The Lost Army (9 page)

Cyrus was young, handsome, daring and powerful. As was the queen. She was also willing to satisfy him in any way he desired. She brought him a large sum of money on behalf of her husband so that he could pay his soldiers’ salaries, and she brought him herself. For a few days, it seemed that the whole world had stopped. The army was encamped, its tents solidly pitched. The royal pavilion was adorned with the finest fabrics and the most precious carpets, with bronze tubs for her majesty’s bath. The men whispered that Cyrus would watch as she undressed and sank into the hot, fragrant water and had herself washed and massaged by two Egyptian handmaidens dressed only in tiny loincloths. He would sit on a stool covered with the royal purple and caress a cheetah curled up at his feet. The sinuous forms of the feline must have felt like the curves of the queen languidly stretching her limbs in the bronze tub.

The third day he decided to offer her a stirring display of his military might, all decked out in full battle order. He asked Clearchus to draw up all of his red-cloaked warriors wearing their polished armour and carrying their big round shields. They were to march at a cadenced step, to the beating of drums and the music of flutes, and parade before the prince and his beautiful guest on their chariots. The effect was brilliant. The queen was happy, as excited as a little girl watching a show of street jugglers.

Suddenly the blare of a bugle filled the ears of the royal spectators, shrill and prolonged. The scarlet warriors slowed their pace, executed a long, perfect right wheel then, at a second bugle call, charged towards the Asian camp where Ariaeus’s troops were housed, their spears low and ready. The attack was so realistic that the Asians ran off in every direction, overwhelmed by panic. When a third bugle call stopped them, Clearchus’s warriors turned back, laughing and making fun of Ariaeus’s troops, who had certainly not made a great show of bravery or resistance.

Strangely, Cyrus was pleased with the trick, because it proved what a disruptive effect a heavy infantry charge by the red cloaks had on the Asian soldiers.

The queen left the camp a few days later, after Cyrus had promised that her husband would suffer no damage or harassment from his troops, in exchange for their unchallenged transit through the pass known as the Cilician Gates. The gap was so narrow that two harnessed horses could not pass at the same time. In effect, a very few selected, well-trained troops posted at the point of passage could have prevented anyone – even the most powerful army of the earth – from crossing. But it seemed that the king of Cilicia had no desire to engage in conflict and preferred to let Cyrus pass rather than attempt to stop him. Whoever held the Gates had the whip hand, so Cyrus had no choice but to trust him. Soon his word of honour would be put to the test: the Gates were only days away from their camp.

The queen departed laden with precious gifts, and perhaps Cyrus made a secret promise to see her again in Cilicia. A beautiful woman – and a queen at that – can’t be considered the object of a few nights’ hurried amusement.

Some days later the army passed close to Mount Argeus where Marsyas was said to have been flayed alive by Apollo. It was a lofty, solitary mountain that loomed like a giant over the high plains. Many other legends were told about that place. They said that deep inside the mountain there was a titan fettered to the rock who from time to time would angrily shake his chains and spew forth flames from his mouth. Rivers of fire would erupt out of the mountain top then, incandescent clouds would form and the whole region resound with fearsome roars. But most of the time Mount Argeus was calm and peaceful, perennially capped with white snow.

Fifteen days or so passed without anything much happening until they reached a city called Dana. Before them loomed the imposing Taurus range. Up on those snowy peaks, Anatolia ended and Cilicia began. As the army made ready to ascend towards the pass, Cyrus imprisoned the Persian governor of the city and had him put to death. Another person, whose name was kept secret, was arrested as well and executed. It seems that neither one of them had ever done anything to deserve such punishment.

Xeno did not know Persian and there was only one interpreter who maintained contact between the Greek officers and Cyrus. The reason was clear enough: restricted conversations could not be heard by too many people, and in this case ‘too many’ meant more than one.

The only Greek to confer with Cyrus was Clearchus. The other senior officers – Menon, Agias, Socrates and Proxenus – were invited to banquets every so often, and sometimes to war council meetings, but at such meetings Cyrus spoke personally to the interpreter, who repeated his words to Clearchus in a murmur. Clearchus passed the orders on to his officers, probably as he saw fit.

Anyone who approached this single interpreter would certainly arouse suspicion and attract the attention of unsavoury characters. All Xeno had to rely on were rumours and hearsay that were difficult to verify. It was very likely, nonetheless, that Cyrus wanted to hide his presence in the area as far as possible, since it was evident that he never should have been there in the first place. No one believed the story of an expedition against mountain tribes threatening Cappadocia any more.

Xeno was already convinced then that the march of such a huge army hadn’t escaped the powers that be: Susa, for instance, and Sparta. But we wouldn’t be sure of this until much later, when Xeno learned that something important had taken place in Greece, something that would influence the fate of us all.

S
OMEONE IN
S
PARTA
had already made a decision that might have shifted the balance of our world, but at that point he didn’t know how to control the sequence of events that he had set off. The instrument was the mercenary army that was now crossing Anatolia, but how could the situation be handled? How to stay out of the game and be inside at the same time?

It was late at night in Sparta when the two kings were awakened one after another in their houses by a messenger: they were to report immediately to the council hall where the five ephors – the men who governed the city – had already joined for a special session.

They probably discussed the issue at length, attempting to establish, with the help of informers, where the army was at that moment and whether it was possible to intercept their march at the border between Cilicia and Syria.

It was evident by now that Cyrus’s objective was the one they had all imagined, although no one officially knew anything: he planned to attack the heart of the empire and overthrow Artaxerxes.

‘Brother against brother,’ someone observed. ‘It’s difficult to hypothesize any other possibility.’

A heavy silence fell over the council hall for a few moments, then the two kings exchanged a few words in a whisper, as did the ephors.

