Alexander looked up the almost vertical walls and watched the slow gliding of an eagle, ‘Do you think there might be anyone up there?’
‘There is only one way to find out.’
‘The Agrianians.’
‘I’ll send them up immediately.’
Shortly afterwards the soldiers, at a halt on the bottom of the gorge, turned their faces skywards and watched the acrobatics of the Agrianian assault troops as they climbed up the rocky faces, chipping away at times with their picks, creating passageways so as to be able to move through crevasses and then continue upwards, indefatigably agile. One of them, shortly before reaching the summit, lost his handhold as he was trying to reach out to an outcrop, fell and was smashed to pieces on the rocks below. His companions continued climbing, but another group set off from the bottom of the gorge up to the point where the battered body had become stuck between two rocks. They took it and at great danger to themselves dragged it down to the bottom where they prepared a stretcher, laid him out on it and covered him with a cloak before waiting to start the march again.
In the meantime the others had reached the top and blew a horn to give the signal to advance. The army moved forward and there were no signs of any of the Great King’s soldiers offering any resistance. At the first stop the Agrianians celebrated their companion’s funeral; they put him on a pyre of pine branches and cremated him while together they sang a mournful dirge. Then, after burying his ashes in an urn, together with his weapons and the buckle of his cloak, they got drunk and revelled together for the rest of the night.
28
IT WAS JUST BEFORE the end of the fourth watch when Alexander, half asleep, became aware of Peritas growling.
‘What’s up? What can you hear? Good boy, good boy . . . it must be a wolf, a lynx perhaps.’ He raised his eyes to the sky and saw the bonfires the Agrianians had lit on the sides of the gorge to show that the coast was clear, for the moment. Then he heard the noise of shuffling feet and confused whispers.
What’s up?’ he repeated, louder this time.
Hephaestion moved forward, ‘Oxhatres has come back with his Scythians – he wants to speak to you.’
‘Oxhatres? Let him through.’
From the bottom of the gorge three horsemen advanced, armed with bows across their shoulders, all completely covered with dust. Oxhatres, exhausted, dropped to the ground and walked forwards, swaying slightly. He had probably lost all feeling in his legs after having ridden beyond the limit. ‘King Darius deposed and made prisoner by Bessus,’ he gasped, ‘Satrap of Bactriana.’
‘The son of a bitch who very nearly took us from behind on the right at Gaugamela,’ said Leonnatus.
Oxhatres asked for help from an interpreter to be sure he would be understood and continued, ‘The King had left Ecbatana with six thousand horsemen, twenty thousand infantrymen and seven thousand talents of the royal treasure with the intention of razing the earth behind him and waiting for you at the Caspian Gates, but his soldiers ended up demoralized due to all their retreating; it was common knowledge that neither the Scythians nor the Kadusians would be sending any reinforcements. Many of them had begun to desert, and indeed we actually met some who gave us this information. They would abandon the encampment at night and spread out in the mountains and through the desert, while the scouts brought back news of the approach of your leading soldiers. At that point Bessus, supported by other Satraps – Satibarzanes, Barsaentes and Nabarzanes – arrested the King, had him put in chains and locked him up in a cart which is now on its way at top speed towards the farthest eastern provinces.’
‘Where are they now?’ asked Alexander. In the meantime his Companions had dressed and put on their weapons – someone had added wood to the fire and they all stood around it, feeling in their bones that they would soon be going into action.
‘Somewhere between us and the city of Hecatompylos, the capital of the Medians, but the gorge is free, and if you rush now with the cavalry you will manage to capture them. It is terrible that this ambitious traitor is enjoying the fruits of his treachery. If you are thinking of pursuing him, then I will come with you and I will be your guide.’
‘I don’t think you’re up to riding any more,’ replied Alexander. ‘You’re exhausted.’
‘Give me time to eat something and stretch my legs a little and you’ll see.’
