Memnon (50 page)

“Dirt!” he bellowed, pointing at a mound of loose soil as more men stumbled up. “Throw dirt on it!”

“Him,” Memnon whispered to the archer at his side, a swarthy Cretan with thick black brows. The man nodded, kissed his bow, and nocked a wickedly barbed arrow. All along the line bow-staves creaked. Memnon raised his hand, dropped it.

The thrum of bowstrings brought to mind the sound of ripping linen.

A hail of death dropped out of the night sky. Engineers, who seconds before cared only about saving their livelihoods now fought for their lives, clutching at arrows that punched through flesh, their cries of alarm turning to screams of agony. The fallen writhed or lay still.

Though unable to follow its flight with the naked eye, Memnon saw the end result as the Cretan’s iron-head found its mark in the officer’s cervical spine. His body sprawled over the mound of dirt.

“Hit them again!”

Memnon’s archers sent a second and third volley into the chaos; his
kardakes
went after the remaining pickets, and any man foolish enough to try and fight the flames. Off to the right, Amyntas and his renegades cried out to the Macedonians in their shared tongue, begging for them to come to their aid. Those who did were slaughtered in a storm of Ionian javelins.

The siege tower blazed, fully engulfed. By its light, Memnon spotted a wedge of Companion cavalry circling to the left; a second wedge on their heels. No doubt more were advancing from the right, along with Alexander’s own archers and a horde of
Pezhetairoi.
It was time to make for the safety of the Tripylon.

“Break off!” he called. “Break off!” One of the Cretans blew a short blast on his horn. Their withdrawal required speed rather than secrecy; making made no pretense at stealth, the Cretans stood and pelted down the hill to join the Ionians. Thymondas bellowed orders, sorted out the shuffling troops; then, as a single entity spearheaded by the renegades, they set off at a run toward the glimmering walls of Halicarnassus. Memnon and his
kardakes
brought up the rear.

After a moment of uncertainty, Alexander’s Companion cavalry picked up the raiders’ trail and pounded after them, their shouts and whoops drawing the attention of the men streaming out of camp to help douse the fires. “There!” Memnon heard a Macedonian scream, followed by the pounding of hooves as horsemen changed course.

“Aim for their mounts!” the Rhodian panted. Now!” The rearguard paused at the bottom of a shallow depression, whirled with their javelins cocked over their right shoulders, and slung the ash and iron darts pointblank into the fire-etched silhouettes bearing down on them. Horses and men screamed, all toppling as the javelins slammed into them. Flailing hooves snarled the legs of other riders to create a writhing wall of flesh. Memnon did not loiter to watch the unfolding chaos. He and his
kardakes
were off and running before the remaining horsemen could circle around them.

A quarter of a mile away the walls of the city blazed with light, its torches and iron cressets beckoning to the men on the ground. Trumpets rang from the battlements. Another two hundred yards and they would be in range of Pharnabazus’s archers, who could hold the Macedonians at bay while the raiders escaped through the Tripylon Gate. Less than two hundred yards, now. Memnon cuffed sweat from his eyes …

Hooves thundered. Unseen until the last moment, a wedge of Companion cavalry smashed into the right flank of the rearguard, splitting it into two groups. Bones snapped as horses trampled the
kardakes;
the soldier two paces in front of Memnon screamed when a spear ripped through his leather armor, gutting him and filling the dusty air with the stench of blood and bowel. The Macedonian’s exultant cry became a death rattle as the Rhodian jammed the blade of his javelin through his neck and rolled him off the back of his horse. Off balance, Memnon collapsed with the dying Macedonian and scuttled away from the crushing hooves of a second rider. Cursing, the fellow stabbed down at him; the Rhodian took the butt-spike of his spear deep in the hip, gritting his teeth against the pain as metal scraped on bone.

“Son of a bitch!” Memnon caught up a fallen javelin and raked it across the horse’s belly. The screaming animal bolted; its rider lost his grip and fell, his armored spine crashing into the dust.

