The Last King of Lydia (15 page)

‘I could not say, my lord.’

‘Well, I would like to know the truth of it. I wish they told such stories about me,’ Croesus said. ‘I suppose it does not matter. What happens now?’

‘We make the men eager to fight.’

‘And how do we do that?’

Over the weeks that followed, Croesus watched his army pass over the land like a walking catastrophe, an earthquake of a hundred thousand feet.

The land alone could not sustain them, so unnaturally large was the gathering of men, and they descended on every farm, village and town and took the food that they needed. They were, Croesus
thought, as capricious as the Gods. One family of farmers would be greeted kindly by the passing soldiers. The fighting men would play with the children, and their officers would communicate, by
gesture and the odd word of common language, their needs to the farmers. Sometimes they would leave gifts in compensation for food and wine. At the next farm, the same men would take the crops by
force, carry off the women and young boys and torture the men to death for sport. There was no pattern to it.

Croesus understood that they took crops and cattle because they would starve if they did not. Why they murdered men and raped women was more mysterious to him. Perhaps, he thought, it was
because they had to learn that they were powerful in this foreign land, that they were not bound by the laws that had ruled them before. Perhaps even as they fed themselves and learned how to kill,
they knew that there was something else expected of them soon, that their killings were but rehearsals for a greater slaughter. No one would remember the villages and small towns that they
destroyed. Through the thousands of little murders the army committed, there grew a desire to do something unforgettable; something that would mark the conquered land as theirs.

This collective dream grew strong and yet remained unfulfilled until they came at last to the city of Pteria.

They destroyed the army that guarded the city. They broke open the gates and tore holes in the walls. Then, that night, for the very first time, Croesus watched a city being razed to the
ground.

Now that darkness had fallen, he could not see the people running in the streets, nor the soldiers who pursued them. He only saw fire – enormous, angry lakes of flame where palaces,
temples, and entire districts of houses had once stood – and the tiny, moving points of light of men with torches. It was as though he observed a city from another world, where flames had
become sentient and built a city of their own.

‘What do you think they are doing over there?’ he asked his general.

‘They are doing what I ordered them to do,’ Sandanis replied.

‘Which was?’

‘Enjoy themselves.’ Croesus winced, and the general smiled patiently. ‘It needn’t concern you,’ Sandanis said. ‘It is what happens.’

‘It makes me think of my home. Don’t you?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘How does that make you feel?’

‘I’m glad it is happening to their home and not to mine.’

‘Nothing more than that?’

The general shrugged. ‘They had bad fortune. The Gods didn’t favour them. They were weak. That is what I think.’

The king nodded, but did not reply. He looked back on the city of fire.

He imagined what was being done in the distant streets. The men tortured and killed, the women raped. The elderly and the children put to death, there being no value in their capture. Everything
of value taken, every sacred building put to the torch.

In the morning, there would be a great gathering at the blackened gates of the city. The healthy men and women, roped together like unruly cattle, would be marched back west and sold. All that
would remain of Pteria was in their memories and in the stories they would tell. He wondered how many generations would pass until the memory of the place faded entirely.

He could feel, somewhere half hidden within his mind, a sense of shame. The emotion was close but could not reach him, as if it did not belong to him at all and merely lurked in his mind,
misplaced by some other, more feeling man. He wondered where it came from, this barricade in his mind that meant he felt nothing, and whether it was the mark of a strong, ruthless king, or of some
kind of monster.

‘It doesn’t make me feel anything, you know,’ Croesus said. ‘Isn’t that strange?’

‘Why should it?’

Croesus shook his head. ‘You are lacking in imagination, Sandanis.’

‘That may be so, my lord.’

‘You may leave.’

The general bowed.

‘The reports are confirmed. The Persian army is coming. They will be here in ten days.’

‘Good. How do we respond?’

‘We wait, and we meet them here. It is as good a place as any to fight a battle. The sight of the city will act in our favour.’

