The Ten Thousand

Given my secretiveness, did she notice me as I pursued her? I personally have no doubt that she did, and in fact once, in a moment of weakness on her part, I even gained her grudging admission to this effect, though she gave no indication of it at the time. A hulking, brooding foreigner, standing a full head above the surrounding crowds, and seeming to be present whenever she emerged into view from her lodgings, would be a hard sight for her to miss. Here the hunter and hunted metaphor breaks down, for if she had indeed been some sort of human prey and I the pursuer, it would not have taken her long to learn to avoid me, to post watchful and giggling sentries, to keep a sharp eye out for my stalking approach and thereby to passively dishearten me in my unwanted attentions. As it happened, she did not do so, and so by default gave impetus to my chase, even casting a smiling eye of encouragement to me now and then when my patience seemed to flag.

Who, then, was the hunter, and who the hunted?

Even today it is a question I ca

BOOK FIVE

The victor's cause is pleasing to the gods,

But girls prefer the vanquished…

– UNKNOWN

CHAPTER ONE

THE PERSIAN SCOUT galloped furiously up to Cyrus on his frothing horse, his beard wiry and dusty from the sprint, a wild expression in his eyes. He shouted in Persian and in camp Greek, sometimes intermingling the two, his tongue tripping over itself in his hurry.

"The king… the king is marching toward us in battle array! Today is the day, Lord Cyrus! The hour of your glory is at hand!"

Word spread quickly down the line, raising panic among the camp followers and confusion among the men. Officers marching in the front, near Cyrus' party, immediately wheeled and began racing back to their units, colliding with the troops advancing behind. Concerned that we might be attacked at any moment, and on unfavorable ground, the prince dispatched officers the length of the army's march to begin making order out of the chaos and to provision the troops. Other riders he sent up into the surrounding hills to observe the king's forces, and to identify favorable terrain for a battle. Cyrus himself hastily do

We stood in silent formation, facing the hills to the east whence the king's troops would be arriving. Hardly a man stirred. The only movement was the occasional distant rider galloping from or toward the army, retrieving messages from the outposts and carrying Cyrus' orders to his far wings. The moment was otherworldly and eerie, tens of thousands of men motionless and silent-that brief moment before engagement when the lines are orderly, the troops confident, the horses calm, and the Homeric glory of battle is most apparent and anticipated.

The distant hills facing us began shimmering in the mid-afternoon heat, becoming hazy and ill-defined. Small flies buzzed about our faces, and sweat trickled down my sides under the corselet. My scalp burned and itched under the helmet, the felt caul lining my head underneath already drenched with perspiration. The initial tension, the sharp knot I had felt in my stomach while making my preparations, had given way to a dull, throbbing ache, a weight in the lower belly and knees, a pervasive background presence of anticipation and fear. Some men, even officers, became restless in the heat, shifting on their feet, gulping fetid water from their skins and chatting idly with their companions. A few set the rims of their heavy shields on the ground leaning against their knees, to free up their hands while they wrung out their caps. Others simply sank down into the dust where they were, grunting loudly as they sat, concluding that whatever repose they were able to afford their tense limbs was worth the difficulty of standing up again under the weight of their gear.

The sun beat on us relentlessly, turning the outside of our armor and helmets hot to the touch, steaming our bodies inside like loaves of bread in an oven. The haziness increased, and we had almost begun to doubt we would be seeing action that day at all, when we noticed the distinct outline of a brownish cloud floating up from the horizon. At first it was so distant and faint that when I pointed it out to Xenophon, he simply dismissed it as the effect of heat waves on the sand as the sun burned hotter. After a few minutes, however, we saw that the cloud was drifting closer, becoming denser and more ominous as it approached-the dust raised by the million marching feet of Artaxerxes' army.

The horizon at the top of the distant hills darkened to black, and then thickened in a wavy line, from the downstream course of the Euphrates at the right of our present location, in a wide arc almost to the farthest left of our view-and then the line began spreading and thickening like the dark shadow of a cloud, moving toward us, inexorable and plaguelike, as the massed forces of five times a hundred thousand men and horses approached us in formation. Certainly no sight ever seen by mortals, not the sacking of Thebes nor the destruction of Ilium, surely not even the war between the gods and the Titans, was a match for this sight of the king's enormous army, for pure, destructive splendor. Here and there shone sparkles of light as the sun reflected off glittering armor and polished bridle bits, and within moments the occasional shouts of officers' orders, the whi

Earlier in the day Cyrus had warned us not to be u