The Last King of Lydia (30 page)

‘It is a little late to have regrets like this, don’t you think? That’s what you said to me. That there will always be another war.’

‘I did. But perhaps we can take Babylon without much of a fight. Who knows what will happen in the next war? But we can fight this one a better way.’

‘Perhaps. But it is too late for you as well, you know. No matter what you do now, you will always be considered a monster to the Ionians. They will sing stories to their children. The
terrible Mede destroyer who came from the east and put their people to the sword.’

‘I thought of you, you know,’ he said. ‘When I saw Xanthus burning.’ He stood. ‘Enough. I have matters to attend to.’

‘I am sure you do. Good luck, Harpagus.’

‘With what?’

Croesus smiled. ‘With whatever it is you need to do.’

‘The same to you.’ Then, shaking his head again, a tired man trying to dispel a troublesome thought, he walked away.

It was only on the night before the attack on Babylon that Croesus finally found the courage to visit his son again.

Gyges sat alone in a corner of the tent. All the others stood some distance apart. It seemed that even in the depths of their particular insanities, they had learned to avoid him. When Croesus
sat next to him, Gyges made no response. His son was hunched over, running his thumb over the knuckles of his closed fist.

‘Gyges.’

His son said nothing. Looking at him, Croesus could feel his fear rise again. No, he thought. I refuse to be afraid of my son.

‘I know you are suffering. I wish that I could help.’

‘No.’ The word came out flat, quiet, and resigned.

‘Is it this waiting you hate?’

‘No.’

‘We are going to take the city tonight. We won’t have to wait here any longer.’

At this, Gyges finally looked at him. ‘No,’ he said again.

Was this the only word he had left? Croesus thought. ‘Our lives will be better in Babylon,’ he said. ‘I promise. There will be a place for you there.’

‘No!’

‘Please, tell me how to help you!’ At this, he thought he saw a sudden weakness, a need in Gyges’s eyes, perhaps even a need he could fulfil. Instinctively, he raised his hands
and reached out to his son.

Gyges backed away from him. ‘No! No! No!’ He was standing and screaming at him now, and Croesus stepped back. He saw Gyges cast a hopeless glance over his shoulder, towards the
entrance of the tent. He followed his son’s gaze, looking on the farmlands out to the west, the horses grazing by the side of the river. In that moment, Croesus thought that he finally
understood his son.

‘I am sorry, Gyges,’ he said. ‘I will come again.’

‘No!’

His son might have had only one word left to him, but Croesus knew that Gyges spoke the truth. He knew that he would not come back.

When he saw Cyrus sitting on the ground in his tent with many soldiers, Croesus assumed they must have won the honour during the draining of the river. Perhaps they were the
fastest diggers, or had hunted down a scout who might have otherwise given away the Persian plan. Cyrus liked to reward such men with the finest wine and drummed music until dawn. But there was
something different about this gathering; it was somehow unlike the others that Croesus had witnessed. It was not a celebration.

No wine was passed around, and all the men still wore their armour and had swords belted at their waists. Armed men, aside from the bodyguards, were never admitted into Cyrus’s presence.
They sat quietly, staring into space. Croesus counted them, and saw that there were fifty.

It was only when he saw the rest of the weapons piled by the entrance, saw the glittering silver and gold at the tips of the spears, that Croesus realized who they were. Fifty of the Immortals,
the ten thousand elite spearmen of the Persian army. It was the regiment that never died, for no matter how many fell in a single battle, at roll call the next day ten thousand would answer, the
dead replaced by new men. No one knew how many faces the regiment had worn, in its time. They were the finest warriors that the king had.

Cyrus sat beside them, one at a time, talking privately to each man. After he had spoken to all of them, the men gathered in a circle and opened a small, plain wooden chest. It contained a fine
black powder – soot, Croesus soon realized, as the men began to coat their skin with it. Cyrus helped them, blackening patches of clothing or skin that the men had missed. His hands were soon
black with soot, like theirs.

