Authors: Stephanie Thornton
I took solace in the knowledge that Bessus’ first two wives had been killed in Alexander’s burning of Persepolis. The last remained here, still fat and jowly but more often ignored now that she’d never wear the queen’s diadem.
I knew this wretched wasteland in every season, its scalding summer heat and screaming winter blizzards, the way the stark cliffs below us changed from wheat gold in the spring to mud brown as the shadows of the tamarisk shrubs stretched longer until finally snow blanketed the mountain peaks. I knew that the long-nosed niece of Ariamazes tumbled a flat-faced soldier behind the henhouses each night. I also knew that we received only sporadic provisions now that the stream of traveling merchants had decided the promise of bored, rich widows wasn’t worth confronting the might of Alexander’s army. Sogdian Rock had grain stockpiles to last two years, but the earth of the citadel’s root gardens had grown barren with winter’s snows, the clumps of dirt frozen harder than any paving stone.
The sheep and goats grew thinner, as did the rest of us, but a tentative spring had finally arrived, bringing with it the promise of easier living and warmer weather. And an army bent on our destruction.
Alexander had finally come to Sogdian Rock.
Greek mercenaries and Macedonians filled the plain below the fortress in a black sea of death. The path upward had been destroyed after we’d received word of Bessus’ execution, news that had decimated my dreams of being queen even as it freed me from having to fake smiles and moans of false pleasure for the fat bastard who had sentenced my brother to die. To keep our stronghold impenetrable, soldiers had bludgeoned the bottom with hammers and hacksaws, prying loose the rocks of the narrow ledge that led into the clouds. It was a dangerous, backbreaking job and several of the men plummeted to their deaths when they lost their footing.
I bade them good riddance, especially the one who had liked to wrap my hair into a rope as he rode me from behind. I hoped the maggots below enjoyed feasting on his miserable carcass.
Now the fortress was truly impregnable, a prison that guaranteed survival to those of us inside.
I stood on the ramparts surrounded by jeering soldiers and curious women, the mothers and young children having retreated to the center of the fortress at the approach of the cunning Macedonian and his troops. The tops of our walls were just out of reach of their archers and too tall for any ramparts to be built, so Alexander and his Companions stood at the base of what had once been the ledge leading to the top, wearing their elaborate helmets and red woolen winter capes that fluttered in the wind. My fists tightened as I realized that one of them was likely Hephaestion, the same demon who had tortured Bessus with flies and honey.
I recalled Bessus’ boast that he’d dress me in a net of gold and gems and have me on the floor of Persepolis’ treasury, that we’d make love in each of Darius’ beds in every one of his palaces.
He was a foolish, boastful, worthless man, just as Darius had been before him. Whoever had thought to give men swords and put crowns on their heads must have had raw eggs for brains.
But now the crowd fell silent as another would-be king shouted up at us.
“People of Sogdian Rock,” Alexander yelled. Even from this vantage, I could see that he was shorter than most of the Companions who flanked him, but his voice boomed like a god’s. “It is my wish to see you saved from the slaughter that has met so many of your countrymen.”
“Slaughter at your hands,” Ariamazes shouted down. Before his men had rendered our rock path impassable, our bold commander had plagued Alexander by leading revolts throughout Sogdiana. “Take your men and march back from where you came. Then there shall be no further Persian blood spilled, Alexander of Macedon.”
“I am your King of Kings now,” Alexander said. “Crowned in Babylon and anointed by your priests and gods.”
“And yet you put Persepolis to the torch, even after you were crowned,” Ariamazes said. “Proof indeed that you are no true king.”
“You may return unmolested to your homes if you surrender this citadel,” Alexander answered. His voice had taken on a hard edge; apparently he didn’t care for being accused of false kingship. “You have until dusk to give me your answer.”
“We can give you our answer now, you addled nanny goat,” Ariamazes said. “You’d need men with wings to capture this fort. Seeing as you have none, we leave you to either fashion some or continue on your way.”
With that, Ariamazes turned his back on Alexander and stalked away from the wall, but the deafening cheers mixed with laughter tumbled like boulders down to Alexander and his men.
Yet while our Persian soldiers clapped one another on their backs and women bent their heads to twitter like dumb sparrows over Ariamazes’ daring, I stared down at Alexander.
