to them with the gift of a handful of chickpeas. The shining one said: ‘Purify these as you know how, and after the rite give them away as best serves the good.’ The father gave thanks, but when Ameretat was gone he complained that the spenta had given no help at all, for they had been given only a few miserable chickpeas. And he was about to share them with his daughter for eating, when she begged him to purify them first.

  “‘Foolish girl!’ her father said. ‘Purified or not, these miserable peas will not save us.’ But her piety shamed him, and he relented, saying the words that consecrated them in the sight of Ahuramazda. Again, he was about to eat them, when his daughter objected, saying she wanted to give her share to the goats. ‘Foolish child!’ the goatherd chided her. ‘What good will a few miserable peas do for our whole flock?’ The wise daughter replied: ‘I know not, father, but I cannot eat while others suffer, even if they are animals.’ At these words the goatherd was proud of his daughter’s sense of duty to asha, and ashamed at having indulged his despair. He bid her to eat her share of the peas and give his to the goats instead. When she threw her father’s peas among the flock, a miracle happened: where each pea hit the ground a beautiful green tree sprouted, grew, and ripened before her eyes, until she was standing in a grove of myrtle trees, each with boughs groaning under the weight of berries.

  “In this way the goats, the father, and the daughter ate, and were saved from the drought. Soon the prince of the kingdom came by, and seeing a grove of myrtle more splendid than in any of his father’s gardens, came to the door to congratulate the owner. There he saw the goatherd’s daughter, and fell in love. When she came of age, he married her, and in due course she became Queen. But for the rest of her life, in times of trouble or not, she was sure to perform this rite of the chickpeas, to protect her family from harm.”

  Rohjane finished the tale long before the other did. When the village woman was finished she said a short prayer over the chickpeas in a different tongue I took to be Avestan, the language of Zarathushtra’s revelation. When that was done, the three women solemnly scattered some of the chickpeas on the shrine, and threw others on the roofs of the houses around them.

  “This land is not in drought,” Alexander remarked in too loud a voice. The women looked in his direction, and seeing us crouching there, turned away in fear. Alexander stepped into the open to appeal to them.

  “Maids, stop! You have nothing but compassion to expect from the hand of your King!”

  His words had the opposite effect. Instead of just running away, the women began to shriek ‘Daeva! Daeva!’ When he followed them through the narrow lanes of the village the people scattered. Women dropped their baskets and ran into their houses; little children fled into their mothers’ arms, crying ‘Daeva! Daeva!’ Alexander, still convinced he could soothe their fears, went from door to door as they slammed in his face. And though he was oblivious to it, he was a frightful sight, with his face rouged with snake blood and his woman’s dress caked in mud. Persistent, he chased them all, holding out his arms in a supplicatory gesture that promised to swallow them up.

  At last he relented, sitting against a wall. We caught up to him as he slumped there.

  “I take it, then, that we are not in Nysa,” said Bagoas.

  Not in Nysa indeed. For it was clear that the Macedonian foraging parties had already visited this place, and their exactions had caused the hunger that the ‘Miserable Peas’ were supposed to remedy. More than mere thievery seemed involved: I had seen the same headlong flight, the same abject terror among the women of a small village before, in Doris north of Amphissa, after Philip’s army had come through in the maneuvers that led to Chaeronea. It must have been much the same in Thebes, or Attica during the Persian occupation, or in Ionia after the revolt failed. Places where men once lived, worked, made love became haunted places; the presence of those missing was still palpable, and every pair of eyes, including the children’s, seemed to contain a story that they would sooner forget, but otherwise tell for the rest of their lives.

  I should add that Alexander, like Philip before him, expressly forbade disrespect of women, the elderly, or children. In Bactria there had been a man in my battalion, the Second Hypaspists, who had been given the rather arbitrary-sounding punishment of one hundred and eighty two strokes of the lash. The number was based on an estimate of the number of women he had raped in the lands of Persia, Hyrcania, and Bactria. The man did not survive the putrefaction of the wounds he received during the scourging. Yet not even this example had brought safety, it seemed, to the people of that village at the foot of Mt. Meron.

  “I think…” said Alexander very deliberately, “that I shall be glad when this is all over.”

  XVI.

  The army pressed on to the Indus. The huge bridge of boats assembled by Hephaestion was sturdy enough for 80,000 Macedonians and 20,000 horses, but still failed to inspire any respect for him.

