Arthur Clarke - Time’s Eye

Basil said, “Yeh-lü is asking about the yam. He has ordered riders out along all the main routes. But some are broken. He says he knows the world has undergone a great disturbance. He wants to know what you understand about this strangeness, and what it means for the empire.”

“We don’t know,” said Sable. “That’s the truth. We are just as much victims of this as you are.”

Yeh-lü seemed to accept this. He stood languidly, and spoke again.

Basil gasped with excitement. “The Emperor himself is impressed by your gift, the orange cloth, and wants to see you.”

Sable’s eyes hardened. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

They stood, and a party quickly formed up, headed by Yeh-lü, with Sable, Kolya and Basil at the center, surrounded by a phalanx of tough-looking guards.

Kolya was rigid with fear. “Sable, we have to be careful. We’re the Emperor’s property, remember. He will speak only to members of his family, perhaps a few key aides like Yeh-lü. Everybody else just doesn’t count.”

“Yeah, yeah. Even so. We’ve done well, Kolya. Just a few days here and we’ve got this far already … Now we just have to figure the angles.”

They were taken into a much grander chamber. The walls were hung with rich embroidery and tapestry, the floors covered with layers of rugs and carpets so thick they were soft to walk on. The place was crowded. Courtiers milled and beefy-looking soldiers stood around the walls, laden with weapons, glaring at the cosmonauts and everybody else—even each other. In one corner of the yurt an orchestra played softly, a harmony of lutes. All the instrumentalists were beautiful, all very young girls.

And yet for all its opulence this was still just a yurt, Kolya thought, and the prevailing stink, of greasy flesh and stale milk, was just as bad as in Scacatai’s humble home. “Barbarians,” he muttered. “They didn’t know what towns and farms were for save as sources of booty. They plundered a world, but they still live like goatherds, their tents piled with treasures. And in our time their descendants will be the last nomads of all—still trapped by their barbaric roots—”

“Shut up ,” Sable hissed.

Following Yeh-lü, they walked slowly to the center of the yurt. Around the throne that was the focus of this wide space stood a number of smooth-faced young men. They looked similar: perhaps the Emperor’s sons, Kolya thought. There were many women here, sitting before the throne. All were handsome, though some looked as old as sixty; the younger ones were quite stunningly beautiful. Wives, or concubines?

Yeh-lü stepped aside, and they stood before the Emperor.

He looked about sixty. Sitting on his ornately carved throne, he was not tall. But he was slim, upright; he looked very fit. His face was full, his features small—very Asiatic—with only a trace of grey in his hair and neatly groomed beard. He held a swatch of parachute cloth in his hand, and he regarded them steadily. Then he turned aside and muttered something to one of his advisors.

“He has eyes like a cat’s,” said Sable.

“Sable—you know who this is, don’t you?”

“Of course.” To his astonishment she grinned, more excited than fearful.

Genghis Khan watched them, his black eyes unreadable.

At dawn Bisesa was woken by the peals of trumpets. When she emerged from the tent, stretching, the world was suffused with blue-gray. All across the river delta the trumpet notes rose up with the smoke of the night’s fires.

She really was in the camp of Alexander the Great; this was no dream—or nightmare. But mornings were the times she missed Myra the most, and she ached for her daughter, even in this astonishing place.

While the King and his advisors decided what to do, Bisesa, de Morgan and the others had spent the night at the Indus delta camp. The moderns were kept under guard, but they were given a tent of their own to sleep in. The tent itself was made of leather. Battered, scuffed, it stank , of horses, food, smoke, and the sweat of soldiers. But it was an officer’s tent, and only Alexander and his generals had more luxurious accommodation. Besides, they were soldiers, and used to roughing it, all save Cecil de Morgan, and he had learned better than to complain.

De Morgan had been quiet all night, in fact, but his eyes were alive. Bisesa suspected he was calculating how much leverage he could apply in his new role as an irreplaceable interpreter. But he grumbled about the Macedonians’ “barbaric” Greek accent. “They turn ch into g and th into d. When they say ‘Philip’ it sounds like ‘Bilip’ …”

As the day gathered, Eumenes, the Royal Secretary, sent a chamberlain to Bisesa’s tent to communicate the King’s decision. The bulk of the army would stay here for now, but a detachment of troops—a mere thousand!—would make their way up the Indus valley to Jamrud. Most of them would be Shield Bearers, the shock troops who were used on such ventures as night raids and forced marches—and who were entrusted with Alexander’s own safety. The King himself was to make the journey, along with Eumenes and his favorite and lover, Hephaistion. Alexander was evidently intrigued by the prospect of seeing these soldiers from the future in their bastion.

Alexander’s army, tempered by years of campaigning, was remarkably well disciplined, and it took only a couple of hours for the preparations to be completed, and the orders for the march to be sounded.

Infantrymen formed up with weapons and light packs on their backs. Each unit, called a dekas ,although it typically contained sixteen men, had a servant and a pack animal to carry its gear. The animals were mostly mules, but there were a few foul-smelling camels. A couple hundred of Alexander’s Macedonian cavalry would ride along with the infantry. Their horses were odd-looking little beasts; Bisesa’s phone said they were probably of European or central Asian stock, and they looked clumsy to eyes used to Arabian breeds. The horses had only soft leather shoes and would surely have quickly been ruined by being over-ridden on rocky or broken ground. And they had no stirrups; these short, powerful-looking men gripped their horses’ flanks hard with their legs and controlled their mounts with vicious-looking bits.

Bisesa and the British would travel with the Macedonian officers, who walked like their troops—as did even the King’s companions and the generals. Only the King was forced by his injuries to ride, on a cart drawn by a team of horses. His personal physician, a Greek called Philip, rode with him.

But after they had set off Bisesa realized that the thousand troops, with their military gear, their servants, pack animals and officers, were only the core of the column. Trailing after them was a rabble of women and children, traders with laden carts, and even a couple of shepherds driving a flock of scrawny-looking sheep. After a couple of hours’ marching, this ragged, uncoordinated train stretched back half a kilometer.

Hauling this army and its gear across the countryside involved an enormous amount of labor, unquestioned by everybody concerned. Still, once they had entered the rhythm of the march, the troopers, some of whom had already marched thousands of kilometers with Alexander, simply endured, setting one hardened foot before the other, as foot-slogging soldiers had always done. Marching was nothing new to Bisesa and the British troops either, and even de Morgan endured it in silence with a fortitude and determination Bisesa grudgingly admired. Sometimes the Macedonians sang odd, wistful songs, in strange keys that sounded out of tune to Bisesa’s modern ears. These people of the deep past still seemed so odd to her: short, squat, vivid, as if they belonged to a different species altogether.