Memnon (39 page)

19

 

A
PALL OF DUST HAZED THE BLUE SUMMER SKY, THROWN UP BY THE
shuffling feet of seven thousand Macedonian infantrymen. Memnon could see the flash and glitter of tall
sarissas,
of bronze helmets and breastplates, as individual phalanx battalions took up positions on the far bank of the Skamandros River. “Look at them, Ephialtes,” he said to the dour-faced Athenian standing at his left hand. “Are they not magnificent?” Ephialtes, a giant of a man in an ill-fitting cuirass, hawked and spat, the only answer he deigned to give. Memnon grinned at Pharnabazus, who stood to his right. “Ah, the sting of defeat yet troubles him. Tell me, Ephialtes, did the Macedonians look this magnificent at Chaeronea?” That battle, two years prior on the Cephissus River in Boeotia, cemented Philip’s supremacy over the Greeks and made Athens tributary to Macedonia—a situation the proud sons of Athena longed to rectify.

“Damn you,” Ephialtes rumbled, “do we attack or not?”

“Impatience is what cost Athens the field that day. Philip, you see, cannot be goaded. He will not move one moment before he’s absolutely ready, and if he can provoke his enemies into impulsively attacking, so much the better. But, that’s not Philip we’re facing. That’s Parmenion. Cut of the same pattern, perhaps, but from cloth of far lesser quality. Still, he won’t make a move until we do.”

Memnon’s soldiers seemed in no great hurry to launch an attack against the Macedonians, either. They held the southern bank of the Skamandros, on a slight rise overlooking the sluggish flow of the river. Five thousand men stood at Memnon’s back, his personal guard of
kardakes
stiffened by a mixture of Greek mercenaries, Arcadians mostly—men trained for war in the iron schools of the Peloponnese and paid for by Persia’s new Great King, Darius. To Memnon’s pride they stood their ground, patient and unconcerned.

Ephialtes gestured at them. “What is the point of having this army if you’re not going to use it? Zeus Savior, Memnon! You’ve marched us out here for five days now! For five days we’ve formed ranks, stared at those whoreson Macedonians for an hour or more, and instead of charging you sound retreat and back we go into camp! Have you no spine, man?”

“Have you no respect, dog?” Pharnabazus stepped toward Ephialtes, the slender Persian’s anger unfazed by the Athenian’s size. Memnon, though, caught his arm, a slight smile on his face.

“It’s not a question of spine, Ephialtes, nor of spleen, nerve, or backbone. It’s one of wits. You’ve noticed, I’m sure, that Parmenion follows my lead as though he were under my command: we march out; he marches out. We form ranks; he forms ranks. We stand; he stands. We withdraw; he withdraws. He waits because that is what Philip has inculcated in him—the idea that your enemy
will
become impatient and he
will
make a mistake. Pharnabazus, tell our erstwhile Athenian what would happen if we charged the Macedonians now.”

Sneering, Pharnabazus crouched and drew his knife, sketching out the battlefield in the sandy loam. “I see no cavalry, so Parmenion’s center would hold us at bay—his
sarissas
are five feet longer than our spears—while both his flanks executed a split to the right and left. This would thin his flanking battalions by half, from twenty men deep to ten, but it would give him the extension he would need to overlap and encircle us. Then …”

The tip of the Persian’s knife obliterated their position.

Ephialtes grumbled. “So what do we do? Play this game with them until winter sets in and we all go home?”

“The Macedonians don’t break off their campaigns on account of the seasons, Ephialtes, and neither do we.” The Rhodian’s other officers joined them: Omares, Patron, and Damastes, the former governor of Abydus.

“What’s the word, Memnon?” Patron asked. Since his return from Syracuse, Patron had renounced the sea, becoming a land commander and even working at developing his skill as a horseman.
Saw too many good lads lost to Poseidon’s fury,
he told Memnon once, while deep in his cups,
unburied and cursed to never know peace. By Hades! I want my bones put under good, solid earth when I die!
“Do we attack?”