Memnon was on him before he could recover. The Rhodian planted the iron tip of his javelin against the bronze cuirass protecting the rider’s chest. Metal squealed as his weight drove it through armor, flesh, and bone. The Macedonian convulsed and spewed blood. Gasping, Memnon staggered to his feet.

The Companions, now clear of the rearguard, wheeled and made ready for another pass. Before their horses could find their rhythm, though, Memnon heard the ripping sound of Cretan bowstrings. Scores of arrows lashed from the darkness to pierce flesh and armor. The Rhodian seized the opportunity his archers afforded. “Get the wounded!” he yelled. “Get to the gate!” He limped along, his hip and leg trembling with pain. Blood sheeted down his thigh.
Would you like to know the hour of your death?
He heard the voice, clenched his teeth against the wave of white-hot agony. “No!” Memnon stumbled; he fell to one knee, a golden mist playing at the edges of his vision. “No!”

Suddenly, Thymondas was there. The younger man caught Memnon by the arm and hauled him to his feet. “Hurry, Uncle!” he said. “We’re almost there!” The Rhodian felt his strength return as the voice in his head receded.
No, not yet.

The final hundred yards passed in a blur; soon, the Tripylon Gate loomed above them. Its three cyclopean towers rose sixty feet above their heads, twenty feet higher than the surrounding battlements, their crenellated tops bristling with Persian archers. They drew back on their bowstrings, the smoky air thrumming as they sent flight after flight of iron-heads into the pursuing Macedonians.

Though the Tripylon sported three towers and two bronze-and-oak gates, it had but a single wooden bridge that could be lowered over the dry moat from the center tower. Memnon grinned at the welcome rattle of chains—even as he the shouts of warning reached him from above. The Rhodian glanced over his shoulder to see a battalion of Macedonian infantry, the
Pezhetairoi,
emerge from the ruddy gloom, their shields canted as they advanced on the gate, oblivious to the hail of arrows.

Memnon snarled, shook himself free of Thymondas. “Archers!” he roared. The Cretans heard him, wheeled. The
kardakes
and Ionians, too, ceased their withdrawal and turned, interposing themselves between the Macedonians and the yawning gates of Halicarnassus. “Kill the bastards!”

The Macedonians could not defend against arrows shot from the walls and those loosed at close range on the ground—their shields were smaller than the traditional bowl-shaped
aspides
of the southern Greeks; shifting from high guard to low left them exposed, and vice versa.

They were like wheat for the sickle.

At close range, Cretan arrows hit with the slaughterhouse sound of a cleaver striking flesh, sinking up to their black fletching in enemy chests, bellies, and throats. Men thrashed and toppled, blood pouring from pierced organs. The front rank of Macedonians disintegrated; the second, too. The third, from what Memnon could see of their eyes, resigned themselves to death and pressed on. These were born soldiers, men who marched into battle with an
obol
already under their tongues, ready to pay their passage into Hades’ realm. They died well, but they died nonetheless.

The Cretans emptied their quivers before Memnon gave the order to resume their withdrawal. As they neared the Tripylon, Ephialtes led a platoon of hoplites over the bridge and formed a protective phalanx to cover the last few yards. Firelight gleamed from their hedge of spears, from their overlapped shields and the crests of their bronze helmets. Ephialtes bellowed an order and their formation split to allow the raiders through, then turned and followed them back into the city.

With Thymondas’s aid, Memnon limped through the gate tunnel and out into the packed street. Men cheered, pressing forward to clap the exhausted and bloody raiders on the back. The wounded were hustled off to the field hospital at the foot of the acropolis; the dead were lifted with reverence and borne away to houses where they could be washed and prepared for the pyre.

“How many did we lose?”

Thymondas could only shrug. “I’ll find out after I’ve seen you to the surgeons.”

“They almost had me,” Memnon whispered. Word of his injury had spread; concerned soldiers shouted prayers at him while their officers pushed through the milling troops to be by his side, to offer their aid. Thymondas clung to him like an overprotective guardian. Pharnabazus appeared, Amyntas and Ephialtes, too. Patron and the Spartan, Callicratides, cleared well-wishers from the Rhodian’s path.

