Chapter III, Part I: Hellene to Hellene
(Spring, 1st Year of the 130th Olympiad ~ 260 BC)
Nine years. For nine whole years, a long time in the life of mortals, I had toiled as a xenoi for the growing satrapy that was that of Baktriana. In those nine years I must have traversed the entire expanse of the nominally Seleukid province thrice over, and still I never grew bored or became angered by the same familiar sites or sounds, something which to most of my Lakedaimonian kin would have seen me shamed and likely exiled from the city, had it not already been so.
These nine years of my life also allowed my mind to change toward the Asiatic, the Easterner, those people that we Hellenes defeated at the side of the boy king and where we were pressed into remaining to protect his rear from Persian shafts. Where once I had believed they were nothing like me, just soft and effeminate farmers who relished the easy way of life, I now looked at those who marched with me each day, especially the horsemen and curious rows of warriors that were both archers and spear-men. Before I came to Asia I knew that a Persian child was taught to fire a bow before being able to fully walk, but to actually see such a sight is really something to open your eyes wide. No doubt, should it come to pass that this record is revealed openly, I will be burnt alive by historians and philosophers of the future, but I say let them do their worst! I have seen what they will never see and Gods curse them if their words bear venom.
Can you imagine, reader, how wealthy a man I was after nine years of payment from the Baktrian mints? I say 'mints' because, by my fifth year in the east, another mint had been built by Diodotos the Younger before he went even further east and has been pressing silver and gold into coins ever since. Let me tell you with what food and shelter Jason and I were given, a clutch of slaves to both of us, and the two drachma a day pay with a bonus for services, by the end of nine years of marching, exercising and doing little else, I had more wealth than a most of the Spartiates in my own polis. Nearly a mina a month, therefore nearly thirteen mina a year, which comes to nearly two talents of coin by the time of which I write. Two talents is some eight-thousand drachma, and when you've little else to spend that on except buying meat and engaging in relations with the local merchants, well, it soon adds up.
What could have happened in nine years, I hear you say. What great deeds were accomplished and foes slain? I shall give you your answer.
By myself and the lochos of thureophoroi into which I had been enlisted, led by our doughty Boeotian who I found to be called Agathokles, there were none. We ate, we drank, we used our slaves and we told tales of our homes, our lives before heading east, but except for alley murders and tavern brawls there was no fighting for us.
At first we were under the employ of Diodotos the Younger, as I have said, but soon enough we were marching west again and into the camp of a half-Persian half-Greek named Philipos Zaraiaspaios. He was an arrogant man, or so I thought, though a sober man who never touched a drop of wine and a devout follower of Zeus Thunderer. None of the lads took to him at first, but as the years of inactivity drew on without the relief of war and the shedding of blood, we rallied to him and became like him morose both in expression and thought. Of course we remained confident, with so much happening in the favour of Baktria and Diodotos the Elder how could we not? We just happened to not be a part of it.
The fortunes of the families of Baktrios and Marakandaios swelled as the years past; Patrokles Marakandaios achieved victories at the Olympic games, a marble statue raised to him in the agora of Alexandreia-Kapisa by the citizens there, his sons growing up in that same settlement and flourishing into manhood before taking steps to be away from their celebrated and wealthy yet seditious father.
Soon enough the eldest of these was following his fathers closest advisor, an Athenian by the name of Atrosokes Nikátōr, onto the very heartland of India and all the way to the city of Takshashila. It was only in the winter of the fourth year of the one-hundred-and-twenty-ninth Olympiad, after nearly three years of besieging the religious centre and central settlement of the region, sending horsemen out to ravages the countryside and cut off both supplies and reinforcements, that Takshashila capitulated, most of its male population put into shackles of rope and chain and sent west into lands where they had never tread. It was an action, beside the slaughter of hundreds, that would haunt the dreams of the youthful Zoilos Marakandaios for the remainder of his life and which he would ever regret. The following year his younger brother Antialkidas would join them both in the community that was swiftly beginning to rebuild itself.
So are the adventures of the Marakandaios line, as told to me by those that were there, but what of the royal family and their exploits? What of those that bore the name Baktrios?
After marching from Alexandreia-Kapisa, Diodotos the Younger changed the direction of his march and headed north-east in pursuit of nomadic raiders and their home. They were Skythians, those that Hēródotos calls 'milk-drinkers', horsemen that were tied to no one place and which could ride as swiftly as the breeze on the plains. Their arrows unerring and their mounts restless. There among the mountainous territories, lands bordering those where no Greek had yet set foot, Younger Diodotos wrestled with the nomads and smote them into the ground. How did he do this? By using the wealth of Baktra to form a horde of his own, bound not by blood or by one faction or another, but like myself by the cold and gleaming site of coins and spoils. All manner of horsemen he had, barely a Greek among them, from the northern steppes, from Baktria, from the Gods knew where, even men with the eyes of cats. Driven back, but far from crushed, he now gathers further hippotoxatai to him and prepares to ride deep into the lands to the east where they say only witches and horses dwell.
My own victories have only just begun, this very year, this very spring.
