Time’s Eye

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.

When she got the chance, Bisesa studied the King.

Seated on a gloriously heavy-looking golden throne, being hauled across India by animal-power, Alexander was dressed in a girdle and striped tunic, with a golden diadem around the purple Macedonian hat on his head, and held a golden scepter. There wasn’t much of the Greek to be seen about Alexander. Perhaps his adoption of Persian ways was more than just diplomatic; perhaps he had been seduced by the grandeur and wealth of that empire.

As he traveled his tame prophet Aristander sat at his side, a bearded old man in a grimy white tunic and with sharp, calculating eyes. Bisesa speculated that this hand-waver might be concerned about the impact of people from the future on his position as the King’s official seer. Meanwhile the Persian eunuch called Bagoas leaned nonchalantly against the back of the throne. He was a pretty, heavily made-up young man in a kind of diaphanous toga, who from time to time stroked the back of the King’s head. Bisesa was amused by the weary glares Hephaistion shot at this creature.