Memnon (52 page)

If,
Memnon thought, leaning against an embrasure and watching the towers roll closer.
How can such a small word encompass so many possibilities?
Yet battle plans were tenuous by their very nature; even if his men failed to split the enemy apart, at least they would spill a great deal of precious Macedonian blood in the attempt. Memnon straightened. His hip burned, but adrenalin masked the pain of it.

“To your posts,” he said to Pharnabazus and Thymondas. “It’s almost time.” Thymondas would command the archers on the wall of the Horn, Pharnabazus at the Tripylon Gate. Of his remaining officers, Orontobates was overseeing the restocking of the harbor fortresses while Patron and Autophradates loaded the wounded, and any excess equipment, on the ships.

No trumpets heralded the commencement of the day’s fighting. As the towers lumbered into range the archers on the wall loosed their arrows—a drizzle at first, then a rain, and finally a hail. Iron-heads struck the timbers and hidebound planking of the towers with a dull crack, punctuated by cries as the occasional shaft threaded a chink in the wood and nailed flesh. Sling bullets whirred and clacked, ricocheting off bronze or wood, shattering into lead fragments that peppered the attackers on the ground.

Sporadic at first, Macedonian archers matched volley for volley once the towers found their marks and the wheels were spiked down. The men inside those infernal machines turned their attention to the rams, and within minutes the walls of Halicarnassus resounded with their thunderous crashes. Each paired impact sent vibrations running through the parapet.

Finally, the
katapeltoi
engaged the walls, their stones and darts aimed for positions on the flanks of the siege towers in an effort to negate the Persians ability to shoot down on the men behind them. By midmorning, all of Alexander’s assets were about the task of reducing the ramparts of the city.

Only then did Memnon give the signal for the assault to begin.

A horn blasted, the trumpeter holding it for a long note. Atop the Tripylon, Pharnabazus ordered the bridge lowered; the gates crashed open and Amyntas, howling like a madman, led his men out, their fiery brands held aloft.

Arrows sheeted from the battlements. Disdaining cover, Thymondas’s archers stood and loosed with reckless abandon. Most were Cretans, men who crawled from their mothers’ wombs bow in hand and who could shoot eight iron-heads in the span of a minute. On this day, their skill rivaled that of the Archer, Apollo. Even the Persians, themselves no slouches with the bow, kept the Cretans’ furious pace, creating a storm of slaughter among the Macedonians.

Though Memnon could not gauge their progress from the ground, he gave Amyntas to the count of one hundred before he loosed the hoplites. Ephialtes, with the fearsome visage of snake-haired Medusa in bas-relief on the chest of his cuirass, held his spear aloft, bellowing, “Kill the sons of bitches!” Then, in two columns, he and his men marched at the double through the Tripylon Gate and into battle.

Skeins of smoke drifted from the siege towers; embattled soldiers plied the
salpinx,
its desperate howl echoed and redoubled by those battalions in Ephialtes’ path. It was a cry for help.

Memnon turned from the sounds of fighting and walked among his
kardakes.
Many of them were survivors of the Granicus, hard-bitten men who burned to avenge that slight on their honor. In their ranks, though, stood silver-haired veterans of Lake Manyas, soldiers who remembered Artabazus’s rule and who were with the old satrap and his family at Dascylium. In their eyes it was Memnon who sprang from Zeus’s loins, not that upstart, Alexander.

“Do you hear those horns?” Memnon began, his voice carrying despite the din of battle that poured through the still-open gates. “Do you? Have you ever heard such wild and off-key bellowing? Fear fills their lungs and they blow their horns from want of succor! Those horns will bring Alexander to us!” Spears clashed on shields; Memnon’s sword flashed in the sun. “Let’s go forth and greet him in a manner he won’t soon forget! Forward by column! At the double!”

