Arthur Clarke - Time’s Eye

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.