Alexander Page 11

  The prince resigned himself gloomily to attending the wedding and suffering the boredom of life at court. With all of Greece now at peace he resigned himself too waiting patiently until his father took the main invasion force to join Parmenion. If only he’d known that life in Greece was about to get a whole lot more exciting very soon he might have been a bit more cheerful.

  Chapter Ten – Into Persia

  336 BC

  Parmenion stood beside Iphitos on the deck of the trireme which led the main part of the fleet. Some distance behind him came Attalus, who was in charge of the second part of the fleet with its transports for the two thousand horses. Nearly half of these were remounts in case of deaths during the journey or after they arrived in Anatolia.

  ‘You’ve been very secretive about where we are heading, Parmenion.’

  ‘Yes, I don’t have to tell you that the Persians have eyes and ears in Macedon, just as you have in Persepolis, no doubt. I wanted to be out at sea before I told anyone where we’re headed. I don’t want a reception committee awaiting us as we try to land.’

  Iphitos nodded. In addition to being Philip’s chief engineer and master of artillery he was also the nominal head of Philip’s agents, though Uzava, a Persian eunuch, actually ran the network and analysed the intelligence gathered.

  One thing he was aware of was that his adopted daughter and her lover had set out in a small galley several days before the fleet had sailed.

  ‘But presumably you know something about the place you’ve chosen?’

  ‘I’d be a fool not so,’ the strategos responded sharply. ‘Look, I have my own sources too. Don’t worry, I’ll share everything with you from now on. Besides, I need you to obtain information about the Greek cities that Philip wants me to liberate.’

  ‘It’s a good job I brought Enyo and Theon with me then. I suggest that they should head off to the first city you’ve targeted as soon as we land if you want them to sound out the Greek population. I assume that’s what you want?’

  Parmenion nodded. ‘Yes, the next town will be Pedasus on the south western tip of Aeolis. We’ll be landing at Dardanellia, near the ruins of Troy. It’s got a large harbour and a long quayside, enough to unload twenty ships at once, I’m told, and the Persian garrison is less than a thousand.’

  Iphitos went back to contemplating the coast five miles or more away as it slid past. From out at sea the hills inland looked purple and he couldn’t make out the coastline itself.

  ‘I assume that you’ll beach the fleet each night?’

  ‘Yes, no sailor will sail after dark if he can help it; too many rocks and hazards, plus they’d probably get lost.’

  The two men smiled at each other; they both had the usual soldier’s contempt for sailors.

  ‘I assume that you have heard the latest rumours from Persepolis?’

  ‘You mean about Darius forcing Bagoas, the Grand Vizier, to drink his own poison?’

  Bagoas had murdered both the previous Great Kings of Persia by poisoning them. He was very much the power behind the throne and his solution when his masters started to flex their muscles was to get rid of them. The last of them, Arses, had no direct descendants and so he had made his cousin, the Satrap of Armenia, the next great king. He had taken the name Darius III but he hadn’t been the grateful puppet that Bagoas thought he would be. Now Bagoas was dead and the empire was in turmoil.

  ‘Yes, I hope that will be helpful to us.’

  ‘Um,’ Iphitos hesitated. ‘Darius hasn’t been accepted by all the other satraps, that’s true, and that might help us in the longer term but I think your immediate problem is Spithridates, the Satrap of Lydia. He has only just succeeded to the satrapy and so he is a bit of an unknown quantity, but Uzava seems to think that he is a strong character and a likely to be good military commander.’

  ‘Well, let’s just hope that he’s not as good as me then.’ Parmenion said grimly before going back into the small cabin that had been constructed for him aft.

