I crawled out from under a ruckle of bodies. Thyestes had led the Thessalians in a charge afoot, with sword and buckler, across the square. My men had struck down a score of townsfolk, and slew several more as they fled. They also caught several women but had the discretion to drag them out of my sight before raping them. From what I heard later, the women were glad to get off so lightly. One, in fact, declared her passionate love for her ravisher and would have joined us had not even my hard-bitten troopers found her too dirty to tolerate.
I had a bloody nose and many bruises, but no broken bones. One Thessalian, Sosikles of Pherai, had been stabbed at the start of the fracas and was dead when we picked him up.
Thyestes and another dragged forth the outas, bleeding from a scalp cut. Thyestes asked the man in Greek: "What means this?" When the outas did not answer, Thyestes shouted at him and struck him.
"Let me try," said Vardanas. He spoke slowly in Arachotian, of which he knew a little. At first the priest feigned not to understand, but a burning brand against his bare foot sharpened his wits remarkably.
After a long and halting dialogue, Vardanas said: "His tale, if I understand him aright, is that Barmoukas told him we planned to surprise and slay them all and feed them to the elephant. Barmoukas —where is the vagabond, by the way?"
We looked but found no sign of the guide.
"Barmoukas," Vardanas went on, "also told him we had a vast treasure and urged him to attack us and seize it before we assailed them. So they planned to capture us all and sacrifice us to their war god, Gis. They thought Gis was wroth with them for neglect and had therefore caused the raid to fail."
Although I never let anybody see inside the chests, the mere fact of guarding them closely would soon betray the fact that they held things of value.
"He also says," continued Vardanas, "that your king wronged them by changing the capital of the province to Gazaka. This ruined their prosperity, so they feel entitled to vengeance on all Hellenes."
I was about to order the outas' head stricken off when a thought came to me. We could not kill all the Haravatians, as they had fled into the hills. But, if we slew the outas, they would simply come back after we had gone and try the same trick on their next Greek guests.
"Tell him," I said, "that Alexander will post some soldiers near here, and the next time the Haravatians molest harmless travelers they will be utterly destroyed."
Some Thessalians murmured at my leniency. But I, remembering the king's lecture to me, insisted.
"I will try," said Vardanas. "He will probably not believe me even if he understand. These folk are such liars that they think all other men are, too. For my part, I had rather bind him between boards and saw him in halves, as the three-headed serpent-king Dahax did to Zamas the Radiant."
As if the loss of a good soldier in this wretched village were not enough, we picked up some sickness that ran through the whole hipparchia, with fevers and fluxes. We crept down the Arachotos, with many halts to gather our feeble strength. Some of the men reported prophetic dreams of doom; others read disaster in the flight of birds. One old vulture—at least, I think it was the same bird—followed us hopefully for days, circling over us just out of bowshot. Vardanas and the Dahas, though splendid archers, missed the carrion eater several times until they decided it was no mortal bird, but a drouz or evil spirit seeking to tempt them to waste all their arrows.
Luckily, considering how weak we now were, news of our slaughter of the Haravatians spread ahead of us, so that the villagers along the way either fled before our coming or used us with utmost respect. While kindness and affability are often useful in getting strangers to treat one well, the ability to avenge any wrong tenfold is more effective yet.
When I found a man named Arakon, who could understand Vardanas' Arachotian, I hired him as a guide to Kandacha. But fortune is never satisfied with a single calamity. The second night, a Thessalian, Pelias, came to me saying:
"That whipworthy guide has run off with my purse! Let's slay all these thieving skellums!"
A search of the camp showed Pelias to be right. I dashed my helmet to the ground, crying: "I swear by Zeus the king and all the gods to flay this branded knave gif ever I catch him! How long sin he's been seen?"
It turned out that Arakon must have slipped away just after dinner on the pretense of a call of nature. Therefore, he had a start of over an hour.
"The Dahas and I might scour the neighborhood mounted," said Vardanas.
I pondered, then said: "Na, na, laddie. 'Tis over-dark, and the risk of a fall is too great. I'll no have my force whittled down yet further for the sake of a few oboloi."
"A few oboloi, forsooth!" said Pelias. "There were twenty-six drachmai and two bonny dareikoi in that purse!"
Later, as we sat about the fire listening to the yelp of jackals and making the best of things with a skin of wine, I said: "By the deathless gods, the Hegias was right when he said never to trust these villains. The king should have wiped them out."
"Oh, come," said Pyrron. "They may have virtues of which we are not cognizant."
"Name one," said Thyestes.
"How about it, Vardanas?" said Pyrron. "Do you know of any virtues in these Eastern hillmen?"
"True, they are brave to the point of folly," said Vardanas, who was sewing another patch on his coat. "And they are kind to their beasts, though they care nought for human life."
"You see?" said Pyrron. "Moreover, they, no doubt, consider us altogether as obnoxious as we regard them. People present their worst aspects to foreigners."
" 'Tis easy for you to talk," said Thyestes. "You've no been robbed."
"No, I pronounce but the truth. After all ..." Here Pyrron cleared his throat, which meant a lecture. "After all, we are all good friends here who have saved each other's lives, though we come of several nations. Yet I'll wager that each—Hellene or Persian or Indian—finds some customs of the other two nations strange and horrible."
"Foreigners find my ways offensive?" said Thyestes. "I believes it no. I'm but a simple professional soldier; there's nought strange and horrible about me. Any wight who thinks so maun be daft."
"Everybody thinks those who disapprove of him arc mad," said Pyrron. "Come now, will you keep your temper if the Persian and the Indian tell us their honest opinion of Hellenic habits?"
"Aye, that I will."
"Well then," said Pyrron, "let Vardanas expound what he thinks are the most objectionable Greek customs."
"Without meaning offense," said Vardanas, "we find Hellenes the most grasping, lying, treacherous race on earth."
"By the gods! How say you that?" said Thyestes.
"Your own poets say so. Who wrote: 'Put faith in no Hellene,' Pyrron?"
"Euripides, I think," said Pyrron.
"And know you not your own history? How about Pausanias' betrayal of the Plataians? How about the great Demosthenes, whom everybody knows was long in the pay of the Persian kings? How about—"
"Na, na," said Thyestes. "No scholar am I. I've heard these men's names but dinna ken the fine points of their history. I admits that some of my countrymen are a whin less careful of their plighted word and more susceptible till the lure of gold than might be. Howsomever, methinks that betimes you Persians carry truthfulness to ane unco extreme."
"Besides," said Pyrron, "there was never a more perfidious treacher than the Persian Tissaphernes."
"Who?" said Vardanas.
"You know, the satrap of Karia under the second Artaxerxes."
"Oh, Tshishapharnas. He had been too much under Hellenic influence. Therefore he does not count."
"A true sophist, though he wear the Median trouser!" said Pyrron. "But continue your catalogue of our delinquencies."
"Next, Hellenes have the world's worst manners. They have no courtesy; they have no sense of fitness; they have no respect for authority. Lastly, for all your vaunted cleverness, you cannot make a decent suit of clothes, but wrap yourselves in blankets like savages."