Memnon pursed his lips. “We’ve seen them. They’ve seen us. Parmenion doesn’t expect me to make a move until he does, and he won’t. He remembers the holy terror we caused when we crossed Mount Ida in the spring and caught his man, Attalus, by surprise at Cyzicus. That debacle cost him three thousand good soldiers. He likes his odds if he can wait us out and lets us make the first move. Let’s crush his hopes again, shall we? To your posts, gentlemen,” he said. “Prepare to sound the withdrawal.”

A quarter of an hour later the
salpinx
blared. Slowly, like some great lumbering beast, Memnon’s forces hung a fresh curtain of dust in the air as they pulled back from the riverbank. From the Macedonian side could be heard jeers and catcalls.
Sarissas
rattled and laughter erupted as a few of Parmenion’s highlanders raised the hems of their linen tunics and shook their genitals at the backsides of the retreating Greeks. “Come over,” they called, “and we’ll give you a proper fucking!”

Last off the field, Memnon simply waved to the Macedonians and strolled after his column.

While the Macedonian camp lay less than a mile from the Skamandros, Memnon pitched and fortified his own some five miles up the river valley; now, a well-worn road led between camp and potential battlefield. The first two miles passed in less than an hour.

His men were in good spirits, as they should be, for they were well paid, well fed, and well commanded. After defeating the Macedonian invaders at Pitane on the Gulf of Elaea, then at Cyzicus, and finally at Percote, they had driven them back almost into the Hellespont’s turbulent waters. All that remained to Parmenion were Abydus, Cape Rhoeteum, and the Dardanian Plain.

“Soon, not even that,” Memnon said. He marched among his men, listening to their stories as he spun fables of his own. The only long face belonged to the Athenian.

“At least we could have camped closer,” Ephialtes muttered, “then we wouldn’t have so far to march every gods-forsaken day!”

“It’s beautiful weather, my friend, and marching is good for the soul. Truly, what else do you have to do?” Memnon clapped the Athenian on the shoulder.

“Killing Macedonians would be preferable to slogging through this heat and dust.”

“Patience, Ephialtes.”

Halfway into the third mile a flurry of activity behind them brought Memnon up short. He turned as a mounted scout, a native of the Skamandros Valley, reined in and vaulted from his saddlecloth.

“My lord!” he said in an accent so thick as to be almost unintelligible. “The Macks! They didn’t wait around! Gone back to their camp, they have! And they put out no patrols!”

“Sentries?”

“Aye, but they ain’t paying much heed!”

Memnon thanked the man and walked away. He studied the makeshift road, looking back the way they had come. It was late afternoon, the sun bright and hot in the western sky. They should have plenty of time …

A sharp whistle brought his aides running. Memnon sent a command to Pharnabazus at the head of the column. He didn’t use the trumpeters in case the sound of their clamor echoed over hill and hollow. A single word, the command easily remembered by even the most lack-witted ground-pounder:
exeligmos.
The aides ran to do his bidding and in moments the army shuffled to a halt. Memnon heard his command bawled down the line, from officers to veteran rankers to individual infantrymen; he watched as his five thousand men executed a countermarch with practiced precision.

At the command
“Exeligmos!
“ the ten soldiers leading each thousandman company stepped right, faced to the rear, and marched between the files, back the way they had come. The second soldiers followed, and the third, until finally the troopers in the one-hundredth position, the
ouragoi,
had but to turn in place and dress ranks with their mates. An aide brought Memnon his shield and helmet as his officers hurried to take their posts at the new head of the column.

Ephialtes glanced about, a bemused look on his face. “What goes?”

“It’s time,” Memnon said, slipping his arm into his shield’s leather sleeve. “Now, we kill some Macedonians.”

 

M
EMNON’S SUDDEN REAPPEARANCE CAUGHT THE GLUM
M
ACEDONIANS
unprepared. Annoyed at being denied battle once again, most had stripped off their armor and were tending their cook fires, baking bread for their evening meal or slugging back their daily ration of wine. The last thing they expected was to see a battle line of Greeks fording the Skamandros, charging full-tilt toward the ditch and earthworks protecting their camp.

