19: THE DELTA

His breakfast over, Secretary Eumenes dismissed his pages. He pulled his purple cloak over his shoulders, and, pushing the heavy leather door flap out of his way, walked out of his tent.

The clouds had cleared away, revealing a washed-out blue sky, pale like faded paint, and the morning sun was hot. At least the rain had stopped for once. But when he looked west, to the sea, Eumenes could see more black clouds bubbling and boiling, and he knew that another storm was on its way. Even the natives who clustered around the army camp selling charms, and gewgaws, and the bodies of their children, claimed never to have known such weather.

Eumenes set off toward Hephaistion’s tent. It was difficult going. The ground had been turned to soft, yellow mud, churned up by the feet of men and animals, that clung to Eumenes’ cavalry boots.

Around him the smoke of a thousand fires rose to the pale sky. The men were emerging from their tents, hefting clothing and gear heavy with mud. Some of them shaved off their stubble: an order to be clean-shaven had been one of the King’s earliest initiatives when he had taken over the army from his assassinated father, ostensibly so that enemies would not be given an easy handhold in close quarters. The Macedonians moaned, as usual, about this fancy Greek practice, and about the wretched, barbarous state of this place the King had brought them to.

Soldiers always liked to grumble. But when the fleet had first arrived here in the delta, having sailed down the Indus from the King’s camp, Eumenes himself had been appalled by the heat, the stink, the clouds of insects that had hovered over the marshy ground. But Eumenes prided himself on his disciplined mind; a wise man got on with his business whatever the weather. It even rains on god-kings, he thought.

Hephaistion’s tent was a grand affair, far grander than Eumenes’, a sign of the favor with which the King regarded his closest companion. The living quarters were surrounded by a series of vestibules and antechambers, and were guarded by a detachment of Shield Bearers, the army’s elite infantry—reputed to be the finest foot soldiers in the world.

As Eumenes neared the tent he was challenged. The guard was a Macedonian, of course. He certainly knew Eumenes, yet he stood before the Secretary now, holding up his stabbing sword. Eumenes held his ground, his gaze unflinching, and eventually the soldier backed down.

The hostility of a Macedonian warrior for a Greek administrator was as inevitable as the weather—even if it was founded on ignorance, for how did these half-barbarians imagine that the great machinery of the army kept them all alive and provisioned, organized and directed, if not for the meticulous work of Eumenes’ Secretariat? Eumenes pushed his way into the tent without glancing back.

The vestibule was a mess. Chamberlains and pages righted tables, gathered up fragments of smashed crockery and bits of ripped clothing, and mopped up wine and what looked like blood-stained vomit. Last night Hephaistion had evidently once more been entertaining his commanders and other “guests.”

Hephaistion’s usher was a small, fat, fussy man with peculiar strawberry-blond hair. When he had kept Eumenes waiting in the vestibule for just the precise time required to reinforce his own position, he bowed and waved Eumenes forward into Hephaistion’s private chambers.

Hephaistion was on his couch, loosely covered by a sheet, and still in his nightshirt. He was the center of industry: chamberlains laid out clothes and brought in food, and a file of pages brought in jugs of water. Hephaistion himself, propped up on one elbow, picked languidly at a tray of meat.

There was a stirring under the sheet. A boy, eyes heavy with sleep, emerged and sat up, looking bewildered. Hephaistion smiled at him. He touched his fingers to his own lips, and then the boy’s, and patted his shoulder. “Go now.” The boy clambered off the couch, naked. A chamberlain pulled a cloak around him and led him from the chamber.

Eumenes, waiting by the entrance, tried not to show his disdain for all this. He had lived and worked with these Macedonians long enough to understand them. Under their Kings they had been welded into a force capable of conquering the world, but they were highland tribesmen only a couple of generations removed from their ancestral traditions. Eumenes would even strive to join in with their revels when it was politic to do so. But still, some of these pages were the sons of Macedonian nobility, sent to serve the King’s officers in order to complete their education. Eumenes could only imagine what impression it must make on such young men when they spent their mornings mopping up the stinking detritus of some barbarian-warrior in his cups—or spent their nights serving his needs in other ways.

