by Tim Leach
‘What do you think they are doing over there?’ he asked his general.
‘They are doing what I ordered them to do,’ Sandanis replied.
‘Which was?’
‘Enjoy themselves.’ Croesus winced, and the general smiled patiently. ‘It needn’t concern you,’ Sandanis said. ‘It is what happens.’
‘It makes me think of my home. Don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘How does that make you feel?’
‘I’m glad it is happening to their home and not to mine.’
‘Nothing more than that?’
The general shrugged. ‘They had bad fortune. The Gods didn’t favour them. They were weak. That is what I think.’
The king nodded, but did not reply. He looked back on the city of fire.
He imagined what was being done in the distant streets. The men tortured and killed, the women raped. The elderly and the children put to death, there being no value in their capture. Everything of value taken, every sacred building put to the torch.
In the morning, there would be a great gathering at the blackened gates of the city. The healthy men and women, roped together like unruly cattle, would be marched back west and sold. All that would remain of Pteria was in their memories and in the stories they would tell. He wondered how many generations would pass until the memory of the place faded entirely.
He could feel, somewhere half hidden within his mind, a sense of shame. The emotion was close but could not reach him, as if it did not belong to him at all and merely lurked in his mind, misplaced by some other, more feeling man. He wondered where it came from, this barricade in his mind that meant he felt nothing, and whether it was the mark of a strong, ruthless king, or of some kind of monster.
‘It doesn’t make me feel anything, you know,’ Croesus said. ‘Isn’t that strange?’
‘Why should it?’
Croesus shook his head. ‘You are lacking in imagination, Sandanis.’
‘That may be so, my lord.’
‘You may leave.’
The general bowed.
‘The reports are confirmed. The Persian army is coming. They will be here in ten days.’
‘Good. How do we respond?’
‘We wait, and we meet them here. It is as good a place as any to fight a battle. The sight of the city will act in our favour.’
‘I knew we destroyed it for some reason.’ He tried a smile, but the general did not respond. ‘Will the Ionians remain loyal?’
‘Yes. My people tell us that they refused Cyrus’s offer last night.’
‘Very well. I am glad the waiting is over, at least.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
Croesus hesitated. ‘These things are necessary in war, you said?’
‘Inevitable, my lord.’
‘Very well. Let the men do what they will tonight. But tomorrow, you will get them ready to meet the Persians. I would rather see a battle than butchery.’
Sandanis raised an eyebrow. ‘Say that again after you have seen battle.’ He bowed again. ‘Goodnight, my lord. Sleep well.’
It was on the tenth day of waiting, sometime after midday, that the Persian army came into view.
Croesus’s scouts had kept careful track of its progress, and so when the Persians arrived, they found the Lydian army arrayed to meet them. Each army was a reflection of the other, and for hours, they shifted across the plains like mirror images. The two armies shuffled from side to side, moving from one place to another, each army taking it in turns to offer a position to its opponent that was declined. After a time, seeing that their opponents would not be deceived into assuming a weak position on the battlefield, both armies gave up trying to gain an advantage. They simply tried to settle on a part of the plain where they could face each other, a place where a hundred thousand men could line up in order and kill one another.
At last, after hours of manoeuvring, they reached a position with which both were satisfied. Having negotiated silently, they were ready to exchange words, and Croesus’s emissary came to him to request his final instructions.
‘If they want us to return to Lydia,’ Croesus told him, ‘they must disband their army immediately, reinstate the royal family of the Medes, and Cyrus must surrender himself personally to me.’ He turned to Sandanis. ‘Will that be enough?’
‘I should think each one of those demands unacceptable enough on its own.’
‘Let us see how they respond to three impossibilities. Oh,’ he said, turning back to the emissary. ‘One more thing.’
‘Yes, my lord?’
‘After their man refuses and offers up some insulting demands of his own, ask him if his master will meet with me, face to face. That is all.’
Croesus watched his emissary gallop out, and saw his Persian counterpart match his trajectory until they converged at the very middle of the field.
‘Why meet with him?’ Sandanis asked.
‘As I said, I am curious to meet the man. I would like to settle some of these rumours. Besides, isn’t this what kings do before great battles?’
‘You are enjoying yourself, I see.’
‘It was my will that brought all these men here,’ Croesus said. ‘Today, we will play our part in reshaping the world. That is remarkable, don’t you think?’
The general pointed to the centre of the plain. ‘He’s coming back.’
‘That was quick.’
The emissary rode back through the Lydian lines, and bowed from the saddle to his king.
‘They refuse our demands, and insist that you send your army back across the Halys river and surrender yourself to the king of Persia.’
‘That is two impossible demands to our three. Did he consent to a meeting?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘A shame.’ Croesus paused. ‘Did he give a reason? I assume his refusal came with an insult?’
‘There was no reason, my lord.’
