Alexander (Vol. 2) (20 page)

‘At your service, Sire!’

‘We have been tricked, General. Perdiccas has fallen into a trap at Myndus and we still have no news of the outcome of it all.

‘But I do know what we will do now. Give orders for the men to have breakfast and then have the infantry and the cavalry lined up ready to march. At sunrise I want them already on their way. We are going to attack Halicarnassus!’

Parmenion nodded and turned to his attendants, ‘You heard the King, didn’t you? Get moving then!’

‘General . . .’

‘Is there anything else, Sire?’

‘Send Philotas to Myndus with a group of horsemen – I need to know as soon as possible what is happening there.’

‘Here he is now,’ replied Parmenion, pointing to his son running towards them. ‘I’ll have him set off immediately.’

Hephaestion, in the meantime, was setting off from the camp with his squadrons, raising up an enormous cloud of dust, galloping off towards Halicarnassus.

They came within sight of the city at dawn and saw that the area under the walls was completely deserted. Hephaestion looked around and then spurred his steed onwards to take by surprise an open space that appeared suitable for their camp.

But the terrain between them and Halicarnassus was gently rolling countryside and it was difficult to see exactly what lay near the walls, so prudence demanded that they move forward at nothing more than a walk.

Everything seemed calm in the silence of sunrise, but suddenly Hephaestion heard a strange noise, sharp and rhythmical, like metal objects striking rock or soil. He continued up to the top of a low hill and was amazed at the spectacle that lay before him.

There was a huge trench down there, perhaps thirty-five feet wide and eighteen feet deep. Hundreds of men were busy working on it, carrying out the soil and broken rock and piling it up to form an equally enormous dyke.

‘Damn!’ exclaimed Hephaestion. ‘We waited too long. You!’ he shouted to one of his men, ‘Turn back immediately and tell Alexander.’

‘Of course,’ replied the horseman as he turned and sped off back towards the camp. But at that precise moment one of the gates of Halicarnassus opened and a cavalry squadron came out at a gallop along the only passable route left between the trench and the walls.

‘They’re coming at us!’ shouted the Thessalian commander. ‘Over there . . . on that flank!’

Hephaestion ordered his division to make an about turn and then he rushed at the enemy as they spread out in file along the narrow passage in order to reach open ground as quickly as possible.

He arranged his men along a front line some two hundred feet long, four horses deep and directed the attack towards the head of the enemy column which was now beginning to gallop along the dyke to take up position in a sufficiently long line to bear the brunt of the imminent clash. Indeed, they met so close to the wall that the Persians had no time to build up speed and Hephaestion managed to drive them back.

The workers who had been down at the bottom of the ditch were terrified by the noise of the battle and abandoned their tools, climbing up the bank on the side nearest the city as quickly as possible and running for the gates. But the defenders of Halicarnassus had already closed all the entrances to the city.

A group of Thessalians took the passageway between the trench and the walls and began attacking the labourers with a thick rain of javelins until they had all been wiped out. But before long another division of cavalry appeared from a side gate in the walls and attacked the Thessalians laterally, forcing them to gather together and respond.

The skirmishes continued with attacks and counterattacks, but Hephaestion finally got the upper hand by deploying the
hetairoi
, the Companions, still fresh, in front of the now exhausted Thessalians. He then chased what was left of the enemy right back to the gates, which this time were opened to let them in.

The Macedonian commander dared not follow them through the huge doors between the two massive bulwarks crawling with archers and javelin throwers. He decided it was enough to have taken the ground beneath the walls and he had his men start on digging another trench on the side of the passage while they waited for the labourers to come. Some horsemen instead were sent to scout for springs that might provide water for men and horses when the rest of the army arrived.

Suddenly one of the
hetairoi
pointed to something up on the walls: ‘Look, Commander,’ he said, indicating the highest tower. Hephaestion turned and moved closer to get a better view. He saw a soldier up there, encased in a shining iron breastplate, his face completely hidden by a Corinthian sallet helmet. He held a long, straight spear in his hand.

A cry rang out behind Hephaestion. ‘Commander, the King!’

Alexander, at the head of the Vanguard, arrived at a gallop astride Bucephalas. Within moments he was alongside his friend and he lifted his eyes towards the tower, where the armour of the mysterious warrior shone brightly in the morning sun.

He stared in silence and knew that he too was being observed: ‘It’s him. It is him, I can feel it.’

At that moment in a far off place, beyond the city of Kelainai, along the road of the Great King, Barsine had stopped with her sons in a hostelry. She reached into her bag for a handkerchief to wipe her face and felt something unfamiliar there. She pulled it out and saw that it was a container with a sheet of papyrus inside. It was the sheet on which Apelles had drawn, with a few masterful strokes, a portrait of her husband, Memnon. Through her tears, Barsine read the few words which had been added at the bottom in a rushed and irregular hand:

T
HE ENTIRE CITY
could be seen from the top of the hill and as Alexander dismounted all his Companions immediately did likewise. It was truly a stupendous sight. A huge natural bowl, verdant with olive trees and here and there dotted with the dark flames of cypresses, gently sloping like a theatre down towards the massive stone walls which enclosed the city towards the north and the east, interrupted only by the huge reddish gash of the trench Memnon had had dug at some two hundred feet from the base of the walls.

To the left was the acropolis with its sanctuaries and its statues. At that very moment smoke from a sacrificial rite rose from the altar up towards the clear sky, petitioning the gods’ help in defeating the enemy.

‘Our priests have offered a sacrifice as well,’ said Craterus. ‘I wonder who the gods will listen to.’

