Long War 04 - The Great King

by Cameron, Christian

  And yet, we were on the same side.

  After the iced drink was served, Arwia went and sat by Sparthius. He reached for her and she laughed and slipped away and put a hand on his arm. She said something.

  He laughed very hard.

  Then she sat by Bulis. He met her gaze with level gravity. She whispered in his ear, and he nodded – and smiled.

  And finally she went and sat by Aristides. From her neck, she took a magnificent necklace of lapis and gold. She put it in his hands. ‘This is for your wife,’ she said.

  He tried to laugh. ‘How do you know I’m married?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, for all I know, all these gentlemen have wives,’ she said lightly. ‘But you love yours.’

  Aristides beamed. I had no wife, but I knew what she had just said, and I felt its justice.

  A dangerous woman indeed.

  An hour later I lay in her arms – under the stars. Under a billowing tent of gauze. With a bowl of iced fruit by my elbow.

  Pah! I brag like a pimply boy. It was . . . wonderful.

  She lay back, snapped her fingers, and a slave disconcerted me enormously by appearing, wiping her all over with a moist towel, and vanishing into the perfumed darkness. A second slave began to wash me.

  I almost leaped out of the tent.

  She laughed. She laughed a great deal.

  She grabbed my ankle and pulled me back into her arms. ‘I know you have no fleet,’ she said. ‘And I know that you cannot sail from Sparta to Babylon.’ She pressed her lips to my ear. ‘But let me pretend you can.’

  I would like to take credit for what came after. But the truth is, Arwia saved Greece, and I had very little to do with it. We did spend the rest of the night pretending that I was going to lead a great army of Greeks through the Persian empire. She made suggestions about where they were weak, and I promised to rescue Babylon from bondage.

  Oh, Babylon.

  I never did learn what she said to Bulis. I know she told Sparthius that she was not woman enough to lie with both of us together. He laughed about that until his dying day.

  The next morning, we rode away from the insects and the perfume and the sticky heat of love, and started up the roads into the mountains of Persia, on the last lap to Susa. Cyrus had a message from court. We were wanted.

  Until then, Susa had seemed impossibly remote. Now we were less than two weeks away. And my Spartan friends, who were each as brave as men could be, suddenly seemed a little more detached. Bulis spent more time training Hector. It became a passion, pothos. Sparthius began to purchase strumpets in the way stations. He had never done any such thing.

  One night Brasidas accused him of comforting the enemy. Sparthius reacted angrily. They were outside, and I began to pull my cloak around me.

  Brasidas laughed. ‘Every child you make with these women will be half a Spartan,’ he said.

  Sparthius laughed – and laughed.

  At some point, Brasidas and Sparthius and Bulis had come to terms. I’d seen it happen, but it had been so gradual that I’d missed the nuances, and I didn’t know what had divided them in the first place.

  The trip from Babylon to Susa is not so far – a little less than two thousand stades, and all on excellent roads. Susa is the Persian winter capital – in summer, they move high in the mountains to Persepolis, which, I regret to say, I never saw. A day out from Susa, and we were on cooler plains with the mountains visible in the distance and the river at our feet, and the air, as promised, was crisper and clear and cool, even though we could all but see Babylon behind us. I exaggerate, but we could see far across the plains before the daytime heat shimmer struck.

  We had ridden for eight days through a flood of soldiers – slingers, archers, spearmen – horse and foot.

  I missed Arwia. I mention this because, for a two-night affair that a man might dismiss, I was still beyond smitten or besotted. At every stopping point, I considered making an excuse to ride back. Only Gorgo’s words – that we were a conspiracy to save Greece – held me to my task.

  Brasidas rode next to me as we ploughed a furrow through the soldiers of the Persian Empire.

  ‘Do you still think that Greece can match the power of the Great King?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘We’re wearing off on you, Plataean. That was a Laconian answer.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Will you try to buy peace from the Great King?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. I smiled. I was getting better at playing Laconian.

  ‘What, then?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ll fight,’ I said.

  ‘And then?’ he asked.

