Xenophon pursed his lips thoughtfully and watched Proxenus' grim, tight-muscled Boeotians maneuvering their engines. He gazed at the hillside in the far distance whence we had ridden that morning, the upper slopes hidden in the dust raised by a hundred thousand head of cattle, horses, goats and sheep, the gently undulating foreslope black with the tens of thousands of the army's massed tents. The destructive potential of the vast array of troops was overwhelming. Cyrus had assembled an enormous mercenary force of battle-hardened and war-hungry veterans, and he was preparing for glory.
As we trotted back to camp in the blazing heat, so different from the damp chill of Athens on the day we had left, Xenophon questioned Proxenus more closely about the prince's intentions.
"As it turns out," Proxenus said, "Cyrus does have one weapon that puts even my engines to shame. Did you know he recruited Clearchus?"
Xenophon looked surprised. "Clearchus-the Spartan general? I'd heard the Spartan Council had sentenced him to death."
"It appears Cyrus has rehabilitated him," Proxenus said dryly.
"Is he at Cyrus' camp now?"
"No, he's collecting additional troops farther east." Then noticing my puzzlement, Proxenus volunteered further information on this mysterious character.
"Clearchus is an exiled Spartan general whom Cyrus much admires for his military skills. He's a military genius, but the biggest asshole in the army. You'll find out why when you meet him. Physically he's a giant, bigger than you, Theo, and is in an evil mood that never ends. He spends all his time stalking about camp and takes pleasure in punishing violations of military discipline. He looks like hell and smells even worse-he munches garlic cloves like grapes and always keeps his pockets full of them. 'Clears the head and fends off the plague,' he says, and the stench of his breath could color the air around him. Before a battle, he spends half a day braiding and oiling his hair, which hangs to the middle of his back. I can't say it improves his appearance any, for all the work he puts into it."
"War isn't a beauty contest," Xenophon chided his cousin. "I don't care if he looks like a Cyclops, so long as he frightens the enemy."
"No need to fear there," Proxenus continued. "The enemy will be pissing on their sandals if he comes within a hundred yards of them, especially if he's upwind. As repulsive as he is, there's no man on earth as competent in battle."
He rode on in silence for a few minutes.
"You think I'm fond of war," he continued, "because I signed on with Cyrus without even a pause after Athens and Sparta made peace. Well, Clearchus has been moving from war to war for the past thirty years. The man can't live without war. He eats war and sleeps it. His men are terrified of him, but they follow him blindly and defend him to the death against any comments by outsiders, so watch what you say about him in front of others. You should thank the gods you'll be serving under me-Clearchus and his officers refuse even to use tents. They sleep in the open in the foulest weather, live on rancid bread and that disgusting Spartan 'black broth,' and ignore women, whether camp prostitutes or their own wives. His men use their shields as pillows and sleep with their spears, and each other, for comfort. I asked him about that once, thinking he was putting himself through hardship just for show, to keep up that insufferable Spartan image. He's Cyrus' top general, after all; he doesn't need to sleep in the mud. He scoffed at this. 'Shit,' he said, 'every lame-assed water boy with a grudge and every harem wench pissed off at Cyrus for sleeping with a different harem wench knows where to find him at night. That's why Cyrus needs thirty guards around his tent. And who can trust the guards? Thanks, I'll sleep in the mud.'"
"So how did Clearchus fall in with the prince?" Xenophon interrupted. "From what you say, there are no two men on earth more unalike."
"It's a bit complicated. Believe me, there is no love lost between those two, but they exploit each other for their own purposes. Clearchus approached the prince a year ago, about the same time I did. He was looking for a patron, and Cyrus knew that he was a brilliant soldier, and even better, that he was an outlaw-no chance of him losing heart and running back home to Sparta for his mother if things got tough. Cyrus gave him ten thousand darics"-here both Xenophon and I gasped, as this was a huge fortune-"to recruit a mercenary army, and Clearchus didn't spend an ounce of it on himself, although the prince would hardly have minded if he had. When word spread that he was paying good money for veteran soldiers, recruits began showing up in droves from every corner of the Greek world-every exiled, disillusioned, disgraced, hard-bitten Greek veteran that wanted a new start in life applied to Clearchus. He picked the cream of these men, paid them in advance, and trained an army, supposedly to suppress the Thracians, who had been marauding some of Cyrus' cities in the northwest. The Spartan elders sentenced him to death for pursuing an unauthorized war in disobedience of their orders-in Sparta that's a charge tantamount to treason. Clearchus didn't give a shit. He's like a hound tearing at a boar, he's unable to stop making war, and Sparta doesn't have enough wars to fight to keep him busy anymore.
