Thousands of men, or former men, they were, though many were unrecognizable as such. It had been only a day since they fell, yet the furnacelike heat had cooked them where they lay on the hot sand, and many had swollen to twice their size with the gas in their bellies. Most lay deathly still, inert and silent as the rocks and crumpled wagons littering the plain. Others, however, hissed and belched in the heat, their limbs occasionally twitching and jerking. Their repose was further disturbed by the raucous cawing of crows circling and gathering in the sky above, summoning their courage for forays to the ground, aimed precisely at those dead whose inner workings were now most exposed to the heavens. I swallowed my rising disgust and forced myself to absorb the scene, to take in the changing details, noting as I stared that not all the bodies were prone and dead, but that many consisted of the black silhouettes of camp followers or soldiers, wandering aimlessly or kneeling or even sleeping in the fields, shoulder to entrails with the dead. An exhausted Greek follower half rose in sleep to slap at an overeager crow that had tested him with a peck to the eyes, and a bloodied Spartan, still in battle gear, sat up swearing and kicking at a stray pig that had begun rooting at his crotch. A filthy, robed woman rocked back and forth on the ground, her hands clawing at her face and hair as she moaned and keened wordlessly at an unidentifiable loss.
To my right a hundred soldiers and camp followers had organized themselves into funeral brigades, which had started pyres and begun collecting bodies for sorting and burning. Persian soldiers, many of them already half charred from the effects of the Boeotian engines, were stripped of any usable possessions and left naked where they fell, their flesh bled or burnt dry of blood and the skin on their faces a hideous, bluish white mask. A row of cadavers had been collected, fallen camp followers of Cyrus' army, who were being identified as best as possible and laid with a brief ceremony into the crackling bonfires by men robed and hooded in thick blankets to shield them from the intense heat and the stench. To my relief, I saw no armor of Greek soldiers in the rows of the dead.
Wood for the pyres was readily at hand, if only from the thousands of Persian arrows and heavy Egyptian shields lying about the surrounding field, abandoned in their owners' hasty departure. Intact wagons and carts, too, were available, and despite the Persians' attempted slaughter, hundreds of head of cattle and sheep had somehow survived the carnage of their brethren and escaped in the night, and were now wandering in the vicinity of the camp, bawling to be milked and tended. If there were not enough provisions to last the entire return trip home, we were at least sufficiently supplied to tide us over for the next several days. I wandered the camp, taking stock of our circumstances and searching for Xenophon and Proxenus. A cloud of dust had separated from the main body of enemy troops in the distance, too small to warrant alarm, but meriting my wary attention as it was intercepted by the Spartan scouts Clearchus had remembered to post on the approaches to the camp. I was soon able to make out an incoming rider at the outer periphery of the battlefield, unarmed and bearing a herald's staff. Since I was in the vicinity, I waited for him as he picked his way gingerly around the swelling Persian cadavers, and I then led him to Proxenus' tent, which for want of any better structure had become the informal gathering place of the army's officers.
Clearchus, who alone among the Greeks was in an unaccountably cheerful mood, came to meet him, and found to his surprise that it was Phalinus, an older, morose-looking Spartan who in his younger days had served under him, but had found the experience to be too trying, and had managed to arrange duties elsewhere. Phalinus had always considered himself an expert military strategist, rather than an actual fighter, and several years ago had convinced Tissaphernes to take him on in this capacity. He was said to be held in high regard even by Artaxerxes for his knowledge of Spartan military tactics and ways. Clearchus punched him good-naturedly on the shoulder.
"You old dog!" he said. "So the king hasn't sent you packing by now for your sorry performance yesterday! You must have him by the short hairs with all your stories about your great victories over Athens. Have you told him yet how you used to be my water boy when we were young hebontes training in Sparta?" Clearchus guffawed loudly at this, but Phalinus remained dour and stony-faced, his eyes bloodshot and watering from the smoke of the funeral pyres, as he refused to reciprocate his former commander's light-hearted greeting.
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?"