Flood Tide

by Alexander Geiger

  *******

  Barsine and the girls were reaching the limits of their endurance. Skirting the government station proved to be more easily said than done. After lurching alongside the road, from grove to thicket to outcrop to bramble, for the better part of the day, and after diving for cover every time they heard the sounds of some approaching traveler, they could barely move. Yet, Barsine urged them on, watching with concern as the walls of the valley they were traversing closed in on them. Finally, at the point where the cliffs on either side left barely enough room for the imperial road and a babbling brook, Barsine spotted the government station. Its location at that particular site was probably not an accident. No one was going to pass by the station without alerting the guards inside.

  Barsine decided to wait until nightfall. She herded the girls under a weeping willow growing by the creek, which hid them from the road. She gathered some food, fed the baby, told the girls to eat and rest, and promptly fell asleep herself. She was awakened, in the semidarkness of the approaching night, by a hand across her mouth. “Don’t scream or you’ll wake the kids,” a strange, high-pitched voice whispered in her ear. She nodded. What would have been the point of screaming in any case?

  Still lying with her back to her captor, she felt a loosening of the constricting embrace and cautiously turned her head. The sight that met her eyes caused her to shudder. Long, dark, oily, perfumed tresses, framing a fat face; loose jowls; leering eyes; thick lips pulled back in a triumphant sneer; a mouth full of black voids and a few rotten teeth. “Kobad, is that you?”

  His laugh was silent, mirthless, and effeminate. “Who else, my lovely.” Grabbing her shoulders, he forced her to roll over and face him. “You didn’t think I’d let you get away, did you? You know I love you too much to ever let that happen.”

  She tried to push him away and get up but he straddled her and kept her down. He was heavy, sweaty, smarmy, disgusting. “You’ve always been so kind to me, Kobad,” she lied. “Please let me go.”

  “You know I can’t do that.” He sounded almost regretful.

  A small spark of hope kindled in her chest. She told herself that, among the eunuchs of the harem, he had been relatively humane. “I can pay you. My husband’s an important man.”

  He shifted his weight and crushed any remaining hope. “I know who your husband is,” he taunted, “and he may be important today but will he still be important tomorrow? Besides, what good is money to me?”

  “I can make your life easier.”

  “That you can.” A lecherous sneer distorted his face.

  “Please,” she pleaded, “be kind. Your kindness will be repaid a hundredfold.”

  “Oh, I’m always kind.” He laughed as he cupped her breast in his paw. “The question is whether you’re willing to be kind to me.”

  “You’re a eunuch, for crying out loud.”

  “Eunuch have needs too, my dear Barsine, and you’re the most beautiful woman in the harem. I’ve been admiring you since the day you arrived.”

  “I can’t, Kobad, please.”

  “Sure you can. And by the way, I can too. So the choice is yours. You can give me what I want and I can sneak you back into the harem, with no one the wiser. Or I can turn you in and they’ll make you watch as they torture your kids to death, after which they’ll keep you alive much longer than you’d think possible. So, what do you say? Yes or no?”

  The oldest girl stirred. “Mommy, who is that on top of you?”

  “Oh, it’s just Kobad. You remember him, don’t you? He’s keeping me warm. Now go back to sleep.”

  She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I can’t do it here. Let’s move away from the children.”

  He complied with surprising agility, getting off her and lifting her to her feet. “After you, madam.” His strange, high-pitched voice was pitiless and mocking.

  She considered hitting him and running away but realized she couldn’t overpower him and she couldn’t leave her children behind. “Just this one time, right Kobad?”

  “Of course. All I need is one short trip to paradise to make me forget I’m not quite a man. After that, I can die contented.”

  She knew he was lying but what choice did she have. Besides, he was a eunuch. What could he possibly do?

  It turned out that, notwithstanding the absence of a scrotum, he could do most things that an intact man could do; only, it took an inordinate amount of effort and patience on her part to get him to the point where he could do it.