They worked silently at this strange ritual until they were entirely covered in soot, pale eyes blinking out of black faces, a shocking white, like bone amidst ash. After they had finished,
Cyrus stood. The men gathered together at his feet, like children listening to their father speak.

‘Some of you will die tonight,’ he said. ‘Perhaps all of you. All who live will be given land and gold enough to ennoble them. All who die will have the honours passed on to
their children.’ He paused, and looked at each man in turn. ‘But I am not asking you to risk your lives merely for land and wealth. This is your chance to be a part of something greater
than yourselves. To build an empire the world will not forget. To take the city that they said could never fall. To become truly immortal.

‘No one will forget what you do tonight. Know that your king is proud of you. Know that you shame him with such courage. Thank you.’ He clapped his hands once, like a priest
completing a ritual, striking soot from his hands in a cloud of black smoke.

They did not cheer. Each man stood in turn, and Cyrus kissed him on the forehead. Then, as one, they bowed to their king, and marched out of the tent and into the night. Almost all of them had
gone when the king pulled one aside. ‘Hyroeades, wait,’ Cyrus said. He beckoned Croesus closer, a half-smile on his face, and the slave came forward slowly, studying the face of this
other man.

He had touches of grey in his hair and a well-lined face, but he did not carry himself like a veteran. He had the awkward uncertainty of a much younger man, and as he stood in front of Croesus
he looked at the ground and avoided the other man’s eyes.

‘Do you know who this is, Croesus?’ Cyrus said.

‘No.’

‘He is the man who found the way into Sardis.’

Croesus stared at him. ‘What?’

‘He climbed the south wall, and led our people in. I thought you might like to meet him.’

‘I see,’ Croesus said. He looked at Hyroeades for a time, but could not think of anything to say.

The other man tried to smile at him. ‘It is an honour to meet you, Croesus,’ he said.

Cyrus laughed. ‘An Immortal honoured to meet a slave.’ He clapped the soldier on the back. ‘Go now. And good luck.’

The man bowed deeply to Cyrus, and then, in an instinctive afterthought, bowed to Croesus as well. Whether it was an honour for his previous station, or some kind of apology, Croesus could not
tell. Hyroeades straightened up quickly, as if embarrassed, and hurried out to join his companions.

‘It will be tonight, then?’ Croesus said.

‘Yes. Everything is ready.’

‘They are the ones who will enter the city. When the river falls.’

‘Yes.’

‘Will any of them live?’

‘No. Some of them will make it to the gates. They might even reach the palace. But the Babylonians will cut them down long before we can rescue them.’

‘I see.’ Croesus hesitated. ‘You wanted to see me about some matter?’

‘I only wanted someone else to see those men before they died. So you can help me to remember them, if I should forget.’ The king sighed. ‘You can go now. I wish to
sleep.’

Croesus stood on the bank of the Euphrates and looked over the city walls, trying to find the same light that he had watched six weeks before. He could not find it. Perhaps his
Babylonian counterpart had gone to the festival and had left his home dark. Even from this distance, Croesus could hear the beating of the drums that summoned the people of the city. Though the
citizens of Babylon did not know it, the drummers were calling to the invaders as well.

Croesus took off his battered leather shoes, hitched up his tunic, sat on the river bank, and dipped his feet into the water up to the knee. He shivered at the cold.

He remembered walking with his father on a bridge over the Pactolus, looking down and seeing his fortune glittering there beneath the clear water. He remembered the great Maeander, which had run
through his old kingdom like a twisting artery, all the way to the coast. And the Halys which he had crossed, dreaming of empire. The Gyndes, where he and Isocrates had traded their secrets. And
now the Euphrates. He had heard that the Hellenes believed that they crossed another river when they died. It seemed fitting, that the land of the dead would lie on the far side of a river. His
life amounted to nothing more, he thought, than the crossing of one river after another. The shifting flow of water that was always the same, always different, and ever unchanged by his
passage.

Croesus sat by the river, listening to the drums of the distant city beat out their alien, syncopated rhythm. He waited for the water to fall.

Hyroeades stood on the bank of the river, and the fifty Immortals waited with him, all of them silent, studying the water, waiting for a sign from the Gods.

