Alexander (Vol. 3) (Alexander Trilogy) (38 page)

Some moments of silence passed by, interrupted only by the chattering of the Persians as they spoke quietly among themselves.

It was Cleitus who piped up first, with a question: And how will you substitute the three magnificent battalions of Thessalian cavalry?’

‘There are two thousand Persian horsemen on their way – all of them trained in the Macedonian manner,’ replied the King, staring him straight in the eyes. ‘I have called them the Successors.’

The words left the Black paralysed and his eyes grew moist with anger. He stood up and said, ‘So it seems you no longer have any need of us.’ Then he wrapped himself up in his cloak and made for the door.

‘Stop, Black! Stop! Do not defy me in this way, Black!’ shouted the King.

But Cleitus did not even turn as he left. Others stood up, leaving the food on the tables – the commander of the Thessalians, then the battalion chiefs Meleager and Polyperchon, followed by almost all the commanding officers of the
hetairoi
cavalry.

‘Do you wish to leave as well?’ asked Alexander, turning to his friends.

Seleucus, usually the coolest of them all, sometimes apparently the most cynical, said, ‘Do not be upset by this, none of it is worth worrying about. We are the ones – those of us who are left here now – we are the ones who swore we would follow you to the ends of the earth. The others are free to do what they will, we have no need of them.’

‘That’s it!’ shouted Leonnatus, who in all truth just a short time before had not seemed at all sure of this. ‘And then these Scythians can only be made of flesh and bones . . . I have seen them, did you know that? In Athens they are paid to maintain public order and they patrol the city holding great wooden clubs and their bows slung across their chests. They didn’t look like anything special to me.’

Ptolemy approached and ruffled his hair. ‘Well done, Leonnatus, you’re quite right; but bear in mind that these Scythians out here are made of sterner stuff. What Craterus has told you is the simple truth: Cyrus ended up biting the dust when he tackled them and they brought Darius to his knees. Entire armies have ventured into the Scythians’ limitless lands with all memory of them being lost forever.’

A
LL SORTS OF GIFTS
were heaped on the Thessalians when they left, and, as with the other veterans, they also received a generous payment to cover the expenses of their journey home; all of which helped considerably in minimizing their feelings of resentment towards Alexander. In fact many of them were much moved when they took their leave. One veteran who had fought in all the battles, from the Granicus to Artacoana, told him simply, ‘I have heard that you will have the barbarians fighting alongside your troops and allow some of their officers to form part of the high command. I do not believe this is a good decision on your part, and yet I have to admit that every time we have grumbled and complained about you and your policies and the fact that it all seemed like so much madness to us, in the end you have always been right.

‘What we want is to be with our families once more, to see our cities again and our villages and in all honesty we are not keen on the idea of running after Scythians across an endless prairie where no olives or vines grow and where we are told there are no houses to be seen for a hundred days’ march. And yet, and here I speak on behalf of most of my companions, we are sorry to leave you, Sire. We will lose sleep thinking of you out there in that deserted land, surrounded by barbarians on all sides, but nothing, I fear, will ever change your destiny. It has been a magnificent experience, fighting by your side. Take good care,
Alexandre,
and farewell.’

Alexander, astride Bucephalas, inspected them, sending a smile or a salute to every soldier, and he shook the hands of all those he recognized or had seen fighting valiantly in the field. The tears that ran down his face were sincere as he watched them all set off at a walk in rows of eight against the sun as it descended red towards the western horizon.

The following day saw the arrival of the first Persian horsemen, combat-trained and equipped after the Macedonian fashion. The only difference, apart from their physical appearance with their thick moustaches and their elaborate hairstyles, was the fact that they used trousers, although another striking feature was their custom of approaching the King using the same ceremonial protocol they had always used with Darius – bending forwards and sending a kiss from a distance. The Macedonians and the Greeks called this gesture
proskynesis
– ‘prostration’ – and they dismissed it contemptuously as a barbaric custom, more suited to slaves than to men; but Alexander accepted it, thus demonstrating that he now considered himself to be the legitimate successor of the Achaemenid emperors.

