It was here, too, that the long-awaited Clearchus joined us with the remaining core of the army he had raised earlier with Cyrus' darics, a thousand fierce and silent scarlet-cloaked Spartan men-at-arms, each with two or three helot slaves to carry their heavy armor and weapons. He also brought eight hundred broad-shouldered Thracian targeteers who had defected to his forces, and two hundred Cretan bowmen. These were to form the hard-muscled center of Cyrus' Greek army, over which Clearchus himself was general, the counterpart to a Persian named Ariaius who commanded Cyrus' native forces. Clearchus was as terrifying an individual as Proxenus had led us to believe, and worse. His face was so homely and pockmarked as to be almost comical, but he had an evil, jagged scar running halfway down the side of his temple, which he was constantly picking at, keeping it inflamed, perhaps intentionally, for effect. His beard was so ragged and lice-infested as to raise eyebrows even for a Spartan, and he never smiled-in fact, he hardly even talked except to cuss out his men, and could barely chew for the rotten blackness of his teeth. He rode disdainfully among his troops, scarcely deigning to show obeisance to Cyrus, but his new recruits marched in perfect unison, without a single wasted movement or word, showing little concern and even less curiosity at the hundred thousand native troops gathered to watch their arrival. They followed Clearchus' smallest gesture and command as closely as if they were a single machine-a war machine, one begotten in turn by a determined god.
During the army's reorganization here at the Meander, Clearchus, surveying the situation, flew into a fury and demanded that the quantity of baggage and camp followers be drastically reduced-the Spartans refused to fight to protect clothing wagons, flute girls and kitchen staff. Cyrus resisted for a time, although when Clearchus threatened to march away with the troops he had just brought, the prince acquiesced in part, cutting the baggage train and followers by half, and paying the latter in gold to return to their homes. He insisted, however, in the face of much Spartan grumbling, on keeping a small coterie of slave girls and attendants-the prince was Persian, and had appearances to keep up.
In view of what the Fates had in store for me, I cannot say whether the prince's stubbornness in this affair was to my benefit or not, though his decision had as great an impact on my life as any decree from the gods, or from the Spartans, for that matter.
Clearchus be damned.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE RAGGED, BAREFOOT boy sat on a boulder at the side of the trail, staring steadily into the distance as he methodically reached into the leather pouch at his hip, picking out grubs he had collected from beneath logs and roots, and munching them one by one. Not that I had ever been especially fond of the grubs and grasshoppers I myself had eaten as a slave in Athens-they filled the belly, barely, and that was about all one could say in their favor-but the fact that this boy was eating them so systematically indicated that they were a mainstay of his diet, not a supplement as they had been for me, and I sympathized with him.
For an hour Xenophon and I had been riding through the narrow gorge of the Meander, picking our way carefully upriver along a rocky trail ripe for twisting a horse's knee or laming its foot. We were seeking a crossing point that our guides had said was to be found nearby, but had seen nothing but the ruins of two rope-and-log bridges that the locals had recently cut, apparently in an attempt to hinder the army's progress. In fact, the army was not even following that path-Cyrus had no interest in pursuing minor tribes of nomadic herdsmen into the interior mountains. Still, our herds had been harassed lately by Pisidian raiding parties, and Xenophon had volunteered to go out in search of a path by which a more heavily armed band of hoplites might later be sent to frighten them away. Proxenus had consented, and assigned to us an interpreter named Cleon, and two Boeotian scouts.
We had to speak loudly to be heard above the roaring of the water, which rushed in a torrent through the narrow gap it had been cutting for the past several miles. On our right was a steep, gravelly hill, almost a cliff, unclimbable, riddled with the holes of an enormous colony of rodents that had constructed a vast network of tunnels beneath the surface. Small spills of flaking shale and debris occasionally tumbled down in front of or behind us as we passed, startling us into thinking that someone must be above us at the top of the ridge; yet whenever we looked, we saw only the pockmarked gravel and the occasional small furry head peeking stealthily out of a hole.
Seeing the boy sitting out here alone, I signaled for Xenophon to stop, and we pulled our horses up alongside, looking at him curiously. He ignored us completely, or feigned unawareness of our presence. He could not have been more than nine or ten years old, and I wondered how he had come to be here, for I saw no signs of any Pisidian encampment nearby. His cheeks were drawn in hunger, and his eyes hollow. The skin around his mouth was filthy, as if he had gorged on honey some time before and neglected to wash afterwards, allowing the dirt to collect around his lips and mingle with the steady stream of snot from his nose that he seemed to have no inclination to wipe off.
Xenophon and I looked at each other. "Is the boy right in the head?" I asked. He shrugged, and called over Cleon to help us communicate.
Cleon was a tall, rangy fellow with weak eyes and odd, bushy hair, a Pisidian who had been captured in a Persian raid years ago, but had become thoroughly Persianized since. He looked at the child disdainfully and barked a question at him. The boy showed no inkling of understanding, neglecting to even blink or glance at him; he merely continued to stolidly chew and pop the glistening white larvae. The interpreter asked something else, to equal effect, then shrugged his shoulders.
"He is an imbecile," Cleon said. "Either that or deaf and mute."
"It would be useful if we could get him to talk," said Xenophon, thoughtfully gazing at the urchin. "He clearly knows the country, or he would not be sitting here so comfortably. He must know if there are any crossings close at hand."
He swung off his horse and I did the same, welcoming the chance to stretch my legs. Xenophon sat down on the boulder beside the boy, rummaging through the pack he carried slung across the horse's haunches. Removing a chunk of roast boar left over from a hunting expedition two days before, he held it out to the famished child.
The boy's eyes flickered as he caught the scent of the meat, and he turned his head slowly to look into Xenophon's face. Almost faster than I could see, his hand shot out, and without even looking at the meat, he snatched it and in one swift motion stuffed it into his leather pouch. He intended it for later consumption, I suppose, because he then turned his gaze back to its previous target over the river, and resumed his slow chewing of the grubs.