At length Hephaistion acknowledged Eumenes. “You’re early today, Secretary.”

“I don’t think so—not unless the sun has begun to jump around the sky again.”

“Then I must be late. Hah!” He waved a meat-laden skewer at Eumenes. “Try some of this. You’d never think a dead camel could taste so good.”

“The reason the Indians spice their food so heavily,” Eumenes said, “is because they eat rotten meat. I’ll stick to fruit and mutton.”

“You really are a bore, Eumenes,” Hephaistion said tensely.

Eumenes bit back his irritation. Despite his endless rivalry with Hephaistion, he thought he understood the Macedonian’s mood. “And you miss the King. I take it there has been no word.”

“Half our scouts don’t even return.”

“Does it comfort you to lose yourself between the thighs of a page?”

“You know me too well, Secretary.” Hephaistion dropped the skewer back on the plate. “Perhaps you’re right about these spices. Still, they cut a passage through the gut like the Companion Cavalry through Persian lines . . .” He clambered off his couch, stripped off his nightshirt and pulled on a clean tunic.

This Macedonian was a contradiction, Eumenes had always thought. He was taller than most, with regular features, though a rather long nose, startling blue eyes, and close-cropped black hair. He held himself well. But there was no doubt he was a warrior, as the many scars on his body attested.

Everybody knew that Hephaistion had been the King’s closest companion since they were boys, and his lover since adolescence. Though the King had since taken wives, mistresses and other lovers, the latest being the wormlike Persian eunuch Bagoas, he had once, drunk, confided in Eumenes that he always regarded Hephaistion as the only true companion, the only true love of his life. The King, no fool even when it came to his friends, had put Hephaistion in command of this army group, and before that made him his Chiliarch—that is, his Vizier, in the Persian style. And as for Hephaistion there were no others, none but the King; his pages and other concubines were no more than ciphers to warm him when the King was away.

Hephaistion said now as he dressed, “Does it give you satisfaction to see me suffer over the King?”

“No,” Eumenes said. “I fear for him too, Hephaistion. And not just because he is my King—not because of the devastation his loss would cause in all our lives—but for him. You can believe that or not, but it’s nevertheless true.”

Hephaistion eyed him. He went to his bath, took a flannel and dabbed at his face. “I don’t doubt you, Eumenes. After all we have been through a great deal together, following the King on his great adventure.”

“To the ends of the Earth,” Eumenes said softly.

“The ends of the Earth—yes. And now, who knows, perhaps even beyond . . . Give me a moment more. Please, sit, have some water, wine, fruit . . .”

Eumenes sat and took some dried figs. It had indeed been a long journey, he thought. And how strange, how—disappointing—if it was all to end here, in this desolate place, so far from home.

With Iron Age soldiers pointing spears at their back, Bisesa, Cecil de Morgan, Corporal Batson and their three sepoy companions climbed over a final ridge. The delta of the Indus opened up before them, a plain striped by the glimmering surface of the broad, sluggish river. On the western horizon Bisesa could make out the profiles of ships on the sea, made indistinct by the dense, misty air.

The ships looked like triremes, she thought, wondering.

Before her an army camp was laid out. Tents had been set up along the riverbanks, and the smoke of countless fires coiled up into the morning air. Some of the tents were huge, and had open fronts like shops. Everywhere there was movement, a steady churning. There weren’t just soldiers: women walked slowly, many heavily laden, children ran over the muddy ground, and dogs, chickens and even pigs scampered through the churned-up lanes. Farther out, big enclosures held horses, camels and mules, and flocks of sheep and goats fanned out over the marshy land. Everybody and everything was muddy, from the loftiest camel to the smallest child.