  ‘I suppose we’ll die,’ I said. I was riding in a river of potential enemy spearmen. The road to Susa and Persepolis was choked with soldiers. They were everywhere – Assyrians, Elamites, Mesopotamians and Medes, horse and foot.

  That night, I dreamed of Arwia, her magnificent shoulders glistening with sweat, riding atop my hips. She was, by far, the greatest wonder of Babylon. Not just as a lover – but as the force that saved Greece.

  You’ll see.

  Susa was beautiful. It lacked the majesty and the squalor of Babylon. And the size. In truth, Susa was a fine city with a noble waterfall and two beautiful bridges, but it wasn’t a great deal bigger than Plataea and it was certainly smaller than Corinth, for all that it had a more cosmopolitan population than any city in Greece save possibly Athens. The agora teemed with men – and women – from every part of the empire and many parts adjacent, and there were Greeks – and everyone else.

  It is not important to this story – but I need to mention that in Susa I met both Aethiopians and Indians. I met an Indian merchant who told me that his country was one hundred and forty-four thousand stades distant, and that, on the Outer Ocean, there was a current and a set of constant winds that would move a ship from Aethiopia to India in the summer and back in the winter. His name was Abha, and we talked for days – I told him how to sail west from Ephesus, and he told me how to sail east from Bahrain. He sold me some fabric and a fine quantity of pepper, and I traded to him my last Athenian arybolos, some British pearls and a Rhodian perfume. We agreed that it did not really matter what we exchanged – our goods would be priceless rarities at their destinations at opposite ends of the earth.

  Abha’s role – well, if I continue to tell this, you’ll meet him again.

  Pardon my digression. We were met at the gates by soldiers. They were ‘Immortals’, as the Greeks call them. In Persian, they are called Anûšiya. Which has the same meaning as our Hetaeroi. They march with the Great King, everywhere – on campaign, on the hunt, and even in the bedchamber. There are ten thousand of them – that’s true – but they come in two ranks. The Outer Companions are armed with a short spear that carries, as its sarauter, a silver apple that makes a deadly mace. The Inner Companions, the true Anûšiya, number only one thousand men, and they carry the spear with the golden apple.

  There is no ‘Horse Anûšiya’ or hippeis, as we would call them. Every Persian noble has his own retainers, and the Great King has his own, as well, but as the Great King – at least among Persians – is far more a ‘first among equals’ (rather like the Kings of Sparta, in fact!) his cavalrymen are also his friends. And the Immortals are soldiers – some are nobly born, but most are commoners and some are foreign despite their Persian dress – Medes, Babylonians, even a few Greeks. They are chosen purely by military merit.

  We were met at the gates by six of the Inner Guard, with golden apples on their spears, magnificent scale corselets – but without our shoulder yokes, which makes them appear far slimmer – and beautiful over-robes. Their over-robes were wool, embroidered with silk.

  Silk is a kind of textile – or just possibly a form of metal – woven by spiders far to the East. I bought some in the market. It is sometimes available in Aegypt, but all of it comes from India and even farther east, in legendary Kwin.

  Well! It was a day of wonders. You
must let me tell it my own way.

  All traffic through the gate stopped for us. Six imperial guardsmen were sufficient to guarantee us instant passage through every checkpoint. The leader of the Anûšiya chatted with Cyrus.

  Suddenly he turned to me and bowed. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘My lord tells me you speak Persian, and I was treating you as an ignorant person. We never see Greeks who speak our tongue.’

  I nodded. ‘May the light of the sun always shine on your face,’ I said.

  He grinned. ‘You have the accent of my home!’ he cried, and slapped his thigh in delight. ‘Did you learn from a man of Fars?’

  I nodded. ‘I have the honour to be a friend of Artapharenes, brother of Darius the Great,’ I said.

  Cyrus nodded. ‘It is true. He was a young scamp, but we took to him. Only the gods know why. He saved my lord’s life, too.’

  The Anûšiya bowed low. ‘Truly,’ the leader admitted, ‘we seldom meet a Greek of worth. Most are slaves – and better so.’

  One of the soldiers looked up at me – we were mounted. ‘Are you a Spartan?’ he asked. ‘We hear they are very good. Good fighters – men of honour.’