“Did you learn anything, Memnon?” the Spartan asked.

“That Alexander’s army isn’t invulnerable,” he replied, gasping for breath. He coughed, spat dust and blood. “Tell your king, Callicratides … tell Agis that if he wants to ally with me against Alexander, if he wants to partake in the reduction of Macedonia, then meet me in Euboea in the spring!” The men who heard this cheered, and the cheers multiplied until it seemed the very stones of Halicarnassus vibrated with praise.

“I will tell him,” Callicratides said over the din. Memnon gave a curt nod and motioned Thymondas along. To himself the Spartan added, “And I will pray, perhaps in vain, that the black Fates take no notice of you, Memnon of Rhodes.”

24

 

M
ORNING SUNLIGHT FILTERED THROUGH SMOKE RISING FROM THE
still-smoldering siege engines. Flames had destroyed one of the towers and badly damaged another before the inferno could be brought under control. The charred
katapeltoi
were silent, the engineers either dead or too exhausted from wounds and exertion to set about making repairs. Closer to the city, the Macedonians tried time and again to recover the corpses of the slain
Pezhetairoi
only to be driven back by massed volleys from the walls. “Let them rot,” the Persian archers snarled, drawing and loosing with vindictive fervor.

Memnon expected some manner of response from Alexander, a renewal of the assault on the Horn, his men’s fury lashed to a fever pitch by their repeated failures. He expected redoubled fighting, redoubled bloodshed. What he didn’t expect Alexander to do, though, was send a herald.

Pharnabazus fetched Memnon from the surgeon’s tent, turning a deaf ear to the doctor, a bearded Chian with a huge beak of a nose, who had swathed the Rhodian’s hip in herb-steeped compresses, bound it with strips of linen, and now vocally demanded he stay in bed. Memnon dismissed him with thanks and hobbled from the tent under his own power. The Rhodian was pale; his lips thin and hard as he limped up the stairs to the battlements, stifling a gasp of pain with each step. Pharnabazus looked no better. The Persian had not slept, and Memnon could see evidence of exhaustion in his haggard face, his glassy eyes. Adrenalin and willpower were all that kept both men mobile.

“Has he asked for anything?” Memnon said.

Pharnabazus shook his head. “He stands just out of bowshot and calls your name. I have forbid the men from taking potshots at him until after you have heard what he has to say. Ephialtes thinks we should reward the archer who can skewer him first.”

“Ephialtes is a fool,” the Rhodian spat.

“You will get no argument from me on that score.”

Atop the wall, the sight of Memnon upright and walking, albeit with a limp, bolstered his men’s morale. They cheered as he joined his commanders at the Horn. Amyntas and Ephialtes muttered together, laughing at some jest they deigned not share with Orontobates. The satrap stood apart, his face set in the scowl that was fast becoming his signature expression.

“What goes?” Memnon snapped.

“He refuses to say,” Orontobates said, gesturing to the figure of the herald. “He will speak only to you.”

Memnon walked past his men and stood alone.

The herald, an older Macedonian wearing a simple tunic, stood under a flag of truce on the far side of the slain
Pezhetairoi.
Grim-faced, he bellowed, “Memnon the Rhodian, son of Timocrates! Come forth!”

“Speak,” Memnon shouted. “I am here.”

“My lord, Alexander, son of Philip, King of the Macedonians, and Captain-General of the Greeks, would speak with you. He gives you the honor of choosing the time and place, saying only that you come alone and unarmed and he will do likewise.”

“I smell a trap.” Memnon heard Ephialtes grunt. He ignored the Athenian, pondered Alexander’s offer.

“What say you, my lord?” the herald shouted.

“My compliments to your king. Tell Alexander I will meet with him in one hour on the crest of that hill, there.” Memnon pointed to the hill his men had skirted during last night’s raid. An old olive tree grew from its low summit. The herald turned, surveyed the site, and nodded.