‘Very well.’ Croesus breathed in deeply, once. He felt no doubt, for it was too late for such things. He felt the easy courage of a man liberated from choice. ‘Let it be done,’ he said softly.
Sandanis turned and nodded to the man at his side. The soldier lifted the horn to his lips and blew, answered a moment later by a thousand horns in the Lydian army, then, like a reply or an echo, by the horns and drums of the Persians; a symphony of a single note played on ten thousand instruments.
The army advanced, the tips of their spears glittering in the clear light like waves under a low sun, the horses dancing nervously as they walked. The men were silent, a particular silence that has the quality of prayer, and the only sounds that Croesus heard were those of foot against earth, of metal against metal.
A line was crossed, some invisible threshold between the two forces. The first flight of Lydian arrows whispered into the air, and was met with an answering volley from the Persian archers. Both flights of arrows hung for a moment at the top of their arc. It seemed that they might remain there for ever. A cloud of wood and iron and feathers clustered thickly together in the middle of the sky, the weapons of two nations mingled so close together that it was impossible to tell them apart.
Then the arrows fell.
8
In the unnamed village on the edge of the Halys, the villagers watched the army return.
The Lydian army had first marched past in the height of summer. Now it was harvest season, and across the continent, towns and villages and farms waited to see what the soil and the Gods would consent to give them. A good harvest, and they could wait out the winter in some kind of comfort. A swarm of insects, a sudden flood, and thousands would starve. Everything depended on the gifts of the earth.
Beside the river, once again, the soil had reluctantly surrendered a small harvest of grain. Each year, as they gathered in their feeble crop, the villagers cursed the stubborn soil and promised themselves that the next year they would move on to a more fertile place. Every spring, they looked up at the sun and forgot their
promise and again sowed their seeds with hope. They were gathering the last stalks from the fields when they heard and saw the familiar signs once more – the omens of an army on the move.
The young hid themselves once again, and the old men and women waited in the fields and watched the army pass.
It was much reduced, some said by a quarter, others by a third. The old men had lived long enough to see many armies pass over the river. They had learned to read, in how the soldiers walked and in the tone of the songs they sang in languages that the villagers could not understand, whether the wars had been won or lost. Even the sound of the army as it moved, the rhythm and force of thousands of footfalls, could tell a story to those who knew how to listen.
The villagers saw that these soldiers did not march with pride, but neither did they have the hollow faces of men who have fought and been defeated. They marched with the exhausted air of men who had risked their lives, had seen their friends die, for the sake of a stalemate.
On the long journey back to the Halys, Croesus had fought the battle in his mind many times.
Everything, at first, had gone as Sandanis had said it would. When the first arrows fell, Croesus had looked from one army to another, wondering if by chance his eyes might alight on the first man to die that day, and realizing, with a kind of abstract horror, that there was a pleasure to be found in watching men die at his command.
The Persians planted their wicker shields on the earth and held their ground, and Croesus’s spearmen swept forward, hoping to break the line. The sounds that filtered back to Croesus were not what he had expected. There were few war cries and little screaming. What Croesus heard more than anything else was the sound of thousands gasping, as though there were not air enough in the world to keep so many alive in one place, as if they had to kill each other in order to breathe.
He watched as the Persian cavalry circled his spearmen and felt a sudden surge of fear. Sandanis had told him it was necessary, but even so, he shut his eyes when he heard a wail of panic break out from the trapped Lydians.
At last, Sandanis gave a second signal, and as though summoned by the cries of their countrymen, the Lydian cavalry, the greatest in the world, came forward. They lowered their long spears, and charged.
That should have been the moment. The moment that he would remember for the rest of his life, the moment when the Persians broke and ran, and he won himself a new empire.
But neither side broke. The horseman charged, but did not push through, and all movement ceased on the battlefield. The two armies fixed their positions against one another, and the killing began in earnest.
Hours passed. Each hour brought another ten thousand dead, but the two armies did not move more than a hundred yards. The excitement Croesus had felt when the first men fell had long faded. He sat on his horse, watching and wishing nothing more than for the battle to be over.
Suddenly, as if they had heard his thought, the armies moved apart. The hours of killing had erased the thought of retreat from their minds, until one man had rediscovered the ability to step backwards, and shared this gift with his companions. The two armies separated, a few wary paces at a time. The captains yelled at their men to advance, to attack again, but the men would not listen. Persians and Lydians had struck a silent truce. They had had enough of killing.
At last, the generals sounded the retreat. The battle was a stalemate. Croesus had not known such a thing was possible, that tens of thousands of men could die, yet nothing change, the world unmoved by such a quantity of blood.
The king had said little since the battle. He had mechanically followed his general’s advice in the aftermath without offering a word in response. Now, as his horse crossed the midpoint of the bridge over the Halys and he returned to the lands he ruled, he had found his voice again.
‘Why did we lose, Sandanis?’
‘We did not lose, my lord,’ the general said. ‘They retreated, and we retreated. There was no dishonour.’
