In the clear air under the brilliant blue of that sky, out on those emerald meadows, all framed by the silver ribbons of the river and its tributaries, the ghosts of Artacoana seemed to fade away for a short time, but Parmenion’s blood-stained shadow continued to appear during Alexander’s nights. One day, at sunset, oppressed by his dread of the onset of darkness, he appeared at Aristander’s tent and said, ‘Get a horse and follow me.’
The seer obeyed and soon, having slipped past the surveillance of the guards, they were moving swiftly through the darkness that was already descending from the mountains and they began their ascent up the slopes of the great ridges.
‘What have we come here for?’ asked Aristander.
‘I want you to summon the ghost of Parmenion for me,’ replied the King, staring at him with a feverish look in his eyes. ‘Can you do this for me, Aristander?’
The seer nodded. ‘If he is still roaming around these lands, I will have him come to you, but if he has already descended into Hades, then I know not if I can reach him without putting my own life in danger.’
‘I dreamt I saw him a few nights ago, alone and on foot, somewhere near that pass over there. He walked with his back bent, as though carrying some heavy burden, and his white hair merged in with the whiteness of the snow. Now and then he waved to me to follow him . . . his great warrior’s calloused hand. Suddenly he turned towards me and I saw the wound he bore on his chest, but in his eyes there was neither hatred nor resentment. Simply an infinite melancholy. Call him for me, Aristander, I beg you!’
‘Do you remember where exactly on the mountain you think you saw him?’
‘Up there,’ replied the King, pointing to a place where a stony path disappeared into the snow.
‘Take me there, then, before night falls and surprises us, leaving no trace of the road we must take.’
They set off first on horseback and then dismounted when the path became narrower and more difficult. Before midnight they reached the snowline and stopped there before the white field that ran all the way up to the high peaks.
Are you ready?’ asked Aristander.
‘I am ready,’ replied the King.
‘For what?’
‘For everything.’
‘Even death?’
‘Yes.’
‘In that case undress now.’
Alexander obeyed.
‘Lie down in the snow.’
Alexander lay down on his back in the snowy shroud and shivered as he watched Aristander kneel down near him and begin rocking backwards and forwards on his heels, singing a strange lullaby, syncopated now and then by short cries in an incomprehensible barbarian tongue. As Aristander’s song climbed up towards the remote and freezing sky, Alexander’s body seemed to fall deeper into the snow, to the point where it was almost submerged.
He felt his skin pierced by thousands of icy needles that seemed to reach his heart and the pain was growing with each instant that passed and was quickly becoming unbearable. At a certain point he realized that he himself was emitting a series of rhythmic shouts in the same barbarian tongue used by Aristander, and then he noticed that the seer’s eyes were all white now and expressionless, like those of a marble statue washed colourless by the rain.
He tried to speak, but nothing came; he tried to get up, but he felt that he was not strong enough. He tried to shout again, but now he had no voice at all. He was falling deeper and deeper into the snow, or perhaps he was floating in the freezing, limpid air above the mountain peaks . . . he saw himself as a child, as though in a dream, running through the rooms of the palace while old Artemisia breathlessly tried to keep up with him. Then, suddenly, he found himself in the great council hall, in the armoury where the generals of the realm used to sit by his father’s side, and he stood there speechless before the majestic warriors all enclosed in their shining armour. At that point he saw an impressive-looking man come out of a side corridor, his white mane flowing behind him – the most important soldier of the realm, General Parmenion!
The old soldier stared at him and said as he smiled, ‘How does that rhyme go, Little Prince, what was it again? Aren’t you going to sing it again for your silly old soldier who’s off to the war?’
Alexander tried to sing it, the rhyme that made everyone laugh, but he couldn’t because a great lump had shut his throat tight. He turned to move back into his room, but before him he saw the landscape all covered with snow and he saw Aristander once more, on his knees, his eyes still white. He desperately tried to summon his last energies to reach out and touch the cloak he had abandoned just a short time before on the snow, but as he made the tremendous effort to turn his head in that direction he was suddenly paralysed by the shock of seeing Parmenion there before him, pale in the moonlight, encased in his armour with his magnificent sword hanging at his side.
His eyes filled with tears as he managed to murmur, ‘Old . . . brave . . . soldier . . . forgive me.’
Parmenion raised his lips slightly in a sad smile and replied, ‘I am with my boys now. We are together. Farewell, Alexandre. You shall have my forgiveness when we next see each other. And that moment will not be long in coming.’ He moved off slowly across the virgin snow and disappeared into the shadow.
Right then Alexander suddenly jerked back into consciousness and there in front of him was Aristander, holding out his cloak and saying, ‘Quickly! Cover yourself! Cover up! You have been very close to death.’
Alexander managed to lift himself up and wrap himself in his cloak and the warmth of the wool slowly brought life back into his body.
‘What happened?’ Aristander asked. ‘I used up all the power I had in my soul, but I remember nothing.’
‘I saw Parmenion. He was dressed in his armour, but he bore no wounds and he smiled at me,’ and as he spoke he lowered his head. ‘But it was probably just an illusion.’
