Tim Leach - The Last King of Lydia

The soldiers who had travelled with him dispersed, looking for old friends to discover what was happening. Croesus went to find the king.

‘Croesus.’ Cyrus smiled wearily at his visitor. ‘Welcome back. Just in time, as well. We could use your advice.’

Croesus gazed around at the men gathered in Cyrus’s tent. Cyraxes was there, looking even older and more distracted than Croesus remembered him. A Gutian general called Gobryas was the only other man he recognized, having been promoted in Harpagus’s absence. On every man’s face, he saw fear. He looked to Cyrus, expecting to find the king, as always, a centre of calm. He did not see fear there, but there were the beginnings of it — a certain hesitance, an unease that he had not seen before. ‘What has happened?’ Croesus said.

‘One of my horses broke its tether and ran into the river.’ When Croesus seemed perplexed, the king continued. ‘One of my white horses, the sacred ones. They have been with me all the way from Persia.’

‘A horse?’ Croesus tried not to give a blasphemous smile of relief. ‘That’s all?’

‘Don’t talk lightly of it, Croesus. It is a terrible omen.’

‘Of course, master.’

Silence fell in the tent, and Croesus thought of how strange it was, that he alone should be unafraid. He believed in the Gods, for what else was a man to believe in? But perhaps he had lost the faith that they would act on one side or another, that a man could be blessed or cursed by the Gods, rather than by his own choices. He had come to realize that they were neither enemies nor friends to the people of the earth. They were content merely to watch.

‘How bad is the mood in the camp, do you think?’ Cyraxes said to Croesus.

‘It is foul. I thought the king must have died, or that we were on the verge of some other disaster.’

‘I do not know what to do,’ Cyrus said, and there was another shiver of fear in the tent. ‘Did you have to deal with omens like this when you were a king, Croesus?’

‘The omens always seemed to be in my favour.’

‘Until I conquered your city.’

‘Yes. Until then.’ Croesus paused. ‘Sacrifice is what the Gods value most. Make a great sacrifice, and win their favour back. Or if it is refused, then you will know for certain that you must not cross this river.’

‘Yes. You are right, of course.’ Cyrus smiled at him — the thinnest of smiles, but Croesus was glad to see it. ‘Now, let me show you how a king deals with omens.’ He turned, and spoke to Gobryas. ‘I have an assignment for your men.’

The general bowed. ‘My lord, I don’t think they will be fit for anything until a sacrifice is made.’

‘That is what I require from them. We are going to sacrifice the river.’

The general blinked. ‘My lord?’

‘I want that river lowered to such an extent that even a woman can cross it without getting her knees wet. Do you think you can manage that?’

‘Yes, my lord.’ He thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Yes. Enough channels and the river can be drained.’

‘How long will the work take?’

Gobryas hesitated. ‘For a river this size. . at least a year,’ he said tentatively.

Cyrus nodded. ‘Well. We had better get started then, hadn’t we?’

Croesus left the king’s tent, and walked through the encampment, searching for Isocrates and Maia.

He asked each spearman and servant that he passed where he could find his friends. Many would not answer, still lost in the ill omen, but he at last found a young boy who knew the tent where Isocrates was sleeping. Croesus hurried then, almost running through the wandering paths of the encampment. Word of his return might spread through the camp, and he wanted to surprise them, if he could.

He slowed as he approached the tent. From within, he could hear an unfamiliar sound, the sound of a woman crying.

He walked close to the entrance, hoping to be mistaken, but the sound persisted, grew stronger. He hesitated, then lifted the flap of the tent a fraction; through the narrow gap, he saw the woman who was weeping. It was Maia.

She had been beaten. One eye was purpled, and blood ran from her nose, half wiped into a reddish smear across her lips and chin. These were only her visible wounds, but she sat hunched and curled up around some other pain.

Isocrates was beside her. He had his arms around his wife and was rocking her gently, whispering words that Croesus could not hear. He was weeping too. Croesus had never thought that he would see Isocrates cry.

Neither of them had seen him, and before they could, he let the corner of the tent fall, and walked away.

Croesus had heard of men who would beat their wives half to death and then fall about weeping, begging to be forgiven for what they had done. That was not what had happened, he was certain of that. All that he knew was that he had witnessed something he was never meant to see.

Croesus sat on the grass at the edge of the river, and listened.

Close to, he heard the rush of the water, ignorant of the hundred thousand men who now worked to silence it; in the distance, the sound of picks biting into wet ground and the cheerful curses of men labouring beneath the sun. Looking across the banks of the river, he counted out the work teams. There were hundreds of groups of hundreds of men, each at work on a separate channel — an army of soldiers, many of them farmers’ sons, remembering what it was to work the earth again.

‘Cyrus has announced a contest, you know,’ he said to Isocrates, who lay on the grass nearby. ‘Ten talents of gold shared amongst the men who finish their channel first. A fortune.’ He paused. ‘I have heard rumours that at night some teams have taken to filling in their rivals’ work, hoping to secure the prize for themselves. Imagine if that is true. Imagine if they are all doing that. We might be here for ever, digging trenches by day, filling them in by night.’

Isocrates sighed. ‘Must you talk?’ he said. ‘I was enjoying the quiet. That’s why I brought you out here, Croesus. To enjoy yourself, while we have a little time free from our masters. Try it, you might surprise yourself.’

‘You’re cheerful.’

‘Of course. Why aren’t you?’

‘It doesn’t bother you? We’re going to sit here for a year, doing nothing but watching them dig away at this river. A year of our lives, wasted here.’

Isocrates shook his head. ‘You still have much to learn about being a slave.’

‘Tell me then, why don’t you?’

Isocrates paused and stretched out, exploring the ground with his hips and shoulders to find a comfortable hollow to fit his back. ‘Change is the enemy,’ he said. ‘For slaves like us. Now we have gained a year where nothing will change. We will eat, do our work and sleep. The army will dig its channels, Cyrus will destroy a river. No wars will be fought, no empires won or lost. Time is frozen, and what a gift that is. To be granted a year of this stillness. There will be no surprises to trap us into making any mistake. If I had my way, I would be happy to wait by this river for the rest of my life.’

Croesus shook his head and said nothing. Looking out at the river, he could see Gyges sitting on the bank some way off. From a respectful distance, Maia watched him closely, for Cyrus had granted Croesus’s request to let her see him.

He thought suddenly of what he had seen, and wondered if his son were responsible for what had been done to Maia, if he had always been responsible. Perhaps he could have believed it before, in Sardis, but now, as he sat dangling his ankles in the water and tossing blades of grass to be carried downstream, Gyges looked different. He almost looked happy.

‘You are still unsatisfied, I suppose,’ Isocrates said.