“So be it. Yonder hilltop in one hour.” The herald turned and retraced his steps to the Macedonian camp.

Pharnabazus walked over to where Memnon stood. “What do you think Alexander wants?”

“We’ll find out soon enough.” The Rhodian shrugged. Sweat beaded his forehead; he shifted his frame, putting all of his weight on his uninjured side.

“This is madness, Uncle!” Pharnabazus hissed, pitching his voice low so the others couldn’t eavesdrop. “You cannot sit a horse right now, and there is little chance you can walk to that hill without aid!”

“So what?” Memnon said. “We call the herald back and have him ask Alexander to meet me elsewhere? Perhaps he’d like to sit under the battlements and enjoy our archers’ scrutiny? He’s no fool, Pharnabazus, and neither am I. So do me a favor, nephew—save your opinion for another day and find me a chariot!”

 

M
EMNON BREATHED THE HOT, DUSTY AIR KICKED UP BY THE HOOVES OF HIS
chestnut gelding as the chariot, an antique rig of tarnished bronze and wormeaten wood, rattled over the rough ground. Already, he could see the stallion Boukephalos cropping the sparse grass near the base of the hill. At the crest, under the boughs of the olive tree, Alexander’s armor glinted in the sun.

The Rhodian slewed to a halt and gingerly dismounted, his hip a swollen mass of raw and lacerated flesh, hot against his leather kilt. He tethered the gelding to a myrtle shrub; limping, he ascended the rise to the crest of the hill.

Unarmed, possessing not even a belt knife, Memnon nonetheless wore his full panoply—ox-hide sandals, greaves, kilt of bronze-studded leather, and his silver-inlaid cuirass. He removed his helmet and carried it in the crook of his left arm. In a pinch he could use it as a bludgeon, though he did not expect treachery from Alexander. Such behavior ran contrary to the young king’s nature.

Reaching the summit, he sensed the power of Alexander’s unrelenting gaze. The king watched him; in return, he studied his adversary, whom he had not seen since that summer at Mieza. Alexander had grown over the years, though not by much. He stood a full head shorter than the Rhodian but the muscular lines of his physique made up for his less-than-impressive height. Clean-shaven and with thick hair like dark gold hanging to his shoulders, Alexander’s features were finer than those of his father, his skin flushed by sun and wind. In his eyes, Memnon could discern that mysterious
daimon
he had often warned Pharnabazus about, the spirit of a true leader.

“You’re wounded,” Alexander said suddenly, lines creasing his high forehead. He took two quick steps to Memnon’s side and offered him an arm to lean upon. The king wore a
lineothorax
crusted with gold ornaments and reinforced with plates of iron, the center boss protecting his chest wrought in the snarling visage of a lion.

“It’s nothing,” Memnon said. “A scratch only.”

“I can fetch my physician, should you require him. He’s a good man, an Acarnanian called Philip.” Alexander ushered him to the shade of the olive tree, where Memnon leaned against the wiry bole, relieving the pressure on his hip.

“As I said, it’s barely a scratch.” Memnon’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Alexander. He could still perceive the inquisitive boy underneath the trappings of war, a discovery he found oddly comforting. “You’re looking well, Alexander. The mantle of kingship agrees with you, it seems.”

“It is a responsibility I savor,” Alexander replied. He returned Memnon’s frank stare. “You’ve done well for yourself, also. Most commanders who suffer a resounding defeat such as what befell you at the Granicus are put aside rather than elevated. Darius must put great stock in your skills.”

Memnon smiled, though the gesture didn’t extend to his eyes. Those remained slitted and cold. “The Granicus wasn’t my battle; its failure belongs solely on the shoulders of the satraps. Men you conveniently killed, as I recall, thus relieving the Great King of the burden of their executions—a burden he would have likely handed to me. I don’t thank you for it, though. I lost too many good men. Friends and kin.”

Alexander’s face clouded. “It’s true that a son of Artabazus died that day?”

“It’s true,” Memnon said, exhaling. “Hydarnes. You probably don’t remember him. He was only a toddler during our stay at your father’s court.” The Rhodian’s voice hardened. “One of your Agrianians slew him.”