Just beyond Cyropolis was the great Jaxartes river, the Persians’ northern border, and Alexander reached it in a single day’s march, setting up camp on its banks. Groups of Scythian horsemen soon made their appearance on the other side, splendidly dressed and armed, shouting defiantly, making threatening gestures and even firing arrows.

One man, who must have been their leader, stood out from the others because of his size and his long hair held in place by a ribbon of red cloth. He wore a long-sleeved tunic and cloth trousers in the same colour with a band of gold down the sides. His chest was protected by a scaled breastplate and the lower part of his legs by metal greaves after the Greek fashion. There was a sword hanging from his belt, a bow across his shoulders and his quiver hung from his horse’s bridle. All the horses wore forehead pieces in embossed metal and the bundles of leather protecting the base of their necks were adorned with magnificent gold leaf ornament.

‘What are they saying?’ Alexander asked his interpreter.

‘They are saying,’ said Oxhatres who understood them, ‘that you are a coward and a cur and that you must leave immediately after having left them a tribute. They suggest one hundred talents of silver.’

This infuriated Alexander and he rode Bucephalas to the edge of the riverbank, heedless of the rain of arrows the Scythians fired against him; Leonnatus and Ptolemy sought to protect him with their shields. He shouted, ‘I am not afraid of you! I will cross the river and I will follow you everywhere, even if it means to the shore of the northern Ocean!’

‘Do you think they’ve understood?’ asked Seleucus with his usual irony.

‘Perhaps not,’ replied Alexander, ‘but they soon will. Tell Lysimachus to take all the catapults to the riverbank and keep them under constant fire. Tomorrow we will cross to the other side and we will found another city – the farthest Alexandria.’

*

Lysimachus had twenty catapults lined up in two rows almost at the water’s edge and began firing. As one row let fly with a salvo of harpoons, the other reloaded, so that the rain of projectiles was uninterrupted and deadly. The Scythians fell in swathes and those who did not suffer direct hits fled, terrorized by these machines they had never seen before. At this point Alexander sent the Agrianians in with orders to swim across the river; the assault troops then quickly established a bridgehead on the other bank which was secured before midday. Diades of Larissa then began launching a series of rafts on the skin bags filled with straw and chaff, just as he had done previously on the Oxus.

The Vanguard were on the other side by sunset and Alexander decided to pitch camp on the northern bank even although Aristander had received several negative omens while making sacrifices to the gods.

The seer appeared after nightfall and was in such a bad mood that he chose not to take supper in the royal tent. In the meantime, by torchlight, the rest of the army continued to cross the river: the
hetairoi
and a squadron of Persian cavalry made up above all else of Medians, Hyrcanians and Bactrians. The few locals who were still on the other side witnessed an extraordinary spectacle – an endless line of horses and horsemen weaving its way across the plain, as it went by illuminating first the fields of grain and then the shining surface of the river.

On the following day, while the engineers were busy marking out the limits of Alexandria-the-Farthest, thousands and thousands of horsemen appeared suddenly on the northern horizon, all lined up across the widest imaginable front.

‘The Scythians!’ shouted Leonnatus. ‘Alarm! Alarm!’

The trumpets sounded, and while the heavy infantry took up position in a square formation around the freshly marked limits of the new city, the cavalry assembled in the space just before them.

‘What can we do?’ asked Craterus.

One of the Thracian commanders, a man who had battle experience under Philip, stepped forward and asked Alexander, ‘May I speak?’

‘Of course,’ replied the King, without taking his eye off the approaching menace of the Scythian line as it advanced across the plain.

