In the meantime the sky had filled with a strange mist that filtered the sun’s rays into a diaphanous and milky glow, wiping out even further the sense of distance and depth.
‘Look!’ exclaimed Leonnatus all of a sudden. ‘Signals from our messengers! They’re attacking.’
45
ALEXANDER ASSEMBLED ALL the remaining horsemen, gave command of the auxiliary divisions and squadrons to Ptolemy and the others, and set off at a gallop together with Oxhatres’ second division, which consisted of a hundred or so Scythians who for some time had fought as mercenaries in the imperial army.
He chose not to come within sight of the enemy as he advanced, maintaining contact through the messengers until he received confirmation that the Scythians had engaged in battle with Perdiccas and Cleitus.
‘What formation have they adopted?’ the King asked.
‘It’s not a formation in the true sense – they are circling around our divisions, firing thick swarms of arrows. Up to now our men have used their shields to protect themselves, but I don’t know how long they can hold out.’
‘Indeed, it is time to put an end to this,’ replied Alexander. He called his Companions and said to them, ‘We will now move forward at a moderate speed until we make contact with them. As soon as we come within sight, the trumpets will sound the signal: Cleitus and Perdiccas will break out of the circle surrounding them, immediately fanning out and turning back towards us as we take the Scythians from behind in a pincer move. There will be no way out for them, not even on the open sides. Take no prisoners unless they surrender. And now, to your mounts!’
Alexander was astride his Sarmatian bay, the standard-bearer alongside him and all the others followed, spread out over a huge front along the flat plain, four rows deep.
As soon as the Scythians appeared with their bright costumes and their scaled armour, the King had the trumpets sound the agreed signal. Almost immediately Cleitus and Perdiccas arranged their men in a wedge shape and charged forward, breaking out of the circle and galloping in a straight line until the last of their men had come out of it. Then they split into two halves, each of which made a wide turn, and united once more into a single front; then they turned around, charging compactly with their spears held low, ready for battle.
At the same moment Alexander appeared from the other side with all his squadrons already speeding forward at a charge. Taken by surprise there in the middle, the Scythians were forced into hand-to-hand combat in a space that was too cramped and with no opportunity of finding escape laterally. They were furious at having been trapped in this way in the very midst of their ocean-like plain, like fish in a net, and they sought to break out in any way possible, but the terrain was so flat and regular that the Macedonian cavalry was able to maintain their front completely intact and to make the most of the advantage of their heavier weapons.
The Scythians fought bitterly, suffering terrible losses, and it was towards afternoon, when they realized they were facing a massacre that they made one final effort, grouping together and driving through a small gap that had formed in the enemy front; led by their commander, they managed to push through into open terrain and slip away.
The Macedonian soldiers cried out in victory, raising the points of their spears to the sky, but the King soon stopped them. ‘It is not over yet,’ he said. ‘Now we must follow them to their villages and we will make sure they will remember for all time Alexander and his hetairoi.’ But just as he was about to give orders for them all to leave, some messengers arrived from the camp with a message from the infantry commanders.
‘Sire, the Satrap Spitamenes has incited the Sogdians and the Bactrians and they are now attacking Samarkand. The commanders want to know what they should do.’
‘Leave a garrison in the new city and then turn back towards Samarkand. I will reach you there as soon as I have finished my incursion here.’
The messengers left and Alexander began the march across the plain once more, led by Oxhatres. They proceeded at a walk now, following the tracks of the Scythian horsemen who had escaped the battle, and the immense vastness of the plain filled them with wonder and awe: there was not even a tree to be seen, no rocks or stones, not a hill or a rise in the land while behind them the mountains of the Paropamisus were pinkish red as the rays of the setting sun fell on the snow-covered peaks.
Ptolemy said, as though speaking to himself, ‘On the island of Euboea, the cities of Chalcis and Eretria fought fiercely for fifty years for control of a plain some thirty-five stadia long.’
