The Persian Boy (23 page)

It’s a great sight when you get to it; it was at least for me, and all who had not seen the Nile. The desert deer on the far side looked small as mice. The engineers stared at it in dismay. They had brought wagons full of timber with them; but what with its great width, its depth and its shifting sands, they could sink no piles. To bridge it was impossible.

Meantime the ferrymen met us with lifted hands, begging for bread. They had owned flat boats, with yoke-poles for a pair of horses, which were trained to swim them across. Bessos had burned the boats on the far side, gone off with the horses, and paid nothing. Alexander offered gold for anything they had left.

At this the poorest brought out their hidden wealth; rafts of hide blown up with air, to float with the current. That was all there was; and that, Alexander said, was what we would cross on, making the rest ourselves.

There were hides in plenty; the tents were made of them. The tentmakers studied the native craft, and oversaw the work. The insides were stuffed with straw and dry rushes, to keep them buoyant longer.

I’ve seldom been so scared as when the moment came to push off. My two servants shared the raft with me; we swam the horses and the mules. When the current tugged, the beasts began to flounder, the Thracian moaned out prayers to some Thracian god, and I saw further on a bigger raft overturning, I thought I was bound for another River. But this was the first time I had shared Alexander’s danger, I who had talked of fighting at his side; and I could see my body-servant, a Persian from Hyrkania, watching me, in search of encouragement, or maybe to see how a eunuch would behave. I will see you dead, I said to myself, before you shall make a tale of me. So I said people crossed like this every day; and showed them that the men from the capsized raft were still holding on to it. The horses got the feel of the river and pulled us on; and we reached the shore hardly even wet.

Even the women and children crossed like this. They had to; it was leagues through the desert to the nearest ford. I saw one raft with a woman on it hiding her eyes, and five children screaming with pleasure.

All in all it took five days. The rafts had to be dried and made into tents again. Alexander gave timber to the ferrymen, to make good their boats.

Horses had died in the march through the burning wind. I thought I would lose Lion; his chestnut coat was staring and his head was down. Oryx, the one I’d had from Alexander, was a fine strong beast and bore up better; but Lion was dear to me. He just lived through it; so did old Oxhead, nursed all the way, often with the King’s own hands. He was twenty-seven now, but built to last.

Soon we could take it easier. The last two Baktrian lords to follow Bessos sent word that Alexander could have him with their leave. The village where he was lodging would give him up.

We were now in Sogdiana. This was the first fruit of it. They have no laws worth speaking of, but the law of blood-feud; even guest-friendship does not count for much there. If you are a little luckier than Bessos was, you may be safe under their roof; further along the road, if you have anything worth taking, they will ambush you and cut your throat. Their chief sports are robbery and tribal wars.

Alexander disdained to pick up Bessos himself. He sent Ptolemy, with a good-sized force since he had to deal with traitors. He did not need it; the Baktrian lords had made off; the mud-walled fort let him in for a small reward. Bessos was found in a peasant hut, with only a couple of slaves.

If Darius’ spirit looked on, he must have felt well avenged. The lords who gave Bessos up had learned from his own example; they wanted him out of the way, to keep Alexander quiet while they prepare?d for war.

Ptolemy had had his orders. When Alexander came up with the army, Bessos was standing by the road, stripped naked, his hands tied up to a wooden yoke. At Susa I had seen this done to a famous bandit before they put him to death. I had never told the King of it; he must have asked Oxathres what was proper.

Nabarzanes had been right; there was nothing of a king in Bessos. I’m told that when Alexander asked him why he had dragged his lord and kinsman to so base a death, he pleaded he had been only one of many about Darius, who had agreed on it to win Alexander’s favor. He did not say why in that case he had assumed the Mitra. The Susa bandit had put on a better face. Alexander ordered him flogged, and kept in chains for his trial.

The traitor lords, who had hoped to keep Alexander quiet, should have known better. He marched straight on into Sogdiana. It was part of the empire, and he meant to keep it so.

