"In any case, you've already seen some of his troops. He outfitted them all in new bronze helmets with horsehair plumes and scarlet cloaks-they all look like Spartan Peers. He armed them with those wicked short swords, new bronze shields and breastplates, and imported some drill sergeants from Sparta to put them through field training. Damn near killed them, and half of them were mustered out as being unfit. But within six months Clearchus had whipped the remainder into the strongest standing army in the Greek world short of Sparta's itself, and you can bet that young Cyrus is pleased. Everywhere the troops march the people fall on their knees and call them 'Cyrus' Greeks.' Well, Cyrus' Greeks whet their blades by destroying the Thracians, and now Clearchus is up-country collecting more soldiers. We'll be meeting up with them later on the march."
We rode along silently, digesting this portrait of our future colleague. I knew that Xenophon would be torturing himself with the irony of the situation. He had enlisted in the only viable Greek army short of Sparta's, at least partially with a view to redeeming his and his father's names-only to find himself serving with a man who was one of Athens' most hated enemies, a man whom Gryllus would sooner have spit on and cursed to three generations than have his son fight under. How strangely the gods ordain things, that the destinies of men as disparate as Clearchus and Xenophon are made to cross paths. One wonders whether Zeus had such a circumstance in mind when he offered Xenophon such favorable omens for traveling to Sardis. It is difficult to imagine that it was not foreseen.
Within three days of our arrival at Cyrus' camp, Proxenus had officially enlisted Xenophon as an officer and his personal aide-de-camp, and I was fitted for light cavalry armor and weaponry, and assigned the duty of bearing his brigade's pennant, a black flag depicting a snake shooting flame from its mouth. It was a role with which I was very pleased.
CHAPTER TWO
PROXENUS, XENOPHON, AND I entered the prince's compound, warily eyeing Cyrus' fierce-looking guards. Some thirty of these giants, seemingly chosen as much for their aesthetic qualities as for their strength and fearsomeness, were on duty at a single shift. Precisely half consisted of Ethiopians, with skin so black as to be almost blue, their huge heads shaved bald and polished by beeswax into shiny knobs decorated with a patterned system of raised tattoos. They carried enormous Persian scimitars and wore baggy pantaloons in the Persian style, and kept their massive chests bare, emphasizing the preternatural darkness of their skin. The other half of the guards, who were arranged in alternating order with the black Ethiopians around the tent, were enormous Scythians, pale of skin to the point of pinkness, almost albino, with shaved jaws and long, drooping mustaches. Twisted ropes of yellow hair hung to their waists, bound with colored strings, and they wore long, straight swords with wrought hilts, and gold-plated, snake-patterned bands on their biceps. Though both races were astonishing to look at, even to cosmopolitan Athenians like ourselves, the Scythians attracted particular attention, even though members of that tribe had long been employed in Athens as a mercenary police force. Scythian soldiers had been known to drink the blood of the men they killed in battle, and to take the scalps of their enemies by making a circular cut around the head above the ears, grasping the hair and then simply shaking the skull out the bottom, leaving the victim, whether dead or yet living, with a bloody, smooth-domed caul. Such scalps were required to be presented to their king for a share of any plunder, and were then tanned and hung from the soldier's bridle rein as mementos. If they were sufficient in number, they might even be sewn together into cloaks or arrow quivers. Such a fate was a terrible prospect to a Greek, who could not imagine presenting himself to the Boatman after death absent his hair, and possibly with skin from other parts of his body flayed and mounted in unspeakable fashion on a barbarian's kit. These men, alternating ranks of Scythians and Ethiopians, were Cyrus' personal bodyguard, and they eyed us suspiciously as we shouldered past them into Cyrus' tent.
Having heard so much about the prince, I was curious to meet him. Only twenty-four years old, Cyrus spoke flawless Attic Greek and Persian, as well as a half dozen other languages of the countries under his domain, and he was as well versed in the writings of the philosophers and men of science of both east and west as many others who had spent their entire lifetimes gaining such knowledge. His appearance was a study in contrasts: He was slight of build, beardless, and kept his chestnut-colored hair long and flowing in an unaffected style, quite unlike the pompous and effeminate, carefully coiffed nobles who served as his advisors and senior officers. The natural handsomeness of his face and the even olive color of his chest and arms was marred by a series of deep scars which Proxenus explained had been given him by an enraged she-bear in a hunt several years before. On the day of our audience with him, he was dressed quite plainly, even severely, in a short ceremonial robe with a military tunic underneath, a combination that would allow him to meet with anyone from diplomats and generals to the lowest private without wasting time changing clothes. This unpretentious demeanor greatly endeared him to his troops as well as to his civilian subjects. His arms were bare, exposing a long white scar running the length of his left tricep-whether from an earlier battle or from his brush with the bear I do not know. His robe was simple, with barely an inch of purple embroidery along the border, but was of the finest-combed Milesian wool. His sandals, though dusty, were of polished and stamped Egyptian leather with gold clasps. Cyrus' plain though elegant dress was that of a man who knows only one stall in the market-the very best.
The prince had been born after his father Darius had come to the throne as Great King of Persia, and so Cyrus ascribed to the ancient Persian tradition that he outranked his brother Artaxerxes who, though thirty years older, had been born while his father was still a mere subject. But the Great King, for reasons to which I was not privy, thought differently. He had arranged for the succession to revert to Artaxerxes, leaving Cyrus in the comparatively minor position of satrap of Ionia, equal in rank to a wily old scoundrel named Tissaphernes, who governed farther south in Asia Minor. Cyrus and Tissaphernes went back a long way-Tissaphernes had married Artaxerxes' daughter, making the old man a sort of relative to the prince, a nephew by marriage. He had also been a close advisor to King Darius, a constant presence in the courts and even in the royal family's living quarters, and Cyrus had detested the sway that the unctuous and crafty counselor held over his father. Three years earlier, sensing that the prince's power and influence were growing, Tissaphernes had denounced him on trumped-up charges to Artaxerxes, who had Cyrus arrested and ordered executed. Cyrus' mother saved his life and arranged for his removal from the court and his satrapy in Ionia, but the rage and humiliation Cyrus experienced from the episode had never left him. He now perceived the quest for power as an obsession, and the elimination of Tissaphernes and Artaxerxes as a ruling passion.
After entering Cyrus' tent with Proxenus and Xenophon I lingered near the door, while the other two advanced to Cyrus' chair and table. Cyrus amiably asked them to stand at ease, while he finished up some current business he had with his advisors. Since this was the first time I had ever visited the quarters of a wealthy Persian, I glanced around curiously, taking in the rich carpets and brocaded drapes, which kept the tent refreshingly dark and cool, and the heavily armed guards standing at motionless attention on either side of the door.
A tall, aquiline beauty slouched languorously behind Cyrus, gently fanning him with a large wicker screen and occasionally whispering orders to various serving girls and guards who kept up a never-ending parade of activity in the shadows between the table and a low rear exit, which communicated with another chamber of the tent. This consort, though breathtakingly beautiful, looked completely bored, and did not deign to make eye contact with any other person in the room.