  Iphitos watched him go. Parmenion was now in his mid-sixties and, although he seemed to be as fit as ever and still had a sharp mind, he was undoubtedly a lot more cautious than he used to be. An awful lot depended on him; his second-in-command, Attalus, was a liability more than an asset as far as Iphitos was concerned. This was perhaps a little unfair, but there was no love lost between the two men. Their relationship wasn’t helped by the fact that Attalus didn’t understand artillery and therefore derided it and refused to consider using it. However, Attalus was powerful and Iphitos needed to be careful around him. Not only was he the uncle of Philip’s latest queen, he was also Parmenion’s son in law, having married his only daughter, Troias, a few years ago.

  -X-

  Spithridates was only too well aware of the existence of the Macedonian expeditionary force. He even knew that it consisted of ten or eleven thousand men. What he didn’t know was where they would land, though he was fairly certain that it would be somewhere along his part of the coast of Anatolia. He therefore concentrated his forces near his capital, Sardis, in the centre of Lydia so that they could react once he knew where Parmenion was.

  His palace made the royal residence at Pella look like a hovel. The outer walls were tiled in blue white and yellow patterns depicting lions, eagles and horses and the main rooms were faced with marble on the walls and floors. These rooms were arranged around a large courtyard in the centre of which a fountain sat in the middle of a crystal clear pool. Around it neatly trimmed grass and flower beds created an air of peace and tranquillity. The palace was divided into three parts: one for Spithridates, one for his harem and one for his slaves and other servants. Even the latter was light and airy.

  The satrap was dressed in light flowing silk robes of red, blue and bright green. He’s even more colourful today that the proverbial peacock the only other man in the room thought disparagingly. He looked to be in his mid-forties and was simply dressed in a white Greek exomis, plain leather sandals and a dark blue chlamys.

  Like most satraps, Spithridates employed Greek mercenaries in addition to his own light cavalrymen and infantry. The latter were a mixture of light spearmen and foot archers. His Greek mercenaries were all hoplites under the command of Memnon of Rhodes, the man who now stood in front of him. Like the Macedonians, his men were all professional soldiers and were a match for any heavy infantry in the known world.

  ‘Where do you expect them to land, kyrios?’

  ‘Either at Dardanellia or Pedasus, where it would be easier to unload because there are proper docks, but they might just beach the fleet almost anywhere.’

  Like all educated Persians Spithridates spoke excellent Greek as well as Farsi, the lingua franca of the Persian Empire.

  Memnon sucked his teeth. ‘It would be easier to use a port, I agree, but he would have to capture the city first.’

  ‘What would you do?’

  ‘Land a thousand men or so on a beach near the port I’d decided to use and secure the docks first. Your garrison would undoubtedly take refuge like cowards in the acropolis to avoid being massacred and Parmenion could then deal with them at his leisure.’

  ‘I see. So you think I should let this wretched man and his barbarians land and then attack him once we know where he is?’

  Memnon smiled to himself. The Greeks always described the Persians as barbarians and, until recently, he had thought of Macedonians as goat herding savages too. Events in Greece in the last few years had caused him to revise his views.

  ‘Yes, I do. We don’t want to risk being defeated piecemeal.’

  ‘Can you defeat them in open battle then?’

  ‘I believe so. I only have three thousand hoplites but, with your ten thousand infantry and two thousand mounted warriors, we outnumber him. However, he has many more experienced soldiers’ so it’s a question of picking the right ground, and then deceiving him into making a wrong move.’

  -X-

  Almost as Memnon had predicted, Parmenion landed five hundred
hoplites and the same number of peltasts five miles south of Dardanellia. The rest of the fleet remained there, beached for the night, whilst the chilarch who had been picked to command the force led his men along the coastal path towards Dardanellia.

  As the sun kissed the hills inland and Apollo started to drive his chariot of fire across the cloudless blue sky once more, the Macedonian column arrived outside Dardanellia. To the chiliarch’s surprise the gates stood wide open and a large crowd dressed like Greek civilians in a mixture of short and long chitons came out to cheer their arrival. Then a man and a woman rode out of the gates and headed towards him.