It was a light day and Jason had just returned to my tent with a skin of strong wine, I have developed a taste for it uncut with water, such is the barbarian in me, when a rider galloped into the camp. He and his mount were both covered in sweat, the gelding clearly blown and in need of rest, the rider sliding from his saddle and ignoring those of us that gathered to watch him approach the temporary dwelling of our leader. No-one spoke, every activity ceasing as the minutes went by, murmurs and even a bellow coming from within the tent. I was busy swallowing wine when the silver-haired half-greek emerged from his tent, three-and-fifty years old by now, a slave strapping his armour around his body as he glared at us all.
“It appears that, after nearly a decade of walking from one end of this satrapy to another, we now stand upon the very soil of a fledgling kingdom.”
At this he raised his hand into the air, a single shimmering silver drachma pressed between thumb and forefinger, “behold your Basileus,” he announced and turned to show the coin this way and that.
Letting the wine drop to my side, moving forward and squinting, along with many others, I could just see the head of the man that must be Diodotos the Elder. I had never seen this satrap, or King as he now was, but he had a strong face and curled hair tied back with a band around his head. On the reverse stood the naked form of Zeus Keraunios, of the Thunderbolt, holding aloft his chosen weapon of retribution and a laurel wreath to represent victory, and there it was, surrounding that image ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΔΙΟΔΟΤΟΥ – of King Diodotos – imprinted into the coin as plain as day for all to see.
“Where once our ruler bowed his head to the Seleukid King, now he is a King of his own. Where once our armies marched and conquered in his name, they now expand the borders for the good of Baktria and all those herein. Where once we were slaves, now we are free. On this day you will each receive three mines for your troubles.”
Once the cheering had subsided, blades banged against shields and rattled on the rims, a smile appearing on his beaten features, Philipos loudened his voice once more and for the final time.
“Make no mistake, we are now at war with the Seleukian menace; they are fierce, their numbers are vast, but the Pahlav to our west – our firm allies and strongest friends – and the satraps of the Pontic Poleis have taken up the call. Now we march south, for Alexandreia-in-Aria, and war with our fellow Hellenes. Take up your spears and make steady your shields. By noon we march.”
************
“Xenophon! Stop daydreaming and get in the line, Zeus' hairy scrotum, you are a sorry lot!”
Agathokles, our Xenagos, disciplinarian, and the most colourful blasphemer I has ever had the pleasure of listening to, would accuse men of anything and curse at every opportunity. Our formation was near-perfect, myself as sharp and alert as ever, yet that was never any reason for the squat Boeotian to lapse into silence. Indeed, compared to our fellow thureophoroi, nearly one-thousand Hellenes, Makedonians and Thrakians armed and trained in a new way of fighting, we stood tall and proud and without fear in the face of our enemy.
Ahead of us rose the palisade of wood that acted as the walls of Alexandreia-in-Aria, the former colony itself large enough to house thousands of citizens, but not strong enough for the weakened Seleukid garrison, composed mostly of spear-armed citizens itself, to defend it all. Within those walls they cowered and gathered together, rams already touching the walls and splintering holes large enough for our forces to filter through, prayers to the same Gods we praised on their lips and bodies shaking with fear. Women clutched children to their breast, the elderly wept bitter tears at their lack of youthful strength and vigour, and those that could fight for a land they saw as their home made themselves ready to sell their lives at the highest price.
I hefted my thureos, lighter and taller than my own shield, wood and leather with a central metal spine, the same glaring face of the Gorgon painted onto the hide stretched across the face of it. For months Jason and I had been training in this style of fighting, more flexible and somehow more 'serious' than that of fighting side-by-side in a phalanx. In the phalanx there were rules, there were ways to incapacitate a man without killing him, but when you fought as a thureophoroi such thoughts of honour and mercy quickly dissipated as a morning mist. It saddened me that my inheritances, handed down through my family for generations, had to be left inside my tent with my skeuophoros - a tall and grumpy Kelt named Attikus - while I carried to battle the linen thorax, simple bronze helmet, a spear and a brace of heavy javelins. Not since my days in the syssitia, among my peers and my elders, had I felt so naked or vulnerable.
“Listen up, you dogs. Our venerable leader in his infinite wisdom had decided to send in the pretty Persian boys first, saving the real men for the second line of attack. So, we let them pluck away at their strings and loose a few arrows, then we surge forward to mop of the survivors.”
Each of us was lost in his own thoughts, such being the way before a battle, muscles tensed and blood beginning to course through limbs as they gripped spear and shield. Unlike those around me I had been hardened against such things from the time of my birth, bathed in wine and allowed to live; since the age of seven I had entered into a academy of warfare the likes of which this eastern world knew so very little, a pupil in a school of bloodshed and violence, of the weak against the strong, and of a thousand ways to kill a man quickly or slowly. No, my mind and body remained relaxed, my hands holding my equipment as a newcomer to war – or so it would seem to the uninitiated – each moment passing before me with the precise judgement of one who knew his occupation better than any other.
