The Falcon of Sparta

by Conn Iggulden

  In the presence of listening soldiers around them and the messenger who would report back, the two generals stared at one another in silence. The order was a desperate throw of the dice that would probably get them all killed – or the single strike that could win the battle before it had even begun. Proxenus was clearly unwilling, but Clearchus knew the general would fall in line if he confirmed the order. The other Greeks might advise, but discipline was the very heart of them. They understood a general or a prince must sometimes send men to die, to hold a hill or a line. Their task was to follow the orders and sell themselves dearly, to allow a victory. It required trust – and faith in those who led them. More, it required men who understood their leaders could be wrong, that they could be sent to destruction in error or pride – and yet would go anyway.

  Even so, Clearchus said nothing for a time. He could see Menon the Thessalian angling over to see what was happening, but that made him decide all the faster. The man had said some foolish things about Sparta, with its single theatre and one river in a dry valley. If they had not been allies, Clearchus would have taken him to task for it. He thought he still might if the man survived the battle. He had sent Menon to the leftmost point of the Greek wing as a demotion, though the spiky little man did not seem to understand that.

  ‘Return to Prince Cyrus,’ Clearchus said. ‘Tell him we will advance as he has ordered.’

  The messenger bowed and raced away once more. Proxenus turned from where he had been staring at the enemy lines. He looked at Clearchus once again.

  ‘If you cut across the field, they will encircle us, my friend. The king’s army overlaps on our left. If we draw in the right as well, he will fold in the wings and that … will be that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Clearchus said. ‘Before we can break the centre, we have to rout the wing ahead. If we can do that quickly, we can turn in then towards the king. I will not let Prince Cyrus say we did not come, but we will have to go through them all first.’

  Proxenus chuckled.

  ‘I do like you, Spartan.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Clearchus said. It was not clear whether he was joking or not, and Proxenus let his smile slip. ‘Go back to your men. Tell them to keep up.’

  Clearchus looked back to two of his men standing with long silver horns.

  ‘Blow the signal to advance,’ he said.

  He checked his sword was free in the scabbard as well as the kopis knife in the small of his back. His shield felt like a good weight, an old friend on his left arm. He held out a hand and a spear was handed over to him. He hefted it and when he smiled, his expression was terrible.

  The horns sounded, over and over. The Spartans set off, leading the entire Greek wing alone against the Persian army. They marched with the river on their right flanks and their red cloaks flying. Ahead of them lay a shifting mosaic of white-coated horsemen and archers. Chariots made lines ahead of the rest, dragged through the soft sand by labouring horses. They bore scythe blades at the height of a man, and on hard ground they would make a frightening foe. In command of that part of the Persian army was the new-made Lord Tissaphernes, resplendent in white coat and seated on a grey mare.

  Cyrus saw the Greeks advance and blessed them. He watched them detach from the standing lines behind him, but then clenched his jaw when he saw no deviation from the path they had chosen. His brother’s position was still far over on the left, but they went forward as if Clearchus had not understood his order. The prince ran his hands over the shaft of a javelin, his horse snorting and pawing at the sand as it sensed his frustration.

  The river glittered over on his right as the rising sun struck the waters. He understood Clearchus had not wanted to be encircled by such a vast number of the enemy, but Cyrus was the heir to the throne. If his brother fell, he would command the entire field in an instant.

  He watched as the Greeks put daylight between the rest of the army and themselves, marching into the face of the imperial host as if they were the aggressors. It looked like one boy with a stick choosing to rush an entire regiment. Cyrus swallowed the lump in his throat. They had not refused or run when he had commanded them. He could not stand and watch them destroyed.

  ‘Sound the advance! General advance. Steady now! Advance against the enemy!’