De Morgan, despite mud and weariness, seemed exhilarated. Thanks to his “wasted education,” he knew a lot more than she did about what was going on here. He pointed to the open tents. “See that? The soldiers were expected to buy their provisions, and so you have these traders—many of them Phoenicians, if I remember correctly—following after the marching troops. There are all sorts of emporia, traveling theaters, even courts to administer justice . . . And remember this army has been in the field for years. Many of the men have acquired mistresses, wives, even children on the way. This is truly a traveling city . . .”

Bisesa was prodded in the back by a Macedonian’s long iron-tipped spear: his sarissa, as de Morgan had called it. Time to move on. They began to plod down the ridge toward the camp.

She tried to hide her fatigue. At Captain Grove’s request she had set off with a scouting party to try to make contact with this Macedonian army. After several days’ hike down the valley of the Indus, at dawn that morning they had given themselves up to a Macedonian patrol, hoping to be taken to the commanders. Since then they had been marched maybe ten klicks.

Soon they were in among the tents, and Bisesa found herself picking her way over churned-up mud and dung; the animal stink was overwhelming. It was more like a farmyard than a military camp.

They were soon surrounded by people, who stared at Bisesa’s flight suit, de Morgan’s morning suit, and the glaring red serge jackets of the British troops. Most of the people were short, shorter even than the nineteenth-century sepoys, but the men were broad, stocky, obviously powerfully strong. The soldiers’ tunics had been recut and patched, and even the leather tents showed signs of wear and repair—but the soldiers’ shields shone, gilded, and even the horses had silver bits in their mouths. It was a peculiar mixture of shabbiness and wealth. Bisesa could see that this army had been a long time away from home, but it had been successful, acquiring wealth beyond its soldiers’ dreams.

De Morgan seemed more interested in Bisesa’s reaction than in the Macedonians themselves. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m telling myself that I’m really here,” she said slowly. “I am really seeing this—that twenty-three centuries have somehow been peeled back. And I’m thinking of all the people back home who would have loved to be here, to see this.”

“Yes. But at least we are here, and that’s something.”

Bisesa stumbled, and was rewarded with another prod from the sarissa. She said softly, “You know, I have a pistol in my belt.” The Macedonians, as they had anticipated, had not recognized the party’s firearms and had let them keep them, while confiscating knives and bayonets. “And I am very tempted to take off the safety and make my escort here shove that pointy tip up his own Iron Age arse.”

“I wouldn’t advise it,” de Morgan said equably.

When Hephaistion was ready to face the day, Eumenes had his chamberlain bring forward the muster rolls and conduct sheets. This paperwork was spread out over a low table. As they spent most mornings, Eumenes and Hephaistion began to work through the endless details of administering an army of tens of thousands of men—the strengths of the army’s various units, the distribution of pay, reinforcements, arms, armor, clothing, baggage animals—work that went on even when an army had been static for so many weeks, like this one. In fact the task was made more complicated than usual by the demands of the fleet that stood idle in the mouth of the delta.

As always the report of the Secretary of Cavalry was especially troublesome. Horses died in huge numbers, and it was the duty of provincial governors across the empire to procure replacements and dispatch them to the various remount centers from where they would be sent to the field. But with the continuing lack of communication, there had been no resupply for some time, and the Cavalry Secretary, growing worried, recommended a sequestration from the local population—“If any fit horses can be found outside the cooking pot,” Hephaistion joked grimly.

Hephaistion was commander of this army group. But Eumenes, as Royal Secretary, had his own hierarchy that ran in parallel to the army’s command structure. He had subsidiary Secretaries attached to each of the main army units—the infantry, the cavalry, the mercenaries and others—each assisted by Inspectors who did much of the detailed information-gathering. Eumenes prided himself on the accuracy and currency of his information: quite an achievement in the service of Macedonians, most of whom, even the nobility, were illiterate and innumerate.

But Eumenes was well equipped for the task. Older than most of the King’s close companions, he had served the King’s father Philip, as well as the son.