"In any case, you've already seen some of his troops. He outfitted them all in new bronze helmets with horsehair plumes and scarlet cloaks-they all look like Spartan Peers. He armed them with those wicked short swords, new bronze shields and breastplates, and imported some drill sergeants from Sparta to put them through field training. Damn near killed them, and half of them were mustered out as being unfit. But within six months Clearchus had whipped the remainder into the strongest standing army in the Greek world short of Sparta's itself, and you can bet that young Cyrus is pleased. Everywhere the troops march the people fall on their knees and call them 'Cyrus' Greeks.' Well, Cyrus' Greeks whet their blades by destroying the Thracians, and now Clearchus is up-country collecting more soldiers. We'll be meeting up with them later on the march."
We rode along silently, digesting this portrait of our future colleague. I knew that Xenophon would be torturing himself with the irony of the situation. He had enlisted in the only viable Greek army short of Sparta's, at least partially with a view to redeeming his and his father's names-only to find himself serving with a man who was one of Athens' most hated enemies, a man whom Gryllus would sooner have spit on and cursed to three generations than have his son fight under. How strangely the gods ordain things, that the destinies of men as disparate as Clearchus and Xenophon are made to cross paths. One wonders whether Zeus had such a circumstance in mind when he offered Xenophon such favorable omens for traveling to Sardis. It is difficult to imagine that it was not foreseen.
Within three days of our arrival at Cyrus' camp, Proxenus had officially enlisted Xenophon as an officer and his personal aide-de-camp, and I was fitted for light cavalry armor and weaponry, and assigned the duty of bearing his brigade's pennant, a black flag depicting a snake shooting flame from its mouth. It was a role with which I was very pleased.
CHAPTER TWO
PROXENUS, XENOPHON, AND I entered the prince's compound, warily eyeing Cyrus' fierce-looking guards. Some thirty of these giants, seemingly chosen as much for their aesthetic qualities as for their strength and fearsomeness, were on duty at a single shift. Precisely half consisted of Ethiopians, with skin so black as to be almost blue, their huge heads shaved bald and polished by beeswax into shiny knobs decorated with a patterned system of raised tattoos. They carried enormous Persian scimitars and wore baggy pantaloons in the Persian style, and kept their massive chests bare, emphasizing the preternatural darkness of their skin. The other half of the guards, who were arranged in alternating order with the black Ethiopians around the tent, were enormous Scythians, pale of skin to the point of pinkness, almost albino, with shaved jaws and long, drooping mustaches. Twisted ropes of yellow hair hung to their waists, bound with colored strings, and they wore long, straight swords with wrought hilts, and gold-plated, snake-patterned bands on their biceps. Though both races were astonishing to look at, even to cosmopolitan Athenians like ourselves, the Scythians attracted particular attention, even though members of that tribe had long been employed in Athens as a mercenary police force. Scythian soldiers had been known to drink the blood of the men they killed in battle, and to take the scalps of their enemies by making a circular cut around the head above the ears, grasping the hair and then simply shaking the skull out the bottom, leaving the victim, whether dead or yet living, with a bloody, smooth-domed caul. Such scalps were required to be presented to their king for a share of any plunder, and were then tanned and hung from the soldier's bridle rein as mementos. If they were sufficient in number, they might even be sewn together into cloaks or arrow quivers. Such a fate was a terrible prospect to a Greek, who could not imagine presenting himself to the Boatman after death absent his hair, and possibly with skin from other parts of his body flayed and mounted in unspeakable fashion on a barbarian's kit. These men, alternating ranks of Scythians and Ethiopians, were Cyrus' personal bodyguard, and they eyed us suspiciously as we shouldered past them into Cyrus' tent.