Meanwhile Nearchus engaged all soldiers with any kind of carpentry skills to help him build more ships. He was able to find thousands of assistants among the Macedonians and the seashore dwellers.
The Macedonian camp attracted not only adventurers, merchants and women, but also scientists, philosophers, artists and performers. A new year had begun, the first year of the one hundred fourteenth Olympiad.
The army slowly traveled down the Indus. Alexander’s extraordinary life force overcame yet another dangerous wound that would have been deadly for most people. Still sick, he spent much time conversing with Indian philosophers. Helenians called them gymnosophists, nude scholars, because it was their custom to constantly walk around wearing hardly any clothes, emphasizing the absence of earthly desires.
With much bitterness, Alexander realised that he crossed one river after another, depleting the patience of his army in vain. It turned out that the Hydaspes joined the Akesinas and the Hydraot, and later the Hyphasys. It eventually fell into a large left arm of the Indus, Laradzos (Satledge), four thousand stadiums below the Indus crossing which had been constructed by Hephaestion. Had Alexander not pushed so stubbornly to the east across the foothills of the huge mountain ranges, but instead descended to the south after the Indus crossing, the entire great Indian plain would have been open to Alexander’s army.
But it was all over. Alexander no longer wished to go anywhere but Persia and the western sea. At the Laradzos he founded another Alexandria which he called Opiana. It was said that while he was there, the king secretly visited an impossibly ancient temple in the ruins of a huge city, a thousand stadiums below the merging of the Indus and the Laradzos. The priest of the temple told Alexander a great mystery, and Alexander never brought up India again. Not even to his closest friends. This news traveled among the soldiers like the wind, making them much better informed than their officers wished.
As they slowly sailed down the Indus, the Macedonians acquainted themselves with the country, whose giant dimensions they now had time to comprehend. It was good that they had put a stop to Alexander’s insane urge to rush headlong into the depths of India. Only now did they remember Ktesius, a Helenian physician who had served at the court of Artaxerxes and composed a description of India as a large country.
One of the Indians, gymnosophist Kalinas, had decided to accompany Alexander, warning the king about dangers and discouraging the officers from unnecessary attacks on nearby cities.
When Hesiona paused to catch her breath, Lysippus poured her some wine diluted with a quantity of spring water. Thais was deep in thought, as if she were still in India, then asked, “Where was Roxanne?”
“She was with Alexander the entire time. She had a separate tent and sailed on a separate ship. On land she traveled by elephant, as was appropriate for a great queen.”
“How does one ride an elephant?”
“I don’t know. We can ask when we get to Babylon.”
“Continue, please.”
In the month of Skyrophorion, Alexander had reached the Indus delta, six thousand stadiums below the convergence of all the tributaries. It looked much like the delta of the Nile. Not only Macedonians, but all the experienced sailors became frightened when he saw the giant waves rushing up the river, raising the water level by twenty to thirty elbows. But they were able to make sense of it once they reached the ocean. The tides there reached levels that were uncommon at the Inner Sea.
Approximately five hundred stadiums from the ocean, above the river delta, Hephaestion started building the Patala port. At the same time, in the month of Hekatombeon, Alexander and Nearchus sailed far into the ocean, five hundred stadiums away from the shore. There he made a sacrifice to Poseidon and tossed a golden goblet into the waves.
Hesiona continued, her hands shaping the story as beautifully as her words. “A month later Alexander traveled further west along the seashore across the deserts of Hedrosia and Karmania. He traveled light with only the infantry and a part of the cavalry. He had already dispatched Crateros with all the carts, families, loot, elephants and livestock along a comparatively easy route across Arahosia and Drangiana[37]. Crateros was accompanied by Seleucus, who, after the Hydaspes battle, forever gave his heart to the elephants and was collecting them as enthusiastically as Ptolemy did jewels …” Hesiona paused and glanced nervously at her friend.
“ …And women,” Thais said calmly. “Continue.”
For the first time the Theban realized how indifferent her friend was to Ptolemy’s romantic adventures.
Crateros founded yet another Alexandria on the river Arahotos and continued slowly to their designated meeting spot in Karmania on the river Amanis, which fell into the deep sea bay of Harmosia.
Alexander traveled with the caravan in order to set up several provision caches for Nearchus along the seashore. The Cretan left Patala with the entire fleet two months later, in Maymakterion, after the change in the winds from summer to winter.
At first Alexander had wanted to entrust the fleet to Onesikrit. Nearchus was against that, pointing out the carelessness and well-known deceitfulness of his assistant. As much as Alexander wanted to travel together with Nearchus, he had to agree with the fleet commander’s arguments. Alexander made it his primary mission to document the shoreline and the sea route connecting India and Persia. That was why he decided to lead the caravan himself across the deserts. The march turned out to be nearly the hardest one of all that had been experienced by the Macedonian army. At first the army was joined by great numbers of civilians: merchants, craftsmen, women.
They all perished of hunger and thirst, although the majority of them drowned.
“Yes, drowned,” Hesiona repeated, noticing her listeners’ confusion. “When the army camped in a dry valley among the hills. A thunderstorm took place somewhere in the mountains and gave start to a mighty stream that instantly crashed onto the unsuspecting people. The soldiers were used to sudden attacks and escaped by climbing the hills, but the rest perished.”
Even at night the gray sand and rocks of the Hedrosia desert radiated heat, imbued with the strong scent of myrtle trees. It was as if a thousand incense burners filled the air with the precious myrrh of Arabia. Large white flowers covered the impassable thickets of low, stocky trees covered with thorns. These were followed by waterless sands.
The journey became more and more difficult. They had to save food, and water supplies nearly ran out. Uncontrollable soldiers looted some of the carts which carried provisions for Nearchus. Only one cache could be set up. In search of water, they were forced to turn into the depths of the country and both the navigators and cryptii became confused. As a result, they had to travel back to the sea, determine their direction and head straight north.
They finally arrived at the city of Pura on the same river where the three portions of the army were set to meet. They rested and continued to travel down the river to the city of Hulaskira in Harmosia.
Crateros arrived on time with his army, women and elephants. His detachment, having traveled a longer route, did exceptionally well. He had no losses among people or animals and no significant delays along the way. Crateros was a passionate hunter and had allowed himself a few forays away from his main route, remembering Alexander’s request to look for the terrible beast “man eater”. The animal had been mentioned in Ktesius’ descriptions of India. Those descriptions were wrought with many improbable stories but included evidence from many witnesses. The Persians were clearly terrified by the beast and called it martichorus, or swallower of people. Its huge size, terrible maw, hard scaly armor and spike-covered tail made the beast sound like something between a crocodile and a behemoth. Crateros himself had heard these stories, but similar to the borius of the Libyan desert, no one could point out its exact dwelling, and Crateros’ search turned out to be in vain.