Alexander (Vol. 2) (21 page)

He realized he wanted to face Alexander in a duel, convinced that his desire for Barsine would give him a devastating, indomitable power. The voice of his field adjutant woke him from this reverie: ‘Commander, the men you asked me to call are here with me.’

Memnon turned and saw that the Macedonians had come armed and in battledress. He had them approach.

‘Here we are, Memnon,’ said one of them. ‘We are ready, at your service.’

‘Can you hear these men calling to one another?’

The men listened out. ‘Of course. These are Alexander’s sentries.’

‘Good. Now, take off your armour and keep just your swords and your daggers – you will have to move with great agility out there in the dark, and in silence. This is what I want you to do: exit from the side gate and each one of you will seek out one of Alexander’s guards, creep up behind him and take him out of action. But you must be ready to take his place immediately and to reply to the signals. You all have the same accent and the same pronunciation – no one will realize what has happened.

‘As soon as you have taken control of a substantial tract of the guard line, you will give a signal – an owl call – and we will send an assault division with torches and incendiary arrows, to burn the towers. Understood?’

‘Perfectly. You may count on us.’

The Macedonians set off and shortly afterwards they took off their armour and went down the stairs to the walkway which led to the side gate. When they found themselves out in the open they split up and crawled on all fours towards the sentries.

Memnon waited in silence on the battlement, looking out towards the big assault towers which loomed in the darkness like giants. Then he thought he recognized the voice of one of the sentries – perhaps part of the plan had already succeeded. Some more time went by and then he heard, quiet at first but then loud and clear, the call of an owl coming from a point along the wall at an equal distance between the two towers.

He went down the stairs quickly and approached the division which was getting ready for the sortie.

‘Be careful. If you go out like that, with torches lit, you will be spotted straight away and part of our advantage will be wasted. Here’s my plan: you must get as close as possible and as silently as possible to the point where our soldiers have replaced the Macedonian sentries – down there, between the two towers. Remain there hidden away until a second group brings you a covered brazier and amphorae full of bitumen; at that point blow the trumpets with all the breath you have and attack the Macedonian garrison, while the others set fire to the towers.

‘The Macedonians believe they have virtually won the siege and they do not expect to be attacked now. Our sortie will be a success. Now, it is time, go now.’

The men headed for the side gate and, one by one, slipped out into the open, followed by the group carrying a jar full of embers and amphorae full of bitumen. Memnon watched on until the last of them had gone out and the iron gate had been closed, then he crossed the city on foot, towards his quarters. He did this almost every evening, strolling incognito among the people, listening to their talk, savouring their moods. The house he was staying in rose at the foot of the acropolis, and it was reached by first walking up a stairway and then along a narrow, steep path.

A servant was waiting for him with a lighted lamp. He opened the door that led in to the courtyard and accompanied his master towards the entrance portico. Memnon went to his bedchamber on the upper floor, where the handmaids had prepared a warm bath. He opened the window and listened: the sound of a trumpet had suddenly torn through the silence of the night, from the north-eastern side of the walls. The assault had begun.

A handmaid approached: ‘Would you care to take your bath now, my Lord?’

Memnon did not reply and waited until he saw a reddish glow and then a column of smoke ascending and twirling its way into the dark sky.

Only then did he turn and unlace his armour. ‘Yes,’ he said.

T
HE ORDERLY WAS BREATHLESS
as he rushed into the tent, but he managed to shout nevertheless: ‘Sire! An attack! They have set fire to the assault towers!’

Alexander jumped to his feet and grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘What do you mean? Are you out of your mind?’

‘They took us by surprise, Sire . . . they killed the sentries and managed to break through. They had amphorae full of bitumen and we simply couldn’t put the flames out.’

Alexander pushed him to one side and ran outside: ‘Quickly! Raise the alarm! Get all the men out! Craterus – the cavalry! Hephaestion, Perdiccas, Leonnatus – send out the Thracians and the Agrianians . . . quickly!’

He leaped on to the first horse that came his way and set off at top speed towards the line beneath the wall. The fire was clearly visible now and two columns of flame and smoke stood out, rising and twisting in dense swirls into the black sky. When he reached the trench he heard the noise of fighting coming from each of the five assault towers.

In a matter of instants Craterus’s heavy cavalry together with the Thracian and Agrianian light cavalry reached Alexander and rushed on ahead, engaging the attackers. The men from Halicarnassus were promptly forced to retreat to safety through the side gate. But two of the towers were completely lost – enveloped in smoke, they collapsed one after the other with a great crash, releasing a vortex of sparks and fresh flames which soon devoured what was left of their structure.

Alexander dismounted and walked towards the inferno. Many of his soldiers were dead, and it was clear that they had been taken by surprise in their sleep because they were not wearing their armour.

Hephaestion appeared soon afterwards: ‘We’ve driven them back into the city. And now?’

‘Gather up the dead,’ replied the King, his expression as dark as the night around them, ‘and set about rebuilding the towers. Tomorrow we will continue our attack with what we have left.’

The commander of the troops in service on the towers arrived, his head bowed, his spirits low: ‘It was my fault. Punish me if you will, but do not punish my men because they did what they could.’

‘The losses you have suffered are sufficient punishment for a commander,’ replied Alexander. ‘Now we must understand where the mistake was made: was there no one checking the sentries?’

‘It seems impossible, Sire, but I had done the rounds just before the attack began and I heard the calls of the sentries. I had given orders to use only the thickest Macedonian dialect in order to avoid any problems . . .’

‘And so?’