The Sogdians live in a land of great dun hills and fearsome gorges. Along every pass there are forts full of armed robbers; the caravans have to hire small armies of guards, to get safely through. Sogdians are handsome; hawk-faced, with the carriage of princes. Nearly all Sogdiana is made of rock; but they build on it in mud, like swallows, because the men think craftsmanship beneath them. They can ride horses where you’d not think a goat could go; but they don’t regard their oaths if it does not suit them. Alexander was quite taken with them, till he found this out.

All seemed to go well at first. The city of Marakanda surrendered; so did the line of forts down by the Jaxartes River. Beyond that are the grasslands, and the Scythians against whom the forts had all been built.

Alexander now summoned the chiefs to his camp, to meet him in council. He wanted to tell them he would rule them justly, and ask what their laws were now. The chiefs, who knew just what they would do if they were Alexander, never doubted he wanted them there to take their heads. So of a sudden the river-forts were stormed by yelling Sogdians, and their garrisons butchered; Marakanda was under siege; a forage party from our own camp was cut to pieces.

He dealt first with that. The raiders had a roost on a mountain crag. The signal-smoke went up from the tall cresset by his tent; the troops fell in; he set out for the place, and took it.

They brought him back on a litter, and laid him on his bed. The surgeon was waiting in the tent, and so was I. An arrow had smashed into his shin, and split the bone. He had made them tug out the barb in the field, and sat his horse till the fort was taken.

When we soaked the stuck bandages off, splinters of bone came with them. More chips were sticking through the skin; the doctor had to work them out.

He lay looking upward, still as his own statue; not even his mouth moved. Yet he had wept for the maimed slaves of Persepolis; for old Oxhead; for Achilles and Patroklos, dead a thousand years; for my forgotten birthdays.

The surgeon dressed the wound, told him to keep quiet, and left. I stood one side of the bed with the bowl of bloodstained water; on the other stood Hephaistion, waiting for me to go.

I turned, with my dirty bowl. Alexander looked round, and said-the first sound he’d made-“You were good with the bandages. Light-handed.”

He kept quiet for about seven days; that is, he went by litter, instead of riding, downhill towards the Jaxartes river-forts. First he was carried by an infantry detail, till the cavalry complained of being denied the privilege. He then let them take turns. At night, when I changed the bandages, he confided to me that the cavalry, being unused to marching, were inclined to jolt.

I rode ahead with the army, this time; he was used to my doing the dressings. The doctor smelled at the wound each day; if the bone-marrow putrefies, it mostly kills a man. Bad as it looked, it scabbed over clean at last; but it left a dent on his shin, which he had for life.

Before long he rid himself of the litter by getting on a horse. By t?he time we reached the river grasslands, he had started to walk.

Doriskos had once said to me, “He’s said to be over-trusting; but if you break your pledge, God help you.” I was now to see the truth of it.

He took five forts in two days; at three of the assaults he was there himself. All had sworn him loyalty, and all had helped murder their garrisons. If Sogdians thought that to honor his given word a man must be soft in the head, they were now shown reasons they would understand.

So now I saw what I’d not seen all through Baktria; the herd of wailing women and children, driven into camp like cattle, the spoils of war. All the men were dead.

It happens everywhere. Greeks do it to other Greeks. My own father must have done it, in Ochos’ wars; though Ochos would never have given such people a first chance. However, this was the first time for me.

Alexander did not mean to drag along this horde of women; he was planning a new city here, and they would give the settlers wives. But meantime, soldiers short of a bedmate-slave were getting their pick. A woman would be led away; sometimes young children with wet dirty faces would stumble after, sobbing or screaming, to be cared for when her new master gave her time. Some of the young girls could scarcely walk; their blood-stained skirts showed why. I thought of my three sisters, whom I’d long managed to forget.

This was the slag of the fire, when the bright flame had passed. He knew what he was born to do; the god had told him. All those who helped, he would receive like kindred. If he was checked, he did whatever was necessary; then went on his way, his eyes on the fire he followed.