‘I knew we destroyed it for some reason.’ He tried a smile, but the general did not respond. ‘Will the Ionians remain loyal?’

‘Yes. My people tell us that they refused Cyrus’s offer last night.’

‘Very well. I am glad the waiting is over, at least.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Croesus hesitated. ‘These things are necessary in war, you said?’

‘Inevitable, my lord.’

‘Very well. Let the men do what they will tonight. But tomorrow, you will get them ready to meet the Persians. I would rather see a battle than butchery.’

Sandanis raised an eyebrow. ‘Say that again after you have seen battle.’ He bowed again. ‘Goodnight, my lord. Sleep well.’

It was on the tenth day of waiting, sometime after midday, that the Persian army came into view.

Croesus’s scouts had kept careful track of its progress, and so when the Persians arrived, they found the Lydian army arrayed to meet them. Each army was a reflection of the other, and for
hours, they shifted across the plains like mirror images. The two armies shuffled from side to side, moving from one place to another, each army taking it in turns to offer a position to its
opponent that was declined. After a time, seeing that their opponents would not be deceived into assuming a weak position on the battlefield, both armies gave up trying to gain an advantage. They
simply tried to settle on a part of the plain where they could face each other, a place where a hundred thousand men could line up in order and kill one another.

At last, after hours of manoeuvring, they reached a position with which both were satisfied. Having negotiated silently, they were ready to exchange words, and Croesus’s emissary came to
him to request his final instructions.

‘If they want us to return to Lydia,’ Croesus told him, ‘they must disband their army immediately, reinstate the royal family of the Medes, and Cyrus must surrender himself
personally to me.’ He turned to Sandanis. ‘Will that be enough?’

‘I should think each one of those demands unacceptable enough on its own.’

‘Let us see how they respond to three impossibilities. Oh,’ he said, turning back to the emissary. ‘One more thing.’

‘Yes, my lord?’

‘After their man refuses and offers up some insulting demands of his own, ask him if his master will meet with me, face to face. That is all.’

Croesus watched his emissary gallop out, and saw his Persian counterpart match his trajectory until they converged at the very middle of the field.

‘Why meet with him?’ Sandanis asked.

‘As I said, I am curious to meet the man. I would like to settle some of these rumours. Besides, isn’t this what kings do before great battles?’

‘You are enjoying yourself, I see.’

‘It was my will that brought all these men here,’ Croesus said. ‘Today, we will play our part in reshaping the world. That is remarkable, don’t you think?’

The general pointed to the centre of the plain. ‘He’s coming back.’

‘That was quick.’

The emissary rode back through the Lydian lines, and bowed from the saddle to his king.

‘They refuse our demands, and insist that you send your army back across the Halys river and surrender yourself to the king of Persia.’

‘That is two impossible demands to our three. Did he consent to a meeting?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘A shame.’ Croesus paused. ‘Did he give a reason? I assume his refusal came with an insult?’

‘There was no reason, my lord.’

‘Very well.’ Croesus breathed in deeply, once. He felt no doubt, for it was too late for such things. He felt the easy courage of a man liberated from choice. ‘Let it be
done,’ he said softly.

Sandanis turned and nodded to the man at his side. The soldier lifted the horn to his lips and blew, answered a moment later by a thousand horns in the Lydian army, then, like a reply or an
echo, by the horns and drums of the Persians; a symphony of a single note played on ten thousand instruments.

The army advanced, the tips of their spears glittering in the clear light like waves under a low sun, the horses dancing nervously as they walked. The men were silent, a particular silence that
has the quality of prayer, and the only sounds that Croesus heard were those of foot against earth, of metal against metal.

A line was crossed, some invisible threshold between the two forces. The first flight of Lydian arrows whispered into the air, and was met with an answering volley from the Persian archers. Both
flights of arrows hung for a moment at the top of their arc. It seemed that they might remain there for ever. A cloud of wood and iron and feathers clustered thickly together in the middle of the
sky, the weapons of two nations mingled so close together that it was impossible to tell them apart.