And he stared back, his hands clasped behind him as he studied our ramparts that touched the clouds.
His was not the stance of a man who had given up. I should know; I saw it daily in my own mirror.
• • •
W
inter’s teeth dug deep that night despite the approaching spring, and the plains to the west were dotted with thousands of Macedonian campfires like tiny orange stars. Ariamazes had held a celebration for the soldiers of Sogdian Rock to honor their bloodless victory over Alexander and my services had been required for three separate soldiers, each of whom had drunk at least his weight in wine and taken an eternity to squirt his seed into me. I peered into the darkness on my way to my room, wondering whether wily Alexander had ordered his men to light several fires each to trick us into believing that their numbers were larger than they were.
“Drink this,” Bagoas said as I entered, setting a steaming cup of boiled herbs before me. Having spent time among Darius’ concubines, he knew how to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and he’d managed to procure a tincture of dried wild carrot, rue, and pennyroyal before the trickle of traveling merchants had shriveled up. It was something my brother, Parizad, would have done for me, although I’d never used such herbs with Bessus. Growing fat and birthing some unknown man’s child here on this godforsaken rock was the last thing I wanted.
“That’s the end of the almond oil,” Bagoas scolded me as I massaged a bit into my hands and brushed it through the ends of my hair. He organized the black and white pawns on an enameled board of Twenty Squares, the same game I’d played with Parizad when we were children; the game was a recent payment from a soldier with the first fuzz of manhood on his upper lip.
“This siege might yet kill me,” I said, choosing one of the scorpion pieces and moving it from the center of the board. “I dreamed last night of bathing in a vat of almond oil while slaves fed me lamb stew with limes and fresh cherries. And then I woke and choked down a bowl of barley gruel.”
“There won’t be any of that once Alexander departs,” Bagoas said in his girlish voice, countering my move. “Unless you can persuade one of these soldiers to claim you as his own. Preferably Ariamazes himself.”
I shuddered at the thought.
The throwing sticks were against me that night, but we played until Bagoas captured the last of my scorpions with his carved bird-of-prey pawns. We abandoned the board and Bagoas lifted the ragged blanket on our mattress and I settled in next to him. We rarely pleasured each other now that we both whored for the soldiers, those parts of our bodies too abused by others to be used for our own enjoyment, but we often curled together like two nestling cats.
The sound of his steady breathing lured me to sleep. I awoke to a brazier long grown cold and the haze of spring sunshine creeping under the door.
And a storm of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of marching boots. It was the sound of an entire army.
I stumbled in the semidarkness, knocking the game of Twenty Squares to the floor with a clatter of pieces.
“Don’t, Roxana,” Bagoas warned me, but I cracked open the door and gasped to see hundreds of Macedonian soldiers standing and marching alongside many of our own captured men in the small square.
Alexander had breached the walls.
But there was no slaughter, no screams, no blood running in the streets.
There were even a few women about and one in particular caught my eye with her dyed black hair beneath an askew veil and her pale pink silk robe that strained around the bodice and hips.
I grabbed Bessus’ widow by the arm and yanked her into my room, slamming the weathered door behind us.
“What’s happening?” I demanded even as she tried to pull away.
“By Mithra, unhand me!” she shrieked, prompting me to squeeze her arm harder. “Let me out of here, before I end up with nits or Astarte’s whore-pox!”
“Piss on Mithra,” I growled. “Tell me what is going on or I’ll slit your throat. No one will notice the body of a dead hag on a day like today.”
Her eyes darted from me to Bagoas, but he only shrugged. “Best do as she commands.”
I worried that I’d have to make good on my threat, but she wrenched her arm away and relented. “Alexander armed three hundred of his men with iron tent pegs and lines of flax. They climbed all through the night after he offered twelve gold talents to the first man to scale the walls.”
Men with wings.
Ariamazes had taunted Alexander, but the wily king of Macedon had outmaneuvered him with iron picks and thread. I would later learn that thirty men had perished during the long climb when they lost their footing, but for now I marveled at his daring, and also at his men’s willingness to follow him in such a dangerous escapade. They must love him well, or be touched by the gods.
“And Ariamazes and his men won’t kill them?”
