by Tim Leach
‘Ah.’ Lakrines bowed low. ‘Forgive me. We misunderstand each other. I may not touch these coins.’
‘Some religious precept?’
‘Something like that. No citizen of Sparta values such things.’
‘Ah.’ Croesus smiled in amusement. ‘Interesting. Satisfy my curiosity. What is it you do value?’
The Spartan nodded. The question had been asked of him and answered many times. ‘We value the man to our right,’ he said. ‘That is all.’ He bowed again, and turned away before Croesus could question him further.
The king drummed his fingers together. ‘Isocrates?’ he said after a time.
‘Yes, master?’
‘Find out what he meant by that.’
In the days that followed, Isocrates immersed himself in the world of hoplites, shield walls and long spears. He learned about the great and weak kings of Sparta, the teachings of their renowned lawgiver, Lycurgus. He examined the tales that had made their way across land and over sea from Sparta to Lydia, each rumour growing and evolving along the way: stories of feral children who murdered slaves and stole their food, invincible warriors who stood ten feet tall, young women who had their hair cut off on the nights of their weddings. He had become expert at judging the tales of distant peoples, handling them the way a dealer in metals might approach a dubious piece of ore; weighing it, testing it, melting away impurities and discovering what value lay at its core.
Like a patient, studious child, the king sat quietly as Isocrates explained the phalanx, the rigid square that the Spartan warriors formed when they took to the battlefield, in which each man used his shield to protect the man who stood to his left. It was a battle formation dependent on the individual’s subsuming of himself into the whole, each man placing his life in the hands of the man on his right.
‘So that is the way wars are fought these days?’ Croesus said. ‘How disappointing.’
‘You prefer the old stories of single combat?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I always wondered what the rest of the army was doing while the two heroes spent hours battling each other.’
‘Standing around and cheering, I suppose. I think I find it more heroic than standing in a square and hiding behind another man’s shield. Still, victory is better than heroic defeat, don’t you agree?’
‘I prefer to be on the winning side.’
‘Very sensible. So in this phalanx, the man on the far right has no protection?’
‘No. That’s the weakness of the formation.’
Croesus smiled. ‘It’s more than that. It’s the flaw in their thinking. Who ends up on the right, do you think?’
‘I think—’
‘I will tell you,’ Croesus continued, gesturing his slave into silence. ‘Sometimes it will be the unwanted, the weak. They will be pushed to the right and left to die by the others. But it won’t just be them. It will be the powerful and ambitious men as well. There’s no room for the great man in their world, or the wretched one either. Mediocrity is what they aspire to. Distinguish yourself in any way, for good or ill, and soon enough you will find yourself out there without protection, and you’ll feel that spear in your ribs.’
Isocrates said nothing, and Croesus gave him a knowing glance.
‘You have many different kinds of silences, you know,’ the king said. ‘An entire language of taciturnity. I recognise this particular silence. You have something more to say?’
‘Just another possibility that you might not have considered.’
‘Which is?’
‘They might consider it an honour to be the man on the right. To be the one who is sacrificed so that the battle may be won.’
‘You may be right. Still, I wouldn’t want to be that man – would you?’ Croesus leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.
‘You are tired, master.’
‘Yes. Tired but content. This war will change the world. That’s something, isn’t it?’
‘Of course, master.’
Croesus nodded slowly. ‘Leave me. No, wait. Isocrates?’
‘Yes, master?’
‘Will you send for my wife?’
Isocrates clasped his hands behind his back, and looked away from his king. ‘I should think she will be in the women’s quarters, master.’
‘How I hate that place being out of bounds to me. This ridiculous charade.’ He shook his head. ‘You can send your wife in to find her, can’t you?’
‘Yes, master.’
‘And Isocrates, there’s something I have been meaning to discuss with you. About Maia.’
‘Master?’
Croesus said nothing for a time. ‘Do you beat your wife?’ he said at last, speaking quietly.
Isocrates went quite still. ‘Master?’
‘I have seen her several times with bruises on her face. She has told me that Gyges is not responsible, and I believe her.’ He paused. ‘It is your work, I take it?’
The slave stood in silence for a time. ‘She is beaten, master,’ Isocrates said eventually.
Croesus looked away. Such behaviour was hardly unusual, but he found himself disappointed. ‘It is a husband’s right, I suppose,’ Croesus said, ‘But it does not please me. If I ask you to restrain yourself, will you?’
‘I will try, master,’ Isocrates said softly.
There was something strange in the slave’s tone, and it did not sound like the anger or shame of a guilty man. For a moment, Croesus pondered whether or not to question his slave further, but decided against it. He would get the answer to this some other time.
‘Go and send for my wife,’ he said.
‘Yes, master.’
Croesus waited alone, listening to the sound of the torches that lit the room. He blinked away his tiredness and tried to order his thoughts.
After a space of time that could have been a moment or could have been hours, he looked up, and saw his wife standing in the doorway.
‘Please. Sit down.’
