Memnon (51 page)

Memnon sniffed the wine, his eyes closed. “It will be,” he replied, “the most horrific battle you’ve ever seen.”

The Rhodian’s prediction came true. At dawn Alexander’s wrath exploded against the walls of Halicarnassus; his anger and frustration funneled down to his men, and they fought like animals, eager to prove their quality to the young king. The
katapeltoi
were brought closer, inside Persian missile range, where they could send heavier stones against the battlements, stones that smashed embrasures and the men behind them. Arrows streaked through the sky in both directions, wounding as many men as they killed. Screams and curses drifted in the dust-thickened air.

On the ground, soldiers filled the moat at a breakneck pace, reinforcing the top layers of earth with split logs snaked down from the hills; already sappers, engineers whose specialty lay in assaulting wall foundations, could cross the moat under their huge hide shields and begin work. The sounds of picks and hammers echoed through the heavy masonry. To counter, Memnon ordered incendiaries lit and dropped from the parapet. The pottery jars shattered, raining burning bitumen down on the sappers’ heads. Their shrieks replaced the staccato rap of tools.

By dusk, when a
salpinx
called an end to the day’s fighting, the battlements of the Horn resembled a slaughterhouse—bodies riven or split asunder, spackled with blood, naked bone gleaming through torn armor and flesh. Pharnabazus, his face hidden beneath a ghoulish veneer of dust and gore, swayed on his feet and might have fallen had Memnon not been there to offer him a shoulder to lean upon. “Merciful gods,” the Persian whispered, his voice raw from the constant effort needed to shout orders over the din. “Why … Why was this so different from the first day?”

“Because their resolve has changed,” the Rhodian said. He limped with Pharnabazus over to a pile of broken stone and sat. “In that first clash, Alexander sought to learn our limits. How far could he push us before we pushed back? Now, he doesn’t care how far he pushes. All that matters is the wall—ripping it down if you’re Macedonian, preserving it if you’re Persian. You’re accustomed to field battles, infantry and cavalry, where there’s ebb and flow, movement and countermovement, charge and retreat. Not so in a siege. The wall is immobile until it falls, and so are we.” He gestured out over the fifteen-foot-wide battlements, the dead mercifully cloaked in the shadows of twilight. “We stand. No charge, no retreat. We face the fury of their missiles, and we either live or we die, as the Fates will it. But we do not move. If we do, Alexander will gain a foothold before we’re ready for him.”

“In the name of all the gods,” Pharnabazus said, his face grim in the deepening darkness. “When will we be ready for him?”

But Memnon did not answer.

The siege progressed in earnest. Day after bloody day Alexander chipped at the city’s defenses. His men completed the road over the moat, making it wide enough to allow the two undamaged towers to be rolled up against the wall simultaneously. The third tower stood a hundred yards to the rear; all three wooden Titans bristled with archers, their massed volleys sweeping Persians from the Horn’s battlements. Protected by the hulking structures, the two battering rams—iron-tipped logs suspended from chains—crashed against the wall, a relentless rhythm driven by sheer muscle.

Memnon strode the battlements, his pain consumed by white-hot anger. His men fed off him. His rage stoked theirs, provoking acts of breathless valor. Men broke cover to hurl incendiaries at the arrow slits in the siege tower walls, splashing the men inside with combustibles even as they were cut down by enemy missiles; in their wake, Persian archers sent tow bolts, arrows wrapped with a length of smoldering twine, through the slits. Flames exploded from the heart of the tower, doing more damage to the soldiers inside than to the green wood around them. Cheering defenders drowned out the Macedonians’ screams.

Later in the day, a detachment of marines from the fleet, protected by hoplite shields, rushed the towers, casting grapnels at their tops. The iron hooks dug into the wood. Men hauled on the ropes. Timbers creaked and snapped. Before the tower could be overturned, though, an axe-wielding Macedonian severed the ropes; his triumph was short-lived—Persian arrows sent him plummeting to his death.

