Antipater had a powerful army, and Macedon had a fleet in the Dardanelles. And Athens, bless them, wavered – they had three hundred triremes in the water, thanks to Lycurgus, and Demosthenes was demanding that his city join Memnon every day.
We were one bold stroke from ruin.
I saw no reason to stop what I was doing, so I sent a message to Parmenio telling him that I would come to the rendezvous at Gordia when I’d finished the task set me. Then I sat in my chair in the warm spring sun and watched my ten-talent engines chip away at the nearest island’s walls.
I had to pretend I had all the time in the world. It really was the most leisurely siege ever – the defenders were sure they’d be relieved, or even become the attackers, in just a few weeks – they had abundant supplies, and I had no fleet. I, on the other hand, had an inexhaustible supply of stones and ten heavy engines and a proper platform for them.
I turned their walls to rubble, and then I went to work on their inner works – or rather, Helios did. We spent forty days pounding their walls, and by the end of it, my artillerists were probably the best shots in the world, and I needed new machines – I’d worn even the crossbars to flinders.
That night, with blackened faces, my companions and I stormed the
Kineas put him down with a thrown javelin.
And then we were in, and the butchery began.
I thought that perhaps, after the shock of that, the other two islands would surrender, but they did not, and now I had wasted my surprise. Or – not precisely wasted. I could now bombard both islands. I tried a daytime maritime assault on the nearest, and lost fifty men and got an arrow in my behind as a memory. That hurt, and I had scant sympathy from Thais. I lay there for five days, feeling like a fool, and Thais came and went, and mocked me gently when she had time.
It was growing hot, and the ground was dry. The campaign season was opening, and I had lots to worry about.
Thais came in – I remember this vividly. She was skipping like a girl, and she beamed as she took my hands.
‘Memnon is dead,’ she said.
I was speechless, and she laughed.
It took me a moment to realise what she wasn’t saying.
‘You killed him?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘I tried to. I assume that I succeeded.’
I sat there with my arse hurting and shook my head. ‘Brilliant. Don’t ever let Alexander suspect.’
She looked at me with the pity that women use on men who state the obvious.
Memnon died north of Mytilene, of a curious stomach complaint that came on suddenly. The nut of the Strychos, ground fine. It comes from India, and Aristotle taught us about it. Thais had her own sources, of course.
Over the next weeks, as Helios cast bronze parts for new torsion engines, as his smiths pounded iron to make new frame supports and as trains of oxen brought timber for new frames from the mountains, we watched Memnon’s plan shatter. There was no successor to his office as the Great King’s strategos. There was no man who could hold his plan, or his army, or the fleet, together.
His death changed everything.
And still the two islands wouldn’t surrender.
Memnon’s death rendered my presence in Halicarnassus somewhat unnecessary. Now there was no threat from the sea. Now there would be no relief of the garrisons. In effect, I had won, or rather, Thais had. Game over. No further need even to hold Caria, really. No threat to Macedon.
At the end of the planting season, we heard from Thais’s people that Coenus was marching the new recruits and married men by rapid stages across Thrace. And we heard that Charidemus – another Athenian-born professional – had advised the Great King to send him to Ionia to carry out the invasion of Greece. According to our source – a damned good source – Charidemus dug his grave with the truth, telling Darius that he didn’t have the troops to face Alexander in the field and shouldn’t try, but should leave the fighting to Greeks, who could bear the brunt of it.
He was a brilliant fighter, or so men said. I heard he was a good general. Whatever the truth of it, Darius had him executed and started raising an army, and the last of the Persian fleet across from us at Chios broke up and sailed away, and the two garrisons asked to meet me in an hour when we shot news of his execution into their positions.
Both garrison commanders were Athenians. Most of the best mercenaries were Athenians or Spartans, and the latter were as good or better. I gave them wine and told them what I knew.
Isokles and Plataeus, they were. Older men, almost Parmenio’s age. Plataeus was a true believer – one of Phokion’s men. He hated us, and all our ways. But he hated serving Persia, too. I knew all this from Thais.
I talked to them for an hour, and they surrendered their islands and I let them keep everything – their loot, their pay, their armour and weapons. Isokles joined me. Plataeus sailed away for Athens.
Pharnabazus, the last Persian friend of Memnon’s still trying to do any work, threw a major garrison into Mytilene, and ordered all the mercenaries and citizens captured there in arms to be used as forced labour rebuilding the walls. I suppose it was better than executing them, as Alexander did, but not much better. Thais got her agents in among them, and recruited a dozen to report to us on what was happening in Mytilene. Most of them were ignorant men, but one was literate and so gifted at spying that by the time the last garrison surrendered after the summer feast of Demeter, he himself was running a dozen other agents and had refused to be ‘rescued’. He remained in place until the city fell to us later, leading the life of a slave, leading teams of saboteurs, scouting for weak points.
I wouldn’t mention it, but that’s your friend Philokles. I never met him, until we fought along the Jaxartes river. But I’m sure it was him. It was a huge war, and yet it seemed like a very small world, and it still does. And the irony of it – Philokles hated Alexander, but he loved liberty, and he loved both Mythymna and Mytilene. And a woman, or so I’m told. It’s his story. Ask him.
At any rate, with Memnon went his intelligence-collection apparatus. We never lost another agent. Now we had the better information, and the networks in place to get the earliest reports of changes in policy. It was clear that Darius meant business. He was raising an army. He was levying troops, and raising rebellions where he could.
I sent Kineas to Parmenio with his Athenians and the promise that I would march in three weeks, when Caria was secure. Then I moved fast, south, clearing the coast road as far as Kallipolis. I gave Queen Ada the keys to her own capital, and left it . . . well, better than I might have. She was a bitter woman. But returning to her earlier armour of doubt, and probably healthier for it.
On my march north, I collected Thais and all my baggage, and all my men. I had been king in all but name for almost a year. I think I did pretty well. I certainly enjoyed it.
It was a happy time.
I found, as I marched north, that I hadn’t really thought of Alexander in a year.
TWENTY
When I rode into Gordia, I found something more – and less – than an army camp. Gordia in high summer is a nasty place, where waves of gritty dust roll on the slightest breeze and the sun pounds down like a white-hot aspis held a few arm’s lengths from your face. There’s not enough water and not enough greenery and everyone smells.
I had four thousand men behind me on the bad roads, strung out over fifty stades. My cavalry was at the rear, preserving their horses. I had plundered Caria for horses – with Queen Ada’s willing support – and my Hetaeroi