Philip had seized Macedon three years before the birth of his heir. In those days the kingdom had been a loose coalition of feuding principalities, under threat from the barbarian tribes to the north and the devious Greek city-states to the south. Under Philip the northern tribes had soon been subdued. A confrontation with the Greeks had been inevitable—and when it had come Philip’s crucial military innovation, a highly trained, highly mobile cavalry division called the Companions, had sliced through the Greeks’ slow-moving hoplite infantry.

Eumenes, himself a city-state Greek from Cardia, knew that resentment against the Greeks’ barbarian conquerors was unlikely ever to fade. But in a time when civilization was limited to a few pockets surrounded by great seas of barbarism and the unknown, the more politically aware of the Greeks knew that a strong Macedon shielded them from worse dangers. They lauded Philip’s wider ambition to invade the immense empire of Persia, ostensibly in order to revenge earlier Persian atrocities against Greek cities. And the education of the King’s son at the hands of Greek tutors, including the famous Aristotle, pupil of Plato, had served to reinforce an impression of Philip’s Hellenism.

It had been just as Philip was preparing for his great Persian adventure that he had been assassinated.

The new King was just twenty, but he had shown no hesitation in continuing where his father had left off. A series of rapid campaigns had consolidated his position in Macedonia and Greece. Then he had turned his attention to the prize that had been almost in Philip’s grasp. The Persian empire sprawled from Turkey to Egypt and Pakistan, and its Great King could field forces that could number a million. But after six years of a short, brutal and brilliant campaign, a King of Macedon had mounted the throne of Persepolis itself.

This King had not wanted simply to conquer, but to rule. He had sought to spread Greek culture through Asia: he had planted or rebuilt cities to the Greek model throughout his empire. And, more controversially, he had tried to weld together the disparate people who now came under his rule. He had adopted Persian dress and mannerisms, and shocked his men by kissing Bagoas the eunuch on the lips in their sight.

Meanwhile Eumenes’ own career had advanced with the King’s. His efficiency, intelligence and political subtlety had earned him the King’s undying confidence—and his responsibilities had swollen with the growing empire, until Eumenes felt as if he was carrying the burden of a world on his shoulders.

But a mere empire was not enough for this King. With Persia won he had launched his battle-hardened army, all fifty thousand of them, to the south and west, toward the rich, mysterious prize of India. They headed ever east into unexplored and unmapped country, heading for a coast that would, the King believed, be the shore of the Ocean that ran around the world. The country was strange: there were crocodiles in the rivers, and forests full of gigantic snakes, and there were rumors of empires nobody had ever heard of before. But the King would not stop.

Why did he go on? Some said he was a god in mortal flesh, and the ambitions of gods transcended those of men. Some said that he sought to ape the achievements of the great hero Achilles. There was curiosity too; a man who had been tutored by Aristotle could not help but grow up with a deep desire to know the world. But Eumenes suspected the truth was simpler. This King was his illustrious father’s creation, and it was no wonder that the new King had wanted to eclipse his father’s very ambitions, and so to prove himself the greater man.

At last, at the river Beas, the troops, exhausted from years of campaigning, had rebelled, and even the god-king could go no further. Eumenes believed that the men’s gut wisdom was sound. Enough was enough; they would do well to hold what had already been taken.

Besides, on a deep level of his sophisticated mind, Eumenes was subtly calculating his own advantage. He had always faced rivalries in the court: the Macedonian contempt for the Greek, the fighting man’s derision of mere “scribes,” and Eumenes’ very competence were enough to make him many enemies. Hephaistion particularly was notoriously jealous of anybody who had his lover’s confidence. Often the tensions among the King’s companions could be lethal. But Eumenes had survived—and he was not without his own ambitions. As the emphasis of the King’s reign turned from conquest to political and economic consolidation, Eumenes’ more subtle skills might find greater purchase, and he intended to be well placed to advance his own position beyond that of a mere Secretary.