Still, the rams hammered the walls, and they did not stop until the
salpinx
sounded their recall. Under a hail of darts and shafts, Alexander’s soldiers drew the siege machines back from Halicarnassus, across the earthworks bridging the moat, and into their nightly positions closer to the camp.

That evening, Memnon used the respite to convene his officers. They met on the acropolis, on a terrace overlooking the unfinished Mausoleum. A loggia of carved and painted cedar provided a sliver of shade against the setting sun. Each man came straight from the walls. Still caked in the grime of battle, they shucked their armor at the edge of the terrace. Servants met them with basins of cool water and scented towels, with fresh tunics and deep cups of fragrant wine, and escorted them to a ring of divans.

Memnon wasn’t the only wounded man among them. Amyntas, his forehead and one eye swathed in bandages, groaned as he sat; Orontobates, too. The satrap had lost a finger and hamstrung himself leaping out of the path of a
katapeltes
stone. Pharnabazus nursed bruised ribs from where rock shards dented his cuirass, and even Ephialtes, with his Heraklean vitality, drank his wine in exhausted silence. Autophradates, alone, bore not the slightest scratch, his post on the water being farthest from combat. Thymondas and Patron arrived last, both men caked in sweat and dust. Patron limped from an arrow wound in his thigh, while Thymondas still bled from a wicked gash in his shoulder. A dart had missed impaling him by a matter of inches. He sat and pressed a wad of linen to the laceration.

“So?” Memnon said. The others looked up.

Patron shook his head. “Another day, maybe two, and that wall is coming down.”

“Can we reinforce it?”

“Perhaps,” Patron said, “but what’s the use? Once the core of the wall is down we could put all the rubble in Halicarnassus into that breach and it wouldn’t be enough to stop the rams.”

“We need to burn those gods-be-damned towers,” Ephialtes muttered.

“How?” Pharnabazus said. “Alexander’s on guard against another night sortie.”

“Do it during the day,” the Athenian said.

Amyntas coughed and spat. “Hera’s tits, man! They’ve got us outnumbered. We go scotching off outside the walls in broad daylight and they’ll hand us our own arses, well-buggered at that.”

“Get rid of the gods-be-damned towers!” Ephialtes lapsed into silence.

“What are our casualties, Thymondas?”

The soldier winced as he applied pressure to his shoulder. “We’ve lost close to four hundred men in the last few days. Twice that number in wounded and a goodly part of those will never fight again. Those stone throwers … a pox on their inventors! And a pox on the man who had the idea of launching a single rock any halfway agile man could dodge, causing it to impact against an embrasure where it splits into a dozen pieces, each one a crude spearhead!” Wood creaked as Thymondas leaned back on the divan. “It’s the most dishonorable manner of fighting I’ve ever seen!”

“It’s only dishonorable because we didn’t think of it first,” Patron said. He studied Memnon as he sat in silence, his brow creased in thought. “Well, lad?”

The Rhodian stirred. “Autophradates, send to Cos and have the balance of the fleet brought over.”

“They will be here before noon,” the admiral assured him.

Memnon nodded. “We’ll start by evacuating the wounded. Orontobates, I’m leaving you with a thousand men to garrison Salmacis and Arconessus, and a flotilla of ships to secure the harbor.”

Orontobates glanced around in confusion. “Leaving?” he said. “What do you mean?”

“Is Halicarnassus not the seat of your satrapy? When I leave, someone will need to stay behind to maintain a Persian presence. Who better than the satrap himself?” Memnon shifted his gaze to the other officers. All save Ephialtes and Amyntas apprehended his meaning, and their faces displayed varied levels of relief. The two remaining Greeks, however, glowered.

“You’re just going to give it to him?” Ephialtes snarled. “Give Alexander the city?”

Amyntas stood and paced. “I didn’t spill my blood here so you could cut and run when things heat up!”

