The Last King of Lydia (16 page)

‘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.

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.

In the long winter months she had to watch him closely, as he felt neither cold nor pain. In years past, when she had been less familiar with his habits, he had come close to frostbite, walking
barefoot in the snow until his feet were hard and white. She remembered the hours he had screamed as the guards held his feet in warm water; he rebelled against their touch far more than the pain
of his thawing skin. Now, she observed him carefully, always ready to coax him indoors to play by the fire when he had been outside for too long.

As she watched him pace around the courtyard, she heard footsteps approaching, an unfamiliar combination of weight and pace on the stones. In the long years of silence spent with Gyges, she
thought she had become familiar with the footsteps of every inhabitant of the palace, but these were alien to her. She wondered if it were some new slave passing through, or visitors from a distant
land who had been trapped in Sardis by the winter. But when the owner of the footsteps came into view, it was someone she recognized.

‘My lady.’ Maia bowed. ‘How can I be of service?’

Danae looked at her in silence. ‘I wanted to see my son,’ the queen said eventually. ‘It has been a very long time since I last saw him.’

‘Of course. He will be glad to see you.’

‘Will he?’ she said absently. Maia could find no response to this, but the queen did not seem to expect one. She stepped through the snow until she stood by the slave, and watched
her son in silence as he wandered aimlessly from one corner of the courtyard to another. Maia noted that Danae had no attendants with her, not a single slave or bodyguard. How the queen had managed
to dispose of them and wander the palace alone, Maia did not know.

‘Has he ever spoken to you?’ The queen’s words summoned Maia from her thoughts.

‘No, my lady,’ the slave said. ‘He has never spoken to anyone.’

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘As sure as I can be.’

‘He is deaf, then?’

‘No. He can hear. Those scholars that the king commissioned, they tested him; clapping their hands by his ear, knocking over a chair on the other side of the room. He responded to them. I
wonder . . .’ She trailed off.

‘Please. Go on.’

‘I sometimes think that he does understand us.’

‘You think he chooses not to speak?’

‘I don’t know.’

Danae nodded absently. ‘How do you stand it? Living with his silence.’

‘It is not so difficult. It gives me time to think.’

‘What does a slave think of ?’ Danae said, then put her hand to her face and turned away. ‘What a foolish thing for me to say. I am sorry.’

‘Not at all. Will the king be coming here as well?’ Maia said. ‘He used to see us often. Gyges misses him, I think. He would be glad to see you both.’

‘My husband does not know I am here. I have no wish to see him.’

Maia said nothing.

‘Do not worry, Maia. You do not have to say anything to that. What is there to say?’

They watched Gyges in silence. He gave no sign that he knew or cared that he was being observed. He ended his absent wanderings in the snow, and retreated to a corner of the courtyard that was
covered by a small awning. A brazier burned there, and he sat on a pile of rugs and stared at the embers.

Looking at him, Maia wondered how long ago it must have been that a man first stared into a fire and sought to read his fortune in the reddish embers and turning flames. She wondered how much
longer it would be before the last man, if there ever were such a thing, stared into a fire as the world broke apart, and thought of the countless people who would sit and consider the flames in
the time between, connected across time only by a moment’s peace, a point of heat. At least in this act of contemplation, if in so little else, Gyges seemed to belong in this world, and not
another.

‘Perhaps I could try with him,’ Danae said.

‘My lady?’

‘Try and get him to speak, I mean.’

‘Of course,’ Maia said. ‘If anyone could convince him to speak, surely it is you.’

She looked at the slave. ‘If that were true he would have spoken by now. You are more of a mother to him than I am.’

Maia bowed her head to avoid the queen’s gaze. ‘Would you like me to go? Perhaps you would like to be alone with him?’

‘No. Please stay.’ Danae hesitated. ‘I wish that I saw more of you. That I had you at my side, as the king has your husband. But I don’t suppose my husband will ever
release you from this duty.’

‘That is true.’ She smiled carefully. ‘But if it pleases you, perhaps you may come here again, my lady.’ She nodded to Gyges. ‘He won’t mind. I love your son,
but I would welcome more talkative company.’

‘Perhaps I will. My thanks.’ Danae looked back to Gyges, and the smile slowly fell from her lips. Slow and hesitant, as if cornering a skittish animal that might startle and bolt,
she approached her son.

He ignored her, staring into the fire like a priest seeking a sign from the Gods. She sat down, waited beside him patiently, and then began to try and convince him to speak.

‘There was no trouble settling our debts, Isocrates?’

‘No, master. The allies are pleased. There was plenty to distribute from Pteria.’

‘Good, good,’ Croesus said. It was late, and most of courtiers had retired for the evening. Only Isocrates and a few guards remained. The throne room was dimly lit, and now Croesus
wished he had commissioned more torches for it – it was hard to read the face of his slave in the shifting play of shadows. ‘Will they all return next year?’ Croesus
continued.

‘Who can tell what the Thracians will do from one year to the next, master?’ Isocrates said. ‘But I expect they will be back, for the gold if for nothing else. The others
certainly have no cause to complain at their share.’

‘Very good. Send some offerings to the Spartans as well. Enough to let them know we bear them no ill will. They did say that they could not join us this year. But enough to let them know
we expect them promptly next spring.’

‘I will see to it immediately, master. Is there anything else you wish me to do?’

‘Send an emissary to Babylon. I have heard Nabonidus fears the

Persian. Perhaps he will join us as well.’

‘Yes, master.’

Croesus slipped one of his rings from his hand and rolled it between his fingers. ‘When this business is finished,’ he said, ‘I will go to Babylon. We will go to Babylon, I
mean. I shan’t go travelling without you again. Wouldn’t you like to see the city?’

‘I will go where you will it, master.’

‘They say it is the greatest city in the world. A city of marvels.’ He thought for a time. ‘I would like to see it,’ he said quietly. ‘They claim to have invented
writing. We may have invented money, but to be the first people to write, that would have been remarkable.’ He paused again. ‘It is the oldest city I know of. Surely, if anyone has the
answers, they must. Don’t you think?’

‘Answers to what?’

Croesus did not reply, and stared absently into space.

‘Is there anything else, master?’

‘No. Go.’

Isocrates bowed and went to the door, but as soon as he placed his hand on it, he heard the king speak again.

‘Isocrates. Wait.’ It was the tone that the slave feared from his master, more than any other. Doubt.

He turned back. ‘Master?’

The king smiled at him hesitantly. ‘Is it right that I do this?’

‘Forgive me. I do not understand.’

‘The war, I mean. What do you think?’

‘You can do whatever you want, master,’ Isocrates said. ‘You are the most powerful man in the world. Doesn’t that make you right, whatever you do?’

Croesus’s mouth twisted, and he felt the blood rush into his cheeks. He beckoned Isocrates forward, and when the slave was before him, leaned in close until he was only a few inches from
the other man’s face.