  He was alternatively cajoling and rapacious, repulsive and relentless, predatory and pitiless, as he forced her to carry on. “That’s right, dear. You’re on the right track. They only cut off our balls, you know. We have to be able to piss somehow. Just keep going.”

  When he was finally able, he entered her from behind, pounding away brutally. He kept it up for a long time, all to no apparent effect. Then he tossed her down, crying and bleeding. “Go get your brats. We’ve got to get going.”

  She was glad he insisted on keeping the mule for himself; she preferred to walk. And she was in no hurry to catch up to the women’s caravan.

  ******

  When Aristandros and his henchmen returned me to Alexandros’s headquarters, the festivities were still in full swing. No one had noticed my absence. They were all too busy admiring Apelles’s latest masterpiece.

  Two days later, we marched on Miletos, in pursuit of the elusive Memnon. When we arrived, no surrender delegation came out to greet us. On the contrary, the city gates were locked and its walls bristled with defenders. We were on a winning streak and therefore confident that Miletos would turn out to be our next conquest but this would be no cakewalk. Alexandros relished the opportunity for a real fight. He was tired of chasing after Memnon and desperately needed a decisive victory to persuade the wavering Ionians that this time their liberation from the Persian Empire would last longer than a passing summer squall.

  Miletos was situated near the delta of the Maiandros River, at the foot of Mount Grion.[12] It enjoyed a fine harbor on a finger of the Aegean Sea called, understandably enough, Miletos Bay. The harbor itself was further protected by a small island in the bay, called Lade, which sat directly across from the port of Miletos. Alexandros’s first order of business, upon arriving at the outskirts of Miletos, was to send observers to the top of Mount Grion to determine why the pan-Hellenic fleet, under the command of Nikanoros, was not yet in the Bay of Miletos.

  Upon seeing the frantic signaling of the observers, Alexandros, trailed by his usual phalanx of aides, scrambled up the mountainside to assess the situation for himself. He, along with the rest of us, was treated to a dramatic maritime regatta. Just to the north of Miletos Bay, in the straits between Samios Island and Mount Mykale on the Ionian mainland, we could see the 160 ships of our fleet, sails fully deployed, oars churning the blue sea, sprinting toward the bay. Looking over our shoulders toward the south, we could see the 400 ships of the Persian naval armada, stretched out in a long line around the Grion Peninsula, bending every effort to reach Miletos Bay first. We all understood what was at stake: Unless Nikanoros reached the bay first, our upcoming siege of Miletos would have little likelihood of success.

  Although there was no chance that the sailors down below could possibly hear us, we all started to cheer and jump up and down. Because of the distances involved, the progress of the ships was imperceptibly slow and we soon tired of jumping but no one was willing to sit down. The wind was freshening, blowing from north to south – a good sign for us. On the other hand, the lead ships of the Persian line were almost at the mouth of the bay – they were going to make it into the bay first.

  The pan-Hellenic fleet, sailing perhaps ten ships abreast, finally reached the bay. However, instead of tacking toward Miletos, they continued to run ahead of the wind, straight toward the vanguard of the Persian ships. (Actually, they were Phoenician ships. The Persians themselves couldn’t sail across a fishing pond but they controlled all the great seafaring nations, c
ities, and islands of the eastern Mediterranean.) As we watched in astonishment, the Phoenicians stopped rowing, then turned around and ran toward their confederates farther down the line. This time, I was sure our mariners could hear our cheering all the way down in the bay.

  As soon as the outcome of the race was clear, Alexandros plunged back down to our camp and started issuing orders. Commandeering some fishing vessels, he dispatched two battalions of infantry to take control of Lade Island. Then, turning to Philotas, he ordered him to patrol the coast as far south and north of Miletos Bay as he could feasibly manage. “Use the entire Companion Cavalry, if necessary, but I don’t want those bastards landing anywhere near Miletos.” And then he boarded a small fishing boat and made his way out to Nikanoros’s ship to offer his congratulations in person and to conduct an impromptu thanksgiving to Poseidon and the local deities.

