The Great King (34 page)

Sparthius nodded. ‘Everything I see says that the Great King is ready to march on us in the spring. Everything is ready. Armies, food, roads, ships – the canal and the bridges.’

I nodded. ‘Everything but the adversary,’ I said. ‘We Greeks are not ready.’

Aristides rubbed the top of his head. ‘Just so,’ he said. ‘And we wouldn’t be ready in the spring if we flew home now under Hermes’ outstretched arms.’

Later that afternoon, Cyrus kept me from a nap that might have saved me and sat me down in the courtyard.

‘You spent the night with the Lady Arwia,’ he said.

I smiled a smug and probably unwise smile.

He nodded. ‘She is wicked, that one,’ he said. ‘She is a rebel, and the Great King should have shortened her by a head when he killed her husband. What did she tell you?’

I shrugged.

‘Come, brother. What did she ask you to do?’

I chuckled. ‘Modesty forbids,’ I said.

Cyrus smiled, then. ‘You pleasured each other? That is all?’

‘She asked me a thousand thousand questions about the Jawan and their lands, even when I was riding her,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘But no . . . politics?’

I shrugged. ‘I heard her speak fifty kinds of treason. Who minds what a woman says, when she is willing?’

He nodded. Bluff, empty-headed, woman-using Arimnestos – eh?

‘I hope to see her again tonight,’ I said.

‘Indeed, your invitation – with all your Spartans and Athenians – is in the palace even now.’ He rose and we exchanged bows. ‘Tomorrow we will ride for Susa. I need to get my head out of this crotch of pests. Into the mountains where the air is clean and cool.’

There are women – I’m sorry even to repeat this, but I’ve had some wine – there are women who you desire with all your being – until you’ve had them, and then the charm wears away. In the cold light of day, you see a thousand flaws – sometimes in them, and sometimes in yourself.

There’s a brilliant Persian poem about it, which I can’t remember.

But Arwia was not one of those women. The thought of her inflamed me, and when I was in her presence, I was like a boy – unable to take my eyes off her, nor to behave myself.

She seemed to revel in it, and we flirted outrageously.

But she was so skilled as a hostess that she could flirt to the point of open licentiousness with me, and still make Aristides love her. He was not besotted, but he never spoke slightingly of her again. The Spartans were utterly charmed.

Something happened which, among other men, might have led to blood. I tell this that you may better understand the Spartans.

Sparthius decided he wanted her. He knew full well I’d bedded her the night before, but he set himself to win her – with humour, with flattery, with anecdotes. He showed his muscles, he won her laughter.

He was very good.

Nor did he hide his intentions from me. As Arwia was in no way ‘mine’, I didn’t make some feeble remark to that extent, but at one point, I did poke him sharply in the arm.

He grinned at me. ‘Let the best man have her,’ he said. ‘I’ve seldom seen her like.’

She entered fully into the spirit of the thing, too. Once she realised she had both of us captivated . . .

There are some powers one should not grant to mortals.

With Aristides doting and Sparthius and I besotted, she began to target Bulis. He drank steadily, but his face remained carved in stone. I had seen him turn his head to hide his amusement at his friend, and perhaps at me, but with the lady he was careful, cautious and correct.

She had dancers. They danced. To say that they danced lasciviously would be like suggesting that the sun gives light.

First girls . . .

Then boys . . .

Then boys with girls.

At some point Aristides excused himself. It was all tasteful – none of your flute-girl tricks with vegetables – but he went for a turn in the garden.

The Spartans sat and watched.

I realised that Arwia was using her erotic dancers to measure them. I watched her watch them, and I thought –
This is a very dangerous woman indeed.
Dangerous, and yet . . .

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.