Memnon checked his temper. He looked from one man to the other, from Athenian to Macedonian; both had reason to hate Alexander, but they were motivated by pride—Ephialtes to redress the insult to Athenian supremacy, and Amyntas to advance his own petty ambitions. Neither could see what lay beyond the tips of their own noses. “When King Xerxes marched on Hellas nearly a century-and-a-half ago,” Memnon said slowly, “was the outcome of the war decided in the pass of Thermopylae? No, gentlemen, it wasn’t. But Hellas needed Thermopylae in order to prepare themselves for the victories at Salamis and Plataea. Halicarnassus is no Thermopylae, but it has served its purpose. Nor am I just
giving
the city to Alexander, as you put it. He’s purchased it with his most precious commodity—the blood of his men. But, what has he purchased my friends? Not a harbor, because we will maintain control of that. Not the harbor forts, because Orontobates will hold those in the name of the Great King. What has Alexander been fighting for control of?” Memnon gestured to the Mausoleum. “That? A gaudy pile of stone housing the corpse of a dead tyrant?”

Ephialtes’ scowl faded; the Athenian chuckled. He swallowed the last of his wine, held out his cup for a servant to refill. “Where will we go?”

“Pella,” Memnon replied. “By way of Euboea.”

The words galvanized his officers. Thymondas gave a low whistle. Ephialtes nearly choked on a fresh swallow of wine. Amyntas stopped pacing. By the look on his face, one could tell he was attempting to make sense of what the Rhodian had said. “Why to Pella?” Orontobates asked.

“Taking the war back to Macedonia is the easiest way to drive Alexander from Asia—and that is my mandate from the Great King. It was never my intention to defeat Alexander at Halicarnassus, only to take his measure. That’s done. Now we move on to the real target.”

“The regent Antipatros and his son, Kassandros, command the Home Guard,” Amyntas said, chewing on his lip. “Antipatros is a staunch King’s Man, but Kassandros hates Alexander …”

“And he’ll hate me after we trounce his father,” Memnon said. Amyntas looked skeptical. Obviously, the renegade held Macedonia’s regent in high regard.
No matter,
Memnon thought. He’d beaten Parmenion; he would beat Antipatros. “But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves, my friends. Before we can invade Macedonia we must first extricate ourselves from Halicarnassus … and give Alexander a final lesson.”

“Have you a plan, Uncle?” Pharnabazus said. Of all the officers, he and Patron showed the least surprise at Memnon’s dynamism—no doubt they were inured to it by virtue of their long association.

Memnon smiled. “I do,” he said. “And it involves those gods-be-damned siege towers.”

 

T
HE SUN ROSE THROUGH A PALL OF DUST
. F
ROM THE
T
RIPYLON’S CENTRAL
bastion, Memnon and his nephews watched as Alexander’s men plodded out to the towers, putting their shoulders to the wheels and moving the massive structures back to their fighting positions. Sappers filed after them, followed by battalions of archers and shield-bearers, Agrianian javelineers and armored Foot Companions. Even from this distance Memnon could sense an air of indifference about them.

“Remember what I told you, Thymondas?” the Rhodian said, turning. “On that first day?”

“Beware complacency.”

“Indeed. Complacency is the insidious enemy of siege warfare. It’s like a disease, striking without regard to allegiance or loyalty.” Memnon led the way as the trio descended down to the level of the parapet. All stood in readiness—every man knew his place, what was expected of him. In the shadow of the Tripylon Gate, Amyntas and a thousand lightly armored Greeks bearing torches and incendiaries awaited Memnon’s signal.

“Your targets are the siege towers,” Memnon had told the Macedonian renegade. “Archers will cover you from the walls, but it’s still going to be like walking into a threshing machine. You’ll have to rely on speed, nimbleness, and prayer.”

“We’ll burn those bastards down!”

A second wave would come on their heels. Ephialtes with another thousand Greeks—the heavy infantry, hoplites in full panoply bearing nine-foot spears and broad shields—would pour out, form a phalanx, and strike Alexander’s flankers while their attention rested on the burning towers.

“Your sole purpose is to kill,” he said to the hulking Athenian the night before. Upon hearing this, Ephialtes’ face had lit up like a man in love.

Finally, when the chaos reached its crescendo, Memnon himself would lead out the final wave: two thousand
kardakes
in close formation. If all went as planned they would split the Macedonian ranks like a hammer and wedge.