Some believed that he, Hyroeades, had the blessing of the Gods. The other Immortals, only half in jest, called him the conquerer of Sardis. He remembered that the moon had been thin on that
night too, casting just enough light for him to identify the vertical path of hand- and foot-holds that led him to the top. He remembered his hand shaking as it closed over the stone at the very
top of the wall; he had been more afraid of finding a Lydian waiting for him than he had been of falling to his death. But there had been no one there.

He had tied the rope and tugged on it six times, and the army had followed him up. Each man, as he crested the top of the wall, touched a hand to Hyroeades’s forehead and whispered a
blessing before moving on. As the Persians advanced into Sardis and the killing began, none had noticed him quietly slip away, down the north cliff to find a place to sleep and wait out the
slaughter.

Hyroeades had felt that he deserved no glory. He had merely followed what he had seen another man do. He had to catch himself each time he was fêted, restraining himself from praising the
Lydian who had first made the climb. After the city fell, he had been summoned by Harpagus to receive his reward. He had hoped they would free him from the army, give him enough land or money to
live free of the wars, to take a wife, grow crops, raise children. Instead, they offered him a place in the Immortals, the highest honour a common soldier could hope to receive. He had taken it.
There seemed no way to refuse.

Downstream, the captain of the Immortals dipped a long reed into the water. He did so every few minutes, always with the same practised motion, the backhanded, downward thrust of a finishing
blow. It had developed the quality of ritual.

When the river fell, it fell slowly, like a man sitting upright who only slowly drifts off to sleep, summoned by his dreams. At first Hyroeades could not be sure that the falling water level was
the consequence of their work. He had been fooled several times already by the random ebbing and flowing of the water. But eventually, there could be no doubting it. Now, each man watched the reed
as it descended into the river, the water covering less of it each time.

They had asked for fifty volunteers for the attack by the river, and Hyroeades had no intention of volunteering. But when the ten thousand had stepped forward as one, he could not remain behind.
What were the odds that he would be chosen, he thought, and so, half a step behind the rest, he too stepped forward. But when they drew the lots from the helmet, his name had come up.

He wondered if his lot had been fixed. If they had ensured that he would be sent inside to help take Babylon, believing his luck would let them take a second unconquerable city. And afterwards,
when he saw the relief in the faces of those who had not been chosen, he wondered how many others had thought as he had, how many had come close to not stepping forward. They had been trapped by
ideas of honour and duty, unaware that it was dissent that brought the blessing of the Gods, not blind obedience.

For the tenth time, the captain thrust the reed into the Euphrates. This time, he did not pull it out again. He opened his hand and cast it into the river, and the reed moved slowly with the now
sluggish water, leading the way into city. The captain’s empty hand rose, and gestured them forward. As one, the Immortals stepped into the water.

Hyroeades kept his eyes fixed on the walls, but saw no sentries there. The few who remained would be high up in the distant watchtowers, cursing that they had drawn sentry duty on the day of the
festival. They would be watching for some massed, sudden assault on the gates. None could have suspected that it would be the river, the flowing artery of the city, that would betray them.

They reached the base of the wall where the river met the city, and gazed into the tunnel ahead. The ceiling was low, but there was still enough room for their heads and shoulders to remain
above the water. The captain paused for a moment, peering into the tunnel, perhaps thinking that it was a bad place for a warrior to lead his men, his instincts rebelling against the possibility of
a trap. He waved his hand again, stepped forward, and disappeared into the blackness. Hyroeades and the others followed close behind.

They kept their arms high to preserve the soot on their skins, their elbows up and hands together like men at prayer. The view ahead was obstructed by the men in front of him, and after only a
few steps Hyroeades found himself in perfect darkness. He listened to the steady breathing of the men around him, amplified by the stone and water, as though he were sharing the tunnel with some
great creature of the river. He thought of what would happen if the water suddenly rose, if some distant downpour half a continent away flooded down through the Euphrates. He thought of them
kicking and clawing to get out, of drowning in the dark.