‘Quite,’ Perdiccas said in agreement, ‘and here our gaze reaches the horizon with no obstacles at all and no sign of any human presence.’
‘Yet they cannot have disappeared into nothing,’ said Hephaestion. ‘They are not ghosts.’
‘They are nomads,’ explained Oxhatres who was riding behind them. ‘They live in carts drawn by oxen and inside are their families – wives, the elderly, children. Their nourishment comes from milk and meat and they can travel for days and nights without ever stopping because their horses have incredible stamina.’
‘How far does their land extend?’ asked Alexander, remembering his father’s tales of his battles against the Scythians beyond the Ister.
‘No one knows,’ replied the Persian.
‘According to some people,’ said Seleucus, ‘they border to the north with the Hyperboreans and to the east with the Issedonians whose diet consists of nothing but horse milk’
‘What if we get lost?’ Leonnatus asked, looking out over the flat, stepped land.
‘Impossible,’ Seleucus reassured him. ‘We have the mountains behind us and the Jaxartes to our left. In any case I would turn back, given what is happening now at Samarkand.’
Alexander continued riding in silence – this was his way of putting them to the test, of seeing just how strong their loyalty, their friendship and their determination to face the unknown still were. Then the Scythian tracks disappeared all of a sudden, as though their horses had grown wings and taken to the skies.
‘By Zeus!’ exclaimed Perdiccas.
Oxhatres dismounted and examined the ground. ‘They’ve wrapped up the horses’ hooves so they leave almost no trace on this dry grass, but my Scythians ought to be able to make something out.’
‘Let’s go on then,’ ordered the King.
The march began once more until darkness fell and not even Oxhatres’ Scythian scouts were able to see anything. Alexander had the trumpets signal a halt and everyone placed their cloaks on the ground, took a little bread and dried meat from their satchels together with their water bottles and sat to eat the most frugal supper they had had for some considerable time. Yet there was a great sense of peace everywhere – the moon was almost full and it was rising now from behind the mountains, illuminating the great plain and making the waters of the rivers shine. The brightest constellations appeared one after the other in the clear night sky that was completely free of cloud. Only far off, towards the east and over the mountain crests, were there some flashes of lightning to be seen; apart from this the world was fully immersed in the peace and quiet of the evening. The Asian warriors had formed their own circle and had managed to light a fire.
‘How do they do that?’ Hephaestion asked, beginning to feel quite cold. ‘I haven’t seen any trace of a bush or anything for a hundred stadia.’
‘Dung,’ replied Oxhatres in his uncertain Greek, and with an expression of profound contempt.
‘Dung?’ asked Seleucus, raising his eyebrows.
‘Sheep dung, horse dung, goat dung. They collect it all in a sack and when it’s dry, they burn it.’
‘Ah!’
‘For us it’s a form of sacrilege – the profanation of fire. In Persia it is punishable by death, but they are . . .’ and he pronounced a word that in Persian meant ‘barbarians’.
‘Don’t you think this is a tasty meal despite it all?’ asked Alexander, changing the subject.
‘When hunger bites . .
.’ said Hephaestion in approval.
And this place . . . I have never seen anything like it. Not even a single habitation between us and the horizon in all directions.’ Then he turned to Oxhatres, ‘What do you think? Will Alexandria-the-Farthest survive and thrive?’
‘It will thrive,’ replied the Persian warrior. ‘When the soldiers leave, the merchants will arrive and the city will fill up with people, with livestock, with life. It will thrive.’
They slept that night guarded by a double ring of sentries on horseback who watched over the moonlit plain. They were up at dawn and set off on the chase immediately. After three days they came across wheel tracks and soon they came within sight of the movable village of the Scythian leader who had fled from the battle – three rings of vehicles, all of them covered with tanned hides.
Oxhatres recognized the standard flying from the leading carriage: a wooden shaft with two bronze ibexes engaged in a clash of horns. ‘He is a King,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the one with the red band around his head . . . and now he has no way out. At this moment he will be thinking, “How did you find me here in the middle of my plain, how did you find your way across a landscape with no recognizable features?”’
