Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great (28 page)

The army made camp—but not in the place the Sogdians suggested—and Alexander rode out with his officers to scout the best point to commence the assault. They had ridden around the Rock for quite some time before realizing they had already made a complete circuit without finding a single weakness. As they stood there, they felt a tingling sensation, as if a light rain was falling on them. The sky, however, was cloudless. Looking more closely, they saw the source of the ‘rain’—the Sogdians had lined up on the walls of their fortress. They had their robes lifted, and they were pissing on the Macedonians below.

Riding away some distance, Alexander wiped his face with a rag. “Find me a fast way onto that Rock,” he said. “Whatever it costs.”

The generals conferred through the night. They considered elevating their catapults on towers, or building an enormous ramp for their battering rams. But such massive constructions would mean bringing in soil and timber from great distances, as the ground in the area was barren. The Sogdians’s insults, moreover, had set Alexander in such a rage that his patience was spent.

There was time for only one solution. A call went out in the camp for those most practiced in rock climbing. To the three hundred men who responded, Alexander promised the princely sum of ten talents to each who reached the top of the Rock; once at the summit, they were to make as loud a racket as they could, so that the Macedonians and the Sogdians would know they were there. To speed their progress, Alexander made sacrifice to Hermes the Messenger, and to the mountain itself.

The attackers set out after dark, each equipped with sets of sharp iron stakes, hammers, rope, and two days’ rations. In theory, the stakes would be driven into whatever soil or ice the men would find; in practice, as climbers rose higher, they found themselves pounding rods into solid rock. Well may we imagine their terror as they clung to the sheer wall, equally afraid to go up or down, forced to witness their comrades slip and fall around them. As the sun set on the first day of the ascent, the survivors secured themselves by whatever method they could, some by tying ropes around themselves, others simply by wedging their arms or legs into tight places. The lucky ones were able to sleep; the unlucky, in their exhaustion and paralysis, slipped from their places and died. The cold tortured all of them, until many gave up and released their holds. The remains of some who fell were never found.

The survivors later reported that they had the same dream that desperate night: as they hugged the wall for their very lives, all were visited by a beautiful Oreid. The nymph, who was naked except for a sheen of the clearest ice on her body, seemed to float before them on a breeze blowing up from the base of the Rock. Using no words, she somehow communicated to each man that he should take hold of her shining hair, which fell to her waist and was garlanded with mountain flowers. Many of the climbers at first hesitated to do so, as she seemed so light as to flutter in the air before them, but were seized by such a temptation to embrace the lovely girl that they abandoned their toeholds and threw themselves upon her. Entangled in this slender form, they suddenly imagined they could sense the veins of water pounding deep in the rock, hear the tender mosses calling to them from the hillsides, and feel themselves carried to a place much higher on the wall, where they were planted with a kiss. And when they awoke, they found themselves clinging to the exact spot where they had dreamt the Oreid had lifted them.

By the dawn of the second day there was a great clamor at the summit of the Rock. Looking up from their camp, the Macedonians saw that most of the climbers were now on a ledge high above the fortress, waving their arms and rejoicing. The Sogdians, for their part, were greatly disturbed by this spectacle, for in their ignorance they believed that Alexander had indeed recruited soldiers with wings, and that the flying Macedonians were not thanking the gods for their mere survival, but preparing to attack. Though the climbers had no weapons, and were pitifully few in number, the Sogdians were defeated by their fears.

The abrupt surrender of the Rock came as a great relief to us. It was also a momentous example for the neighboring chiefdoms, who might have entertained thoughts that they might hold out against Alexander. The King, hoping to discourage such ambitions with a judicious show of kindness, restrained his impulse to punish Oxyartes for his arrogance. The chief was allowed to retain nominal sovereignty over his lands. Oxyartes, in turn, invited Alexander to provision himself from the stores he had laid up in his fortress, which were so prodigious that he could supply the entire Macedonian army several times over. At this, Alexander privately savored his good fortune, for the Sogdian emissaries had not exaggerated about withstanding a twenty-year siege.

When he surrendered his redoubt, the Sogdian chief Oxyartes did it with such gracious good-humor that the Macedonians were much charmed. He offered an inexhaustible supply of food, wine, and feminine companionship. Alexander, to whom gift-giving was as serious a matter as warfare itself, matched this largess with presents of gold and silver from the treasury at Persepolis. Oxyartes took the baubles, of course, but with the slightest air of disdain for such useless things, preferring in his turn to give weapons, horses, and provisions. Alexander pretended not to need these things either, and so the competition went on for some time, with the subordinates on each side benefitting far more than either of the two leaders.

In this part of Asia it was considered proper for fathers publicly to advertise the charms of their unmarried daughters. It was on such an occasion, performing a dance for the royal Companions in the reception hall of the chief, that Alexander first saw Rohjane. With her two sisters, she wore a finer version of the formal Sogdian men’s costume, with a knee-length, brocaded jacket of silk, tightly-cinched belt, and narrow trousers with the cuffs stuffed into leather boots. A cone-shaped headdress covered her head, with the tip deliberately bent forward. (The tip, it was said, had to be bent just so or the whole effect was ruined.) In their dance the girls held swords, which they swung and skipped over in unison. Rohjane’s mannish clothes notwithstanding, lines of plaited blonde hair swept down from the bottom of her cap, belying any possibility that she was anything but a woman. The playful Sogdians were amused at the spectacle of girls imitating warriors—a joke that was lost on the Macedonians, who had very proper ideas about this sort of thing. Alexander had eyes only for Rohjane.