Leptine appeared just then with a jug of‘Nestor’s Cup’ and Alexander nodded to her to serve some for Oxhatres, ‘Try this,’ he said, ‘it’s strong enough to bring people back from the dead.’ Then, turning to his companions, ‘All cavalry units prepare to move immediately.’
This was exactly the order they had all been waiting for. The trumpets blared out the signal to fall in, and immediately afterwards Alexander leaped on to his horse and set off at a gallop along the bottom of the gorge, beside Oxhatres, followed by Hephaestion, Ptolemy, Perdiccas, Craterus and all the others. The hetairoi divisions set off as they became ready and as the space cleared down at the bottom of the narrow gorge.
They rode for hours, stopping only to let the horses get their breath back. The gorge was now opening up towards the valley, which led down towards the city, and the sun was just beginning to show from behind the snowy peaks of the Hyrcanian Mountains. Suddenly Oxhatres shouted, ‘Halt!’ and tugged on his horse’s reins. The animal snorted heavily and pulled up, shining with sweat, and Alexander and his men stopped too, arranging themselves in a wide circle and preparing their weapons. The King unsheathed his sword, Leonnatus unhooked his cleaver and everyone turned to the Persian Prince who was pointing to an object off at a distance of some two stadia.
‘It’s a carriage from the royal stables,’ he said. ‘Perhaps they abandoned it so as to be able to speed up.’
‘Let’s move forward and keep our wits about us,’ Alexander ordered. ‘It might be a trap. Hephaestion on that side, Ptolemy over there. You, Perdiccas, move forward along the road and see what the situation is just beyond that bend. Be careful.’
Oxhatres spurred his horse on towards the carriage and Alexander followed him, together with Leonnatus and Craterus.
The royal carriage was there in the middle of the road, apparently intact, its doors closed.
‘Wait,’ said Leonnatus. ‘Let me go first.’ He dismounted and wielded his axe as he opened the door and looked inside: ‘Oh, by Zeus . . .’
Alexander also approached – King Darius lay there on the floor, dressed in his country clothes and completely lacking in any sign of his regal status, apart from his majestic head: his long hair, his beard bedecked with rings and his thick black moustache which contrasted greatly with the deathly pallor of his skin. A wide red stain covered his chest, his clothes were soaked in blood right down to his belt, and his hands were bound together. Out of contempt they had used a gold chain for this job.
‘Bastards!’ Alexander swore indignantly.
‘Quickly, let’s pull him out!’ exclaimed Ptolemy. ‘Perhaps he’s still alive. Call Philip, quickly!’
Two soldiers delicately lifted the Great King’s body and placed it on the ground on a blanket. Philip arrived in a rush and knelt down by Darius, placing his ear on his chest to listen for a heartbeat.
‘Is he dead?’ Leonnatus asked.
Philip gestured for him to be quiet and continued to listen, ‘It’s incredible . . .’ he said. ‘He is still breathing.’
Everyone looked at one another. Alexander knelt close to Philip, ‘Is there anything you can do for him?’
The physician shook his head, then he began undoing the chain around Darius’s wrists, ‘This is all I can do – let him die as a free man. It’s a matter of moments now.’
‘Look!’ exclaimed Craterus. ‘He’s moving his lips . . .’
Oxhatres too knelt down and tended his ear towards the King’s lips for an instant, then he stood up with his eyes full of tears.
‘He is dead now,’ he said, his voice trembling with emotion. ‘Great King Darius III is dead.
’
Alexander moved closer: ‘Did he say anything?’ he asked. ‘Did you manage to hear his words?’
He said, “revenge”!’ he replied.
Alexander looked on his enemy, at the glassy eyes that had once stared at him for an instant on the battlefield at Issus, and he felt a deep sense of pity for this man who up until a few months before had sat on the highest throne on the earth, revered as a god by millions of subjects and who now, betrayed and murdered by his own friends, lay abandoned on a dusty road. There came to his mind the lines of the Fall of Ilium which describe the lifeless body of Priam, killed by Neoptolemus:
Here lies the King of Asia, the powerful lord of armies
Like a tree felled by lightning
An abandoned trunk, a body without a name.
