The Ten Thousand

by Michael Curtis Ford

  As my eyes drifted away from the horizon to the nearer perspective, I saw that contrary to my first impression, the land was indeed composed of many features that had not been immediately apparent, like brush strokes on a painting, or the waves and currents of the sea as observed by the sailor, standing out in relief on the water's infinite flat smoothness. The earth was cracked and broken, split into random patterns that bifurcated and converged like a rash on the skin, strewn with gullies and washes, dry streambeds and low, withered shrubs. It was a foul terrain of pain and frustration, ground that had slowed my frantic return to the camp on horseback the day before. In the middle distance, just beyond a line of small hills that I could barely distinguish from its surroundings, I made out the vast expanse of the Persian army where it had halted in its retreat, massed like a milling column of ants stretching off to the horizon, the Persian battle pennants providing tiny spots of brightness and color on what was otherwise a drab, undifferentiated cloud of men and beasts. I shook my head to concentrate my thoughts, and focused my gaze on the specifics.

  For miles around lay the detritus and destruction of the previous day's wide-ranging battle. Upturned wagons smoldered on their sides, their contents of grain and salted fish spilled and half torched, some still spewing a foul, greasy smoke. Spear shafts and javelins were spiked into the hard earth at crazy angles where they had landed, the ends swaying and quivering slightly as if curious, invisible desert gods were testing the depth and the strength of the shanks. My gaze ranged over the broad landscape, flitting sideways from fractured hill to withered clump of grass until I reluctantly, unwillingly permitted it to settle on the dark lumps scattered about the plain in numbers too daunting to count: the twisted bodies of lamed or trampled horses; the oxen and sheep viciously slashed in the abdomen or throat for no other reason than to deprive the Greeks of their sustenance and service; and perhaps least unexpected, yet most horrifying, the men.

  Thousands of men, or former men, they were, though many were unrecognizable as such. It had been only a day since they fell, yet the furnacelike heat had cooked them where they lay on the hot sand, and many had swollen to twice their size with the gas in their bellies. Most lay deathly still, inert and silent as the rocks and crumpled wagons littering the plain. Others, however, hissed and belched in the heat, their limbs occasionally twitching and jerking. Their repose was further disturbed by the raucous cawing of crows circling and gathering in the sky above, summoning their courage for forays to the ground, aimed precisely at those dead whose inner workings were now most exposed to the heavens. I swallowed my rising disgust and forced myself to absorb the scene, to take in the changing details, noting as I stared that not all the bodies were prone and dead, but that many consisted of the black silhouettes of camp followers or soldiers, wandering aimlessly or kneeling or even sleeping in the fields, shoulder to entrails with the dead. An exhausted Greek follower half rose in sleep to slap at an overeager crow that had tested him with a peck to the eyes, and a bloodied Spartan, still in battle gear, sat up swearing and kicking at a stray pig that had begun rooting at his crotch. A filthy, robed woman rocked back and forth on the ground, her hands clawing at her face and hair as she moaned and keened wordlessly at an unidentifiable loss.

  To my right a hundred soldiers and camp followers had organized themselves into funeral brigades, which had started pyres and begun collecting bodies for sorting and burning. Persian soldiers, many of them already half charred from the effects of the Boeotian engines, were stripped of any usable possessions and left naked where they fell, their flesh bled or burnt dry of blood and the skin on their faces a hideous, bluish white mask. A row of cadavers had been collected, fallen camp followers of Cyrus' army, who were being identified as best as possible and laid with a brief ceremony into the crackling bonfires by men robed and hooded in thick blankets to shield them from the intense heat and the stench. To my relief, I saw no armor of Greek soldiers in the rows of the dead.

