Cyrus nodded to them then sat cross-legged on the ground. ‘What matter requires my attention?’ he said.
‘We were debating what to do with Croesus,’ said Cyraxes.
‘Ah. Debating. So that’s what the shouting was.’
‘Forgive us.’
‘No forgiveness is needed. I appointed you both to argue with each other. The attack was a success, I see?’
Harpagus nodded slowly. He was younger than Cyraxes by a decade, and, looking at him, few would have thought that he was much older than Cyrus. Only his eyes, deep and blank, like the eyes of a dead man, revealed that he had lived to see half a century of war and politics. ‘Yes. Our scouts took the wall, and by the time the Lydians were alerted, we already had enough men over the wall to hold the battlements.’
‘And they took Croesus alive?’
‘Yes. They found him with his son.’
‘His son? Is he a threat to us?’
‘Hardly. The man is an imbecile. Almost mute.’
‘That is for the best. Reward the man who captured Croesus, as I promised.’ Cyrus covered a small yawn with his hand. ‘Now, back to your debate. Tell me what I should do with him. Cyraxes?’
‘His people love him,’ the old man said. ‘He knows the region, knows its politics. He will be the perfect satrap for Lydia. Under our close supervision, of course. With his army destroyed, he poses no threat. Why not let him continue to play as a king?’
Cyrus nodded. ‘Very well. And Harpagus? You disagree?’
The general shrugged. ‘People like strong kings.’
‘And?’
‘I don’t think they’ll forgive him for losing a war that he began. These people have no reason to obey us unless they fear us. I can’t see that we will be safe until Croesus is dead.’
Cyrus nodded again. ‘Thank you both.’ He thought to himself for a time, and his advisors waited silently. Finally, he said, ‘The Cappadocian prince. Harpagus, you said you weren’t sure of his loyalty?’
Harpagus showed no surprise at the change of subject, for he was used to the lateral shifts of the king’s conversation. ‘Cappadocia is a burned-out wasteland,’ he said. ‘My spies tell me the people feel they have received little reward from being under our protection, after what the Lydians did to them.’
‘I don’t want to deal with a rebellion there. We have more important things to do than put down the Cappadocians. Let them have some compensation.’
‘If I can say-’
‘Yes, Cyraxes, I have heard what you’ve had to say. Let Croesus live, and I could be facing two rebellions. Cooperative governors are easy enough to find. Rebellions cost much to put down. I have made my decision.’
The older man bowed again deeply. ‘Your will be done. When?’
‘Let’s get it over with. At dawn tomorrow.’
Cyrus spent the night in what had been Croesus’s bedchamber, more out of curiosity than as a symbolic conquest. He knew almost everything about his enemies long before his armies marched to war. His spies reported on the strength and composition of their armies, his emissaries calculated a nation’s wealth, almost down to the last head of grain and talent of gold. He learned everything he could about their weaknesses and fears, their sexual desires and taste in food. Every piece of information mattered, anything that could give Cyrus the measure of his opponent. No detail was too intimate to be found out, except for where the king slept — the only secret that a ruler could maintain.
Cyrus had expected much from Croesus’s bedchamber, the private sanctuary of a man who had almost made a religion of his wealth. Here, where no one else could see them, Cyrus had imagined that Croesus would keep his most beautiful artefacts, but there was something half-hearted about the priceless ornaments that decorated the room, as though they had been placed out of obligation, rather than true desire.
The morning of the execution, Cyrus rose long before dawn. The servants who came hesitantly to wake him found him waiting for them, fully dressed and reading by torchlight to pass the time. He accompanied them down staircases that had been scrubbed clean of blood just hours before. At the same moment, somewhere far below, he knew that Croesus was being woken and led to the place of his death.
Cyrus reached the entrance to the atrium in good time, and waited for the sun to rise. One by one, his advisors appeared and came to wait with him, their faces long with exhaustion. Cyraxes looked especially tired; grey faced and stooped. Cyrus leaned forward and clapped his hands by the old man’s right ear. Cyraxes jumped in surprise, and the other men laughed, grateful for the break in tension, before they lapsed back into silence.
The moment came at last, and Cyrus pushed open the double doors, and entered with the sun.
He looked at the pyre, the wood heaped at its base, the high stake and wooden throne, the pale figure tied to it with a single iron chain. A wooden colossus, built to consume itself. He glanced at Croesus for only a moment before he sat down at the table.
He waited for his taster to sample the food, but when he was at last allowed to eat, he ate lightly — a few pieces of bread, some dates and olives. He took a single sip of wine and gazed at the prisoner on the pyre.
Cyrus had looked into the eyes of many condemned men. Kings he had conquered, traitors he had executed, criminals on whom he had been asked to give final judgement. He knew that all of them, as they met his gaze, believed that they were showing him something unique. They were not. There were only a few ways for a man to meet his death, and Cyrus had seen them all many times over. In Croesus’s eyes, the king saw something familiar. Acceptance.
Cyrus leaned back in his chair, and gestured to the servants around the pyre. He beckoned to another man on the balcony to bring him his parchments. He heard but did not see the fire being lit, and at the same moment acrid incense filled his nostrils. Cyrus sniffed in distaste, and bent over the table to busy himself in the affairs of state.
Some of the messages he reviewed had travelled merely hours to reach him. Questions about supplying the army that now occupied Sardis, or the appointments of new local rulers for the conquered towns and cities of the Lydian empire. Others were messages from the far side of his kingdom, which had taken weeks to arrive over mountains and seas, passing through a dozen hands before they reached the attention of the king.
For these delayed messages, he gave commands in response to events that had yet to occur: on receiving news of a food shortage in Ecbatana, he sent an order to put down the riot that he knew would have broken out by the time the message arrived in the east; learning that a fleet of merchant vessels was a day late in reaching Suhar, he sent his scouts to scour the coast for the shipwreck he was certain had occurred. Ruling the future, Cyrus was fond of saying, was the last great skill for a king to master.
He had dispatched only a few messages when he heard a low groan from the pyre. Cyrus looked up in surprise; perhaps wood burned quicker in the west, he thought. But the fire had not yet reached the prisoner. Cyrus saw Croesus’s lips move twice, but he spoke too softly for the Persian king to hear. Then he said the same word a third time, just loud enough to be audible.
‘Solon.’
Cyrus frowned. ‘What does that mean?’ he said to his interpreter.
‘I do not know.’
‘Ask him.’
‘My lord?’
Cyrus nodded towards the pyre. The interpreter bowed, and asked the question in Lydian.
Croesus raised his head and looked at Cyrus. ‘He is a man all kings should speak to,’ the prisoner said, his eyes streaming from the smoke.
‘Oh?’ Cyrus said, after the interpreter relayed this to him. ‘And why is that?’