He murmured, ‘I will be the one to avenge your death. I swear it,’ and he closed Darius’s eyelids.
29
Alexander to Sisygambis, Great Queen Mother, Hail! Your son Darius is dead. He died not by my hand, nor at the hands of my men, but was killed by his own friends: they assassinated him and abandoned his body by the side of the road to Hecatompylos.
He was still breathing when I found him, but we were unable to do anything to help, apart from swearing to avenge the ignominy of his death. His last thoughts were certainly for you, just as my thoughts are with you now. This death is for me a great offence, just as it was for him because it has deprived us both of a fair match, face-to-face, which would have left us with a winner and would anyway have left the loser with some honour.
I will send him to you now, so that you may embrace him for one last time and weep for him as you accompany him to his final resting place. His body has been prepared so that it might survive this last, long journey to the ruins of Persepolis where the tomb that had been dug alongside the other Kings is ready to welcome him.
Arrange a fine funeral for him. As for me, I will not rest until I find the assassins and avenge his death. For a mother there is no greater grief than the loss of a child, but I beg you not to hate me – the gods at least have given you the possibility of mourning him and burying him, in keeping with your ancestral customs. My mother, who has been waiting for me for years, will perhaps not even be granted this concession.
Sisygambis closed the letter and cried for a long time in the intimacy of her own room, then she called the eunuchs and ordered them to prepare her small carriage and the horses, their mourning dress and the funeral offerings. She set off the following day across the land of the Ouxians, the people on whose behalf she had interceded with Alexander to stop him clearing them out of their own lands.
When word spread that the Queen Mother was travelling up to Persepolis to bury her son, all the people gathered along the road – men, women, the elderly and children together greeted the old grief-stricken Queen in silence and escorted her to the frontiers of their lands, to the edge of the highlands from which the ruins of the burned capital could now be made out – the columns of the luminous Palace of the Solstice, petrified trunks in a forest devoured by fire.
She stopped at the gates of the destroyed city and had her tent pitched there and she fasted for days until she saw, way down on the road leading from Ecbatana, the carriage pulled by four horses bearing her son’s body.
*
Alexander immediately set off once more in pursuit of Bessus and his accomplices. On the following day they came to the city called Hecatompylos, where the Persian commander surrendered without any resistance and from there they moved on to Zadracarta, the city of the Hyrcanians. Before them now lay the limitless extent of the Caspian Sea.
The King dismounted and began walking barefoot over the wet pebbles on the seashore, and his companions, surprised and somewhat puzzled, followed him along the watery frontier that marked the extreme point of their march.
‘Whereabouts in the world are we exactly, do you think?’ Leonnatus asked Callisthenes when they found themselves there before the sea.
‘Give me your spear,’ replied the historian.
Leonnatus gave it to him with a puzzled look on his face. Callisthenes stuck it into the beach as straight and as deep as he could manage and then carefully measured its shadow.
‘More or less at the same level as Tyre, but I have no idea how far from Tyre we are.’
‘And where does this sea end?’
Callisthenes sent his gaze out across the great liquid expanse that was just beginning to turn red in the sunset and then he turned to Nearchus who at that moment was approaching and perhaps had an answer to this question. The navarch bent over, picked up a pebble and threw it with all his strength as far as he could. The stone fell into the sea and produced a series of concentric ripples that moved through the water and died on the shore. He replied:
‘No one knows, but if I could build a fleet I would like to sail over that horizon, over there towards the north. That way we would discover whether this is a gulf of the northern Ocean, as many say, or whether it is a lake.’
As they spoke, they heard voices coming from the encampment, growing in excitement until they became cries of joy and songs of exultation.
Alexander turned to look back: ‘What’s happening at the camp?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Leonnatus, picking up his spear again.
‘Go and find out then.’