  Wood for the pyres was readily at hand, if only from the thousands of Persian arrows and heavy Egyptian shields lying about the surrounding field, abandoned in their owners' hasty departure. Intact wagons and carts, too, were available, and despite the Persians' attempted slaughter, hundreds of head of cattle and sheep had somehow survived the carnage of their brethren and escaped in the night, and were now wandering in the vicinity of the camp, bawling to be milked and tended. If there were not enough provisions to last the entire return trip home, we were at least sufficiently supplied to tide us over for the next several days. I wandered the camp, taking stock of our circumstances and searching for Xenophon and Proxenus. A cloud of dust had separated from the main body of enemy troops in the distance, too small to warrant alarm, but meriting my wary attention as it was intercepted by the Spartan scouts Clearchus had remembered to post on the approaches to the camp. I was soon able to make out an incoming rider at the outer periphery of the battlefield, unarmed and bearing a herald's staff. Since I was in the vicinity, I waited for him as he picked his way gingerly around the swelling Persian cadavers, and I then led him to Proxenus' tent, which for want of any better structure had become the informal gathering place of the army's officers.

  Clearchus, who alone among the Greeks was in an unaccountably cheerful mood, came to meet him, and found to his surprise that it was Phalinus, an older, morose-looking Spartan who in his younger days had served under him, but had found the experience to be too trying, and had managed to arrange duties elsewhere. Phalinus had always considered himself an expert military strategist, rather than an actual fighter, and several years ago had convinced Tissaphernes to take him on in this capacity. He was said to be held in high regard even by Artaxerxes for his knowledge of Spartan military tactics and ways. Clearchus punched him good-naturedly on the shoulder.

  "You old dog!" he said. "So the king hasn't sent you packing by now for your sorry performance yesterday! You must have him by the short hairs with all your stories about your great victories over Athens. Have you told him yet how you used to be my water boy when we were young hebontes training in Sparta?" Clearchus guffawed loudly at this, but Phalinus remained dour and stony-faced, his eyes bloodshot and watering from the smoke of the funeral pyres, as he refused to reciprocate his former commander's light-hearted greeting.

  Phalinus waited silently for all the Greek captains to arrive, and then coldly called their attention.

  "The king," he announced in an authoritative voice, "having killed Cyrus and plundered the Hellene camp, declares a great victory. He orders you to lay down your arms, and to beseech him for what mercy he might deign to offer you."

  Utter silence. The Hellenes were speechless, and I saw Clearchus immediately flush, the scar on his cheek turning livid. He paused a few seconds to gain control over his anger.

  "It is not for the victors to lay down their arms," he said slowly and coolly, gesturing broadly with his great, hairy arm at the immense field littered with Persian corpses. He then stalked off to complete a sacrifice he had been about to attend, leaving the other officers gathered about Phalinus, muttering to themselves.

  Proxenus finally broke the tension. "Phalinus, you yourself are a Greek: speak to us openly and honestly. Is the king addressing us as a conqueror, or merely asking for our weapons as a gesture of good faith?" At this, all the captains spoke up, either shouting Proxenus down for his candor toward Phalinus, or attempting to ask their own questions. Finally an Athenian captain, Theopompus, a dandy whom I had seen one or two times with Socrates in the agora, managed to gain the others' attention.

  "Phalinus," he said. "Put yourself in our place. Now that we have been plundered by the king, we have nothing but our arms and our courage. As long as we keep our weapons, we can still use our courage. But if we give up the weapons, we lose both. Could you blame us if we rejected the king's demand?" He smiled smugly at his compact argument, and waited for Phalinus' reaction. We all watched him.

  Phalinus laughed tightly. "Well said, little Socrates! But
logic will not advance your cause if the facts are against you. Courage or not, the king still has half a million men in the field, and that many more again in Babylon a few hours' march away. You are foolish to think there is anything you can do to check his power. I am a Greek too. If I thought you had one chance in a thousand to prevail against the king, or even to run from him and return safely back home, I would tell you to do it. By the gods, I've earned my own little stash of gold from the Persians over the years-I would even go with you. The fact that I don't speaks for itself. Ask your great philosopher what he would do in that situation."