With such eyes I watched as the 'Persians', an assortment of Skythians, Syrians, Baktrians, and more, paced forward and knocked arrows to their bow strings. Raising them to point nearly into the sky they loosed the shafts, a hiss puncturing the air as the white feathered missiles rose ever higher only to fall over the walls of the city and in amongst its defenders. How long this went on I am unsure, the cries of the dying and soon to be dead striking me as a feather against an elephant. Such things were far beyond me, as they were below me.
It seemed an age before the Persians, brave men all, let their bows become silent once more and took up their eight-foot spears. With a roar and a cheer to Diodotos and Zeus-Ahura Mazda they went willingly through the breaches in the walls, their steps kicking up dirt from the dry earth of the ground, until they disappeared completely from view to be obscured by both things I have mentioned.
Not long after, his head-wrapping askew and a broken shaft in his hand, a Persian made himself seen and waved for us to advance with the blessing of Philipos. On his order we did so, trumpets blaring and feet stamping, into the opening and into glory...
************
“There they are!” Bellowed a gaunt Syracusan, the first of nearly two-hundred half-trained citizens to appear around the corner of a street between the wooden walls of the city and the houses of the interior, “do not be afraid brothers and sisters, let the Gods give you strength!” Here was a man who put fire into the bellies of his fellow Arians, here was the man who would die first and by my hand.
“Tighten the line lads, tighten the line and press forward.”
Locking our shields together, just over one-hundred xenoi against an avalanche of poorly trained and poorly lead fools. Nonetheless, for all our training, they had the advantage of numbers and did not seem to be in any hurry to cease their charge into us. We met them in kind, pausing only one to loose a volley of javelins into the foremost of them, bodies dropping as if their life had suddenly been snuffed out and the wounded clogging the street with their pathetic forms. When the two lines met there was an almighty crash, those in our front line being pressed between those behind and the enemy before us, men thrown straight from their feet or impaled onto a weapon by the weight and momentum of their bodies alone.
There he was, that Syracusan bastard, a wickedly sharp axe of a Skythian design in one hand and a small pelte in the other. He was a gangly one, his black hair lank and his eyes wide and full of the excitement a man feels when gripped by battle. Calmly I pulled back my spear, aiming the tip over the shoulder of the man to my front, and with a single grunt skewered this demagogue through his eye-socket. In one fluid motion I withdrew the eight-footer and sought another target, my half-closed eyes picking out a young man who opened his mouth to shout something, something that he never got past his teeth, the iron tip of my spear already bursting from the back of his throat to shower his fellow Seleukid settlers in gore.
On my right I could see Jason, the Thrakian locked in the grips of a primal blood-lust, his shield thrust forward to hammer a man back before a single step forward and the raising of an arm allowed the man’s life to drain from his body and out onto the dirt of the street. The next never saw the highlander, this savage warrior splitting apart his features in a series of cuts. Weeping tears of blood, hands pressed to his face, the slashed Hellene fell to his knees and was trampled to death by those of his friends that sought to reach us and die in their turn.
By the time a cheer rose from the agora of the settlement, voices proclaiming a victory for Baktria, my muscles were burning and even my breath came raggedly from my parched throat. Looking about, ignoring the sea of moving and motionless bodies all around us, I could see that no matter how bad a state I believed I was in that there were others who were far worse. Some simply stood and stared into the sky, others squatted with their backs to a wall, others yet sank straight into the waves of the corpse-ocean and looked as one of them, too tired to move or even to care.
“Spartan...”
At first I thought I had heard no more than a voice in my head, until something touched my leg and I twisted around with my spear raised.
“Agathokles?!”
There, pallid and quite clearly dying, was our Boeotian. In my mind I remembered seeing him fall, but in the heat of battle thought nothing of it. Now he lay before me with his shield asunder, his spear shivered and a hole torn through his gut. How he stank, having loosened his bowels across the floor and mingled it with ill-scented urine, but I knelt beside him and cradled his balding head even so.
“Thought you could lie to me, ey? Though I didn't know? Old Agathokles always knows!” A cough racked him and made him groan in pain, his eyes rolling back into his head, “I liked you most of all, Xenophon...tell me...tell me, what is your true name?”
“Paramonos, son of Theron,” I admitted in a hushed tone, never taking my eyes from his face even as his shade left his body, “exile of Sparta and born to battle.”
I do not know whether he heard me or not, but I would like to believe so.
Now I must rest...yes, rest. There will be more tales and more battles, for those exiled from Alexandreia-in-Aria, some two-thousand rebels and plotters, I had no doubt that the pain and torture had just begun. We were at war with Arkhe Seleukia, and the this one settlement was only the origin of what would become a war that would engulf the east.
[EB Baktrian AAR/Tale] In the Land of a Thousand Tongues [Updated: 13/01/2014]
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Evalation
I'll give you some rep too...when it's posted! 
It shouldn't be confusing, just read it and imagine. It isn't complicated much 
Although I realise, without visual aids, how it might get a bit confusing. Just read it, check the map of the game, then piece it together. If needs be I can post some screenshots to help. 