Alexander signalled to his Companions and each of them lined up his own division so that together they surrounded the small city on wheels. The horsemen sat upright on their mounts, the long shafts of their spears held firmly in their hands. They looked like superhuman beings in that solitary place, expressing a sense of irresistible power in the shining muscles of their steeds, in the sharp points of their weapons, in the flashing brightness of their polished helmets, the crests waving in the first breeze of daybreak.
In the unreal silence of the early hour suddenly there came the sound of a horn that faded out across the immensity of the plain. Then the Scythian king appeared, astride a splendid dappled stallion, very different from the small, bristly horses ridden by his men – perhaps a gift from some neighbouring king, or loot from a raid somewhere. He was still wearing his battledress – his scarlet ribbon, the scaled armour of his breastplate. His wife followed him on foot, sporting a high headdress in gold, decorated with parallel bands, a long red veil and a crimson tunic adorned with small plaques of gold sheet on its edges, together with a long dress that reached her feet and almost covered her shoes of embroidered wool. She led by the hand a young girl of about twelve years of age, certainly her daughter, judging by how closely they resembled each other.
The chief looked around, almost as though inspecting the great line up of armoured warriors who had appeared from nowhere, then he advanced confidently towards Alexander and began talking. Oxhatres had had one of his Scythian mercenaries accompany him and as this man translated, the Persian translated in his turn for Alexander.
‘No one in our memory, has ever dared push this far into Scythian territory. No one has ever managed to defeat the Scythians and to surprise them in the heart of their land. Also I have heard that you defeated the King of the Persians and took his realm from him. So you are either a god, or you have a god on your side. Fighting against you I lost my best warriors and I struggled to save my own life. I have come to offer you peace and as part of my pledge I offer you my daughter as your bride.’
At these words the Queen pushed the reluctant girl forward and Alexander saw that her eyes were full of tears under her long, black eyelashes.
He dismounted, looked at the girl and tears came to his own eyes as he thought of his sister Cleopatra and how young she had looked when he had left for Mieza and his long period of study under the guidance of Aristotle . . . how long ago was that now?
‘Your daughter still needs the love and the care of her mother and I have no wish to take her away,’ he replied. ‘To seal a pact between Kings all that is required is an oath made on the sky, which sits above all men, and on the earth, which one day will welcome us within itself. And a handshake.’
He waited until the interpreter had finished translating, then he offered his hand to the Scythian king who shook it firmly, raising his other hand first towards the sky and then extending it, palm downwards, towards the ground.
‘My name is Dravas,’ said the leader, fixing his eyes on those of the young golden-haired stranger, ‘and what is your name?’
‘Alexandros,’ came the reply, ‘and I can return here at any moment and from any place I may be.’ He said this in such a tone and with such a look that the Scythian leader had no doubt at all, not even for a moment, that he was telling the simple truth.
46
ON THE FOLLOWING morning they set off again, westwards now towards the Jaxartes, but the terrain here was completely arid and burned by the sun, so that the men soon finished their supplies of water. The soldiers of the light cavalry who had borne the brunt of the hardest work in the long-distance reconnaissance missions and the watches were the first to run out, and Alexander gave orders for his personal supplies to be given to them. In this way they continued forward for one more day, but then their thirst became unbearable. The King drank from a puddle of water in a hollow and before nightfall he found himself the victim of terrible pains in his abdomen, soon accompanied by high fever and dysentery.
Hephaestion had a stretcher made and so he was carried, delirious, for another two days. The King lay burning up with fever and thirst, soiled by his own excrement which for lack of water could not be cleaned off, and tormented by swarms of flies.
‘If we do not reach the ford soon, he may die,’ said Oxhatres. ‘I will go on ahead to look for it. Follow my tracks. If you manage to catch any wild game, eat the meat raw. No one must drink anything that the Scythian mercenaries refuse to drink – they know about these things.’