‘Then why didn’t we win? We were better equipped. Better organized. That’s what you told me.’
The general shrugged. ‘There were more of them, and we were on their land. It evens out.’
‘So why were you so eager to fight that battle?’
‘I was confident that we would not lose. I was not sure that we would win.’
Croesus shook his head. ‘We lost a quarter of the army—’
‘They lost many more.’
‘Do not interrupt me. We lost a quarter of the army, and we have nothing to show for it.’
‘We will come back. Next year, we will have the Spartans with us. If you had waited for them—’
Croesus gave him a look of warning. The general bowed his head.
‘Forgive me,’ Sandanis said. After a moment he added, ‘We will come back next year. If that is your wish.’
Croesus nodded, but in his mind he saw a war that could continue for decades. Brief, bloody summers, and long, tedious winters spent waiting for those summers. Waiting for the killing to start again; a war that he might watch over for the rest of his life, as though he were raising another child.
‘I had hoped it would be over by now,’ he said.
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Was that naïve?’
‘A little. But we will win. You need not worry.’
Croesus nodded again. After a moment, he said, ‘I remember your words at the council. You think this is a pointless war, don’t you?’
‘It doesn’t matter what I think,’ Sandanis said. ‘I live to serve you, my lord. I hope my loyalty is not in question.’
‘Never, Sandanis,’ Croesus said. ‘You are a practical man. You and Isocrates should spend more time together. Perhaps you will get the chance, this winter.’ He turned to look back at the bridge that marked the edge of his lands. ‘We will be back next year,’ he said. ‘We will keep coming back every year, if we have to. We will come back until we have won.’
The villagers watched the army pass into the distance, and gave it little thought. A few of the men exchanged bets on whether or not they would see the army return the following year, wagering leather belts, knives of flint, and tortoiseshell brooches, but that was the extent of their interest. They went back to gathering their crops and cursing the soil.
Some time after the army had passed, the villagers saw two more riders cross the bridge. Each man held the reins of another, riderless horse beside his own. The men had dark skin, and wore strange leather clothes of a kind that the villagers had never seen before. The horses were thin, tall and sleekly muscled, bred for speed rather than war.
The men crossed over the bridge in a moment, quite unaware of the significance of their passage. They were the first men of their nation ever to cross the Halys river. Then they too disappeared into the distance, pursuing the army as it retreated back west.
Cautious, they maintained the distance of a day’s march from the Lydian army. For most of the journey, they never saw a single man from the army that they pursued. They followed a phantom across alien lands, a monster that marched with thousands of feet and left a long, unmistakable scar across the land.
The two scouts slept in copses and deserted farmhouses, drank from rivers and sucked dew from the grass. They ate small birds that they shot from the sky with curved bows. They sneaked into orchards at night like mischievous children and stole what fruit they could find. At one lean time, as they passed through a land ruined by both a failed harvest and the passage of the hungry army that had preceded them, the two men each opened a vein in the neck of one of their horses and drank a little blood to sustain them.
They followed the army until it reached the walls of Sardis. There, at last, watching from the hills, they allowed themselves a long look at the monster they had been pursuing.
They watched as the mercenaries received their payment of slaves and gold at the gates of the city and left for their native lands. They watched as several thousand Lydian citizens were released from the army
to begin their own long journeys back to their homes in the distant corners of the empire. They watched as layer after layer peeled away from the Lydian army, until its core, perhaps a third of the number that had first crossed the Halys all those months before, entered the city walls to wait out the winter.
Having seen enough, they turned around and began their own journey home. They lashed the reins and stirred their mounts. The two men would not sleep or eat on their return.
They rode east, back towards Persia.
9
It was winter in Sardis.
For the wealthy in the high city, the season was a passing inconvenience. Food was dull, with no fruits except those that had been preserved in honey. They conducted love affairs to pass the time, drank too much, and dreamed of the liberation of spring and summer, when their lives would begin again.
For the poor of the lower city, winter was a more serious matter. They spent the rest of the year planning for the cold months, saving up wood enough to last them through. Those who miscalculated, or had their stockpile spoiled or stolen, threw themselves on the charity of others, going from family to friend to acquaintance until they found someone to take them in and give them access to a fire. This was not usually difficult, for most were happy to crowd more bodies around the flames, aware that they themselves might have need of such a favour in a future lean year. But there were always those who did not have friends or relatives from whom they could beg for the charity of heat. Such people froze to death quietly in the poorest houses of the city, and were found only when the spring thaw opened up their tombs.
Not all in the palace were free from worry in winter. In an exposed courtyard, Maia clutched her cloak around her and shivered as she watched Gyges trudge through the snow. He looked more and more like a wild man in the winter since the royal barbers had given up their erratic attempts to attend on him, given his habit of wandering outside, and let his beard and hair grow long. Maia was not fond of treating him like an animal left to grow out its pelt, but there seemed no other way to keep him warm.