  Horns blared all down the lines and the prince’s Persian regiments lurched into movement, black squares looking small against all those they faced. Still, they too had found their courage. Cyrus took his place in the front ranks of the centre, though he knew his brother would find no one to oppose him when the forces met, so great was the difference in their numbers. Cyrus’ only chance was to turn the field, or sweep through with his strongest right flank against the weakest left wing of the enemy. He peered ahead to see banners becoming clearer with every step. They were barely eight hundred paces apart by then, so that archers and peltasts were limbering up their arms and shoulders, ready to attack, while every other man who would have to endure it readied shields and prayed they would not be struck down.

  Cyrus caught his breath when he saw the ranks around his brother. King Artaxerxes was hidden from view by a shifting screen of soldiers and chariots. His banners were there in a cluster on the prince’s left, the golden eagle of Achaemenid. Cyrus has brought his falcon banners to challenge. One of them would fall.

  Clearchus loped along with eight ranks of Spartans and four more of their helot slaves, each two hundred and forty men wide. Behind came the forces of Proxenus and Netus, with Menon grumbling in their wake. Clearchus glowered at the sight of chariots ahead, knowing they would be fearsome to those who had never seen them before.

  ‘See how those old carts struggle in the sand,’ he called along the line. ‘Tell the men to jump those blades. We leap higher than that in the gymnasium, boys.’

  His Spartans chuckled as they remembered, and he decided suddenly not to give the Persians the respect they sought.

  ‘Men of Greece!’ he roared as he marched along. ‘Who are these people who dare to stand before us? No one, despite their vanity. We are warriors, the best the world has ever seen. Homaemon – we share the same blood. Homotropa – the same customs. Homoglosson – the language we speak.’ His voice had built to a crescendo, huge in volume and impact. ‘And Homothriskon – the same temples and gods. That is why we win. We are one people, indivisible. For today we are not Spartans, or Thessalians, or Athenians. We are Hellenes. We are men of Greece. Shall we show them what that means?’

  His Spartans gave a great growl and the rest responded, showing teeth as they walked with him. Little by little, the pace was increasing. They knew they were heading into range of arrow and slingstone. It was time.

  Each of the men who rode horses leaped down and slapped the mounts away from them. Boys who had run alongside took the reins and turned them back to the camp, now some miles behind. They cheered the soldiers on in high voices.

  ‘Double your pace,’ Clearchus roared, the sound carrying.

  He heard the order repeated further along the line and the army made a sound together that was more than just an explosion of breath. It was a challenge to those they faced. Thousands began to sing the paean, the song of death.

  ‘Ready shields and spears!’ Clearchus called.

  The Persian line was suddenly coming up fast and the air above filled with thousands of arrows, like blades of grass or dark hairs against the sun.

  ‘Shields up! Steady your pace!’ Clearchus roared again. He was not out of breath. He ran every day in training and he was barely winded. ‘Engage the enemy! Keep formation! Keep discipline. For Prince Cyrus. For Greece. For Athens. By the gods, for Sparta!’

  He kept up a stream of orders as his men advanced like a swung blade for the last hundred paces. The paean ended with a note of sadness rather than a roar, but it struck terror into the enemy even so. Arrows rattled against their shields, but most of them passed overhead, shot from archers who had not understood their pace. Held to the last, the barrage of Greek javelins ba
ttered lines down. Helots launched from ranks further back with grunts of effort. The Spartans kept hold of their spears and advanced with them held out low, a wall of thorns.

  The Persians under Tissaphernes broke before the Greeks reached them. The front ranks fell back in chaos as the men there tried to turn from red-cloaked Spartans with death in their hands. Chariots turned over as the wheels caught in the sand or were dragged sideways by the horses.

  Clearchus exulted as the way cleared before him. His Spartans drove the enemy like goats or cattle, killing anyone too slow to get out of the way, but holding discipline. He shouted the warning anyway, the constant fear of any general, that his men might become drunk on anger and break formation. He had seen armies made mobs before. Destruction always followed.

  His Spartans were the edge of the shield, so that none of those behind could run mad without passing their own allies. They advanced steadily, with shields ready and spears stabbing out. Some of the ranks behind had drawn knives to see to wounded enemies, chopping down as they stepped across so that no one could leap up and cause chaos once the main lines had passed.

