"What's wrong with a small state?" demanded Pyrron.
"Nothing save its size. Soon or late, a larger state swallows it, as a large fish swallows a small. There is strength only in union, as your own Aisopos said. Union can only be brought about by conquest, as the quarreling states of Hellas have often proved."
"The small states of Hellas did passably well against the great Dareios and the great Xerxes."
Vardanas shrugged. "Those Persian defeats were such accidents as happen in the life of any great empire. Forget not that when you won Marathon and Salamis, the Persians had already conquered hundreds of nations, from Kyrene to India. Then for years the Greek democracies attacked us. But even when Greek methods of warfare drew ahead of ours, we could always break up the invasion by playing off one Greek state against another, or bribing a general to desert and lead his men home. When Persia fell at last, it was to a powerful kingdom like itself."
"You're well informed in such matters," said Pyrron. "I doubt if many young Persian gentlemen could match you."
Vardanas grinned. "I had a good Greek teacher, Dorymachos of Acharnai, who studied under the godlike Platon and taught me the rules of rhetoric and the tricks of debate. To return, why does Alexander appoint so many Persian governors? Because Hellenes are unused to doing things on an imperial scale. Either they are overwhelmed by the task, or they cannot resist stealing from the treasuries they are set to guard."
"From what we've seen, Hellenes are not the only pilferers in positions of responsibility," said Pyrron. "But touching on the destiny of democracy: If you be right, which I don't admit, something precious will have gone from the world. To try to expound the delight of living in a democracy to one who has never experienced it is like explaining color to a blind man."
"I know that not," said Vardanas. "From what I hear, the Greek democracies spend all their time cutting each other's throats, as if they were wild Gandarian tribesmen. Peaceful and orderly civilized life, however, needs the rule of an all-powerful king, above the passions of feud and the hatreds of faction."
Pyrron said: "I must pit you against some of the more extreme democratic orators in Athens. The bout were worth the ticket."
Vardanas was not finished. "Moreover, war can be ended only by making the whole world into a single peaceful empire. Such an empire can be ruled only as a kingdom, for the reasons we have seen."
"I wouldn't call the Persian Empire peaceful," said Pyrron. "The viceroys were always revolting, and whenever a king died, his sons waged a civil war for the throne, like that which ended at Kounaxa."
Thyestes growled: "By Zeus, who wants to stop war? In a warless world the manly virtues would wither. Besides, soldiers like me would be out of work!"
During the night, a yell from the sentry brought us out of our tents. "Ghosts!" he screamed. "The ghosts of them that fell in the battle!"
I looked in the direction the sentry's trembling finger pointed, and fear squeezed my heart and stopped my throat, too. The light of the setting moon shone on a mist that moved towards us from the river. It was not a solid mist, but broken into columns and streamers about the size of a man. This broken mist advanced upon us with an eldrich effect. Around me rose a murmur of prayers and exorcisms. Kanadas' teeth chattered with terror. My own hair stood up; had I been alone I might have run, but a hipparch must set an example.
"Stand fast, lads!" I croaked. "If Thessalians dinna flee from living coofs, why should we fear their wraiths?"
Then came Pyrron's clear lecture-platform voice: "An interesting natural phenomenon!" He stepped forward and passed his hand through the first ghost. Then he turned and cleared his throat. "None of my colleagues has yet precisely defined the relationships prevailing amongst air, mist, and water. Air and water are commonly deemed distinct elements, yet in the case of mist we have an apparent intermediate form. We know that mist and cloud are made of water, but where does the water in mist go when it disappears? Perhaps the answer is to be found in the atomism of the great Demokritos—"
He had begun to pace about as he spoke, and now he stubbed his toe and measured his gangling length upon the ground. He got up, uttering mild curses, which were lost in the laughter of the hipparchia.
The following night we camped beside a village in the midst of a wide stretch of ruins. This is all that remains of the city of Ninos, the capital of the Assyrian Empire until the Medes and Babylonians destroyed it about the time of Solon and Periandros. Many tall tales are told of King Ninos, who built the city, and his queen, Semiramis, who reigned after him. But, as Beliddinos warned me that most of these stories are false, I will not repeat them.
The villagers called the ruins "Nineva." But when, with Elisas' help, I sought to question them in Syrian concerning the history of the city, it turned out that they knew less about it than we did.
From Ninos the course of the river trended westward. For a time we had the use of the Persian royal highway, stretching along the left bank of the Tigris between Ninos and Amida. This great road, which runs over five hundred leagues from Ephesos to Sousa, formed the backbone of the old Persian postal system. The surface was still in good condition, albeit not kept in such fine repair as under the Persians. Because of the time of year, the traffic was light, though single riders and men afoot were not uncommon.
We planned not, howsomever, to follow this splendid road all the way westward because it leads through Armenia and Kappadokia, which were out of our way. Forbye, these provinces of the Persian Empire had declared their independence when Dareios fell. Alexander's generals were unable to subdue them, for both lands were under the rule of powerful native kings who had served the Persians as governors and were well tempered in the arts of war and statecraft.
Swiftly we marched northwest for five hundred furlongs, through groves of date palms and orchards of cherry trees, to Bezabde. This is a fortified town in a crook of the Tigris, just short of the Armenian border. Here the road forks. The royal highway continues northward into Armenia, while the caravan road to the Syrian coast crosses the Tigris and trends west.
In Bezabde were many Armenians—stocky, hook-nosed men like the Assyrians. They trim their thick black beards to a point and wear the Armenian national hat. This is a cap bound about with long ribbons, which sits low over the nape in back and is gathered into three knobs forming a kind of crest over the forehead. There were also Kordians, big fierce-looking hillmen who dwell in southern Armenia, and their handsome women clad in bright clothes and speaking with loud, commanding voices.
On our first day in Bezabde, I saw one of these Kordians walking about the streets with a pair of curious objects on his back. These were flat structures of wood and leather, like unto the lids of oval boxes or baskets. I stopped the man, a tall, stout, red-faced fellow smelling of garlic, with blue eyes and great brown mustaches that swept out like buffalo's horns. I asked him what the things on his back were, but he could not understand me. However, Vardanas could follow the man's speech half the time, as the Kordians speak an Arian tongue.
"He calls them snowshoes," Vardanas explained. "On them he walked down hither from his village in the hills." The Persian pointed towards the snow-covered Armenian mountains to the north. "It is even colder there than here."
I shivered, for winter was now at its depth. Many a time and oft we had our tents blown down and our garments soaked by heavy storms. Most of us, tired of freezing our arms and legs, had bought native coats and trousers. Thessalians, used to a rugged climate, do not have the prejudice of southern Hellenes against warm raiment that fits the body. Forbye, it was hard to buy olive oil to anoint our bodies with in this land.