After that reverse at the Beas, the King still had one grand ambition, though. Still deep in India, he built an immense fleet to be sailed down the Indus and then along the coast of the Persian Gulf, intending to establish a new trade route that might further unify his empire. He had split his forces: Hephaistion was to take the fleet to the mouth of the delta, followed by the baggage train and the King’s prized elephants; Eumenes and his staff had traveled with the fleet. The King himself stayed behind to campaign against rebellious tribesmen in his new Indian province.

All had gone well, until the King had taken on a people called the Malloi, and their fortress city of Multan. The King, with typical daring, had led the attack himself—but he had taken an arrow in the chest. The last dispatch Hephaistion had received had reported that the wounded King was to be placed on a ship and floated down the river to join the rest of the fleet, while his army followed later.

But that had been days ago. It was as if the world-conquering army upriver had utterly disappeared. And the sky had been full of unimaginably strange portents; some of the men muttered that they had seen the sun itself lurch across the sky. Such strange signs could only signify a huge and terrible event—and what could that be but the death of the god-king? Eumenes believed more in hard fact than any number of omens, but it was hard for him to decipher this information, or rather the lack of it, and unease grew steadily.

Still, the unrelenting routine of running the army was a distraction from the greater uncertainty of the situation. Eumenes and Hephaistion had to deal with contentious issues that could not be resolved at lower levels of the bureaucracy. Today they turned to the case of a commander of a division of Foot Companions who, on discovering his favorite prostitute in the bed of a fellow officer, had lopped off the man’s nose with his dagger.

“It’s a nasty little case,” said Eumenes, “which sets a bad example.”

“But it’s more complicated than that. This is a shameful act.” So it was; such disfiguring had been meted out, on the King’s orders, for example to an assassin of the defeated Darius, Great King of Persia. “And I know these men,” Hephaistion went on. “Rumor has it they were lovers too! Somehow this girl has come between them, perhaps hoping to profit by turning one against another.” He rubbed his long nose. “Who is the girl, by the by?”

It was a good question. It wasn’t impossible for members of resentful, defeated peoples to work their way into the command structure of the King’s army, to do as much damage as they could. Eumenes riffled through his scrolls.

But before he could find the answer Hephaistion’s usher came bustling in. “Sir! You must come . . . The strangest thing, the strangest people—”

Hephaistion snapped, “Is it news of the King?”

“I don’t know, sir. Oh, come, come!”

Hephaistion and Eumenes glanced at each other. Then they stood, carelessly toppling the table with its scrolls, and hurried out. Hephaistion snatched up his sword on the way.

Bisesa and de Morgan were brought to a grander collection of tents, though no less mud-spattered than the rest. Severe-looking guards armed with spears and stabbing swords stood at the entrance, glaring at them. Bisesa’s escort stepped forward and began to jabber in his fast Greek. One of the guards nodded curtly, stepped into the first tent and spoke to somebody within.

De Morgan was tense, edgy, excited—a state he got into, Bisesa had learned, when he sensed opportunity. She tried to keep herself calm.

More guards, in subtly different uniforms, came pouring out of the tent. They surrounded Bisesa and the others, their swords pointed at the travelers’ bellies. Then out came two figures, obviously more senior; they wore military-looking tunics and cloaks, but their clothes were clean. One of these commanders, the younger, came pushing through the guards. He had a broad face, a long nose, short dark hair. He looked them up and down and peered up into their faces—like his troops he was shorter than any of the moderns. He seemed tense, gaunt, unhappy to Bisesa, but his body language was so alien it was hard to be sure.

He stood before de Morgan and yelled in his face. De Morgan quailed, flinching from the rain of spittle, and stammered a reply.

Bisesa hissed, “What does he want?”

De Morgan frowned, concentrating. “To know who we are . . . I think. His accent is thick. His name is Hephaistion. I asked him to slow down. I said my Greek was poor—and so it is; the stuff I was taught to parrot at Winchester wasn’t much like this.”