An illusion?’ said the seer. ‘Perhaps not. Look’
Alexander turned and saw a row of footprints in the snow that ended just a stone’s throw from them, as though whoever had walked in that direction had dissolved into thin air. He knelt down and touched them with his fingertips and then he turned towards Aristander with his gaze full of wonder, ‘Macedonian boots . . . studded. Oh, by Zeus, is it possible?’
The seer stared out towards the horizon, ‘Let us return now,’ he said. ‘It is late. The stars that have protected us this far will soon disappear in the morning light.’
41
ALEXANDER CELEBRATED THE birth of his new city with solemn rites and sacrifices, after which he announced athletics, games and a poetry competition with elaborate stage settings. The best tragic actors who had acted in all the most demanding roles now sought to compete with the legendary Thessalus. The highland air, however, seemed to confer even grander timbre and power to the great actor’s voice.
The high point of the cycle of tragedies came with a production of Seven against Thebes in which a young actor from Mylasa acted with striking realism the part of Tydeus, sinking his teeth into the skull of Melanippus. However, the prize for the best interpretation was won yet again by Thessalus for his majestic performance as the protagonist of Agamemnon.
The celebrations lasted seven days. On the eighth day, the army set off on its march behind a patrol of local guides in the direction of the pass. After just two stops, they found themselves advancing through deep snow across a land that appeared to be completely deserted. Because the access paths were all extremely steep and difficult to climb up, the pack animals had all been loaded with half of the weight they normally carried, so that the expedition’s autonomy was much limited.
The guides explained that there were villages up there and there were provisions to be found, but the snow hid them all so well there was no trace whatsoever. The only way to find out where these settlements were was to wait until evening when the inhabitants lit their fires to cook their supper and the smoke gave their precise location away. In this way the soldiers filled their bellies
, but the inhabitants of those poor villages were deprived of all they needed to survive and had to leave their mountain homes and move down towards lower lands where they fought over food with other poor wretches.
The march continued, but it was so strenuous it began to take its toll, with many men suffering from the effects of snow blindness.
Alexander summoned Philip the physician to his tent after sunset and showed him a passage from The March of the Ten Thousand. ‘Xenophon recounts that he had the same problem with his men in the snows of Armenia – he says that a fair number of them even lost their sight.’
‘I have given orders for the soldiers to bandage their eyes, leaving only slits for them to see out just as much as is necessary,’ replied Philip. ‘This measure ought to help save their sight. I cannot do any more than this – we do not have enough medicines for everyone, but I do remember that my old teacher, Nicomachus, the man who delivered you, made use of snow to cure irritations of the tissues as well as for stemming or stopping haemorrhages. I have carried out some trials with our soldiers and the results are encouraging. In this case we really can say that the cure is to be found in the offending substance.’
Then, noticing that Alexander looked strained, ‘And how do you feel in yourself, Sire?’
‘My pains are of a type that are beyond your cures, my good Philip, only wine sometimes helps assuage them . . . never until now had I understood what my father meant when he said that a king stands alone.’
‘Are you managing to sleep?’
‘Yes . . . occasionally.’
‘Then go now and rest. May the gods grant you a decent night.’
‘And to you too, iatre.’
Philip smiled for the King used his full medical title only when he was particularly pleased with some element of his work as a physician. He saluted Alexander with a slight nod of the head and went out into the starry night.
In the course of the following day they came within sight of an enormous rock – high and craggy. Callisthenes studied it for a long time and then had himself accompanied to its base by a patrol of Agrianians. He had noticed a vaguely semicircular projection on one side, reminiscent of a gigantic nest, while on the other side, exactly halfway up the rock face, were some rust-coloured, ring-shaped stains and then a depression that made one think of the shape of a human body of enormous proportions. He immediately sent for Aristander.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s extraordinary! We have found the rock that Prometheus was bound to! That thing there,’ he said, pointing to the projection, ‘might well be the nest of the eagle that ate his liver and those,’ pointing now to the rust stains, ‘are from the chains that held the Titan prisoner. And that is the mark left by his body . . . if my uncle Aristotle is right, as I believe he is, and this is the Caucasus, then this might well be Prometheus’s rock.’ The news spread quickly among the ranks of the army. A fair number of the soldiers left their positions to go and see it and the more they looked at it the more they were convinced of the truth in what Callisthenes had said. Thessalus too came, and, inspired by the grandiose nature of the landscape around them, he began reciting verse from Aeschylus’s Prometheus – the lament of the Titan, chained to the Scythian rock. His stentorian voice, echoed by the high peaks, sent the words of the poet resounding through that barbarous and remote land, perennially gripped by ice:
O you bright sky of heaven, you swift-winged breezes, you river-waters, and infinite laughter of the waves of ocean, O universal mother Earth, and you, all-seeing orb of the sun, to you I call! See what I, a god, endure from the gods.