Alexander turned to him, ‘To the strongest.’

‘The engines will never manage to get anywhere near that ditch,’ said Ptolemy. ‘And at that distance we will never succeed in breaching the walls.’

‘That’s certainly true,’ said Alexander. ‘We’re going to fill in the trench.’

‘Fill in the trench?’ asked Hephaestion. ‘Do you have any idea how much . . .’

‘You will start straight away,’ continued Alexander, without batting an eyelid. ‘Take all the men you require and fill it. We will cover you with catapult fire at the walls. Craterus will take care of that. What news is there of our war engines?’

‘They have been unloaded in a small inlet some fifteen stadia from our camp. Assembly is almost complete and Perdiccas will transport them here.’

The sun was just beginning to descend towards the horizon above the sea, exactly midway between the two towers which watched over the entrance to the harbour. Its rays steeped the gigantic mausoleum that rose at the middle of the city in a bath of molten gold. Atop the great pyramid the four-horse chariot looked as though it was about to set off into the emptiness, to fly galloping through the violet clouds of sunset. Some fishing boats entered the port, sails fully open, like a flock of sheep returning to its pen before darkness. The fresh fish would soon be transferred into baskets and sent off to the houses where the families of Halicarnassus were preparing supper.

The sea breeze blew through the trunks of the age-old olive trees and along the paths that led up through the hills. The shepherds and the peasants were all returning peacefully to their homes, the birds to their nests. The world was about to nod off in the peacefulness of the evening.

‘Hephaestion,’ said Alexander.

‘Here I am.’

‘Have a night shift organized for the labourers. The work must be incessant, just as when we cut the stairway out of the rock face on Mount Ossa. Even if it rains or hails, you must keep on without any interruption. I want movable shelters set up for the labourers. And have the blacksmiths make tools if necessary; the engines must be in position within four days and nights at the latest.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better to begin tomorrow?’

‘No. Right now. And when it is dark you will work by torchlight, or light bonfires. This work does not call for precision – all you have to do is to shovel the earth into the ditch. We will not eat supper this evening until we have put the ballistae in place and begun the shovelling.’

Hephaestion nodded and returned to the camp at a gallop. Shortly afterwards a long line of men with spades, shovels and picks, followed by carts drawn by oxen, headed towards the trench. Alongside them came the ballistae, pulled by pairs of mules. These were gigantic bows made of laminated oak and ash, capable of propelling iron bolts a distance of some five hundred feet. Craterus had them take up position and as soon as a group of enemy archers began to let fly with arrows from the tops of the city walls, he gave orders for a return sally and a volley of the heavy iron missiles cleared the battlements.

‘You may start your work!’ he shouted, while his men rushed to reload the ballistae.

The labourers jumped down into the trench and then clambered up on the other side, by the dyke, and started shovelling soil into the trench which lay gaping behind them. The dyke itself protected the workers, so that there was no need, at least during this stage of their work, to cover them with the mobile roofs. Craterus, seeing that his men were now safe, had the ballistae aim at what was known as the Mylasa Gate and the smaller side gate to the east, in case the besieged Halicarnassians attempted any sudden sorties against the labourers.

Hephaestion gave orders for other teams to move up towards the hills with saws and axes – wood for burning, for illuminating the site during the hours of darkness would soon be required. The huge enterprise was under way.

Only then did Alexander return to the camp and invite his companions to supper, but he had given orders for them to organize regular reports on the progress of the work and the development of the situation.

The night passed without incident and the work progressed according to the King’s orders. The enemy could do nothing to prevent it.

By the fourth day sufficiently large areas of the trench had been filled and levelled, so that the siege engines could move forwards to the walls.

They were the same engines Philip had used at Perinthus – towers up to eighty feet high with suspended battering-rams at various levels, manoeuvred by hundreds of men safely sheltered inside the structure. Soon the great bowl of the Vale of Halicarnassus resounded with the rhythmic crash of the iron-headed rams beating ceaselessly against the walls, while the labourers continued to fill the trench below.

The defenders of the city had not envisaged the filling in of the trench in such a short time and they found it impossible to impede the work of the towers; within seven days a breach had been opened and much of the bastions flanking the Mylasa Gate had been reduced to rubble. Alexander sent his assault troops in over the piles of stone with orders to open up the road towards the centre of the city, but Memnon had already lined up his defence and he drove the Macedonians back without too much trouble.

The battering-rams continued their work over the following days, driving into the walls to widen the breach, while the ballistae and the catapults were brought up to keep the besieged troops under pressure. Victory seemed close at hand, and Alexander called his commanders to his tent to organize the final thrust.

Only those troops who were manning the assault towers and a certain number of forward sentries, arranged at regular intervals along the line of bastions, were left under the walls.

There was a new moon that night, and the sentries called to one another in the dark to maintain contact, but Memnon was listening to them as well. Wrapped in his cloak, he stood motionless on the battlements, looking down into the darkness and concentrating hard to try to catch what the sentries were saying to one another.

A few days previously some Macedonian nobles, friends of Attalus and the late Queen Eurydice, had come to offer their assistance to the inhabitants of Halicarnassus in their struggle with Alexander.

Memnon suddenly remembered this group and ordered his field adjutant, standing there with him in the darkness, to bring them to him immediately. It was a peaceful night – a light sea breeze was gradually refreshing the heat of the late spring day and Memnon occasionally lifted his eyes to the huge starry vault that curved away to the eastern horizon. He thought of Barsine and of the last time he had seen her naked on his bed, opening her arms and gazing at him with fire in her eyes. At that moment his feeling of loss was a sharp, physical pain.