Phalinus waited silently for all the Greek captains to arrive, and then coldly called their attention.
"The king," he announced in an authoritative voice, "having killed Cyrus and plundered the Hellene camp, declares a great victory. He orders you to lay down your arms, and to beseech him for what mercy he might deign to offer you."
Utter silence. The Hellenes were speechless, and I saw Clearchus immediately flush, the scar on his cheek turning livid. He paused a few seconds to gain control over his anger.
"It is not for the victors to lay down their arms," he said slowly and coolly, gesturing broadly with his great, hairy arm at the immense field littered with Persian corpses. He then stalked off to complete a sacrifice he had been about to attend, leaving the other officers gathered about Phalinus, muttering to themselves.
Proxenus finally broke the tension. "Phalinus, you yourself are a Greek: speak to us openly and honestly. Is the king addressing us as a conqueror, or merely asking for our weapons as a gesture of good faith?" At this, all the captains spoke up, either shouting Proxenus down for his candor toward Phalinus, or attempting to ask their own questions. Finally an Athenian captain, Theopompus, a dandy whom I had seen one or two times with Socrates in the agora, managed to gain the others' attention.
"Phalinus," he said. "Put yourself in our place. Now that we have been plundered by the king, we have nothing but our arms and our courage. As long as we keep our weapons, we can still use our courage. But if we give up the weapons, we lose both. Could you blame us if we rejected the king's demand?" He smiled smugly at his compact argument, and waited for Phalinus' reaction. We all watched him.
Phalinus laughed tightly. "Well said, little Socrates! But logic will not advance your cause if the facts are against you. Courage or not, the king still has half a million men in the field, and that many more again in Babylon a few hours' march away. You are foolish to think there is anything you can do to check his power. I am a Greek too. If I thought you had one chance in a thousand to prevail against the king, or even to run from him and return safely back home, I would tell you to do it. By the gods, I've earned my own little stash of gold from the Persians over the years-I would even go with you. The fact that I don't speaks for itself. Ask your great philosopher what he would do in that situation."
By this time, Clearchus had completed the sacrifice and returned, his face black with the fury that had been building up within him. "Take this back to the king," he spat. "If he wishes to be friends with us, we will be more valuable to him with our weapons than without. If he wishes to make war on us, all the more reason for us to keep our weapons. The weapons stay, and will remain sharpened. And you, Phalinus, you ass-kissing son of a bitch: The next time I set eyes on you in my camp I will be carving your balls for my breakfast."
Phalinus smirked. "I am merely the king's representative," he said unctuously. "I can't tell you not to act the fool, Clearchus. But I have one more message from the king. He offers a truce if you stay where you are, but war if you move from this place, either forward or backward. Give me an answer to take back to the king: Will there be a truce, or will there be war?"
"Yes," said Clearchus.
Phalinus looked at him in confusion, then glared. "What am I supposed to tell the king?" he asked in irritation.
"That for once we agree with him. There will be truce if we stay, and war if we move."
But he did not say which he intended.
That evening, Clearchus ordered us to break camp just after dinner. When Xenophon passed the order on to me, I could not believe I had heard him right.
"Do you realize that Clearchus has just signed our death warrant?" I exclaimed. "We are only ten thousand-the king will have his entire army upon us by daybreak!"
Xenophon didn't flinch. "That may be-but Clearchus' hand was forced, by our own troops. Did you know? Three hundred Thracian infantry and forty cavalry deserted to the king this afternoon."
"Three hundred and forty? Couldn't their officers keep them in line until we all came to a decision as a unit?"
Xenophon hesitated, and looked away with an expression of bitterness. "Their own officers led them. And as soon as word of the desertion spreads through the army, there will be others."
I pondered his words. There was no telling how much longer Clearchus would be able to keep the army together in the absence of the common hope of plunder from Cyrus. A frontal attack on Artaxerxes, with badly outnumbered troops, was out of the question. Staying where we were with no provisions, while the king wore us down by delaying, would be to commit passive suicide. Our position simply was not tenable.
"Where does Clearchus intend to march us?" I asked.
Xenophon shrugged. "He sees no choice but to unite with Ariaius and the native troops, and to hope they remain loyal to us rather than to the king."
It remained unspoken, yet implicit, that moving from our present location meant a declaration of war against the entire Persian empire, as surely as our forebears had declared war on the king's own ancestors, Darius and Xerxes.
After a long march in the darkness, we reached Ariaius' camp at midnight. The officers immediately gathered around a council fire, and all of them, Persian and Greek alike, swore to defend each other to the death. At Ariaius' insistence, they sealed the pact by dipping their spears in the blood of a newly sacrificed bull, each man daubing a bit on the breast of his neighbor with his spear point as a sign of mutual trust.
Clearchus then spoke up, impatient.
"Now that we've sworn allegiance to each other with that spear-point bullshit, and recognize that we're both in the same predicament, what do you propose, Ariaius? You know this country. Do we return the way we came?"
Ariaius stared morosely into the fire a few seconds before answering.
"If we return that way, we're sure to starve. On our march here the countryside was a barren desert. For seventeen stages we had to rely on the provisions we brought with us, and now we have none." He paused again for a moment, in thought. "Returning by the northern route is longer, but it at least brings us through fertile country with plenty of villages, where we can take provisions. The key is to move fast, and put as much ground between us and Artaxerxes as possible. He won't dare to attack us with a small force, but if he moves with his entire army he'll be too slow to catch us. I propose we move quickly, while we can."
This set the officers to grumbling, for it looked like the coward's way out-a mere cut and run. No one else had a better idea, however, so by default the officers voted it as their plan, sacrificed to the gods, and each went back to catch what few hours of sleep he could before rousing the exhausted army the next morning and embarking on a forced march.
I lingered for a time in the shadows by the fire, reluctant to return to the tent, my mind whirling and my body tense and restless. Despite the awfulness of that long, bitter day-the burning of the dead, the confrontation with Phalinus, the exhausting march in the dark to Ariaius' camp-I had scarcely been able to think of anything but the event of the night before. My thoughts raced with the vivid dream I had experienced, my near certainty that I was about to die at Asteria's hands from having unknowingly committed some crime of concupiscence, like one of those sticklike male insects I once watched in horror as a child which, even during the very act of mating, is calmly devoured by the female headfirst, right down to his still rutting abdomen. After wandering aimlessly across the camp for some time, I realized with a jolt that my feet had carried me, almost instinctively, to the quarter of the camp followers.