The King also stood still and listened to those sublime words, but then Callisthenes replied to Thessalus with the words of Hephaestus, forced to put the Titan in chains:
Therefore on this joyless rock you must stand sentinel, erect, sleepless, your knee unbent. And many a groan and unavailing lament you shall utter; for the heart of Zeus is hard, and everyone is harsh whose power is new.2
These words cut Alexander to the quick, almost as though they had been spoken for him and him alone.
At that very moment an eagle took to the skies from one of the higher peaks and sent its raucous, strident call through the immense space above them as it hovered slowly over the icy desert, as though Zeus himself were replying, offended by the insolent mortals and their puny words.
Callisthenes turned and saw the King’s preoccupied gaze: ‘Are these verses not splendid?’
‘They are,’ replied Alexander, and he began walking once more.
*
It took sixteen days’ marching for the army to cross the great mountain chain from one side to the other, going through all sorts of trials and ordeals before they came down towards the Scythian plain. Some of the animals had to be put down in order to get past the last part of that formidable barrier, but in the end Alexander was able to cast his gaze over a new province of his immense dominion.
From the last mountain pass he looked out over an endless steppe and once again the men were overwhelmed at the sight of such a uniform, endless landscape, but above all they were amazed that the eternal ice and snow should almost border on such semi-desert lands, baked by the sun.
Being once again part of Alexander’s enterprise made them feel as though they had been sucked up in some vertiginous current, by an invincible and irresistible force. They felt that they were once again engaged in an incomparable adventure that no one else in the world would ever live through; no one except them had had the fortune of encountering such a man, assuming he was a man. Indeed, many of those who followed the army, used to seeing him from far away, shining in his silver breastplate alongside the red standard with the golden star, had now come to think of him as some superhuman being.
As soon as they reached the plain, they set off towards the capital of the region, a city by the name of Bactra, which stood at the centre of a verdant oasis where they would finally find refreshment. The city surrendered without a fight and Alexander confirmed the existing satrap, Artaozos, in his position. He was the one who welcomed the King to the place and informed him that Bessus had retreated, razing the earth in his wake.
‘He never imagined that you would reach us so quickly, that you would have crossed the mountains in a matter of days, overcoming snow and hunger. He wasn’t able to assemble a sufficiently large army to face you on the open field, so he has crossed the River Oxus, one of the largest of those that flow down from our mountains, and he is now in the midst of those cities which are his allies, and he has destroyed all the bridges behind him.’
On hearing this news the King decided not to waste any time and set off again on their march with the intention of crossing the river where he could. When they reached the banks, he called Diades, his chief engineer, and pointed to the other side, How long will it take you to build a bridge?’ he asked.
Diades took a javelin from one of the guards and drove it as deep as he could into the riverbed, but the flow immediately tilted it until it was almost lying flat on the water. ‘Sand!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s just sand!’
‘What does that mean?’ asked the King.
‘It means that no supports will hold, just as the shaft of that javelin failed to hold.’ He looked around before speaking once again, ‘What’s more, there are not enough trees nearby.’
‘I will send men back to the mountains to cut fir trees.’
Diades shook his head, ‘Sire, you well know that nothing has ever stopped me, that there has never been any enterprise that I have ever felt was impossible, but this river is five stadia wide, its flow is very strong and its bed is pure sand. There are no supports that can hold and without supports there can be no bridge. I advise you to look for a ford.’
Oxhatres moved forward and in his uncertain Greek said, ‘No ford.’
Alexander started walking up and down the bank in silence, under the gaze of the entire army, as well as his puzzled Companions. Then his attention was drawn by the work of some peasants who were busy in the
fields alongside the river. They were separating the straw from the chaff, making the most of the windy day as they threw it all up into the air with shovels and forks. The straw fell not far from them while the chaff, lighter as it was, fluttered in the wind and was carried to the edges of the threshing floor. It was beautiful to watch – a sort of golden vortex of thousands of shining golden strips fluttering in the air.
As the handsome young man approached them, the peasants stopped their work and looked at him keenly in wonder as he bent over to gather a handful of chaff.
He turned back towards Diades who in the meantime had stuck other poles into the riverbed, not far downstream and was watching them despondently as they were flattened by the current.
‘I have found a way,’ said Alexander.
A way of crossing? How?’ asked the engineer as he opened up his arms in disbelief.
The King raised his hand and let the chaff he was holding fall to the ground. ‘With this,’ he said.
‘With the chaff from the straw?’
‘Exactly. I’ve seen it done on the Ister. They fill cattle-skins with chaff, then they sew them up and put them in the water. The air trapped in the chaff will make these leather bags float for long enough to let us cross the river.’
‘But we don’t have enough skins for all our men,’ said the engineer.
‘No, but we have enough to build a walkway. We can use the skins from the tents . . . what do you think?’
Diades looked at him incredulously. ‘It’s an ingenious idea. We can grease them with tallow to make them more waterproof
A council of the Companions was called and everyone’s duties were specified: Hephaestion was to collect the chaff, Leonnatus to gather up all the skins normally used for the tents and to requisition those of the locals as well. The boards for the floors of the war engines were to be used for the walkway, and stones with ropes tied to them were to be the anchors.