The villagers acted quickly. The young men and women hid in dark corners of the huts, or in the undergrowth near the village. They pulled aside piles of rushes that concealed small buried chambers, and they secreted there all the grain, bread, and salted fish that they had. The children hid as well, and soon only the old men and women remained outside, watching the army approach.
The villagers neither knew nor cared who ruled over them. On occasion, two elders might choose to argue over whether they thought it was the Cappadocians or the Galatians to whom they might owe their loyalty. It was a debate with no consequence, to pass the long hours when there was nothing else to do. The rumour had come to the village many years before, that it was now the Lydian king who ruled them. It had been dismissed as preposterous. No one in the village could imagine that the power of that distant kingdom could ever reach so far as to affect them, yet now the forces of the Lydian king marched towards them.
The old villagers stood and stared as the army approached, waiting to see if the men would slow for a moment, if a squadron of cavalry would peel away from the main column and ride towards them. It would be the work of a moment for some squadron of the marching horde to turn aside and burn the village to the ground.
The army did not slow. They had marched past dozens of villages like this one, and each one seemed to be on the verge of starvation, populated entirely by old men and women. There seemed not a single piece of bread that could be spared, not a single young man to join the army or a young woman to entertain the spearmen, not in the entire kingdom of Lydia.
The soldiers were aware of the deceptions of the villagers, but they were well provisioned and under strict orders not to ravage the countryside. Not yet. All knew that once they crossed the river into lands that were not ruled by their king, the rules would change. Life would be worth less beyond the Halys.
The old men and women watched as tens of thousands of warriors crossed the bridge into foreign land. Armoured infantry, their faces dripping sweat beneath their heavy bronze helmets, marched beside archers and slingers who wore little apart from their weapons; Thracian mercenaries cursed thickly in their own language at the Lydian cavalry who rode beside them. Following them all, in the train of the army, rags wrapped around their faces against the thick clouds of dust stirred up by fifty thousand men, came the slaves and the supply wagons, driving vast flocks of sheep and goats with them as a living larder, the animals almost outnumbering the men who had marched before them. The people of the village, who had been unmoved by the passage of the warriors, nudged each other and stared wistfully at the passing animals, and wondered at the power of a chieftain who had so many cattle at his disposal. Here was wealth they could understand.
They watched the horde of men and animals go by and disappear over the horizon, marching towards the low-hanging sun as though that was what they sought to conquer. When the army had gone, and had been reduced to nothing but dust and sound on the horizon, the young men, women and children emerged from their hiding places, and gave thanks that they had been spared. Then they gathered up their nets and hurried to the river, competing, as they did every morning, to see who would earn the Gods’ favour by landing the first fish of the day.
They camped a day’s march beyond the Halys, sleeping on alien earth for the first time. Most men lay on the ground rolled in their cloaks, piled together around campfires in great packs to share warmth. There was only one tent at the very centre — small and simple, but a palace for this wandering band of men. Inside, next to a single brazier casting warmth and light erratically, Croesus held a council of war with his general, Sandanis.
‘Any word yet on the Persians?’ the king said.
‘Not yet, my lord.’
‘But they know we are coming?’
‘Yes,’ the general answered. ‘They have been preparing for it.’
Croesus nodded slowly. ‘And they will bring their army out to meet us in battle?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
Croesus gazed for a time at the ornate patterns of the tent wall and tried to summon some order to his thoughts. It was a strange thing, to be occupying land belonging to another. He found that he liked this sensation of gradual ownership, of conquest by possession. If he could only enjoy this feeling without the battles and the killing to come, that would have been better. But such a thing was impossible.
He turned back to his general. ‘It all seems strangely consensual, Sandanis.’
The general frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It is very accommodating, that they will bring their army all the way across the kingdom to fight us.’
‘It is the custom,’ Sandanis said bluntly. Croesus sighed, and wished again that he had brought Isocrates with the army. For all his skills as a general, Sandanis was not a thoughtful man.
‘I would have thought,’ Croesus said, ‘that when some foreigner marches an army on to your land, custom would be the last thing on your mind. Why not wait, make us pursue him?’
‘He wants this settled as much as you do. It shames him to have us on his land.’
‘Yes, I suppose it does.’ The king rubbed his jaw. ‘What do you know about this Cyrus?’
‘I know much about his army. Little about him.’
‘A pity. Everyone has a different story. They are good ones, too. Raised by wolves, some say, others say by farmers. I wonder how that confusion began. There were half a dozen prophecies foretelling his birth and it is said his line will rule for nine generations. Do you believe any of that?’
‘I could not say, my lord.’
‘Well, I would like to know the truth of it. I wish they told such stories about me,’ Croesus said. ‘I suppose it does not matter. What happens now?’
‘We make the men eager to fight.’
‘And how do we do that?’
Over the weeks that followed, Croesus watched his army pass over the land like a walking catastrophe, an earthquake of a hundred thousand feet.
The land alone could not sustain them, so unnaturally large was the gathering of men, and they descended on every farm, village and town and took the food that they needed. They were, Croesus thought, as capricious as the Gods. One family of farmers would be greeted kindly by the passing soldiers. The fighting men would play with the children, and their officers would communicate, by gesture and the odd word of common language, their needs to the farmers. Sometimes they would leave gifts in compensation for food and wine. At the next farm, the same men would take the crops by force, carry off the women and young boys and torture the men to death for sport. There was no pattern to it.
Croesus understood that they took crops and cattle because they would starve if they did not. Why they murdered men and raped women was more mysterious to him. Perhaps, he thought, it was because they had to learn that they were powerful in this foreign land, that they were not bound by the laws that had ruled them before. Perhaps even as they fed themselves and learned how to kill, they knew that there was something else expected of them soon, that their killings were but rehearsals for a greater slaughter. No one would remember the villages and small towns that they destroyed. Through the thousands of little murders the army committed, there grew a desire to do something unforgettable; something that would mark the conquered land as theirs.
This collective dream grew strong and yet remained unfulfilled until they came at last to the city of Pteria.
They destroyed the army that guarded the city. They broke open the gates and tore holes in the walls. Then, that night, for the very first time, Croesus watched a city being razed to the ground.
Now that darkness had fallen, he could not see the people running in the streets, nor the soldiers who pursued them. He only saw fire — enormous, angry lakes of flame where palaces, temples, and entire districts of houses had once stood — and the tiny, moving points of light of men with torches. It was as though he observed a city from another world, where flames had become sentient and built a city of their own.