Finally the eldest of the ephors spoke. ‘When we made the decision to accede to Cyrus’s request we considered all the evidence scrupulously and cautiously. We feel that we made the right choice and acted in the best interests of the city.

‘We could have turned Cyrus down, but he would only have looked for help elsewhere: in Athens, for example, or Thebes or Macedon. It was best not to miss out on this opportunity: if Cyrus is truly marching against his brother, there are only two possible outcomes. If he wins, he will owe us his throne and our power in that part of the world will have no limits. If he loses, the army will be destroyed, the survivors executed or sold off as slaves in distant lands. No one will ever be able to accuse us of having plotted against the Great King or of supporting the endeavours of a usurper, because none of the men recruited knows the reason for which Cyrus had ordered them to assemble at Sardis, except for one. And he will never talk. There is not one regular Spartan officer among them.’

Someone present there, perhaps one of the kings, or both, must have thought about how much things had changed in three generations. Then, Leonidas and his men had fought at the Fiery Gates, three hundred against three hundred thousand, the Athenians had done battle on the sea, one hundred ships against five hundred, all the cities of Greece had fought, together, on the open battlefield. Against Persia. Side by side they had fought for the freedom of all of Greece and defeated the largest, richest and most powerful empire in the world. Now the Grecian peninsula was an expanse of ruin and devastation. The flower of its youth had been mown down by thirty years of civil strife. Sparta had won hegemony over a graveyard, over cities and nations that were shadows of what they had once been. And in order to feed this ghost of power they were forced to beg for money from the barbarians, their former enemies. This expedition represented the point of no return. They had reached the limit, sending off a select corps of over ten thousand extraordinary warriors in a venture that was almost certainly doomed to failure, with a good chance that these men would be completely wiped out. What city was this that they ruled over? What sort of men were these five bastards called ephors who were responsible for governing Sparta?

Perhaps they were tempted to voice their outrage, they who were descendants of the heroes of days gone by, but they limited themselves to stating a more realistic appraisal: something might go wrong. Something unexpected might push the situation out of control. It was a possibility they had to consider.

The chief of the ephors admitted that the objection was well put and that they had already paid it heed. For this reason, a regular Spartan officer, one of the very best, was on his way to join the army, with precise orders that could not be revealed. A secret mission that must remain so at any cost. Only when the situation was resolved would the kings be informed.

The man chosen for such a delicate mission – which required courage but also intelligence and above all, absolute loyalty and obedience to his orders – would be leaving next day on a ship from Gythion. The kings would learn of his identity six days after his departure.

The session was ended at once and the two kings went back to their homes, distraught and disillusioned, in the middle of the night.

A few hours later the Spartan envoy was awakened by a helot and accompanied to his harnessed horse. The man mounted his steed, secured his bag and galloped off. The sun was rising from the sea when he arrived within sight of the first houses of Gythion. A trireme of the war fleet was waiting at anchor with a light blue standard flying aft: the signal that they were expecting him.

He crossed the gangplank and led his horse aboard the ship.

T
HE ARMY
left their quarters in Dana at dawn. Before the bulk of the troops set off, Cyrus asked Clearchus to send a detachment of his men to another pass that gave access to Tarsus – the capital of the kingdom of Cilicia and the biggest city in the region – from the rear. If the Cilicians refused to admit him, the detachment could attack from the west and force a resolution to the situation.

Clearchus chose Menon of Thessaly and gave him orders to move his battalion towards a pass in the Taurus chain that opened on to the plains west of Tarsus, while the rest of the army would transit through the narrow Cilician Gates and arrive at the capital from the north.

Menon left when it was still dark, while Cyrus waited until dawn and then headed towards a rest stop at the foot of the mountains. From the moment when the road began its steep climb, there would be no opportunity to make camp until after crossing the pass; this was true not only for such a huge army as his but even for a mere caravan. It was thus necessary to divide the journey in two stages. After spending the night at the foot of the Taurus chain, Cyrus led his army towards the Gates. It was dawn, they would be there before dusk. The road was little more than a winding mule track often flanked by deep gorges.

If the king of Cilicia decided to oppose their march, he could easily pick them off one by one, or decide to hold them in check for days and days, perhaps even months.

Tension was high among the ranks. The soldiers couldn’t help but look upwards, at the rocky, towering peaks that surrounded them. What really disturbed them was that the road – usually heavy with traffic, since it was the only route for caravans from Mesopotamia heading towards Anatolia and the sea, and vice versa – was deserted. Not a single donkey or camel, only a few scattered peasants hauling basketfuls of goods on their shoulders. Some of the locals gathered by the road to watch the passage of the incredibly long column. Surely the word was out that something dangerous was bound to happen along that route, and no one dared use it, nor would they until the whole army had passed.

Before venturing through the pass, which was cut into the solid rock and allowed the passage of a single pack animal at a time, the prince sent scouts forward to reconnoitre. They reported back that there was no one at the top but that they’d spotted a camp on the other side which seemed to be completely deserted. Perhaps there had been an early plan of resistance that was later abandoned. Cyrus and his men crossed the pass with no trouble and settled into the camp while the long column continued its climb, all night long. When the last man had arrived at the top, it was already time to set off again.

In the meantime Menon and his battalion were crossing the western pass. They were moving quickly and without much worry because their guide had assured them that the area was clear.

The pass was found at the watershed of two streams: one flowed towards the Anatolian high plains, the other descended towards the sea. The first part of their route climbed upwards with a rather constant, moderate slope. They were covering open countryside and the view was clear all around. But when Menon had crossed the saddle and reached the slope beyond, he could see that the valley of the second torrent was steep and rugged, a deep gully buried at the foot of high, craggy walls. The descent was much steeper, and the water raced much faster.