I watched him vanish into the untimely autumn rain with mixed feelings.
Late that night, Cyrus awakened us and dragged us out into the inn’s courtyard, on to horseback, and we were away, still blinking away sleep. He himself was already wet to the skin, and we rode north, cold, wet, miserable, and wondering what had occasioned this untimely ride. As the sun began to rise in a pale grey imitation of daylight, he came back down the column to me.
‘Apologies, old friend. The Great King has not forgotten you, and there are cavalrymen on the roads. Someone talked.’ He shrugged. ‘It is hard to hide half a dozen Greek men, no matter how I dress you.’
I passed this on to the other Greeks.
Aristides said quietly, ‘It couldn’t be better, despite the lost sleep. All we need to do is pretend that we don’t know where Brasidas is, either.’
I had a hard time adjusting to Aristides the schemer — a man I’d have said was unable to tell a falsehood of any kind. As it proved, he was full of deceit for those he perceived as his enemies. The next morning, he had me tell Cyrus that we’d lost Brasidas, and there followed a certain amount of bad playacting as we worried about him.
In the end, we all decided that we could not go back. I think Cyrus felt we were a little callous about it, but we all have trouble reading foreigners, and Cyrus had trouble reading us.
Brasidas was either in Babylon or caught, by that time, and we had six thousand stades of riding ahead of us, and we tried to avoid the Royal Road.
But for most of the route over the Taurus Mountains and farther west, there is no other route. The Royal Road wanders a bit, but it goes over the only practical passes. And in places, it is only one or two horsemen wide. Ten men could hold some of those passes for days against an army.
We ended up creeping along valleys, crawling up heights, and then dashing along the road. Horses died, to Cyrus’s intense annoyance. The queen had given him magnificent horses — his gift, which he was burning up protecting us. I doubted very much that Cyrus’s head was on the line.
After ten days in the mountains, it felt as if it was the only life I’d ever known. Some days we bought a sheep or a couple of goats; some days we got warm bread from an oven, or wine. Most days, we ate grain by the handful — boiled until soft. The water boiled before it was hot when we were high in the air, and we had snow one day, all day, and sat and shivered in our summer clothes.
We arrived at Melitene on the upper Euphrates tired and saddle sore and much thinner than we’d left the plains, and the reports of merchants scared me. In effect, in ten days in the mountains, we hadn’t got any closer to Greece. But I didn’t know the terrain, and I certainly trusted Cyrus.
One of the few things I remember of that desperate trip was that I trusted Cyrus and had to convey my trust to the others, every day. Bulis, especially, was constantly on the brink of turning on our escort. And they grew increasingly tired of us — six foreigners who were the cause of all their discomfort. But they were honourable men, and true to their salt — a Persian expression, because salt for them is the sign of hospitality. However much they loathed us, they kept going.
At any rate, we made Melitene and rested for a day. We all bought heavy local cloaks and rolled wool hats, and even the Spartans made some concessions to the weather.
Cyrus sat with me and we shared a cup of wine.
‘I’m going to try the road,’ he said. ‘We have to beat winter into the high passes. Winter is close.’ He shrugged with obvious discomfort. ‘If it comes to a fight — well, there’re not many men who can beat my demons.’
Indeed, after ten days of hunting and riding with Cyrus and his men, I doubted whether there were better cavalrymen in the entire world. It was in the mountains that the quality of their horsemanship became fully evident. They could ride up — and down — slopes I would have said were too steep for a horse even without a rider. I spent a lot of time clinging to my horse’s mane in something very like terror, and at one point Cyrus laughed, slapped my back, and informed me that this was fair repayment for our time at sea.
Our fourth day out of Melitene, we descended sharply down a series of switchback trails to the Royal Road, and then we moved like the wind. With three horses to a man, we rode fast — trot, canter, walk, trot all day, a brief break every hour and then a new horse. I would guess we made almost two hundred stades the first day on the road. We passed the way station without stopping even to use the well.
The next day, we made half again as much, passing no fewer than three way stations. At the third, we stopped, and drank from the well, filled our canteens and rested our poor jaded horses. Cyrus looked grave when he emerged.
‘I didn’t fool the post-master,’ he said quietly. ‘There are still patrols out looking for you.’
He sent a pair of his best men well ahead as scouts, and the next day, at midday, he dragged us all off the road into a narrow pass somewhere in Kataonia. We saw the patrol before we heard them, far off on the road, and we stood by our horses’ heads until they were well past. Then we got back on the road and went as fast as we could.
But it wasn’t fast enough, and of course we left tracks, and the enemy had a rearguard. They must have hidden from us as successfully as we hid from them, but they warned the main body. By late evening, it was clear that we were pursued.
Cyrus cursed. ‘I don’t want to lose a man here,’ he said. ‘Nor do I want to kill men whose only fault is serving their king too well.’
We made the post house, and Bulis suggested that we could poison the well — which caused Cyrus to look at the Spartan envoy as if he were some sort of hardened criminal. ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘would induce me to poison a well.’ He stomped off, his flat leather boot soles making a flapping sound in his irritation.
We slipped away before first light with six men covering us from the heights. The enemy patrol was hot on our heels, probably having ridden all night to close the gap, but they had to stop to water their horses and we slipped away.
But later that day, as we wound our way through the Comana valley, they struck. They charged our rearguard — not quite by surprise, but their total commitment was fearsome, and they killed two of Cyrus’s men at the first encounter — and then it was a fight. Bulis and Aritides had doubted whether, when put to it, Cyrus would fight. I never doubted it. But Persians are as given to blood feud as most men, and after the deaths of Altris and Eza, two of our younger Persian escorts, the rest turned to fight with a will.
Cyrus laughed grimly, loosening his sword in its sheath. ‘Mardonius must have offered a mighty reward for you,’ he said. ‘Nothing else would cause these men to risk everything like this.’
They came on recklessly.
For their part, Cyrus’s men waited patiently. No word was spoken for a long time, and even I wondered whether it was possible that we were betrayed — Bulis was growing restless, and Sparthius already had his sword in his hand.
And then, without a word spoken, both sides began to loose arrows, and for a moment we were in a hail of shafts. I had faced Persian archery before, but it was worse mounted — because my horse took two arrows before I had any notion that we were being hit, and she reacted by throwing me over her head.
By Apollo, by whom I seldom swear — that was a heavy fall, from a horse on to rock, and jagged rock, at that. I lay unmoving for too long, and suddenly there was a cavalry melee over my head, and I, the vaunted warrior of the Greeks, was lying on my back almost unable to rise from the pain in my hip where it had struck the rock.
I was stunned. I couldn’t get up.
Hector saved me. He stood his horse right over me, and when the enemy charge came home, he used his spear like a hero, keeping a pair of Medes at the point of his spear — one of them missed a cut with his sword and clipped his own horse’s neck, and his horse bolted — and Hector put the other down with a fine thrust. I was nothing but a spectator.