“Ariamazes fled,” she said, her lip curled in revulsion. “Lowered himself down in a basket used for supplies. That bag of bile he called a wife ran with him while our worthless men laid down their swords.”
“May he rot forever and vultures pluck out his miserable eyes. And may his prick shrivel and fall off,” I added for good measure, although Ariamazes’ prick had been laughably short to begin with.
I’d heard all I needed to and hustled her to the door, surprised when she hesitated. “Where shall you go now, Roxana?” she asked, her voice thorny with spite. “Back to your father?”
I’d sooner go to
Duzakh
.
But I offered her a smile just as honeyed and just as treacherous. “I’m not sure yet,” I said. “I’ll think of something.”
I pressed my forehead to the door after I closed it behind her, my mind reeling as I felt Bagoas drape a moth-eaten blanket around my shoulders. “I hope your fingers are deft this morning,” I finally said to him.
“What are you planning?”
“We can’t scurry like rats in a sinking ship this time,” I said. “For there’s nowhere to scurry to, unless you care to climb down the cliffs using tent poles abandoned by the Macedonians.”
“I can’t face all of those soldiers,” Bagoas murmured, and I was shocked to see his hands trembling. “I’d rather you slit my throat.”
I closed my eyes against the possible fate that awaited us, used among countless Macedonian soldiers that would make the Persian regiment pale in comparison. Why was it that women bore the brunt of war’s aftermath, while men escaped via an easy death?
And poor Bagoas, caught between two worlds, was neither man nor woman.
“You shall not have to face them.” I wove my fingers through his hair and kissed his eyelids. “Alexander loves beauty and I am beautiful,” I said. “His men won’t dare molest me, the daughter of Oxyartes of Balkh, if I’m dressed like the Queen of Queens.”
“Oxyartes of Balkh isn’t your father and even if he were, he’s the most minor of nobles,” Bagoas said, for I’d spilled that particular detail after a night of too much wine. “How can you be so sure you’ll catch Alexander’s attention?”
“I swear to you that I’ll catch at least the eye of one of his generals,” I said. “Or I’ll slit both of our throats.”
Bagoas looked about to argue, but finally gave a rueful shake of his head. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Help me dress,” I said, my heart racing and my palms suddenly damp. “We haven’t much time.” I wondered if this was how soldiers felt before charging into battle, suddenly alive at the very real possibility of victory or destruction.
I would emerge triumphant, or die trying.
• • •
B
agoas sewed my hair into an elaborate set of curls and coils worthy of a queen’s tiara, dressed me in my black silk embroidered with griffins, and belted my waist with a simple silk girdle before clasping my lynx bracelets high on my arms. I peered outside for the second time that morning and slipped into the crowd.
Every child’s wail and mother’s snivel set my teeth on edge. Still, I supposed mingling with the sweaty masses was preferable to being molested or murdered.
A hush fell over the dozens of soldiers and captives, but the air hummed with tension. Alexander was easy to recognize from the day before, shorter than almost all his men despite the egret plume and horsetail helmet he wore. A soldier with shoulders like a galley rower and crowned with a fish-spine helmet stood at his side, but it was Alexander who stepped forward and spoke, his voice booming over the huddled crowd.
“People of Sogdian Rock,” he said, opening his arms. “I have proved that your fortress is not impenetrable, and thus, your soldiers have agreed to join my army. The rest of you may travel in my retinue as my honored guests, until the time when your own families shall swear their allegiance and claim you, or you may remain here under your newly appointed governor.” He turned his palms up to the sky in a gesture of benevolence. “You may rest well in the knowledge that you shall not be harmed.”
Mothers and wives around me sagged and sobbed in relief, but I fought down a wave of panic as Alexander turned to depart. The fish-spine soldier murmured something to him and Alexander gave a tight nod. I thought I detected a grimace of pain there, perhaps the stiffness of an old wound, but then he turned back to address us once again. “Hephaestion here has reminded me of my manners, for I shall host a banquet in the former house of Ariamazes each night for the duration of our stay here. Sadly, the quarters are cramped and will not accommodate so large a crowd at once, but each of you shall join me one night until I’ve had the pleasure of meeting all the wives and daughters of Persia’s ancient nobility.”