  As usual, the way was smoothed by the surrender of the next kingdom to the east, in this case that of a character named Aamb
hi (or “Omphis,” as Aeschines called him). A more self-interested climber we had not encountered in eight years of campaigning in Asia. Already under severe pressure from the two Indian kings to his east, Abisares of Kashmir and Porus of the Pauravas, Aambhi made a profound gesture of surrendering what was barely his in the first place. Moreover, Aambhi overdid his show in nearly disastrous fashion: by assembling his entire army before the gates of Taxila, his capital, he so alarmed the Macedonians that they rushed to organize a defense. The confusion was only resolved when Aambhi came out to surrender personally. Alexander met him in the center, both men now models of fraternal goodwill, both smiling, both unable to understand a word the other said.

  As expected, the toady was confirmed in his kingship by Alexander, whereupon he changed his name to “Taxiles.” This struck me as odd, something like Alexander styling himself as “King Pella.” In any case, the Macedonians made such an impression that “Taxiles’s” enemy, Abisares, sent tokens of submission. This left only King Porus to oppose their invasion of the Ganges Plain. Beyond that, the Macedonians expected only to find the eastern limit of the continent, washed by the waters of unending Ocean.

  Each time the corporation known as “Alexander” called upon the strategic skills of Arridaeus, it took a risk. Accordingly, it made a number of sincere efforts to persuade, overawe, threaten and otherwise motivate Porus to give up his enmity against Taxiles. But this Porus was a stiff-necked fellow, repeatedly sending back the Macedonian envoys. The final time he added a promise: Porus would indeed greet Alexander at the Hydaspes River, but only at the head of his army. “And when Porus takes the field,” the message read, “it is not to stage a pageant like Aambhi, but to make war.”

  So war it was. Aambhi warned the King that Porus was a formidable foe, with a well-trained army and a large corps of war elephants. Far from giving Alexander pause, this news delighted him, for he was tired of petty conflicts with brigands and hill tribes, and longed for a good, pitched, set-piece battle.

  The Hydaspes is only a tributary of the Indus, but no trickle like the Granicus. It is deep and fast enough to prevent a crossing in all but a few well-known places. Porus blocked them all with an army of 30,000 infantry, 4,000 horse, and 200 elephants. Except for the elephants, the Paurava force was smaller than Alexander’s, but had the advantage of the best ground, and the knowledge that they were fighting for their homes and children; the Macedonians were exhausted, ignorant of the territory, and far from home. For these reasons, it would seem, Porus believed he had a chance to stop the man who had toppled the empire at his doorstep.

  Porus was clearly not a man to be panicked by a quick offensive thrust. Instead, Alexander opened the battle with a series of cavalry feints up and down the river. In response, the Pauravas’s elephants and horsemen went out to shadow the Macedonians, massing at the points where Alexander’s cavalry bluffed a crossing. The Macedonians kept this up for several nights, whooping and carousing as they galloped, more or less telling the Indians exactly where they were. With this tactic Alexander so exhausted the enemy that they ceased to respond to these moves in force—for it is not an easy thing to get a corps of elephants on the march! Instead, Porus convinced himself that Alexander would not attack at all that season, but wait for the late summer, when the water level would be more suited to an attack.

  Having lulled the Pauravas into complacence, Alexander slipped out of camp and surveyed a crossing Aambhi had pointed out to him, some distance to the north. The river was deep there, but narrower. Judging the ford to be manageable, he ordered his men to construct rafts as they had on the Danube and the Oxus, and also to bring forward one of the large galleys he had disassembled at the Indus and portaged to the Hydaspes. Though no enemy scouts had appeared on the opposite bank that far north, Alexander felt obliged to wait for the most opportune moment to cross, for the Macedonian reputation of invincibility was at stake.

  His moment came two nights later, when a great rainstorm broke over the battlefield. With storm clouds blocking the moon, and the rain and thunder muffling their maneuvers, Alexander moved the bulk of his army to the crossing place. Craterus was left opposing Porus with a small force that kept up a large number of campfires, to fool the enemy into believing the Macedonians had not moved. An officer named Attalus, who was about Alexander’s height and coloring, was dressed in his clothes and diadem, so the Indians would not think the king had left the camp. Finally, Craterus was given orders to cross the river when Porus decamped, and to follow the sound of the battle wherever it might be.

  The crossing was accomplished before dawn without the loss of a single man. Alexander drew his men into formation, expecting to receive a counter-attack at any moment. His scouts then returned with disturbing news: the Macedonians had not landed on the opposite bank of the Hydaspes, but on an island in the stream! An additional crossing would be needed before he could engage the enemy. His men were now stranded uselessly, while back at the main Macedonian camp the diminished size of Craterus’s holding force would become obvious as the sun rose.