In their lack of imagination, some rhapsodes have described Rohjane as ‘the second most beautiful woman in Asia’—that is, the most beautiful after Stateira. For the record, I don’t know if she was the second most beautiful woman in Asia, or perhaps in Sogdia alone, or just in the Macedonian camp. What ignorance to assume that mere beauty had any influence on Alexander, who had grown up immersed in the occupations and pleasures of men! Having been there at the time, I can attest that her appearance had less to do with it than her other charms. It could have been the way she tilted her head in the dance, for instance, or the play of slight creases around her mouth when she smiled, or the way she kissed the air as she disappeared behind the curtain.

Of what the heart wants, there is no accounting. Straightaway Alexander called to Oxyartes, asking for Rohjane to join him for a drink. Surprised, the chief asked if the King did not mean her elder sister. No, replied Alexander, he meant Rohjane. At this point the chief turned white—his reluctance was obvious, though everyone assumed it had to do with disposing of his daughters in the proper order, eldest first. In retrospect, I am not so sure this was the reason. For it was not paternal propriety that showed on the face of genial Oxyartes, but apprehension, perhaps even fear for his powerful but ignorant guest. But he was in no position to refuse.

The King spent an anxious few minutes waiting for the girl to return, suffering in silence the inanity of an argument between Craterus and Perdiccas. The former argued that man always gives away the fact that he is a prostitute by the timbre of his farts. Perdiccas, showing his prudence, denied that buggery had any such effect. They went back and forth on this question for some time, until the curtain to the women’s quarters rustled, and Alexander told them to shut up.

Rohjane came out in a different outfit this time. Her legs were covered by loose-fitting chintz trousers belted above her waist. Around her shoulders she had a short jacket of gold-embroidered green velvet left unfastened at the front, and a silk shawl. Her chest was entirely uncovered except for a plum-colored handkerchief that hung from her neck. This thin garment did little to conceal her shape as she moved, bewildering the otherwise delighted guests.

She strode toward Alexander on green leather shoes with built-up heels. Her every step was accompanied by the music of tinkling jewelry. When she bowed, her hair fell in curled disarray around her cheeks—a display that seemed to intrigue all the men, who rarely saw ungirt long hair among the respectable women of Macedon. There was a slight smile on her face, as if she were savoring some joke only she had heard.

Still, for all her undeniable attractions, she could not match the bounteous presences of Thais or Stateira. Her charm lay more with her quickness of mind. That, and her unaccountable confidence, for she was nothing more than a minor chief’s daughter, on display at the demand of the conqueror the Persian Empire, yet she showed no fear at all. In this she reminded me of someone whom I could not remember at that moment.

In trying to recall whom, I was distracted by the conversation that followed, and can only remember a few lines.

“King Alexander wishes to speak with you,” Oxyartes said.

“So I supposed. Well, King Alexander, speak!” she replied, in a heavily-accented Greek identical to her father’s.

“Rohjane!”

“I would speak,” said Alexander, “except that I am struck dumb.”

“What a pair we are, then. You are struck dumb, and I am commanded to be.”

Alexander looked at her with those eyes, which were not easy to withstand. Rohjane returned his stare, until he smiled, and she finally blushed, looking away. And with that, the bargain was sealed.

The next day they were married. According to Sogdian custom, Rohjane was not required to be present, but only her father. Alexander was presented with a loaf of bread, which he cut in half with a ritual sword passed down from the time of Oxyartes’s earliest forebears. Half the bread went to the father, and half to the husband, and when they ate the union was made.

The most remarkable thing about the wedding was not the ritual, but the differing expressions on the faces of the bride’s and groom’s parties. The Sogdians, of course, were unanimously delighted. The Macedonians, including Hephaestion, Craterus, Ptolemy, Perdiccas and Parmenion, could not have made their discomfort more obvious. To them, the marriage was nothing less than a disaster. Naturally, as her conqueror, Alexander had every right to take the girl into his bed in any fashion he wished. He was free to spawn a whole nest of bastards by her. But it was unthinkable that he would actually
marry
a girl of such minor status. No doubt they were also troubled by the possible implications of a ‘Queen Rohjane;’ the powers behind the throne were crowded enough without adding a new, unpredictable player to the game. These suspicions no doubt had something to do with her cool reception among the Macedonians, as Aeschines has described. Is it any wonder, then, that I sought to increase the Athenians’ influence over the court by befriending her? To my mind, I would have been negligent not to have taken the opportunity.

Of Alexander’s thinking on this matter I can say nothing for sure. He never discussed it with me, and met my eyes only once during the ceremony. There was a petulant defiance in them, as if his decision to marry was supposed to make a point. How god-like he was in his impetuosity, in his contempt for consequences, he seemed to be telling me. How much like Zeus, who never let the inferiority of his mortal conquests frustrate his pleasure.

It was then, just after the wedding, after Rohjane was led out in her semi-barbarous wedding gown of kidskin and fox fur, and presented her cheek for her husband to kiss, that I remembered the person of whom she most reminded me.

It was Olympias.

Speaking of his minor conquests, there is another I must mention though my time is short. I feel compelled to describe it because it will never appear in the public histories, or if it does, only as an unconfirmed story that the reader may believe or not according to his prejudices. I tell you now it did happen, in just the way I will describe it.

Just north of the Oxus River, the Macedonians came upon a small village. As the army approached, a deputation came out to greet it wearing Greek dress, and speaking in an Ionian Greek dialect. In Alexander’s presence they declared that they were Milesians of the clan Branchidae. At this Callisthenes struck his head in wonder. For these, he declared, had to be the very descendants of the priestly clan of the Branchidae who had once tended the sacred precincts of Apollo at Didyma. He was about to say more—but bid the King first to order the Milesians out of earshot.