‘I fought against the Scythians on the Ister together with your father and I remember it well. Anyone who enters Scythian territory and moves too far from his own base is in big trouble. Just look at that plain – it extends uninterrupted, apart from the big rivers, as far as the Ister, as far as the border with Macedonia, and those men,’ he continued, pointing now to the shining warriors in their scaled metal breastplates, ‘move across the plain like fish in water. Their sense of direction is such that they can keep to a route and travel thousands of stadia without seeing even a tree or a hut. Now they are lined up frontally, but this is not how they will attack us. As soon as we move they will charge in a circle around us, without ever coming within the range of our arrows, yet from that distance they will send a hail of their own upon us. Hundreds of our men will be wounded, many of them not seriously, but enough to put them out of action.

‘The attack will naturally provoke a reaction, but they will not engage us immediately and they will pretend to retreat, so as to draw us farther away until they suddenly reappear, like ghosts, and give chase again, letting fly with swarms of arrows to weaken us even more. Only then will they unleash the frontal assault, wiping out all survivors. When all of their enemies are dead they start stripping the bodies of anything of value, cutting off heads to exhibit them as trophies, or simply scalping them to decorate their spears and the handles of their battle axes with the hair of their defeated enemies.’

‘An interesting custom,’ said Seleucus, running his hands through his hair.

Alexander looked around and saw the Black off at some distance, watching over his men as they pitched tents. He was keeping out of the King’s way since he had left his table at Cyropolis and spoke to him as little as possible, but on this occasion there was no way out when Alexander called him over with a gesture.

At your command, Sire!’ he responded, using the impersonal formula of military protocol as soon as he reached Alexander.

‘I have no orders for you,’ replied Alexander. ‘I would like you to listen to the words of this friend who fought against the Scythians on the Ister.’

‘I fought there too,’ said Cleitus.

‘What do you suggest then?’

‘I suggest we turn back.’

Alexander looked again at the huge enemy line that was now immobile in the midst of the steppe, ‘You are free to do so, even though I am now in need of your experience and your valour more than ever, but I have never retreated before an enemy lined up against me in the open field.’

‘I think I have a useful suggestion,’ said the Thracian.

‘What?’ asked the Black, unable to help himself being drawn into the urgent discussion.

‘Let’s send quite a strong group forwards – a thousand or so men. We’ll have them move out to the right as though aiming to drive towards the interior of Scythian territory and we’ll keep an eye on the enemies’ movements using a relay system, perhaps one horseman every five stadia. If they make no move then we’ll send out a second contingent with another line of communication . . .’

‘I understand,’ said Alexander. ‘As soon as they decide to attack the news reaches us and we take them from behind with the forces we have left here.’

‘And as quickly as possible,’ added the Thracian. ‘What’s more, given the situation we’re in, these men will be precious,’ he said, pointing to the Persian contingent.

The Black grimaced, but said nothing.

Well . . . Black, are you with us?’ asked Perdiccas.

‘Where can I go if I’m not with you?’

‘Who’s going to be the first off then?’ asked Alexander.

‘To be the bait? That’s a job for me, since I’m the hardest to chew here,’ replied Cleitus. He had the fall in sounded for his squadron and then gave orders for them to advance at a walk. Lined up in rows of four, the
hetairoi
formed an ordered and glinting dark mass in the midst of the green plain, moving compact and united to the rhythmic roll of the drums. Gradually they disappeared as they moved into the distance, but at least one relay horseman remained in sight, while the Scythian cavalry, taken by surprise by this manoeuvre, seemed unsure of what to do.

‘They’re not moving . . . they’re not biting . . .’ said Ptolemy, shaking his head.

‘Let’s send a second squadron,’ ordered Alexander. ‘Perdiccas, you go, and move as quickly as you can – the sooner you join up with the Black the better – and take them with you,’ he added, pointing to the Persian contingent, still awaiting orders at the edge of the field. Oxhatres nodded to indicate he had understood and as soon as the trumpets sounded and Perdiccas’s division moved forward, he too lined up with his horsemen of the steppes.