The young king nodded. “Cophen spoke frequently of his brothers, which intrigued me. I have only one, a half-brother, Arrhidaeus, and he is a simpleton through no fault of his own. A defect of his birth, or so my mother claims. I am sorry for the loss of your nephew, Memnon, and to Artabazus for the loss of his son. War is a harsh master, as you well know. Is Cophen with you in Halicarnassus?”

However genuine, Alexander’s condolences left the Rhodian apathetic toward the young king and immune to his mystery. “No,” he said. “I sent him back to his father. The dichotomy of friendship to you and duty to the Great King caused him much consternation. Removing him from the path of possible temptation seemed the wisest course.”

“A pity. I would’ve liked to have seen him again.”

Memnon’s patience ebbed. “Did you call this meeting simply to reminisce, Alexander, or do you plan to use our meager shared history as a way of convincing me to transfer my allegiance?”

“Parmenion assured me such an effort would be in vain,” the young king said, coldness creeping into his voice. “You’ve made your decision and I respect your sense of loyalty, misguided though it may be. No, Rhodian, I’m here because I wished to ask a favor of you, man to man: allow my troops the chance to recover their slain brothers and cousins from the shadow of the city walls. In return, I’ll have the dead you left in the field last night brought to the gates.”

“You ask for a truce?”

“Do not read too much into this, Memnon.” Alexander’s eyes flashed. “Call it a truce if you like, but understand it is a pause only, an exchange between friends.”

Memnon straightened, ignoring the agony of his hip. “I will grant your request because it’s the right thing to do, not because of some imagined bond we share. We’ve never been friends, Alexander. You’re the son of a man who offered my family safe haven, nothing more. Is the balance of today enough of a pause to recover the dead and see to their funerals?”

“It’s more than enough time.” Alexander’s thin nostrils flared; Memnon sensed a wave of anger flowing off him. The young king was not accustomed to having his friendship rebuffed, and the idea of if stung his pride worse than the loss of his siege machines. Though his face remained impassive, inwardly Memnon cackled with glee.

“So be it. Farewell, King of Macedon.” Memnon inclined his head.

“Rhodian,” Alexander said, rage bringing a touch of pallor to his cheeks. “When my men breach the walls of Halicarnassus—and they will breach them!—I will treat you no different from any of my enemies. Do you understand?”

“If your men breach the walls,” Memnon said, turning away. “I would expect nothing less.”

 

U
NDER THE WATCHFUL EYES OF
M
EMNON’S ARCHERS, THE MACEDONIANS
gathered the bodies of their slain
Pezhetairoi;
afterward, they carted the Persian dead to the Tripylon and left them, twenty-two in all. Memnon ordered the gate opened and the cart brought inside—though not before his men searched it thoroughly, making sure the dead were their own and not enemy soldiers masquerading as such. Treachery might not have been in Alexander’s arsenal but it was surely in Parmenion’s; the Rhodian was no Priam, to be gulled by a wily Odysseus.

Though a truce existed, preparations for the resumption of fighting never slackened. Outside the wall crews cleared away the wreckage of charred siege machinery, repairing damaged
katapeltoi,
and restocking ammunition caches. Inside the wall, workmen demolished buildings behind the site chosen by the Macedonian king for his breach; then they used the rubble to reinforce existing defenses. Soldiers looked to their weapons, restringing bows and honing blades, casting lead into fresh sling bullets, and replacing dented shield faces with new bronze. Night fell, and funeral pyres blazed in both camps.

“Prepare yourself,” Memnon said to Pharnabazus. His nephew had brought him a platter of roasted fowl, bread, and cheese, with a jug of strong Thasian wine to wash it down, and lingered about until the surgeon finished changing the dressings on his hip. Now Memnon lay on a divan, his weight on his good side. “Tomorrow marks the beginning of the real siege.”

“Worse than the other battles we have endured, Uncle?” the Persian said. “I find that difficult to believe.”