  ‘Greetings Chilarch,’ the young woman grinned at him. ‘The city is yours. The citizens revolted yesterday and drove the Persians out, all except for the cowardly garrison. As soon as they realised that the city had risen in revolt they took refuge in the acropolis.’

  He chilarch smiled back. ‘I take it that you are Enyo and Theon. I know of you both by reputation, of course, and I was told that you would be here, but I hadn’t expected that you’d have done my job for me.’

  ‘You’ve still got the garrison to bottle up tight so they can’t cause any mischief and the docks to secure, but I don’t suppose that’ll be a problem. As soon as the population knew that Parmenion was coming, the Persian civilians started to flee and the Greeks took to the streets armed with anything they could lay their hands on.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ the chilarch asked as the two started to ride south.

  Theon turned back and spoke for the first time: ‘we can’t tell you that, but you’ll find out soon enough.’ He then wheeled his horse and cantered after Enyo.

  -X-

  They skirted the city of Colonae, which was mainly inhabited by Persians and other non-Greeks, and re-joined the road to Pedasus a few miles beyond it. There were other travellers on the road, some Persian, some Greek and one Phoenician caravan with whom the two travelled for a while. The merchants hailed from Carthage, a city on the southern coast of the Mediterranean some way to the west of Egypt. Both Enyo and Theon had heard of Carthage but they had never met anyone from there before.

  The merchants were travelling from Sardis to Pedasus from where they would take ship to Sicily with the goods they had bought in Anatolia. They asked politely where the two Greeks were going and they fed them their cover story. They were man and wife but they had fallen out with her brother, who lived in Dardanellia, and they were now travelling to Pedasus to start a new life.

  As they were now twenty five and twenty two respectively the story that they were married wasn’t too unbelievable, though their respective accents weren’t the same as that of other Anatolian Greeks, might have aroused suspicion. However, the Phoenicians seemed to accept their story and they parted amicably when they reach the outskirts of the city.

  The cover story had started Theon thinking. Most people who knew them had expected their love affair to have petered out long since. They had met when he was fifteen and she was eighteen. She had captured him during a mission in Thrace, where he had been born, and she had forced him to act as her guide. However, there had been a strong attraction between them from the start and they had become lovers shortly after they had first met. The fact that they were as much in love with each other now as then indicated how strong the bond between them had been from the start. Their relationship had changed, of course, over the intervening years, but they still made love frequently and passionately, and Enyo still took the bitter herbs that Chloe, Iphitos’ wife, gave her to stop her becoming pregnant.

  ‘Enyo,’ he began as soon as they had found a decent tavern in which to stay, ‘I’ve been thinking about our cover story. Perhaps it’s time that it became fact.’

  She was puzzled for a moment, then she realised the import of what Theon was saying.

  ‘You want to get married?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve never loved anyone else and I never will. I know you don’t want to settle down and have children but…’

  ‘The answer’s yes.’

  ‘What? Yes? You mean you’ll marry me?’

  ‘Yes, of course I will. Mind you that doesn’t mean I want to settle down to a boring life in a city somewhere, doing the shopping and keeping house.’

  ‘No, of course. I thought we could live in the country and hunt and farm.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Or we could carry on doing what we’re doing.’

  ‘Once Philip has conquered the Greek cities of Anatolia I doubt if there is going to much call for us as agents. We can hardly infiltrate a Persian city.’

  ‘That’s true.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Time to talk about that once this mission is over; for now we need to seek out the Greek leader here and talk to them.’

  The unspoken question that hung in the air between them from then on, though, was whether they would have children. Theon wanted to be a father very much, but not a cold martinet like his own father had been. He wanted to shower his children with love and affection. He knew that Enyo chewed something that stopped her conceiving and wondered whether she would be prepared to stop taking precautions – and if she did, whether she could even get pregnant. Enyo was wondering the same things. She had been adamant that she didn’t want children up to that point, but now she was beginning to think that she might like to have children by Theon. After all, they weren’t poor and she wouldn’t have to look after them herself.