  By this time, Clearchus had completed the sacrifice and returned, his face black with the fury that had been building up within him. "Take this back to the king," he spat. "If he wishes to be friends with us, we will be more valuable to him with our weapons than without. If he wishes to make war on us, all the more reason for us to keep our weapons. The weapons stay, and will remain sharpened. And you, Phalinus, you ass-kissing son of a bitch: The next time I set eyes on you in my camp I will be carving your balls for my breakfast."

  Phalinus smirked. "I am merely the king's representative," he said unctuously. "I can't tell you not to act the fool, Clearchus. But I have one more message from the king. He offers a truce if you stay where you are, but war if you move from this place, either forward or backward. Give me an answer to take back to the king: Will there be a truce, or will there be war?"

  "Yes," said Clearchus.

  Phalinus looked at him in confusion, then glared. "What am I supposed to tell the king?" he asked in irritation.

  "That for once we agree with him. There will be truce if we stay, and war if we move."

  But he did not say which he intended.

  That evening, Clearchus ordered us to break camp just after dinner. When Xenophon passed the order on to me, I could not believe I had heard him right.

  "Do you realize that Clearchus has just signed our death warrant?" I exclaimed. "We are only ten thousand-the king will have his entire army upon us by daybreak!"

  Xenophon didn't flinch. "That may be-but Clearchus' hand was forced, by our own troops. Did you know? Three hundred Thracian infantry and forty cavalry deserted to the king this afternoon."

  "Three hundred and forty? Couldn't their officers keep them in line until we all came to a decision as a unit?"

  Xenophon hesitated, and looked away with an expression of bitterness. "Their own officers led them. And as soon as word of the desertion spreads through the army, there will be others."

  I pondered his words. There was no telling how much longer Clearchus would be able to keep the army together in the absence of the common hope of plunder from Cyrus. A frontal attack on Artaxerxes, with badly outnumbered troops, was out of the question. Staying where we were with no provisions, while the king wore us down by delaying, would be to commit passive suicide. Our position simply was not tenable.

  "Where does Clearchus intend to march us?" I asked.

  Xenophon shrugged. "He sees no choice but to unite with Ariaius and the native troops, and to hope they remain loyal to us rather than to the king."

  It remained unspoken, yet implicit, that moving from our present location meant a declaration of war against the entire Persian empire, as surely as our forebears had declared war on the king's own ancestors, Darius and Xerxes.

  After a long march in the darkness, we reached Ariaius' camp at midnight. The officers immediately gathered around a council fire, and all of them, Persian and Greek alike, swore to defend each other to the death. At Ariaius' insistence, they sealed the pact by dipping their spears in the blood of a newly sacrificed bull, each man daubing a bit on the breast of his neighbor with his spear point as a sign of mutual trust.

  Clearchus then spoke up, impatient.

  "Now that we've sworn allegiance to each other with that spear-point bullshit, and recognize that we're both in the same predicament, what do you propose, Ariaius? You know this country. Do we return the way we came?"

  Ariaius stared morosely into the fire a few seconds before answering.

  "If we return that way, we're sure to starve. On our march here the countryside was a barren desert. For seventeen stages we had to rely on the provisions we brought with us, and now we have none." He paused again for a moment, in thought. "Returning by the northern route is longer, but it at least brings us through fertile country with plenty of villages, where we can take provisions. The key is to move fast, and put as much ground between us and Artaxerxes as possible. He won't dare to attack us with a small force, but if he moves with his entire army he'll be too slow to catch us. I propose we move quickly, while we can."

  This set the officers to grumbling, for it looked like the coward's way out-a mere cut and run. No one else had a better idea, however, so by default the officers voted it as their plan, sacrificed to the gods, and each went back to catch what few hours of sleep he could before rousing the exhausted army the next morning and embarking on a forced march.

