‘Who can tell what the Thracians will do from one year to the next, master?’ Isocrates said. ‘But I expect they will be back, for the gold if for nothing else. The others certainly have no cause to complain at their share.’
‘Very good. Send some offerings to the Spartans as well. Enough to let them know we bear them no ill will. They did say that they could not join us this year. But enough to let them know we expect them promptly next spring.’
‘I will see to it immediately, master. Is there anything else you wish me to do?’
‘Send an emissary to Babylon. I have heard Nabonidus fears the
Persian. Perhaps he will join us as well.’
‘Yes, master.’
Croesus slipped one of his rings from his hand and rolled it between his fingers. ‘When this business is finished,’ he said, ‘I will go to Babylon. We will go to Babylon, I mean. I shan’t go travelling without you again. Wouldn’t you like to see the city?’
‘I will go where you will it, master.’
‘They say it is the greatest city in the world. A city of marvels.’ He thought for a time. ‘I would like to see it,’ he said quietly. ‘They claim to have invented writing. We may have invented money, but to be the first people to write, that would have been remarkable.’ He paused again. ‘It is the oldest city I know of. Surely, if anyone has the answers, they must. Don’t you think?’
‘Answers to what?’
Croesus did not reply, and stared absently into space.
‘Is there anything else, master?’
‘No. Go.’
Isocrates bowed and went to the door, but as soon as he placed his hand on it, he heard the king speak again.
‘Isocrates. Wait.’ It was the tone that the slave feared from his master, more than any other. Doubt.
He turned back. ‘Master?’
The king smiled at him hesitantly. ‘Is it right that I do this?’
‘Forgive me. I do not understand.’
‘The war, I mean. What do you think?’
‘You can do whatever you want, master,’ Isocrates said. ‘You are the most powerful man in the world. Doesn’t that make you right, whatever you do?’
Croesus’s mouth twisted, and he felt the blood rush into his cheeks. He beckoned Isocrates forward, and when the slave was before him, leaned in close until he was only a few inches from the other man’s face.
‘I wish you would not talk like that,’ Croesus said. ‘Do you not have a voice? A mind of your own? You offer me nothing but sycophancy? What use are you to me?’
‘Master-’
Croesus hit him; the clumsy, open-handed slap of a man unused to violence. Isocrates took the blow without complaint, running his tongue over his lips to check for the taste of blood. Croesus slumped back and turned from his own action in disgust.
‘Can I speak freely?’ Isocrates said after a moment.
‘I wish you would. Just for once.’
Even with this permission, it was a long time before the slave spoke again. ‘I wish,’ he said, ‘that you had asked me that a long time ago. I wish I could have told you not to go to war.’
‘But you could not speak without being asked.’
‘No, master.’
‘Perhaps you are right. Maybe we should not return.’ He stared at Isocrates. ‘And I think I may have to free you, if your slavery means that you must keep your thoughts from me. Would you still serve me, if I gave you the choice as a free man?’
Isocrates looked at the ground. ‘I don’t know, master.’
‘Ah. An honest answer. Thank you.’ Croesus paused. ‘I am sorry I struck you. It was a mistake.’
‘You never have to apologize to me.’
Croesus turned away. ‘I wish the winter was over,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand to be trapped in this city any longer.’ He closed his eyes. ‘You’re still here?’ He waved a hand at the slave. ‘Go.’
10
Afterwards, as always, there would be stories of omens. Of horses consuming snakes in the fields, of sacrifices that went rotten in moments on the altars, and of predictions that had been made five generations before. But, in truth, there were no signs. When it came, it came as all true disasters do, with no warning at all.
A farmer beneath the walls of Sardis saw it first. He was cutting wood on the outskirts of the city, working fast to keep warm in the cold winter air, when the wind blew against his back and brought with it some strange fragment of sound. A distant voice in a foreign tongue, coupled with the sound of metal on metal.
He assumed at first that it was some trick of the wind, and continued cutting. The sound came again — stronger, more insistent, like the repeated calling of a name. He placed his axe to the ground, turned and looked to the east. It was there that he saw the unimaginable.
A numberless mass of men sprawled across the land to the east, consuming the horizon. Even then, confronted by the sight, he could not understand what he was seeing. His mind refuted it. It was not until he looked more closely, saw the horsemen whose steeds snorted frost, the spearmen with heavy sheepskins slung over their necks and rags wrapped around their hands, that he believed it.
The farmer looked on the legion who had done the unthinkable, marching for days and nights on end through a foreign land in winter, faster than any messengers who might have been sent riding ahead of them. Surely no army had ever achieved its like before. Even at this distance, he could see the alien banner under which they marched; the towering eagle that held a globe in each talon, as though even the conquest of one entire world would not be enough to satisfy the king who marched beneath that banner. It was the flag of Cyrus, and of Persia.
‘No army marches in winter,’ Sandanis said at last, to fill the terrible silence.
‘What?’ Croesus said.
‘No army marches in winter.’
‘Is that your excuse?’
‘I was-’
‘Why not? Custom again, I suppose?’
The general said nothing. Croesus looked away in disgust.
They were in the emerald throne room, its pillars studded with jade, green silks falling from the ceiling, and the king wished they had moved to some private meeting room when the news had come. It was no place for a council of war. Croesus felt like a man pretending to be a king.
He turned back to Sandanis. ‘Can we defeat them?’
Sandanis hesitated. ‘Perhaps.’
‘That is all you can say?’
‘Yes. That is all.’
Croesus looked around the room again, and the men and women of the court regarded him silently. Defeat hung heavy in the air around him.
‘Gather the army,’ he said at last.
Sandanis bowed, then looked up at the king again.
‘There is something more?’
‘You will have to come with us, sire.’
‘You think I will inspire the men?’ Croesus said bitterly.
‘Yes, my lord.’
He stared into space. ‘Isocrates?’ he said.
The slave stepped forward. ‘Yes, master?’
‘I left you behind before, and it was a mistake. You must come as well.’
For a moment, Isocrates said nothing — a half-beat of disobedience. ‘As you wish,’ he said.
The Persians waited, with a strange courtesy, for what remained of the Lydian army to take up position. In spite of their winter march, it seemed that they still had some regard for the habits of war.
Croesus watched the Lydian cavalry move to the vanguard, and despite the great numbers that stood against them, he let himself feel some small hope. He told himself that the Persians must be exhausted by their forced march across the continent. Perhaps it was here, beneath the walls of Sardis, that he could win his greatest victory.
Before he could speak and order the attack, a series of horns sounded from the Persian army. Every other man on their front line stepped to the left, exposing a series of empty columns. Through these gaps, strange figures advanced, bulky creatures that seemed to have two heads and six legs. Croesus wondered if the rumours were true, that the Persians had tamed monsters as part of their army. Then his eyes began to make sense of what he saw and recognized the figures for what they were. They were camels, being led by servants to the front line.