An
aulos
flute marked cadence as the Persian soldiers hustled out the Tripylon Gate. It clanged shut behind them, only to be opened when Pharnabazus heard the signal to withdraw. Beyond the walls, Memnon could see better the havoc his men wrought. The base of one siege tower burned; the other two smoldered, needing only the application of an incendiary to burst into open flames. Amyntas’s men tangled with Alexander’s light troops while the archers on the walls dueled with their Macedonian counterparts. Already, Ephialtes’ phalanx scythed through the unprepared battalions of Foot Companions, driving them back, their advance angling left to engage the siege engines, as well.

Memnon guided his
kardakes
into the gap between Ephialtes and Amyntas. Dust and smoke cloaked the field, choking friend and foe, alike. In the chaos, whole companies intent on rescuing the siege towers passed in front of the Persian spearmen. The
kardakes
struck mercilessly, splitting their ranks wide open and scattering men in all directions.

The battle raged throughout the day. The fires died out, quenched in part by the blood of the slain. For hours, the Persians had the upper hand as their archers kept the Macedonian cavalry from entering the fray; nor could Alexander bring reinforcements from the other gates—the young king feared catastrophic sorties from those points, should he turn his back on them. He had to contain the assault with the troops at hand.

Ephialtes took the Persian left as far as the line of
katapeltoi.
The Athenian’s hoplites slaughtered the engineers, wrecking several of the machines before they were hit with a Macedonian counterattack. Alexander’s veterans, men of Philip’s era, cursed their younger brethren as whelps and cowards even as they engaged the Greeks—phalanx against phalanx,
sarissa
against spear. The longer Macedonian pikes proved their worth once again, driving the hoplites back toward the Tripylon.

The Rhodian felt the timbre of the battle change. His left compacted; the soldiers his
kardakes
faced, a mix of Thracian peltasts and Macedonian hill-fighters, fought with redoubled fury as the veterans spiked into the Persian ranks.

A screaming Thracian leapt on Memnon’s shield, dragging it down as a second man, a blood-spattered Macedonian, came at him with axe and knife. He didn’t even take two steps before a
kardakes
over Memnon’s shoulder rammed his spear straight into the Macedonian’s sternum. Bone shivered and cracked. The Thracian, realizing his ploy had failed, looked up as the Rhodian’s blade sheared through his skull.

The tide of the battle definitely turned. They were being forced back, Memnon reckoned, and with mounting casualties.
We can do no more.
Content with the enemy blood soaking the ground, Memnon called for his trumpeter to sound withdrawal …

 

T
WILIGHT’S MANTLE LAY OVER
H
ALICARNASSUS
. S
TARS BLAZED, COLD AND
aloof, their patterns shaped by the deeds of gods and men. By their thin light Memnon took measure of the dead. Of the four thousand men who fought in the assault, fifteen hundred still lay on the field. Another thousand bore wounds, a third of those serious. A quarter of the seven hundred Cretans atop the walls would never return to their sea-girt island. The balance of them displayed with pride the marks of arrow, stone, and fire.

Ephialtes died fighting Alexander’s veterans—Philip’s men—those very soldiers who had shamed his
polis
on the field at Chaeronea. By all accounts, the hulking Athenian took a few of them with him on the long road to Tartarus.

Amyntas, too, was slain—his head hacked off by a pair of rival clansmen who recognized him. Memnon could do nothing to recover his body or even to prevent it from being dishonored. Such was a renegade’s fate, and Amyntas well knew it. Ephialtes at least would be buried with the rest of the Persian dead, for that was Alexander’s way. Not so Amyntas. Memnon said a prayer for the Macedonian’s shade.

“What now, my lord?” a soldier asked, his face unrecognizable beneath a mask of blood. Memnon clapped him on the shoulder and walked on, through the heart of the agora as it quickly filled with troops. The wounded had gone to the ships; seeing the whole of the fleet anchored off Halicarnassus, the rest of the garrison milled about, waiting for orders. They sensed a change.