  It turned out we had a terrific defensive position. Our fleet, with the effective support of the troops on Lade Island, controlled the Bay of Miletos. Philotas’s cavalry prevented the Persian navy from landing foraging parties anywhere near Miletos. Their ships were forced to anchor offshore, without fresh provisions and without fresh water, exposed to the ravages of weather on the open sea. Our infantry surrounded the city, preventing any of the inhabitants from getting out. The only problem was that Alexandros didn’t want to be in a terrific defensive position; he wanted to be on offense.

  Parmenion and his troops, having pacified the rest of Ionia, joined us under the walls of Miletos. The siege engines, which had been sitting on barges since we had crossed the Hellespont, trailing our progress down the coast of Anatolia, were finally offloaded near the Miletos harbor. There was, for the moment at least, even some surplus coinage in the treasury from the spoils, ransom payments, and “voluntary” contributions collected from the liberated cities of Ionia. Our foraging parties had no difficulty bringing in sufficient supplies from the surrounding countryside, which was in the middle of the harvest season. We were ready to settle in for a long siege. Alexandros, on the other hand, was eager to breach the walls, defeat the garrison, conquer Miletos, and kill Memnon.

  While the siege engines were being assembled and rolled into position, Alexandros held a council of war. The first item on the agenda was a decision on attacking the Persian fleet. Nikanoros wanted to attack, despite his inferior numbers. He reasoned that we had nothing to lose. As things stood, Persia, using the combined fleets of all its subject nations, cities, and islands, enjoyed almost complete control of the Aegean sea lanes. While the pan-Hellenic fleet was able to enforce a blockade of Miletos, it was in turn trapped in the Bay of Miletos and therefore practically useless beyond its immediate objective. Nearchos the Kretan, who knew something about naval warfare, was opposed to an attack, pointing out that not only did the pan-Hellenic fleet have greatly inferior numbers but the crews supplied (under some duress) by the member cities of the Hellenic League were also not yet sufficiently trained and possibly of suspect loyalties. Everyone had heard about the rumored invasion of the Greek mainland by Dareios and Memnon and these crews were likely to feel stronger allegiance to their home cities than they did to Alexandros’s army. Uncharacteristically, Parmenion found himself on the side of those urging aggressive action, perhaps swayed by the fact that Nikanoros was his son. Hephaistion pointed out that, while it could be argued that the pan-Hellenic fleet had nothing to lose, Alexandros did have something at stake; namely, his reputation for invincibility. Alexandros decided that the pan-Hellenic fleet would not attack and ordered Nikanoros to maintain a defensive position, enforce the blockade, and otherwise do nothing.

  There was much less debate about the advisability of attacking Miletos itself. Alexandros wanted to attack and that was that. He assigned a company of sappers to undermine the watchtowers that anchored Miletos’s walls, three companies of light infantry to man our own siege towers and rain destruction down on the enemy soldiers stationed within, separate companies of heavy infantry to wield the battering rams against each of the city gates, and a company of engineers to operate the catapults lobbing stones, flaming barrels, and other missiles into the city.

  While we were busy laying out detailed plans for the capture of the city, word arrived that the Milesians were abandoning the city walls and leaving the city gates unguarded. Alexandros immediately dispatched Perdikkas, with a company of heavy infantry and a battering ram to break down the nearest city gate, with the rest of us, on horses, following immediately behind. The Milesians, seeing the approach of the battering ram, decided to preserve the gate by opening it. Our troops poured in but there was no wild stampede. Alexandros enforced rigid discipline. We proceeded building by building, street by street, and neighborhood by neighborhood, seizing all weapons and armor we found, confiscating all items of significant value, occupying every building, and arresting all men of military age. But there was no wholesale destruction. Miletos would not become another Thebes.

  Finally, we reached the akropolis, which had its own set of walls, gates, and towers. The akropolis was garrisoned by Greek mercenaries, presumably under Memnon’s personal command. They welcomed our arrival with a hail of imprecations, bolts, boulders, javelins, arrows, and missiles of every description. Evidently, they were not quite ready to surrender.