‘With my own ears I heard all of them call out in perfect Macedonian, but you must find this hard to believe.’

Alexander ran his hand over his forehead. ‘I believe you, but from now on we must be continually aware that this opponent is the most cunning and the most dangerous we have had to face so far. As of tomorrow double the number of sentries and change the passwords at every change of guard. Now, gather up the dead and have the wounded taken back to the camp. Philip and his surgeons will take care of them.’

‘I will do exactly as you have ordered and I promise that nothing like this will ever happen again, even if I have to stand guard myself.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ replied Alexander. ‘What you should do instead is have our naval men teach you how to signal at night with a polished shield and the light of a fire.’

The commander nodded, but just then his attention was drawn by a figure walking around the embers of the burned towers, every now and then bending over as if inspecting something on the ground.

‘Who is that?’ he asked.

Alexander looked in the direction indicated and recognized the man as he turned and his face was illuminated for an instant in the flames.

‘No need to worry – it’s Callisthenes.’ And as he spurred his horse on towards his official chronicler, he turned and shouted to the commander: ‘Take care! If it happens again, then you’ll pay for this time as well!’

Soon he was alongside Callisthenes, who was crouching down, observing one of their dead soldiers, definitely a sentry because he was dressed in full armour.

‘What are you looking at?’ asked the King as he leaped to the ground.

‘Dagger,’ replied Callisthenes. ‘They used a dagger. A single stab wound to the back of the neck. And down there is another one – identical.’

‘So the attackers were Macedonian.’

‘What does this have to do with using a dagger?’

‘The duty commander told me that all the sentries, right up to the very last moment, replied to all the calls in Macedonian dialect.’

‘Does that surprise you? You certainly have no shortage of enemies back home – people who would be very pleased to see you humiliated and destroyed. And some of them will have come here to Halicarnassus – it’s not such a long journey from Thermai.’

‘What exactly are you doing here now?’

‘I am a historian. The autopsy is essential procedure for anyone who aspires to being a true witness to events.’

‘And so Thucydides is your model? I would never have guessed. Such unadulterated rigour does not become you – you enjoy living it up too much.’

‘I take what I can wherever I find it, and in any case I have to know all there is to know: I decide what should not be told, what should be told and how to tell it. This is the historian’s privilege.’

‘And yet there are things happening right now which you cannot even guess at. While I can.’

‘And what would these things be? If I may ask.’

‘Memnon’s plans. I realize now that he has studied everything I have done and perhaps everything my father Philip ever did. And this is what allows him to be one step ahead of us.’

‘And in your opinion what is he thinking about now?’

‘About the siege of Perinthus.’

Callisthenes would have liked to ask more, but he found himself alone with the corpse which lay at his feet as Alexander leaped on to the horse and rode off. The smouldering remains of the two towers collapsed, releasing a sheet of flame and a whirlwind of smoke which the wind soon dispersed.

The towers were rebuilt with some difficulty, using the hard, knotty trunks of olive trees, and the siege operations were slowed down. Memnon, who was receiving supplies regularly by sea, was in no rush to risk another sortie, and Alexander did not want to use the other machines without first checking them thoroughly because they too had been damaged by smaller fires.

What worried him most of all were the noises coming from inside the city – unmistakable noises, similar to those which his own carpenters were making as they reconstructed the towers.

When the new engines were finally in position and the rams started widening the breach, Alexander found himself faced with exactly what he had feared – a new semicircular bastion uniting the segments of the wall which were still intact.

‘The same thing happened at Perinthus,’ Parmenion recalled when he saw the improvised fortress appear behind the opening created by the battering-rams.

‘And that’s not all,’ said Craterus. ‘Just follow me please . . .’

They climbed to the top of one of the towers, the easternmost one, and from there they saw what the besieged citizens of Halicarnassus were busy preparing – a gigantic quadrangular structure made of wood with great square beams, connected lengthwise and crosswise.

‘It has no wheels,’ said Craterus. ‘It is anchored to the ground.’

‘They have no need of wheels,’ said Alexander. ‘They simply want to keep the breach in their sights. When we try to enter, they will let fly with showers of bolts and arrows – they will massacre us.’

‘Memnon is a tough specimen,’ commented Parmenion. ‘I had warned you, Sire.’

Alexander turned sharply without making any attempt to conceal his annoyance. ‘I will demolish the walls and even that damned wooden tower, General, whether Memnon likes it or not.’ Then he turned to Craterus. ‘Keep the tower under surveillance and let me know what they are up to.’ He hurried down the steps, mounted his horse and returned to the camp.

*

The breach was widened even further, but each Macedonian assault met with a counterattack from Memnon, and his new bastion provided an excellent position for his archers, who easily picked off the attackers as they came through. The situation was virtually a stalemate, while the summer sun became warmer by the day and Alexander’s reserves more and more depleted.

One night it was Perdiccas and his officers who led the garrison on the breach. Some wine had arrived from Ephesus, a gift from the city’s administration for Alexander, and the King had had some of it distributed to his officers.

It had been some time since they had drunk anything as good as this and Perdiccas and his men were anything but moderate in their consumption. By midnight they were all under the influence. One of them started singing the praises of the beauty of the women of Halicarnassus, of which he had heard tale from a merchant at the camp, and the others became excited – bragging and challenging one another to sort out the siege once and for all with a surprise turnaround attack.

Perdiccas came out of the tent and looked at the accursed breach on which so many brave Macedonian soldiers had already died. At that moment the light sea breeze seemed to clear his mind and he had a vision of himself beneath the walls of Thebes, slipping in through the city gates with his men to resolve the stalemate.