Time’s Eye

The Macedonians had been drawn up into two long files, with the Foot Companions at the center, and the elite Shield Bearers guarding either flank. Now, as the arrows flew, to brisk drumbeats and trumpet peals, they quickly regrouped into a close order, boxlike formation eight men deep. They raised their leather shields over their heads and locked them together, like the formation the Romans had called the turtle.

The arrows fell on the shields with audible thumps. The shell formation held, but it wasn’t perfect. Here and there men dropped, to sharp cries, and there would be a brief hole in the cover, a fast flurry as the wounded man was dragged from the formation, and the shell would close up again.

So men had already started to die, Josh thought.

Perhaps a quarter-mile from the city walls, the Mongols suddenly broke into a charge. The warriors roared, their war drums banged like a pulse, and even the clatter of the horses’ hooves was like a storm. The wave of noise was startling.

Josh didn’t believe he was a coward, but he couldn’t help but quail. And he was astonished at how calmly Alexander’s seasoned warriors held their places. To more trumpet peals and yelled commands— “Synaspismos!”—they broke up their turtle formation and formed their open lines once more, though some kept their shields raised to ward off arrows. They were in a line four deep now, with some troops held in reserve at the back. They were infantrymen facing the Mongols’ cavalry charge, a thin line of flesh and blood was all that stood between Babylon and the oncoming Mongols. But they locked their button shields together and rammed the butts of their long spears in the ground, and foot-long iron blades bristled at the oncoming Mongols.

In the last moments Josh saw the Mongols very clearly, even the eyes of their armored horses. The animals seemed crazed; he wondered what goads, or drugs, the Mongols used to induce their horses to attack packed infantry.

The Mongols fell on the Macedonian lines. It was a brutal collision.

The armored horses battered a way through the Macedonian front line, and the whole formation buckled at the center. But the Macedonians’ rear lines cut at the animals, killing or hamstringing them. Mongols and their horses began to fall, and their rear lines slammed into the stalled advance.

All along the Macedonian line now there was a stationary front of fighting. A stink of dust and metal, and the coppery smell of blood, rose up to Josh. There were cries of rage and pain, and the clash of iron on iron. There were no gunshots, no cannon roars, none of the dark explosive noises of the warfare of later centuries. But human lives were erased with industrial efficiency, all the same.

Josh was suddenly aware of a silvered sphere hovering before him, high over the ground, but almost at his own eye level. It was an Eye. Perhaps, he thought grimly, there were other than human observers here today.

The first assault lasted only minutes. And then, to a trumpet-call, the Mongols suddenly broke away. Those still mounted galloped back from the fray. They left behind a line of broken and writhing bodies, severed limbs, maimed horses.

The Mongols paused in loose order, a few hundred yards from the Macedonian position. They called insults in their incomprehensible language, shot off a few arrows, even spat at the Macedonians. One of them had dragged a wretched Macedonian foot soldier with him, and now, with mocking elaboration, began to carve a hole in the living man’s chest. The Macedonians responded with insults of their own, but when a unit ran forward, weapons raised, their officers roared commands for them to hold their positions.

The Mongols continued to withdraw, still taunting the Macedonians, but Alexander’s soldiers would not follow. As the lull continued, stretcher-bearers ran out from the Ishtar Gate.

***

The first Macedonian warrior to be brought into Bisesa’s surgery had suffered a leg wound. Ruddy helped her haul the unconscious figure onto a table.

The arrow had been broken and pulled out, but it had passed right through the calf muscle and out the other side of the leg. It didn’t look to have broken any bones, but flaps of muscle tissue spilled out of the raw wound. She stuffed the muscle tissue back into the hole, packed some wine-soaked cloth into it, and then, with Ruddy’s brisk help, bound it up tight. The soldier was stirring. She had no anesthetic, of course, but perhaps, if he woke, fear and adrenaline would keep the pain at bay a while.

Ruddy, working with both hands, wiped sweat from his broad, pale brow onto the shoulder of his jacket.

“Ruddy, you’re doing fine.”

“Yes. And this man will live, will he not? And walk out, scimitar and shield in hand, to die on some other battlefield.”

“All we can do is patch them up.”

“Yes …”