  I pointed at Brasidas, who was just behind me. ‘He is a Spartan.’

  The leader nodded. ‘The Spartans will be with us, when we fight. Their king-in-exile is close to our king. They hunt together.’ He nodded as if stating a profound truth. ‘The Spartan king is an honourable man – and a fine hunter. Very brave.’

  Well, we all delude ourselves in war. Why should not the Persians delude themselves?

  ‘What are they saying?’ asked Brasidas, and the two heralds pushed their horses forward. I translated.

  The Spartans all smiled, and Sparthius slipped down from his horse. ‘Immortals? These are Persian Immortals?’ He looked over the officer’s equipment like a man buying an ox at a fair. ‘Ask him if I can hold his spear.’

  The Persian courteously handed the Spartan his spear.

  Sparthius – ignoring the crowd of onlookers we’d drawn at the edge of the Susan agora – began to whirl the spear.

  ‘Superb balance,’ he said. ‘Short – but a good head.’ He tested it with his thumb and smiled. He handed it to Bulis, and who looked at the head – and smiled.

  ‘Good steel,’ he said.

  Before the gods, the Immortals made the Spartans happier than Arwia’s beauty and all her wit. Bulis called to me – in Greek – his voice full of life, lilting like a boy’s.

  ‘These are worthy men.’

  By which, if you haven’t figured out the Spartan mindset, he meant – these are men worth matching spears with.

  In truth, the Great King’s palace at Susa was splendid, and had I seen it before Babylon, I would have gaped. But I’d been to Babylon, and Arwia’s great hall with its winged lions and green marble columns was – truthfully – grander than Darius’s palace at Susa. And when you left the temple-like hall for the guest quarters – it was more like a stone-built barracks, which, in fact, it was. The Great King had almost a thousand guests, and we were packed in like travellers in the caravanserai along the Royal Road, with Indians and Bactrians and Jews . . .

  At the same time, the guest barracks was wonderful, because we all mixed together at mealtimes as if we were some kind of exotic army, and the conversation was a delight. I didn’t meet a fool there, and I met many men far better travelled than I. Aristides all but held court – his wisdom was apparent to all, and he quickly gathered a group of high-minded men who discussed issues like the value of excellence and the purpose of human life.

  I don’t want to suggest that I wasn’t interested. But I was in the capital of the greatest empire on the aspis of the world, and I was there to learn all I could about the enemy, not about the mind of man. Each day, when the sun was halfway to the middle of the sky and the shadow of the horse statue in the Foreigners’ Courtyard reached a certain point, the palace major-domo would come and announce the list of guests who would be received by the Great King. And as soon as this ceremony was performed, Brasidas and I would pack ourselves cloaks and hat and go out into the agora. We visited Cyrus at his father’s house and had a tremendous meal with a man who had ridden with Cyrus the Great and had, himself, been to the borders of India. He was a courteous, dignified old gentleman who was nonetheless not too fine to flourish his akinakes and show us just how he slew a prince of the Scythians.

  We went with Cyrus to the barracks of the noble cavalry and watched them at exercise.

  Cyrus said, ‘It might seem foolish of us to show you everything – our armament, our tactics. But the Great King believes that if other nations see our power, we can avoid bloodshed by your submission.’

  In truth, just on the plains around Susa, the Great King had more – and better – cavalry than all of Thessaly and all of Greece could ever raise, better mounted, better equipped, with bows which none of our horsemen had. One day, Cyrus took us to see Persian archers.

  I grew up watching Persian archers, but the Spartans had not.

  Brasidas stood silently while twenty men lofted shafts so fast that the third one was in the air before the first struck. And when they struck, they struck deep. Persian bows were bigger and more powerful even than Scythian bows, as those of us who had faced noble Persian archers at sea had every reason to know.

  And Cyrus embarrassed me by telling the men on the archery range that I had charged Artapherenes’ guard at Sardis – and lived.

  ‘Tell us!’ men insisted, so I told the story, hiding, as much as possible, the fact that there had been only ten of us in the charge.