Trumpets blared on both sides. Five thousand Greek throats raised the
alala,
the undulating war cry that vented fear and bolstered courage; from Macedonian throats came curses and shouts of alarm. Parmenion and his officers scrambled to whip their men into some semblance of a phalanx. The Macedonians jostled one another, tripping over their equipment; some snatched their
sarissas
and met the Greeks half-naked, others paused to throw on chest armor or a helmet.

It availed them nothing.

With Memnon in the lead, the Greeks breached Parmenion’s defenses. The Rhodian leapt the ditch and scrambled up the earthworks, his shield held high to deflect
sarissa
blades or sword strokes. He reached the top and, with an underhand thrust, sheathed his spear in an attacker’s unarmored vitals. The man went down screaming, clutching the blood-slick shaft. Memnon clambered over the crest of the earthworks and planted a foot in his victim’s groin, tearing the weapon free. Another Macedonian naked but for greaves and a Thracian helmet howled as he charged into the breach. Memnon swung his shield edge-on. Oak and bronze met flesh and bronze with a sickening crunch; the man dropped, helmet and skull staved in. The Rhodian shifted his weight. A third attacker, coming on the heels of the second, received the gory blade of Memnon’s spear on the point of his bearded chin. His head snapped back in a spray of blood and shattered teeth as the iron sliced through the roof of his mouth, into his brain. Memnon kicked the corpse free of his spear.

Greeks poured over the earthworks on three sides of the camp. Damastes’ company struck from the right; Omares’ from the left. Memnon’s company, flanked by Pharnabazus’s and Patron’s, drove through the Macedonian center, making for the command tent and Parmenion. Here, the fighting was fiercest. A wild mob of highlanders, men of Parmenion’s own county, raised a hedge of
sarissas
to protect their general and kinsman. Iron ripped through bronze and flesh, each true strike marked by a rooster-tail of bright blood. The ground underfoot, churned and saturated with bodily fluids, became reeking mud that clung to a man’s sandals.

The Greek advance might have faltered there had Ephialtes, bareheaded and bloody, not carved a breach in the enemy line. Memnon watched as the huge soldier hoisted a wounded Macedonian over his head and hurled the unfortunate onto the
sarissas
of his comrades, adding another and another until their combined weight snapped pike-shafts, opening a hole. Ephialtes, snatching up a sword in each hand and bellowing like a madman, plunged into this rupture. Memnon sent a dozen hoplites after him to give the Athenian cover.

With his camp overrun and defensive line shattered Parmenion had little choice but to call for a general retreat if he hoped to salvage anything of his army. A
salpinx
wailed, its final note trailing off in a mournful echo. Memnon recognized the signal. Through his own trumpeters, he ordered the Greeks to cease their slaughter. By the hundreds, the Macedonians disengaged and ran; those unable, through wounds or the ravages of heat, threw away their weapons and begged for mercy.

Ephialtes struck down one would-be prisoner and had his sword upraised over another as Memnon caught his arm. The Athenian, eyes glassy and wild, snarled and tried to shake free; Memnon backhanded him across the cheek.

“Get hold of yourself, damn you!” Memnon roared. “Get hold or I will kill you where you stand!” Ephialtes blinked. Blood drooled down his face, and his chest heaved with his exertions. Lowering his sword, he looked around not unlike a man waking from a deep sleep. “Go,” Memnon said, gently this time, “take some rest. You’ve earned it.” The Athenian nodded, stumbled toward the earthworks.

All around, shattered by heat, thirst, and exhaustion, Greeks sprawled amid the dead and wounded Macedonians, gasping for breath through the narrow slits of their Corinthian helmets. Others scoured the bodies for allied wounded, ignoring Macedonian pleas for succor.

“No, brothers!” Memnon called to them, wrenching off his helmet and handing it to an aide. “Help them, as well!” Water bearers circulated among friend and foe, alike.

The Rhodian found Pharnabazus sitting outside Parmenion’s tent, bruised and blood-spattered, but otherwise unharmed.

“This one is going to keep the old bastard up nights, Uncle,” he said, smiling. “I imagine he is cursing himself for letting you leave Thrace alive.”