  It was with pre-occupied minds that they left the tavern and headed for the Merchants’ Hall. This was where the leading Greek traders and skilled craftsmen met once a week to discuss matters relevant to the city’s economy and settle disputes. The city had a Persian governor so the Greeks had no voice in the administration of the city, but that didn’t stop them discuss the injustice of Persian rule. One particular gripe was that the governor invariably found in favour of the Persians in any dispute between them and the Greeks. They railed about it, and about the high taxes they had to pay, but no-one ever proposed that they do anything about it.

  That is until Theon and Enyo arrived.

  ‘So you see Parmenion will be arriving here in about a week to evict the Persians and make this a Greek city once again.’

  ‘That’s all very well but he won’t be staying here will he? What happens after he leaves and the Satrap arrives to wreak his vengeance on us?’ One of the Greek merchants asked, his eyes betraying his fear.

  Theon looked at Enyo and she nodded, so he continued.

  ‘Parmenion is merely leading the vanguard. Philip of Macedon is now Hegemon of all Greece and he will shortly follow with an invasion force made up of all the armies of Greece from Illyria to Thrace and from Thessaly to Athens.’

  ‘Not of all Greece.’ A voice suddenly called out and a man dressed in a military exomis and a chlamys stood up. ‘I’m Kadmos, the envoy of Sparta. We are still at war with Macedon and many of the Greek states feel as we do that it is better to have Darius of Persia as an ally rather than an enemy. If Philip goes ahead with his mad scheme and is defeated by the might of the Persian Empire, as he must be, what happens then?’ He paused to look around the chamber, engaging as many with his eyes as he could.

  ‘I’ll tell you. He will invade Greece, as Xerxes did, only this time he’ll be victorious because the armies of the Greek states will be no more than bleached bones in the Persian desert. What do you think will happen to the Greek cities on the Anatolian Coast who have risen against his rule? He’ll do to you what Philip did to Potitaea. He’ll raise your city to the ground, kill you and enslave your women and children. Is that what you want?’

  Whilst he was making his speech he didn’t notice Enyo circling round behind him. Suddenly she whipped out the dagger she had concealed in her chiton and sawed it across Kadmos’ neck. Blood spurted down his front and all over those sitting near him. She let the body drop to the floor in the stunned silence.

  ‘So die all traitors to Greece,’ she hissed, wiping her dagger on the dead man’s chlamys and p
utting it back in its sheath.

  Seconds later there was uproar, some condemning the murder and demanding that Enyo be handed over to the governor for trial and execution and some defending her execution of a man who was an agent of the hated Persians.

  Theon tried to drag her out of the chamber but she shook her head and, grabbing the gavel from the table in front of the man presiding ineffectually over the meeting, she started to bang it repeatedly on the table. Slowly the hubbub subsided.

  ‘Thank you. I regret the necessity of killing the Spartan but he was, as some of you were just saying, an agent of Darius. The Spartans are poisonous dogs, always have been and always will be. As a Thessalian I know that all too well.’

  She paused for a moment before continuing. ‘I’m the daughter of Iphitos, one of Philip’s closest advisors, so I know what I’m talking about. He is with Parmenion and Attalus, the king’s uncle by marriage, and they will be here soon. Now you have a choice. You can either follow the example set by Dardanellia and expel the Persians before they get here, or you can risk the inevitable chaos, murder and rapine if the army has to take this city by force. The choice is yours.’

  ‘Why are you listening to this woman,’ one of those sitting at the table with the presiding merchant wanted to know. ‘We are men, we don’t let girls tell us what to do.’

  ‘Enyo is one of Philip of Macedon’s most trusted agents and I’m her betrothed. To insult her is to insult the king and to insult me.’ Theon fixed the man with his eye and pulled his himation aside to reveal the hilt of his sword. ‘Anyone who insults me had better be prepared to fight me.’