Leonnatus leaped on to his horse, set off at a gallop towards the camp and, as he approached, heard increasingly loud and distinct shouting and singing. Then he realized what it was that had generated all these celebrations – the soldiers had heard of Darius’s death and thought the war had finished, and rumours were spreading that they were finally returning home. They danced and drank and shouted for joy, singing old Macedonian songs that had almost seemed forgotten and some even started preparing their baggage for the long journey.
Leonnatus jumped to the ground and stopped the first soldier who passed before him, an infantryman of the pezhetairoi: ‘What’s happening here, by Hercules?’
We’re going home! Haven’t you heard? The war’s over!’
‘It’s over? Who told you it’s over?’
‘Everyone says it’s over – Darius is dead and the war’s over. We’re going home! We’re going home!’
‘You fool!’ Leonnatus shouted into his face. ‘Tell all these imbeciles to calm down and stop this din. There is one man and one man alone who will tell us when the war is over – Alexander! Understand? Alexander! And he has said nothing, I can assure you of that.’ He left the soldier standing there like a halfwit in the middle of the camp and the deafening racket of the groundless celebration and returned quickly to the King.
‘Well then?’ Alexander asked.
‘It’s difficult to—’
‘By Hercules, speak, man! What’s happening in my encampment?’
‘Nobody knows how, but a rumour has started that the war is over and that we’re all going home . . . ever since you told the Greeks they could return our men have been sure that it was their turn next, and since Darius is dead now . . . they’re all celebrating wildly and—’
Alexander leaped astride his horse and galloped to the camp. As soon as he entered, he called the trumpeters and had them twice sound the signal to fall in. The racket subsided, mutating into a suffused buzz of voices, then the men, in groups, in divisions or one by one, gathered in the middle of the camp around the assembly podium. Alexander, surrounded by his Companions, stood upright at the very centre, his face thunderous. He lifted his hand to ask for silence and began:
‘Men! What are you doing? Come on, I want an answer! Send me your commanders and tell me what you are doing!’
The buzz grew in volume again and it was clear they were all shocked by this sudden dampening of their celebrations. One by one the commanders of the various units moved forwards, conferred for a moment among themselves at the base of the podium and then their spokesman said, ‘Sire, after you dismissed our Greek allies, news spread that you were about to dismiss
the Thessalians as well, and they started preparing their baggage. At that point, when news reached us that Darius is dead, we all thought the war was over and that you would send us home too. The men started celebrating – they all want to return to their wives and their children who they haven’t seen for four years.’
‘This is true,’ replied Alexander. ‘I intend to dismiss the Thessalians just as I have already dismissed the Greeks. They are our allies in the pan-Hellenic League and their task is complete now. We had promised freedom for the Greek cities of Asia and defeat for the longstanding enemy of the Greeks and we have kept those promises. We have conquered the four capitals, the Great King is dead, but our own task is not yet over.’ The buzz of disappointment grew at these last words. ‘No, men! My veterans of so many battles! My friends! To the east, the rebel Satraps are preparing a counterattack; they have assembled a new army of thousands and thousands of warriors and they are simply waiting for us to turn our backs to them.
‘They will attack us from every possible direction with their fast horses; they will not relent for one moment, neither by day nor by night; they will poison the wells along our path; they will burn the crops; they will destroy the villages where we might seek shelter from the harsh winter. Our return journey, after having accomplished such glorious feats, will be transformed into a catastrophe. Is this what you want?’
The answer to the King’s question was a silence full of despondency and disappointment. These men who had always fought with such formidable courage, who had faced up to every danger without ever worrying about their own lives, were now full of doubt and uncertainty. What they saw stretching before them were completely unknown lands and seas; even the positions of the very constellations in the skies seemed to be changing and they had no idea of where they were. Suddenly they felt they were too far away from their homes. For the first time they felt sure that Alexander himself had absolutely no intention of returning home, that he simply wanted to move forwards, forwards into eternity. Their fear now was that they would never return.