Then the arrows fell.

In the unnamed village on the edge of the Halys, the villagers watched the army return.

The Lydian army had first marched past in the height of summer. Now it was harvest season, and across the continent, towns and villages and farms waited to see what the soil and the Gods would
consent to give them. A good harvest, and they could wait out the winter in some kind of comfort. A swarm of insects, a sudden flood, and thousands would starve. Everything depended on the gifts of
the earth.

Beside the river, once again, the soil had reluctantly surrendered a small harvest of grain. Each year, as they gathered in their feeble crop, the villagers cursed the stubborn soil and promised
themselves that the next year they would move on to a more fertile place. Every spring, they looked up at the sun and forgot their promise and again sowed their seeds with hope. They were gathering
the last stalks from the fields when they heard and saw the familiar signs once more – the omens of an army on the move.

The young hid themselves once again, and the old men and women waited in the fields and watched the army pass.

It was much reduced, some said by a quarter, others by a third. The old men had lived long enough to see many armies pass over the river. They had learned to read, in how the soldiers walked and
in the tone of the songs they sang in languages that the villagers could not understand, whether the wars had been won or lost. Even the sound of the army as it moved, the rhythm and force of
thousands of footfalls, could tell a story to those who knew how to listen.

The villagers saw that these soldiers did not march with pride, but neither did they have the hollow faces of men who have fought and been defeated. They marched with the exhausted air of men
who had risked their lives, had seen their friends die, for the sake of a stalemate.

On the long journey back to the Halys, Croesus had fought the battle in his mind many times.

Everything, at first, had gone as Sandanis had said it would. When the first arrows fell, Croesus had looked from one army to another, wondering if by chance his eyes might alight on the first
man to die that day, and realizing, with a kind of abstract horror, that there was a pleasure to be found in watching men die at his command.

The Persians planted their wicker shields on the earth and held their ground, and Croesus’s spearmen swept forward, hoping to break the line. The sounds that filtered back to Croesus were
not what he had expected. There were few war cries and little screaming. What Croesus heard more than anything else was the sound of thousands gasping, as though there were not air enough in the
world to keep so many alive in one place, as if they had to kill each other in order to breathe.

He watched as the Persian cavalry circled his spearmen and felt a sudden surge of fear. Sandanis had told him it was necessary, but even so, he shut his eyes when he heard a wail of panic break
out from the trapped Lydians.

At last, Sandanis gave a second signal, and as though summoned by the cries of their countrymen, the Lydian cavalry, the greatest in the world, came forward. They lowered their long spears, and
charged.

That should have been the moment. The moment that he would remember for the rest of his life, the moment when the Persians broke and ran, and he won himself a new empire.

But neither side broke. The horseman charged, but did not push through, and all movement ceased on the battlefield. The two armies fixed their positions against one another, and the killing
began in earnest.

Hours passed. Each hour brought another ten thousand dead, but the two armies did not move more than a hundred yards. The excitement Croesus had felt when the first men fell had long faded. He
sat on his horse, watching and wishing nothing more than for the battle to be over.

Suddenly, as if they had heard his thought, the armies moved apart. The hours of killing had erased the thought of retreat from their minds, until one man had rediscovered the ability to step
backwards, and shared this gift with his companions. The two armies separated, a few wary paces at a time. The captains yelled at their men to advance, to attack again, but the men would not
listen. Persians and Lydians had struck a silent truce. They had had enough of killing.

At last, the generals sounded the retreat. The battle was a stalemate. Croesus had not known such a thing was possible, that tens of thousands of men could die, yet nothing change, the world
unmoved by such a quantity of blood.

The king had said little since the battle. He had mechanically followed his general’s advice in the aftermath without offering a word in response. Now, as his horse crossed the midpoint of
the bridge over the Halys and he returned to the lands he ruled, he had found his voice again.