Pharnabazus and Patron wrangled a couple of blocks into the agora’s center, creating a makeshift plinth. The Rhodian ascended to it. At a gesture, his trumpeter sounded assembly. Men pressed closer, listening. His words would be relayed to every corner of the agora.

For a moment, Memnon said nothing. He looked out over the sea of upturned faces, some bandaged and bloody, all covered in the dust of a city not their own. In every visage, he read a tale of bone-crushing weariness, grief, and pain. What did they read in his?

“There was a time,” he began, “when I could spool off a speech faster than an Athenian demagogue. My father was an orator, you see, and men claimed I inherited his gift. Perhaps, perhaps not. For myself, I make no such boast. If I speak well it’s because of you, my brothers; your deeds have given me a foundation on which to construct a flimsy tower of words. By all the gods, you make me proud! All of you!” They responded in kind, cheering the Rhodian on until he raised a hand for silence.

He continued. “This city came under my custody bearing a price for its walls, a price quoted in blood! Not ours, my friends, but Alexander’s! He’s met that price, and then some! Now, we must relinquish Halicarnassus to him!” Cries of “no!” and “stay and fight!” erupted from the assembly. Memnon raised his hands again, shouted over them. “He’s bought it, friends! Paid for it with his most precious possession—Macedonian blood! And he can have it! Aye, he can! For you and I, my brothers, have greater things to accomplish! What’s this one city compared to the whole of the Aegean?”

The agora exploded in wild screams. Sword hilts and spear shafts clashed on shields, on armor. Soldiers chanted Memnon’s name until the stones threatened to crack. Let the whelp have Halicarnassus! They would seize the Aegean, perhaps Hellas itself! It took another blast of the trumpet to bring them under control.

“We’re done here, brothers!” Memnon said. “When Alexander rises tomorrow we’ll be long gone, and his men will be able to see for themselves what their comrades died for.” The Rhodian pointed off to his right, to the massive Mausoleum. Laughter rippled through the crowd. Slowly, they broke up and filed down to the harbor, placated; they would board the ships secure in the knowledge that their own sacrifices at Halicarnassus were for a greater good.

Pharnabazus helped his uncle down from the plinth. The wound in the Rhodian’s hip reopened during the day, leaving his bandages sodden with blood, and the pain a deeper throb than ever before. “The gift is there,” the Persian said. “No matter how much you deny it.”

Memnon sighed, looked up at the stars. It was the time of night he missed Barsine most. “Will the gift ever be for peace, I wonder?”

I
NTERLUDE
VI

 

“H
ALICARNASSUS WAS A
M
ACEDONIAN VICTORY ONLY IN THE STRICTEST
sense,” Harmouthes said. “Alexander occupied the city, yes. But at a terrible price.” The Egyptian looked at Barsine. She slept restlessly. Her eyes flared open every little while as she fought to breathe. Her struggles ebbed, growing less frantic.

Ariston pursed his lips. “Is she …?”

“She is in Lord Osiris’s hands now. We can do nothing more.”

“I’m sorry, Harmouthes.”

The Egyptian gave the young man a sharp look. “I will not mourn her yet,” he said. “She fights the summons into the West. She may yet save herself.”

Ariston sighed. “What became of Memnon’s plan to transfer the war to Euboea?”

Harmouthes rose from Barsine’s bedside and went to the window, cracking it a little so he could inhale the cold night air. Stars shone through jagged rips in the clouds. “He pursued it after Halicarnassus, but uprisings against him on Chios and Lesbos threatened to delay his plans. No one knew how long the fickle Spartans would wait for him, so he spent the winter retaking those islands, reinstalling their garrisons and delivering crushing retributions; fighting when he should have been healing.” Harmouthes pulled the window shut and returned to his bedside vigil. He stroked Barsine’s brow; she murmured in her sleep. “Chios proved as effortless as before, as did four of the five cities of Lesbos, thanks to his cousin, Aristonymus.” The Egyptian sighed. “Mytilene, though …”