  A small, residual force of Macedonians could have kept the akropolis surrounded and could have starved the Greek mercenaries out in a matter of weeks, while the rest of us collected our spoils and moved on. But Alexandros had other ideas, especially because he believed Memnon was trapped with his men inside the akropolis. He ordered the siege engines to be brought into the city, set the sappers to work, and massed his forces under the akropolis walls.

  The siege of the Milesian akropolis turned out to be a useful training exercise for Alexandros’s army, which, up to that point in our Anatolian adventure, had not been required to execute the seizure of a single walled fortress. It took a few days to undermine the watchtowers and breach the walls, to kill or capture the defenders, and to determine that Memnon had once again slipped through our fingers.

  It was interesting to watch Alexandros’s reaction to the news. He raged, of course, at our failure to kill or capture Memnon but it was a controlled rage. His dispositions for the captured men and materiel were equally measured. All captured foreigners were sold into slavery; all Milesians were set free. The captured Greek mercenaries were not summarily executed, as might have been expected. Instead, they were offered an opportunity to enlist in Alexandros’s army, provided they agreed to swear allegiance to the pan-Hellenic cause and to Alexandros personally. The valuables seized from private homes were returned but all public treasure, whether Persian or Milesian, was expropriated. Alexandros put a “democratic” government (selected by him) in charge of the city, under the supervision of a Macedonian commander and the protection of a Macedonian garrison. Miletos was enrolled in the Hellenic League and assessed a heavy membership contribution.

  Alexandros took a tour of the city in the company of the leading citizens who had been formerly in charge. They proudly showed him their extensive sculpture gardens, featuring dozens of statues of Milesian athletes who had prevailed at the Pythian and the Olympic games.

  “And where were the men of such physiques when Miletos was being enslaved by the Persians?” he asked. He was too tactful to mention their similar absence during our recent liberation of Miletos.

  The Persian navy, growing hungry, thirsty, and seasick in the choppy waters of the Aegean, withdrew to Dareios’s next line of defense, at Halikarnassos. In response, Alexandros surprised us all. He disbanded his own navy, sending all the allied ships and their crews back to their home cities, except the Athenian ships, which he kept, allegedly for transportation needs. (I suspected he also considered them useful hostages in case the leading city of the Greek mainland decided to give him trouble.)

  “Why would he do that?” I asked Seleukos, regarding Alexandros’s decision to disband his own navy.

 
“I think it bothered him a lot more than he let on when Hephaistion told him they threatened his reputation for invincibility.”

  “But now we have no navy.”

  “They would’ve been destroyed sooner or later anyway. And they certainly wouldn’t have been able to blockade Halikarnassos the way they did Miletos, since the enemy ships are at Halikarnassos already.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You realize that, without a navy, if we lose a battle against Dareios, there’ll be no way to evacuate the men back to our side of the Hellespont.”

  “Exactly,” Seleukos said.

  Chapter 9 – Halikarnassos

  In the end, the occupation of Miletos proved to be easier than appeared likely at our first approach to the city. On the other hand, the decisive showdown that Alexandros desired hadn’t materialize either. Most annoying of all was Memnon’s ability to inflict delays, costs, and losses on our forces and then move on, eluding death or capture.

  The next big city, only two or three days’ march down the coast, was the capital of Karia, Halikarnassos.[13] Clearly, that’s where Memnon was headed and that’s where our next fight would take place. But Alexandros didn’t have us march directly down the coast; he had a more circuitous approach in mind.

  Alexandros had had some previous history with Karia, which was a small kingdom squeezed in between the larger satrapies of Ionia, Pisidia, and Phrygia. Although always under the domination and thumb of Persia, until recently it had retained a semblance of autonomy under the Hekatomnid dynasty, founded by a local Karian of uncertain origins, named Hekatomnos. This soldier and adventurer managed to pick the right side in one of Persia’s civil wars and was subsequently rewarded for his acumen by being named satrap of his home region, a singular honor for a non-Persian. Hekatomnos ruled Karia for some seventeen years and managed to transform his position from being an appointed satrap of Karia to becoming the hereditary king and ruler of his small kingdom.