The sixth city was Kyropolis, the strongest; not built by the river, of mud-brick, but on a hill-flank, of stone. It had been founded by Kyros, no less; so Alexander had sent the siege-train on with Krateros, and ordered the assault saved up for him. He pitched his tent quite near the siege-lines, to save a walk, so I saw some of the battle. A great splinter of bone had just worked up through the scab on his shin. He made me tug it out, saying the doctor talked too much, and I was neater-handed. The blood was clean. “I’ve good-healing flesh,” he said.

The engines were set up; two siege-towers, clad with hide; a row of catapults, like huge bows laid on their sides, shooting bolts of bronze; and the battering-rams under their housings. In honor of Kyros, he put on his best armor; his silver-burnished helmet with white wings, and his famous belt from Rhodes. Because of the heat, he refused his jeweled gorget. I heard the men cheering, as he rode up to the lines. The assault started soon after.

I felt the rams’ thumping through the ground. Great clouds of dust flew up, but no breach appeared. For some time I saw the silver helmet, till it passed round a turn of the wall. Not so long after, yells and shouts rose up to heaven. The great gates of the fort were open; our men poured in. The walls were covered with soldiers fighting hand to hand; I could not think why, if the Sogdians had opened the gates. They had not; Alexander had done it.

The fort had its water from a river led under the walls. It was low in summer; its channel would let in a stooping man. He led his party in himself, wounded leg and all. The Sogdians, concerned about the rams, had not watched the gates well. He fought his way through, and pulled back the bolts.

Next day he came back to camp. A knot of officers was with him, asking how he felt. He shook his head fretfully, beckoned me up, and whispered, “Bring me a tablet and stylos.”

That came of leaving off his gorget. In the street-fighting, a stone had hit his throat and bruised his voice-box. Only a little harder, it would have broken the bone and choked him. But he had stayed there in command, whispering his orders, till the citadel surrendered.

He could bear pain like no one I ever saw; but not being able to talk drove him nearly mad. He would not rest quiet alone with me, who at a finger-sign would have known just what he wante?d; when his voice improved he strained it and it went again. He could not endure to hear the talk at supper and stay mute; he ate in his tent, with a clerk to read to him from one of the books he sent to Greece for. They had started building his new city, so he was soon riding out there, finding of course a hundred things to say. Even so, his voice was strengthening. He had a wonderful body for healing, in spite of all he did to it.

A new sight now appeared across the river; the house-wagons of Scythians, their horse-herds and black felt tents. They had heard of the Sogdian rising, and swept down like ravens to share the spoil. When they saw us, they withdrew and we thought them gone. Next day they were back; the men alone. They rode their small hairy mounts in whirling circles, waving their tufted spears and yelling. They tried to shoot across, but their arrows would not carry. Alexander, curious to know what they were saying with so much noise, sent for Pharneuches, the chief interpreter. The gist, it seemed, was, if Alexander wanted to know the difference between Baktrians and Scythians, let him cross the river.

We had this several days running, louder each time, and with gestures that needed no interpreter. Alexander was getting angry.

He had the generals in his tent, huddled around him so that he need not raise his voice. A whisper is catching; they all sounded like conspirators. I heard nothing till he said aloud, “Of course I’m fit! I can do anything but shout.” “Stop trying, then,” said Hephaistion, “or you’ll be dumb as a fish again.” As they argued their voices rose. Alexander said that if the Scythians got off now without a lesson, they would be sacking his new city the moment we had marched on. Since he meant to give the lesson himself, the others were much against it.

He supped in his tent, as sulky as Achilles. Hephaistion sat with him awhile, but left because he would keep talking. So I went back again; shook my head at all but sign language, and in due course put him to bed. When he caught my hand to keep me, I must own it was not without my contrivance. The bow had been strung too long. We did very well without words; and, after, I told him old tales till he went to sleep,

I knew, however, he would not change his mind about the Scythians. He thought that if he did not go himself, they would suppose he was scared.

The Jaxartes is much smaller than the Oxos. He had the rafts started next day, and sent for the seer Aristander, who always took the omens for him. Aristander came back to say the entrails of the sacrifice were unlucky. (We Persians have cleanlier ways of consulting heaven.) I heard it said the generals had been at him; but I would not have cared for going to that old blue-eyed Magus, and asking him to bend a prophecy. Besides, he was right.