  The entire Persian wing collapsed and the slaughter that followed was terrible, until every man of the Greeks was covered in the blood of strangers. Only the fact that so many of that wing had been mounted saved them at all. Tissaphernes withdrew some thousands out of range of thrown spears or slingstones, saving his own life in the process. Clearchus and Proxenus could see the man sitting his horse amidst white banners, but he had fallen back behind the main lines and Clearchus could not walk him down. The Spartan saw the Athenian horsemen were gathering themselves to ride out, but Clearchus ordered them to hold position. Amateurs and young men charged superior forces. Professionals rested themselves and climbed the mountain step by step. They had few enough horses anyway. Keeping a dozen or so back would not change the outcome of the battle.

  Clearchus had to roar at his men to halt them as they began to push on, breaking through the main forces and glimpsing the curving river and open plains beyond. He needed the eyes of Argus to see all he needed to, in that place. They had done well, but the king’s army was barely bleeding and still so vast as to appear unmarked. The dead were left where they fell. Those they faced were fresh, though their eyes were already wide with fear.

  ‘Wheel left now! Break through them to the centre!’ Clearchus said.

  He and his Greeks would roll the front edge of the Persian snake like a carpet, from one end to the other. It would bring them into contact with the Great King’s position, exactly as Cyrus had ordered. Clearchus shrugged off weariness as the first excitement faded. This was work, the hardest work he had ever known. The sun’s heat was growing and he felt his tongue had grown dry. There were no water boys to be seen and so he shrugged and cleaned his sword in the moments of respite.

  As he turned, he sent Proxenus to the flank with a line of Cretan bowmen, in case Tissaphernes tried a charge or rallied some Persian archers. To that point, Clearchus knew he had lost very few men and he wanted that to continue. He had seen one fellow caught by a chariot scythe, his own fear holding him in place when any other man would have dived and lived. That was the lesson. They had to keep moving. If they stopped, they would be overwhelmed, as a hawk can be brought down by crows.

  19

  Cyrus felt fear clutch at him, making him want to race his mount from the field. He had never known anything like it, as if he had been taken by the throat and shaken. He could breathe only shallowly and he felt his heart thumping, surely loud enough for those around to hear and know he was afraid. He saw his own death in the vast lines and the metal shimmer of the Euphrates river.

  ‘I am a prince,’ he whispered to himself, ‘of the house of Achaemenid. I am a son of King Darius, a grandson of Xerxes. I will not run from this. I will stand.’

  Ahead, he watched Clearchus lead out the Greeks, looking like men racing under a wave before it crashed down on them. Persians poured around them and they were swallowed up before his eyes, driving on and on into the enemy.

  On his left, Cyrus saw his brother’s imperials would overlap his flank with entire regiments. He did not have the numbers to stop them encircling him. Nothing ruined fighting strength faster than men knowing their retreat had been cut off, that they could not run, that there were enemies behind as well as before them. It was the simplest tactic of the Achaemenids – to bring so many to the battle that they overwhelmed whoever stood against them. The entire point of war was to bring ruin and destruction, as fast and as brutally as possible. Cyrus swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. His brother’s army would curl around his own like a claw – and it would be over.

  Cyrus felt the fear pass as soon as he had faced the worst. If his brother fell, he would be king. That was all that mattered. If Artaxerxes had brought the entire world to that plain by the great river, still only two lives would decide the outcome. The prince felt calm settle on him, like dust in the air. He breathed more deeply. It was not too hard. It was not too complex. One blow would end it all.

  Six hundred horsemen rode with the prince as his personal guard, all fiercely loyal. Those who would have gone with Orontas still felt the sting of shame and the suspicion of their colleagues. They were desperate to prove themselves.

  When Cyrus saw his brother’s lines would overlap, the prince knew he had only one choice left. He would gamble his life on a single hour. He would be the spear-point, but once thrown, it could not be called back.

  ‘Parviz!’ he bellowed.

