columns of sixteen each, we approached the place guardedly, not knowing what we would find.
The first movement we saw in the camp was the bent figure of the King’s doctor, Critobulus. From a distance I could see he held a water jug in his hands, and he turned his head toward us as I hailed him. With the sound of the stream so close to me I could not understand his replies. He began to point fretfully in the direction opposite to us, jumping up and down.
“On the run now, boys!” I ordered my archers, understanding his warning at last.
XIX.
The dark-haired Mallian horsemen arrived just as we did, at dawn. They were riding in hard from the flatlands, blades raised, eyes blazing with fury at the massacre of their people at Multan. My men surrounded Alexander’s tent just in time to set themselves, draw one arrow, and let fly. The Cretan reputation for bowmanship was fulfilled: five of the Mallians went down right away. The other ten reached us before we could get off another shot. At that point we took the worst of it, since only I had a proper sword, the archers being equipped with daggers. We made a fighting retreat with our backs to the tent, a few of us forming a screen for the rest to use their bows. Three more Mallians dropped as our legs brushed the tent cords.
It took some time before I realized a short-limbed demon was fighting beside me. It was Alexander, his sword flashing, clad only by his own bloody dressings. The appearance of the great Alexander took the heart out of the Mallians. They began to give ground until the arrows flew again. Then, with a final, undecipherable curse, the last one wrenched his horse around and rode away.
The King said nothing during the fight. When it was over he just stood there on uncertain feet, smiled, and collapsed. Critobulus reappeared from his hiding place in the bushes.
“Help me get him inside!”
Fresh bleeding had soaked through the linen wrappings around Alexander’s chest. Cutting the dressing away, the doctor washed off the old and new blood, the poultice of sea salt, and exposed the wound. It was an arrow hole in his left side, surgically enlarged to extract the head. The scab had been ripped in two, no doubt during the exertions of the fight, and the wound issued blood-red foam.
“There is air mixed with the blood, so the lung has not healed,” said the doctor. “but the bleeding is our concern now. Lay this on with your whole weight…use both hands.”
I stood leaning on Alexander with a wine-soaked cloth until Critobulus was ready with another styptic. When it was applied, and we had the King wrapped in fresh bandages, I finally asked the doctor the question I had meant to ask him since I had arrived.
“What happened to your guards?”
“I don’t know. When I got up to check the wound before dawn they were already gone.”
“Where is Hephaestion?”
“I told him to sleep in his own tent last night. He was accomplishing nothing here.”
I dared not leave the King during the day and the night he slept after this near-disaster. That his guards had been withdrawn, and the Mallians made aware of his location, suggested a level of Macedonian duplicity that I had not suspected. For this reason I could not even risk sending word of the attack back to camp, lest it invite another attempt. For this precaution Hephaestion would be furious with me.
Fortunately, there was a lot of work to divert me from these troubling thoughts. Twelve of the Cretan archers had died in the raid, with three surviving their immediate injuries. Despite our best efforts one of these men died from loss of blood. The others lost an arm and an eye, respectively. I heard the survivors boasting hopefully among themselves during the night:
“If those fools in Sogdia got ten talents for climbing a rock, we should get a thousand for saving his life!”
Alexander awoke with no memory of the raid. When I reminded him, and added that his guards had vanished just before the attack, he laughed. He relished the irony of it, that a battle with consequences as momentous as Guagamela had been fought and won for him by an Athenian and handful of bowmen.
“So if it wasn’t for you my torment would be over, Machon! Do you expect to be rewarded for this cruelty?” he asked, indicating to include the tent, the sky-in short, life itself-in his conception of ‘cruelty.’ His attitude changed, however, when I told him that Peithon was rifling through the royal tent.
“Peithon,” he said, weariness creeping into his voice. “why do you force me to act this role? Where is Hephaestion?”
“Exhausted. Shall I send for him?”
“No. I’ll go.”
The physician laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. “You must not rise,” he said.
“I have no intention of rising, dear Critobulus! But we can’t leave our friend here to Peithon’s tender mercies.”
A boat was brought in secret to a place below the knoll. The doctor oversaw the rigging of a stretcher between the wales. In this way, we floated Alexander downstream to the Macedonian camp. The sentries saw him first as he approached, shouting out that Alexander’s funeral barge was on the water. Alexander lay still as his men gathered on the bank, some wet-eyed with grief, some in wonder. Then, at exactly the most opportune moment, the King opened his eyes and raised his fist, proving to all that he still lived.
Aeschines described the scene in his statement. But my opponent is wrong to claim that the King did this simply to prove he was alive. When he raised his arm, the finger on the end of it was pointing straight at Peithon. The officers around the usurper stepped away, leaving him standing alone in his glad silks and golden fillet. He was arrested by Perdiccas’ men, and after a short trial, disappeared. Some say he spent his last days in whatever hole that contained Callisthenes before he died.
Despite hints that verged on outright denunciation, I could not convince Alexander that Craterus, Perdiccas or Ptolemy had a hand in Peithon’s crimes. His resistance to this idea seemed to have a practical purpose: with Arridaeus still incapacitated, and Philotas, Parmenion, Cleitus and now Peithon gone, the King’s circle of experienced commanders was shrinking. But I also believe there was the usual strand of Euripidean fatalism in his attitude-a conviction that his time was short, and someone strong needed to be left to pick up the reins. For their part, then, Perdiccas, Ptolemy and Craterus suffered nothing from allowing Peithon to overplay his hand. A potential rival was removed, and they had an opportunity to make a display of their loyalty to the King.
Aeschines, you are mistaken in another way. You say that all the Macedonians rejoiced when they saw Alexander in the boat, throwing blossoms and money at him. In fact, while some cheered his appearance, the response was not overwhelming. The ambivalence showed painfully on many faces, for Alexander to have survived his wound would mean there would be much more fighting and dying before they reached home. Many of these deaths would be against petty tribes like the Mallians. After the stupendous achievement of conquering the Persian Empire, to risk themselves that way, pacifying primitives in marginal places, seemed a task less than worth their lives.
Pushing south, we watched the Indus grow wider, and its waters rougher, until many of the boats were forced to find shelter along the banks. But when the men returned to where they had beached their craft, they found that the river’s level had risen while they were away, and their boats had floated off. Moreover, the Macedonians were confounded to watch the great river do an about-face and flow north. This inspired great unease among them, for they thought nothing mortal could make such a large river reverse its current. Some whispered that it was a signal of the gods’ displeasure that the army had pressed so far into unknown lands.
Alexander sacrificed a spotless white heifer to Poseidon and to the Indus. Upon the performance of the ceremony, the Indus slackened and reversed her current again, so that the Macedonians believed the sacrifice had pleased these gods. But the complete cycle of flooding and ebbing happened again the same day; the flood, moreover, was composed of salt water, which could only have come from the sea.
This phenomenon of the tides is known only on the shores of Ocean. Proceeding a few miles south, the Macedonians saw at last the great mouth of the river, and the infinite waters beyond. To commemorate their safe arrival, Alexander ordered a great trophy to be built of square-cut blocks, and more sacrifices. A hecatomb of Aambhi’s gift oxen were slaughtered offshore and the meat distributed to the men on the beach; so much blood