  ‘And Marathon?’ asked another. ‘The battle on the plains of Athens? Were you there, as well?’

  I admitted I had been, and then we were swapping lies – or at least half-truths – because he had ridden with the cavalry at our end of the line.

  In the end, we agreed that no two men see a battle the same way, But I agreed with him that, had the ends of the Greek line not pressed forward so fast, the Persians would have triumphed. This seemed to satisfy him that I was a reliable witness.

  They served us wine, and we were like comrades.

  The next day, in the market, a street sweeper – a low-caste half-Mede – told me that soon I would have his job.

  ‘Now you are an ambassador,’ he said. ‘Soon, you will be a slave, lower than me. I see it every day. Put your neck under his foot and get it over with!’ The man laughed a gap-toothed smile. ‘I need the help.’

  And that day or the next we were invited by Shahvir and Mayu – I think I have those names correctly, they were officers of the Anûšiya – to a mess dinner at the barracks. I was enjoined to bring all the Spartans, and I did.

  Shahvir was a fine companion, but as soon as we’d had a cup of wine, he showed us several sets of Greek panoply. ‘You have seen us ride and shoot,’ he said. ‘Let us see the Greek way of war.’

  I protested that he must have seen hoplites – in Babylonian service, if nowhere else.

  ‘I myself have fought the Ionians several times,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Too much armour, too little training.’

  I turned to Bulis. ‘He’d like us to demonstrate the phalanx.’

  Bulis nodded. ‘With three men and a foreigner?’ he asked. Note that well, friends – we were in Susa, in Persia, and he called me a foreigner. It is hard to love the men of Lacedaemon. At any rate, he shook his head at me.

  ‘You do not know our dances,’ he said.

  ‘I know the seventh dance,’ I said. ‘I learned it from Sparthius.’

  Sparthius nodded. ‘He’s better than most boys,’ he said. ‘I say let’s do it. With four of us we can look like something.’

  Brasidas looked as displeased as I. ‘I am a Plataean,’ he said.

  In that moment, I loved him.

  Bulis didn’t change expression. ‘Of course. Your view is noted. Will you dance with us, Plataeans?’

  I looked at Brasidas, and he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.

&
nbsp; It is one thing to dance the Pyricche in the agora of your city, or some clear space under the walls. At Plataea, we dance it at the corner of the enclosure of Hera, and the goddess herself, I think, watches us when we are at our best.

  But even when we stumble or miss the time, we dance for three thousand men and women, and we know them all by name. When a young man is particularly skilled or good, women – and some men – cry, ‘Kalos! Kalos!’

  It is different, when you dance the war dance for enemies. And you must believe me, friends. By that night in Susa, we knew that we were a few Greeks in a sea of enemies. They were good men and women – decent, honourable – but they were – from the Great King we had not met to the meanest slattern – cocksure that they would conquer us and make us slaves.

  Nor was the armour good stuff, nor did it fit well. In the end, I asked Mayu for his scale shirt – we were of a size.

  ‘But it is not like your gear,’ he said.

  ‘I have one just like it hanging from the rafters of my house,’ I said.

  ‘Where from?’ he asked.

  ‘Marathon,’ I said wickedly. No one should ever have sent me as a diplomat.

  Bulis commanded us. He made us stand perfectly still and simply tap the floor with our sarauters for what seemd like an eternity. He wanted us to have the rhythm correct.

  I have said that the Spartan Pyricche is not like ours. I’ll say more now. In Sparta, they have ten – or, for all I know, fifty – Pyricche, not just one. Each dance has a particular storyline, and each dance teaches a set of lessons to a boy – or a man.

  So the seventh dance of the Lacedaemonians is the dance of the shield press. In it, the two lines exchange thrusts, but only to offer the opportunity to use the aspis as a weapon. It is the one I chose to learn because it teaches the lessons so well – how to turn your aspis like a table, how to cut with the outer rim, how to break an opponent’s body-structure with a push offline.

  For a moment, as we stood ready, I couldn’t think of the opening sequence, and so I was late – terribly late – entering the first step.

  Hah! But after that, I was into the rhythm of the thing, and we were like gods.