  I lingered for a time in the shadows by the fire, reluctant to return to the tent, my mind whirling and my body tense and restless. Despite the awfulness of that long, bitter day-the burning of the dead, the confrontation with Phalinus, the exhausting march in the dark to Ariaius' camp-I had scarcely been able to think of anything but the event of the night before. My thoughts raced with the vivid dream I had experienced, my near certainty that I was about to die at Asteria's hands from having unknowingly committed some crime of concupiscence, like one of those sticklike male insects I once watched in horror as a child which, even during the very act of mating, is calmly devoured by the female headfirst, right down to his still rutting abdomen. After wandering aimlessly across the camp for some time, I realized with a jolt that my feet had carried me, almost instinctively, to the quarter of the camp followers.

  Picking my way through the confused jumble of wagons and tents in the women's section, I sensed the burden of mournful and accusing glances pressing upon me from every shadow and shelter. I wandered blindly and fruitlessly for an hour, uncertain that I would ever be able to find her-when suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, I felt her soft hand slip into mine and tug me gently away. She led me to the edge of the camp, and I tried to pull her close to me, but she stiffened, resisting me, and continued to guide me forward in the dark until the mournful sounds of the camp had been left far behind and we came to a small rock outcropping, sheltered by a forlorn shrub. Here she finally stopped, and without sitting down, turned toward me, her face shadowed in darkness and her body tense.

  "Theo, last night was… last night I was afraid of everything, and what we did was wrong. I am sorry."

  I remained silent, waiting for her to continue, for I had nothing to contribute to a statement such as this.

  "You know me but you know nothing about me," she said. "I am a child of the Persian court. I was beholden to the prince, and before that to his family. Yet here in the desert I have nothing. I can bring you only misery."

  "Asteria, if you mean a dowry, that is not something I am concerned with. I too have nothing of my own. And a marriage is impossible for the time being anyway, under these circumstances."

  She paused for a moment, seemingly puzzled, before I saw a faint, sad smile briefly flit across her face. "That isn't exactly what I meant. It is a question of family honor. My father…"

  I interrupted her, glowering. "You are concerned about honor and your father-why, because I have no rank? I am a soldier of Athens, a warrior. I have no money, but I have a strong arm, and the vast heritage of my city. Who is your father, what does he have to boast of?"

  She sighed. "Theo, you don't understand. If it were merely his disapproval, that I could endure. It is something far more than that, though, something I fear I could not live with. How can I betray my father?"

  "Betray him? Where is your father now? Of what possible threat can I be to him, or him to me?"

  "I'm not even sure myself…"

  "Asteria-look at our situation, lo
ok at your situation. A woman must take protection where she finds it. I am here, and he is not."

  She paused for a long time in the darkness, peering into my face, seeming to perceive me as clearly as if it were light, again attempting to divine the response of the gods before acting. After a moment she moved toward me, and I felt her warm, fragile body press against me. I bent down to breathe in her scent, the same powerful perfume of charred wood and crushed flowers that had lingered in my nostrils since her visit the last night. As we settled on the sparse, dusty grass beneath us, I began fumbling clumsily with her tunic, attempting to slip my hand beneath.

  "Wait," she said, "we haven't time. The sun is beginning to rise already." The eastern sky had indeed begun to lighten and the camp was beginning to stir with the sounds of morning activity, though hardly anyone had slept more than a few hours.

  I relaxed and an almost overwhelming sense of weariness and release washed over me, leaving me grateful for the opportunity merely to lie still with her in my arms. She, too, seemed content, worlds away from the tension and desperation of the night before. Still, the terrible doubts I had harbored earlier continued to nag at me.

  "Asteria," I began haltingly, "last night, when you were leaving, I think I had a dream-it was as if you, and your knife…" I was at a loss for words, for how do you speak to someone about such an experience? I looked at her face, which was gradually becoming more distinct in the graying sky, her limpid eyes almost glowing in the ethereal gray light, yet still colorless as shadows. Her expression was blank, almost quizzical, as she gazed calmly back at me.