He disappeared off towards the west, together with a group of Sogdian horsemen, the most resistant to the heat and the thirst, while the column of men continued to advance at a walk under the relentless sun. He returned after nightfall and immediately asked of the King, ‘How is he?’
Hephaestion shook his head without replying. Alexander lay on the ground in his own filth, his lips cracked and dried, his breath rattling.
‘I have found the ford,’ said the Persian, ‘and I have brought water for drinking, but not for washing.’
Alexander drank as did all those whose thirst had brought them closest to death, then they set off once more on the march to the Jaxartes after dark. The river came in sight with the first light of dawn. The King’s Companions immediately immersed him in the cold waters and kept him there until his body temperature fell. He regained consciousness slowly and asked, ‘Where am I?’
‘At the ford,’ explained Oxhatres. ‘We have fresh fish here and wood for cooking.’
‘Your Greek is getting better,’ Alexander had the strength to reply.
*
They joined up with the rest of the army near Samarkand, where a nasty surprise was awaiting them. The commanders of the pezhetairoi had launched an ill-considered attack on Spitamenes’ troops on the Polytimetus river and had been soundly defeated. Almost a thousand soldiers had fallen and several hundred were left wounded; the funeral pyres burned for days and days, the sky dark and gloomy.
Leptine cried in despair when she saw the King in such a terrible state. She washed him, dressed him in clean clothes and had men with feather fans keep him cool day and night. Philip was soon at his bedside and realized that the fever was still very high – every evening, at sunset, Alexander became delirious. The physician recalled some of the teaching of his master, Nicomachus, and so sent for Hyrcanian horsemen and instructed them to collect snow on the mountains, and he covered the King’s body with it every time the fever began rising while Leptine continued to change the cold cloths on his forehead all through the night. Then he began feeding him with dry bread and sharp apples until his diarrhoea calmed.
‘Perhaps you’ll scrape through this time as well,’ he said to him when he saw him gain some colour, his temperature finally normal, ‘but if you carry on behaving in this w
ay then not even Asclepius himself, who they say can revive the dead, will be able to save you.’
‘I am convinced that you are better than Asclepius, iatre,’ the royal patient managed to reply before falling asleep again.
As soon as he was able to give orders, Alexander prohibited all the survivors of the battle of the Polytimetus to speak of it with anyone, so as to avoid discouraging any of the men. Then he sent Perdiccas, Craterus and Hephaestion to counterattack Spitamenes’ forces, driving the rebels back towards the mountains. At that stage, however, autumn was already on its way and it would have been madness to set off through the mountains after them. He decided to return to Bactra, where Bessus was being held prisoner, marching westwards along the northern limits of the empire, to affirm his authority in that area and to see if Scythian territory also extended in that direction for such a distance.
They crossed the Oxus again on the bridge of tent-skins and ventured into an area that was deserted for the most part – vast and completely flat, it extended northwards and disappeared into the foggy horizon. Occasionally they met long caravans of Bactrian camels heading westwards, at other times they found themselves being followed at a distance by groups of Scythian horsemen, recognizable by means of their clothes and their decorated trousers, and their characteristic scaled armour. One day, around sunset, just as they were preparing to pitch camp, a member of the advance guard came back with some startling news: ‘Amazons!’
Seleucus grinned, ‘I didn’t realize that one of the solutions to all the drought we’ve been experiencing had been to give undiluted wine to the troops.’
‘I am not drunk, Commander,’ replied the soldier in all seriousness. ‘Right now there are female warriors lined up on that hill opposite us.’
‘I don’t fight women,’ said Leonnatus solemnly, ‘unless that is—’
‘But they are not looking for a fight,’ said the soldier. ‘They smiled at us and the one who looks like their leader is beautiful and . . .’ At this point he turned to show the King where the meeting had taken place and saw that she was now right behind them, less than half a stadium away, escorted by four of her companions.