‘What do you think they are doing over there?’ he asked his general.
‘They are doing what I ordered them to do,’ Sandanis replied.
‘Which was?’
‘Enjoy themselves.’ Croesus winced, and the general smiled patiently. ‘It needn’t concern you,’ Sandanis said. ‘It is what happens.’
‘It makes me think of my home. Don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘How does that make you feel?’
‘I’m glad it is happening to their home and not to mine.’
‘Nothing more than that?’
The general shrugged. ‘They had bad fortune. The Gods didn’t favour them. They were weak. That is what I think.’
The king nodded, but did not reply. He looked back on the city of fire.
He imagined what was being done in the distant streets. The men tortured and killed, the women raped. The elderly and the children put to death, there being no value in their capture. Everything of value taken, every sacred building put to the torch.
In the morning, there would be a great gathering at the blackened gates of the city. The healthy men and women, roped together like unruly cattle, would be marched back west and sold. All that would remain of Pteria was in their memories and in the stories they would tell. He wondered how many generations would pass until the memory of the place faded entirely.
He could feel, somewhere half hidden within his mind, a sense of shame. The emotion was close but could not reach him, as if it did not belong to him at all and merely lurked in his mind, misplaced by some other, more feeling man. He wondered where it came from, this barricade in his mind that meant he felt nothing, and whether it was the mark of a strong, ruthless king, or of some kind of monster.
‘It doesn’t make me feel anything, you know,’ Croesus said. ‘Isn’t that strange?’
‘Why should it?’
Croesus shook his head. ‘You are lacking in imagination, Sandanis.’
‘That may be so, my lord.’
‘You may leave.’
The general bowed.
‘The reports are confirmed. The Persian army is coming. They will be here in ten days.’
‘Good. How do we respond?’
‘We wait, and we meet them here. It is as good a place as any to fight a battle. The sight of the city will act in our favour.’
‘I knew we destroyed it for some reason.’ He tried a smile, but the general did not respond. ‘Will the Ionians remain loyal?’
‘Yes. My people tell us that they refused Cyrus’s offer last night.’
‘Very well. I am glad the waiting is over, at least.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
Croesus hesitated. ‘These things are necessary in war, you said?’
‘Inevitable, my lord.’
‘Very well. Let the men do what they will tonight. But tomorrow, you will get them ready to meet the Persians. I would rather see a battle than butchery.’
Sandanis raised an eyebrow. ‘Say that again after you have seen battle.’ He bowed again. ‘Goodnight, my lord. Sleep well.’
It was on the tenth day of waiting, sometime after midday, that the Persian army came into view.
Croesus’s scouts had kept careful track of its progress, and so when the Persians arrived, they found the Lydian army arrayed to meet them. Each army was a reflection of the other, and for hours, they shifted across the plains like mirror images. The two armies shuffled from side to side, moving from one place to another, each army taking it in turns to offer a position to its opponent that was declined. After a time, seeing that their opponents would not be deceived into assuming a weak position on the battlefield, both armies gave up trying to gain an advantage. They simply tried to settle on a part of the plain where they could face each other, a place where a hundred thousand men could line up in order and kill one another.
At last, after hours of manoeuvring, they reached a position with which both were satisfied. Having negotiated silently, they were ready to exchange words, and Croesus’s emissary came to him to request his final instructions.
‘If they want us to return to Lydia,’ Croesus told him, ‘they must disband their army immediately, reinstate the royal family of the Medes, and Cyrus must surrender himself personally to me.’ He turned to Sandanis. ‘Will that be enough?’
‘I should think each one of those demands unacceptable enough on its own.’
‘Let us see how they respond to three impossibilities. Oh,’ he said, turning back to the emissary. ‘One more thing.’
‘Yes, my lord?’
‘After their man refuses and offers up some insulting demands of his own, ask him if his master will meet with me, face to face. That is all.’
Croesus watched his emissary gallop out, and saw his Persian counterpart match his trajectory until they converged at the very middle of the field.
‘Why meet with him?’ Sandanis asked.
‘As I said, I am curious to meet the man. I would like to settle some of these rumours. Besides, isn’t this what kings do before great battles?’
‘You are enjoying yourself, I see.’
‘It was my will that brought all these men here,’ Croesus said. ‘Today, we will play our part in reshaping the world. That is remarkable, don’t you think?’
The general pointed to the centre of the plain. ‘He’s coming back.’
‘That was quick.’
The emissary rode back through the Lydian lines, and bowed from the saddle to his king.
‘They refuse our demands, and insist that you send your army back across the Halys river and surrender yourself to the king of Persia.’
‘That is two impossible demands to our three. Did he consent to a meeting?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘A shame.’ Croesus paused. ‘Did he give a reason? I assume his refusal came with an insult?’
‘There was no reason, my lord.’
‘Very well.’ Croesus breathed in deeply, once. He felt no doubt, for it was too late for such things. He felt the easy courage of a man liberated from choice. ‘Let it be done,’ he said softly.
Sandanis turned and nodded to the man at his side. The soldier lifted the horn to his lips and blew, answered a moment later by a thousand horns in the Lydian army, then, like a reply or an echo, by the horns and drums of the Persians; a symphony of a single note played on ten thousand instruments.
The army advanced, the tips of their spears glittering in the clear light like waves under a low sun, the horses dancing nervously as they walked. The men were silent, a particular silence that has the quality of prayer, and the only sounds that Croesus heard were those of foot against earth, of metal against metal.
A line was crossed, some invisible threshold between the two forces. The first flight of Lydian arrows whispered into the air, and was met with an answering volley from the Persian archers. Both flights of arrows hung for a moment at the top of their arc. It seemed that they might remain there for ever. A cloud of wood and iron and feathers clustered thickly together in the middle of the sky, the weapons of two nations mingled so close together that it was impossible to tell them apart.
Then the arrows fell.
8
In the unnamed village on the edge of the Halys, the villagers watched the army return.
The Lydian army had first marched past in the height of summer. Now it was harvest season, and across the continent, towns and villages and farms waited to see what the soil and the Gods would consent to give them. A good harvest, and they could wait out the winter in some kind of comfort. A swarm of insects, a sudden flood, and thousands would starve. Everything depended on the gifts of the earth.
Beside the river, once again, the soil had reluctantly surrendered a small harvest of grain. Each year, as they gathered in their feeble crop, the villagers cursed the stubborn soil and promised themselves that the next year they would move on to a more fertile place. Every spring, they looked up at the sun and forgot their promise and again sowed their seeds with hope. They were gathering the last stalks from the fields when they heard and saw the familiar signs once more — the omens of an army on the move.