Now the other commander stepped forward. He was evidently older, bald save for a frosting of silver hair, and his face was softer, narrow—shrewd, Bisesa thought. He put his hand on Hephaistion’s shoulder, and spoke to de Morgan in more measured tones.

De Morgan’s face lit up. “Oh, thank God—a genuine Greek! His tongue is archaic but at least he can speak it properly, unlike these Macedonians . . .”

So, with a double translation through de Morgan and the older man, who was called Eumenes, Bisesa was able to make herself understood. She gave their names and pointed back up the valley of the Indus. “We are with an army detachment,” she said. “Far up the valley . . .”

“If that is true we should have encountered you before,” snapped Eumenes.

She didn’t know what to say. Nothing in her life had prepared her for an incident like this. Everything was strange, everything about these people from the depths of time. They were short, grimy, vigorous, powerfully muscled—they seemed closer to the animal than the human. She wondered how they saw her.

Eumenes stepped forward. He walked around Bisesa, fingering the fabric of her clothes. His fingers lingered over the butt of Bisesa’s pistol, and she tensed; but happily he left it alone. “Nothing about you is familiar.”

“But everything is different now.” She pointed to the sky. “You must have seen it. The sun, the weather. Nothing is as it was before. We have been brought on a journey against our will, without our understanding. As have you. And yet we have been brought together. Perhaps we can—help each other.”

Eumenes smiled. “With the army of a god-king I have journeyed through strangeness these past six years, and everything we have encountered we have conquered. Whatever strange power has stirred up the world, I doubt it holds any fear for us . . .”

But now a cry went up, rustling through the camp. People started running to the river, thousands of them moving at once, as if a wind had run over a field of grass. A messenger ran up and spoke rapidly to Eumenes and Hephaistion.

Bisesa asked de Morgan, “What is it?”

“He’s coming,” the factor said. “He’s coming at last.”

“Who?”

“The King . . . ”

A small flotilla of ships sailed down the river. Most were broad flat-bottomed barges, or magnificent triremes with billowing purple sails. But the craft at the head of the flotilla was smaller and, without a sail, was pulled along by fifteen pairs of oarsmen. At its stern was an awning, stitched with purple and silver. As the boat neared the camp the awning was pulled back to reveal a man, surrounded by attendants, lying on what looked like a gilded couch.

A muttering ran through the watching crowd. Bisesa and de Morgan, forgotten by all but their guards, pressed with the rest toward the shallow bank. Bisesa said, “What are they saying now?”

“That it’s a trick,” de Morgan said. “That the King is dead, that this is merely his corpse being returned for burial.”

The boat put into the shore. Under Hephaistion’s command a team of soldiers ran forward with a kind of stretcher. But, to general astonishment, the figure on the couch stirred. He waved the stretcher-bearers away, and then, slowly, painfully, with the help of his white-robed attendants, he got to his feet. The crowds on the banks, all but silent, watched his painful struggle. He was wearing a long-sleeved tunic and a cloak of purple, and a heavy cuirass. The cloak was inlaid and edged with gold, and the tunic ornately worked with patterns of sunbursts and figures.

He was short, stocky, like most of the Macedonians. He was clean-shaven, and he wore his brown hair brushed back from a center parting and long enough to touch his shoulders. His face, if weather-beaten red, was strong, broad and handsome, and his gaze steady and piercing. And as he faced the gathering on the bank he held his head oddly, tilted a little to the left, so that his eyes were uplifted, and his mouth was open.

“He looks like a rock star,” Bisesa whispered. “And he holds his head like Princess Diana. No wonder they love him . . .”

A new muttering began to spread through the crowd.

“It’s him,” de Morgan whispered. “That’s what they are saying.” Bisesa glanced at him and was startled to see tears in his eyes. “It is him! It is Alexander himself! By God, by God.”

The cheering started, spreading like fire through dry grass, and the men waved their fists and their spears and swords. Flowers were thrown, and a gentle rain of petals settled over the boat.