‘I asked you not to come to me,’ she said as she approached him.
‘I didn’t, did I? You came to me.’
‘You are the king. I cannot refuse your requests.’
‘Yes, I know. But I wanted to see you.’ She said nothing.
‘I had a response from the oracle, you know,’ Croesus said after a moment’s silence.
‘A blessing for your war. The whole city knows that. I do hear things, you know.’
‘But did you know the oracle had answered two more of my questions? The responses reached me yesterday. No one knows of them but me. And now, I would like to share them with you.’
She sighed. ‘And what did the oracle tell you?’
‘I asked for how long my line would rule.’ She shook her head. ‘You think me vain,’ he said. ‘But listen to her reply. She said that my people would rule until a mule sat on the throne of the Medes.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Exactly. It’s nonsense. My line will rule for ever.’ Hesitant, he took her hand and cradled it his palms. ‘Do you know what that means?’
‘I suppose you will tell me.’
‘It means we will have another child. Another son. And our son will have sons. That is wonderful, don’t you think?’
She smiled sadly, but kept her head low. ‘I am glad you have hope.’
‘You will believe in it too. When I come back, after the war, all things will be different.’ He leaned forward and kissed her softly on the forehead.
She looked up at him. ‘You mentioned two more questions, Croesus. That is only one answer.’
‘I asked if Gyges would ever speak.’ He paused. ‘But it doesn’t matter now, knowing that we will have other sons.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said that if Gyges ever spoke, I would regret it.’ Croesus hesitated, then shrugged. ‘I don’t know what that means.’
She nodded to herself, then left to return to her chambers. He watched her, and did not try to stop her.
He waited until he was certain that she had returned to the sanctuary of the women’s quarters and would not return. He stood, and made his way down to the lower treasury.
The room was not as impressive as it had been. The gifts to Delphi had cost him greatly, and the fortress of his wealth had lost some of its former grandeur.
A part of him wished that the room could have remained as it was before: a place of glorious, unspoiled potential. Once he had seen a different vision each time he descended into the treasury. He had seen enormous theatres, vast temples and funerary mounds, fleets of trading ships that would map out every corner of the unknown world. He had dreamed an infinity of forms that his wealth might take.
Now, he saw only an army. An army of flesh and leather and iron and bronze that would spread the kingdom of Lydia across half the world. An army whose marching feet would write his name into history for ever.
He would have to be content with that.
7
Far to the east of Sardis, a village lay on the banks of the Halys river. Its clustered huts were of many different kinds, relics of all the tribes who had lived here at one time or another. Some were made from river reeds lashed together, others had been fashioned from mud or clay, others were wooden frames covered with animal hides. The fishing was good enough to support a few families, the soil too poor to allow the village to grow beyond that, and so the settlement never became larger than a village. None of the people who had ever lived in this place felt a need to give it a name, and so it did not have one.
There was only one thing that distinguished it from the many other villages by the Halys – the bridge that passed over the deep river a short distance from the huts, the bridge that at this time corresponded to a line inked on to a map. It marked the border between Lydia and Cappadocia, the easternmost point of Croesus’s empire.
It was still early in the morning, while the fishermen were beginning to lay out their nets, that the first signs came. The observant noted the birds that flocked overhead in larger numbers than usual, all of them flying from west to east. Soon after, to the west they saw a dust cloud rising as though a tornado were making its way towards them. Then, confirming what they all knew by then, they heard the steady, thudding sound of an army on the move.
The villagers acted quickly. The young men and women hid in dark corners of the huts, or in the undergrowth near the village. They pulled aside piles of rushes that concealed small buried chambers, and they secreted there all the grain, bread, and salted fish that they had. The children hid as well, and soon only the old men and women remained outside, watching the army approach.
The villagers neither knew nor cared who ruled over them. On occasion, two elders might choose to argue over whether they thought it was the Cappadocians or the Galatians to whom they might owe their loyalty. It was a debate with no consequence, to pass the long hours when there was nothing else to do. The rumour had come to the village many years before, that it was now the Lydian king who ruled them. It had been dismissed as preposterous. No one in the village could imagine that the power of that distant kingdom could ever reach so far as to affect them, yet now the forces of the Lydian king marched towards them.
The old villagers stood and stared as the army approached, waiting to see if the men would slow for a moment, if a squadron of cavalry would peel away from the main column and ride towards them. It would be the work of a moment for some squadron of the marching horde to turn aside and burn the village to the ground.
The army did not slow. They had marched past dozens of villages like this one, and each one seemed to be on the verge of starvation, populated entirely by old men and women. There seemed not a single piece of bread that could be spared, not a single young man to join the army or a young woman to entertain the spearmen, not in the entire kingdom of Lydia.
The soldiers were aware of the deceptions of the villagers, but they were well provisioned and under strict orders not to ravage the countryside. Not yet. All knew that once they crossed the river into lands that were not ruled by their king, the rules would change. Life would be worth less beyond the Halys.