  It was not in Alexander’s character to rage at Aambhi’s bad advice, but only to apply himself with greater resolution. The island had at least shielded his army from the eyes of Porus’s scouts. His men proceeded across the arm of the Hydaspes without delay, sinking up to their necks in raging snowmelt. Weapons disappeared in the current; horses and men lost their footing and floated away. Nevertheless, the Macedonians completing their second crossing of the morning just as a mounted detachment of Indians finally sighted them. The horsemen attacked, but upon seeing that the phalanx was safely across and deployed, turned and fled. There was a skirmish as the Cavalry Companions intercepted the Indians. One of Porus’s sons was killed after a brave struggle, but the bulk of his force escaped.

  From across the river, Craterus witnessed riders arrive in Porus’s camp with news of Alexander’s appearance on the east bank. The Pauravas king ordered his men to march north, leaving only a token force to prevent Craterus from following him. The last of his elephants departed just as the bodies and sarissas of the drowned Macedonians floated past the Indian camp.

  The armies met on flat ground. Hoping to nullify Alexander’s skill at wide cavalry sweeps, and knowing that the horses of the Macedonians were terrified of the larger creatures, Porus pushed his elephants far forward. Aambhi, however, had told Alexander that the Indian mahouts had never faced an army of well-drilled pikemen. Alexander sent word to his infantry to be ready as he feinted with his cavalry. The Pauravas took the bait, sending out their horsemen to chase away the Macedonians. Just as the Indian army split in two, Alexander ordered the Foot Companions forward, brandishing their sarissas under the snouts of the elephants.

  For a few moments, the battle hung in the balance as Porus’s infantry held firm against the Macedonian attack. His elephants, tusks raised, charged into the Macedonian ranks, snorting and trampling, plucking unlucky phalangites out of the ranks with their trunks. The victims were suspended helplessly by their legs before the Indians dispatched them. Archers stationed on the elephant’s backs fired into the phalanxes from above, doing further damage.

  The Macedonians tried to use their pikes against the eyes of the elephants. The elephants were most sensitive about wounds to their trunks, which they held out of reach of the soldiers. The Pauravas’ mahouts were much more skilled than those hired by the Persians at Gaugamela. Porus’ elephant corps did its job very well, keeping the Macedonians away from the Indian center just as it was ordered to do. The heads of the creatures were armored, so it was difficult work to damage them. The Pauravas sallied out against the phalanx several times, their tuskers working terrible carnage against the Foot Companions, who often could not generate enough force behind their sarissas to pierce their thick hides. The Macedonians finally used their war axes against the elephants, chopping at their trunks until they were severed or too mangled for use. In agony, their eyes put out, the giants soon went out of control, thrashing at anything
in their reach, including their Indian masters.

  The Paurava cavalry, having made no headway against the mounted Companions and Thessalians, added to the chaos by returning to the center. The Indians’ fate was sealed when Craterus appeared in their rear, charging on the double upon them. Porus tried to organize his army into a defensive square, but as Arridaeus had envisioned, his surviving elephants could not turn around quickly enough. With the luxury to charge the Indians at a run, the Macedonians put their lances right through the shields and leather armor of the enemy. This triggered the final panic, and sealed the victory for the Macedonians.

  Surrounded, Porus’s army became a bloody, mud-spattered confusion of men, horses, and elephants, all doing as much damage to each other as to the Macedonians. Alexander ordered the phalanx on his left to withdraw, opening a path for the survivors to escape. For it seems that already, before the battle was over, Alexander had plans for Porus and his gallant fighters.

  To my mind this victory came as hard as of any fought by the Macedonians in Asia. Alexander’s infantry was the most demoralized after this battle than after any other. The thousand men lost at the Hydaspes, and the way many of them had been crushed to death, made the Macedonians very reluctant to meet any more elephants in the future. And India, as everyone knows, is the wrong place to go if you fear these animals!

  Alexander sent Aambhi to solicit Porus’s surrender. But when the latter rode before the Indian king and addressed him in his own tongue, Porus turned his elephant to attack, declaring “A crown yields only to a crown, not a dog!” Aambhi escaped, telling Alexander a story that the Paurava monarch preferred death to capture. But Alexander saw through this, having a better understanding the proud king’s mind. He then obliged Aambhi to return with him as his translator.