  The man looked up, pleased to be needed for anything. Parviz rode an old mare well enough, but he was no kind of warrior, not like the prince’s guards.

  ‘Fall back now,’ Cyrus called to him. ‘This is no place for you.’

  The prince saw the man’s face crumple in dismay, but at least he would live. Cyrus was already shouting to another.

  ‘Captain Hadid!’ he called.

  The captain came forward and bowed his head to receive orders, but there was no time, not really. The space between the armies was closing like the last arrow of evening. When they clashed, there would be no room to ride out.

  ‘My guards, with me!’ Cyrus dug in his heels, trusting them to follow.

  For a moment, his horse lunged ahead of all the rest, rearing as he kicked it into motion. With a howl, his men converged on the prince as he darted north across the field. He was the swallow coming home beneath the clouds, a royal falcon in the storm.

  Cyrus found himself grinning as the air became a gale and the rhythm of his gallop beat like a drum under him. He braced a knee under the saddlehorn and sat high, leaning over the horse’s shoulders as they worked together. He carried a javelin in one hand and his sword rested behind him, ready to be drawn.

  His brother’s banners beckoned, calling him on. Cyrus caught glimpses of his guards galloping alongside, forming a wedge. It was madness, but he found himself calling the challenge to the lines ahead. His voice was lost in the roar of hooves and men, but there were no words to it, just a wild shout and a promise of vengeance. Cyrus felt tears come to his eyes, stung by grit.

  The enemy knew who he was, of course. From the first moment the prince had come out of his regiments, they had known him. No one else could have gathered six hundred horsemen but the royal prince of Achaemenid. Those ahead jerked back and forth as the prince bore down on them at full gallop, though whether it was fear of the massed charge or fear of him, Cyrus could not tell. They had been close as he sprang out; he was on them in moments, before new orders could change their formation.

  Some of them gave way rather than stand against those spears and horsemen travelling as a blur. Dozens fell back or threw themselves down in fear. Those who were braver or too slow to jump aside were smacked down suddenly, broken as if they had fallen from a cliff. Cyrus felt the impacts sting his legs. He saw men knocked aside by the plunging shoulders of his horse, driven under flashing hooves. He heard their screams as thin wails vanishing behind as his guards
drove a spike into the screen of the Persian king.

  The two royal brothers saw each other in the same moment, almost in a beat of stillness. Cyrus forgot he was galloping through moving men and saw only the astonished eyes of Artaxerxes, the ornate helm turning to face him. His brother’s mouth was open and red. His hand was reaching for a sword, but Cyrus was too fast, too solid, too much the vengeance he had promised. He had lost his javelin in the chest of a stranger. His sword was in his hand. He raised the blade high and struck at his brother’s neck, hammering him back, so that the king flailed and cried out in horror. The blade struck metal, turning in Cyrus’ hand as it caught the edge of the breastplate. Yet he had seen blood. It was a moment of perfect clarity, the air sweet and cold. Cyrus breathed out in something like joy.

  Clearchus had no time for satisfaction. The Greek square drove hard into the imperial forces, denying them any opportunity to rally. The Persians could not react fast enough. By the time their officers even understood what was happening, the Spartans were through and hacking into a new regiment. They created a rolling rout ahead as men turned and ran rather than face that red-cloaked edge and the bloody swords that flickered in their hands.

  Clearchus fought with shield and spear alongside men he had known for years. On that day, they were all united on the field of Cunaxa, by the river Euphrates, the great life serpent that made the desert green.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing there? Keep a proper distance between those ranks!’ Clearchus roared at the men of Proxenus, marching behind his own. Chastened, they shuffled back, his outrage strangely calming in the face of the enemy. If Clearchus could find the time to notice poor form, perhaps it was not quite as hopeless as some of them believed. Not one of them had seen so many people in one place before, not in the theatre of Dionysus in Athens, not in the crowds in the sacred groves of Delphi. It was a glimpse of an empire greater than anything they had imagined, and they could only blink and gape and press on.