The old men and women watched as tens of thousands of warriors crossed the bridge into foreign land. Armoured infantry, their faces dripping sweat beneath their heavy bronze helmets, marched beside archers and slingers who wore little apart from their weapons; Thracian mercenaries cursed thickly in their own language at the Lydian cavalry who rode beside them. Following them all, in the train of the army, rags wrapped around their faces against the thick clouds of dust stirred up by fifty thousand men, came the slaves and the supply wagons, driving vast flocks of sheep and goats with them as a living larder, the animals almost outnumbering the men who had marched before them. The people of the village, who had been unmoved by the passage of the warriors, nudged each other and stared wistfully at the passing animals, and wondered at the power of a chieftain who had so many cattle at his disposal. Here was wealth they could understand.
They watched the horde of men and animals go by and disappear over the horizon, marching towards the low-hanging sun as though that was what they sought to conquer. When the army had gone, and had been reduced to nothing but dust and sound on the horizon, the young men, women and children emerged from their hiding places, and gave thanks that they had been spared. Then they gathered up their nets and hurried to the river, competing, as they did every morning, to see who would earn the Gods’ favour by landing the first fish of the day.
They camped a day’s march beyond the Halys, sleeping on alien earth for the first time. Most men lay on the ground rolled in their cloaks, piled together around campfires in great packs to share warmth. There was only one tent at the very centre – small and simple, but a palace for this wandering band of men. Inside, next to a single brazier casting warmth and light erratically, Croesus held a council of war with his general, Sandanis.
‘Any word yet on the Persians?’ the king said.
‘Not yet, my lord.’
‘But they know we are coming?’
‘Yes,’ the general answered. ‘They have been preparing for it.’
Croesus nodded slowly. ‘And they will bring their army out to meet us in battle?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
Croesus gazed for a time at the ornate patterns of the tent wall and tried to summon some order to his thoughts. It was a strange thing, to be occupying land belonging to another. He found that he liked this sensation of gradual ownership, of conquest by possession. If he could only enjoy this feeling without the battles and the killing to come, that would have been better. But such a thing was impossible.
He turned back to his general. ‘It all seems strangely consensual, Sandanis.’
The general frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It is very accommodating, that they will bring their army all the way across the kingdom to fight us.’
‘It is the custom,’ Sandanis said bluntly. Croesus sighed, and wished again that he had brought Isocrates with the army. For all his skills as a general, Sandanis was not a thoughtful man.
‘I would have thought,’ Croesus said, ‘that when some foreigner marches an army on to your land, custom would be the last thing on your mind. Why not wait, make us pursue him?’
‘He wants this settled as much as you do. It shames him to have us on his land.’
‘Yes, I suppose it does.’ The king rubbed his jaw. ‘What do you know about this Cyrus?’
‘I know much about his army. Little about him.’
‘A pity. Everyone has a different story. They are good ones, too. Raised by wolves, some say, others say by farmers. I wonder how that confusion began. There were half a dozen prophecies foretelling his birth and it is said his line will rule for nine generations. Do you believe any of that?’
‘I could not say, my lord.’
‘Well, I would like to know the truth of it. I wish they told such stories about me,’ Croesus said. ‘I suppose it does not matter. What happens now?’
‘We make the men eager to fight.’
‘And how do we do that?’
Over the weeks that followed, Croesus watched his army pass over the land like a walking catastrophe, an earthquake of a hundred thousand feet.
The land alone could not sustain them, so unnaturally large was the gathering of men, and they descended on every farm, village and town and took the food that they needed. They were, Croesus thought, as capricious as the Gods. One family of farmers would be greeted kindly by the passing soldiers. The fighting men would play with the children, and their officers would communicate, by gesture and the odd word of common language, their needs to the farmers. Sometimes they would leave gifts in compensation for food and wine. At the next farm, the same men would take the crops by force, carry off the women and young boys and torture the men to death for sport. There was no pattern to it.
Croesus understood that they took crops and cattle because they would starve if they did not. Why they murdered men and raped women was more mysterious to him. Perhaps, he thought, it was because they had to learn that they were powerful in this foreign land, that they were not bound by the laws that had ruled them before. Perhaps even as they fed themselves and learned how to kill, they knew that there was something else expected of them soon, that their killings were but rehearsals for a greater slaughter. No one would remember the villages and small towns that they destroyed. Through the thousands of little murders the army committed, there grew a desire to do something unforgettable; something that would mark the conquered land as theirs.
This collective dream grew strong and yet remained unfulfilled until they came at last to the city of Pteria.
They destroyed the army that guarded the city. They broke open the gates and tore holes in the walls. Then, that night, for the very first time, Croesus watched a city being razed to the ground.
Now that darkness had fallen, he could not see the people running in the streets, nor the soldiers who pursued them. He only saw fire – enormous, angry lakes of flame where palaces, temples, and entire districts of houses had once stood – and the tiny, moving points of light of men with torches. It was as though he observed a city from another world, where flames had become sentient and built a city of their own.
