"What the hell kind of a lame-ass stunt was that to pull?" he roared. "You're a fucking general, but you have no more brains than the chief ass-wipe for the goat herd, risking your command like that. Ignorant son of a bitch, I ought to chain you up and…" His voice trailed off in disgust as he saw that Xenophon was simply grinning at him. The other officers stared at him wide-eyed.

"In three minutes of running, those idiots on the ridge wasted twenty cartloads of boulders and a hundred arrows on me," Xenophon retorted. "Do you think their supply of ammunition is unlimited? With two or three hotheads out there attracting their fire, we can deplete their entire supply by this afternoon. I could probably ask for volunteers…"

His words were interrupted by the crash of another enormous load of stones that had just been sent racing down the hill and slamming into the tree. Looking over, we saw that Callimachus was already cowering in the first spot to which Xenophon had raced, and was preparing to run to the next tree. When Agasias saw him moving toward the stronghold, with the entire army watching, he could not bear the thought of his rival's attaining glory by being the first in, so he too rushed toward the tree, nimbly avoiding the shower of boulders and tagging Callimachus, who in turn rushed to the next way station. In dismay Aristonymus leaped out to the field and ran past them both, followed by another officer, Aeneas, drawing a deafening thunder of stones from the ridge top above.

Amazingly, not a man of them was touched, and within ten minutes of the captains' racing from tree to tree they were met not by the crashing of boulders from above, but by cries and shouts of consternation from the enemy. They had dropped over a hundred cartloads of stones on the Hellenes down below without hitting a single target, and now had no more heavy ammunition left.

Chirisophus did not waste time. Shouting to his hoplites to advance, they immediately began a brisk charge in formation, picking their way across the rubble-strewn field, while Callimachus, Agasias, Aristonymus, and Aeneas sprinted toward the unguarded entry to the stronghold, to the cries of terror from the women and children inside, certain they were to be murdered in cold blood by the filthy, long-haired attackers.

For decades I have tried to forget what I next witnessed. The women and old men inside the compound, hundreds of them, in their desperation and fear, rushed to the edge of the cliff-and simply jumped off. Not a moment of hesitation. It was as if they had practiced the maneuver their entire lives. Those with children or babies ran to the edge, paused for the space of a breath, then dropped the infants over the cliff first, before following behind. The entire army could see this from our vantage point, and we raised our voices in horror, shouting at the women to stop. The pitiful mothers, however, were mad from fear of being dishonored in front of their husbands watching up on the cliff, with their children skewered or taken as slaves, for such is the custom of the local tribes in warfare. They took our strange-sounding shouts as a cry for blood, and redoubled their efforts to commit mass suicide, some of them slitting the throats of the terrified and screaming children to spare them the agony of the long drop, others leaping into the abyss clutching their offspring or their aged parents to their breasts in a last embrace of death.

The four racing captains, their triumph at being the first to enter the stronghold turning to shock at the sight that met their eyes upon their arrival, rushed to the edge of the cliff themselves, shouting at the women and old men to turn back, that they meant no harm. They drew their swords and swatted at the terrified Taochians with the flats of the blades, beating them back from the edge, but this only threw them into greater panic and they began swarming in attack over the officers themselves. Aeneas spotted an elderly man, who by his dress appeared to be a headman, running furiously to the edge to throw himself over, and the Greek captain leaped to tackle him from behind. At the last moment, however, the frantic old wretch tripped over his vestments, throwing Aeneas off balance, and with his strong arms locked around the man's waist they both went hurtling off the precipice to the distant rocks below.

Chirisophus' Spartans finally arrived and were able, with difficulty, to put a stop to the carnage, but not before terrible damage had been done. Of the several thousand human beings huddled in terror on the boulder just minutes before, hardly a hundred remained. Our troops wandered the smooth, icy surface of the mountaintop in an agony of remorse that they had been the cause of this tragedy. The only sounds were the whimpering of the few children who had escaped the carnage, their mothers' arms being simply too full with their other babies, and the bleating and mewing of hundreds of head of cattle, asses, and sheep that had been left behind. My stricken mind could not even comprehend the emotions of the Taochian defenders watching on the ridge top, those silent men whose families were all dead by a meaningless suicide. We had no way of contacting them. Xenophon ordered all the local prisoners to be released, hoping they would make their way to the defenders in the hills, and tell them that the few children left alive would be taken to the nearest village and deposited with the residents there, with a full store of provisions.

That night, the entire army camped silently in grief for wives and children not even theirs, in the small enclosure of the flat mountain top. When I stole away from my duties to seek out Asteria, I had difficulty finding her. After searching for a time among the Rhodians' camp, I finally asked Nicolaus discreetly if he had an idea as to her whereabouts, and he pointed me in the direction of the cliff face behind the camp.

I soon found her, wedged into a dark gap between two large boulders, overlooking the site where the Taochian women had dashed themselves and their children onto the rocks. The sides and bottom of the cliff were now lit by flickering shadows cast by the enormous funeral pyre built below by the Cretan mountaineers whom Xenophon had assigned to collecting and burning the bodies and arranging for an appropriate marking. Asteria looked drawn, and acted nervous and uncommunicative.

"I brought you something," I said, trying to inject a note of consolation into my voice. I paused, waiting for a reaction that did not come, and unable to think what else to say I unwrapped from an oilcloth rag a bit of stale bread dipped in honey, which had been one of her favorite treats on the march. What simple things now satisfied her, after the rich existence she had once lived.

Asteria winced when she saw the food, and turning suddenly I heard her retch into a small cavity in the rock behind her, gasping for breath when she was done and then slowly turning around again to face me. From the close smell I noticed when I sat beside her, I realized she had been in here for some time.

She looked at me in a way that reflected, if not outright dislike, something only slightly more than indifference and far less than I had expected. She quickly composed her features into an expressionless mask, but the barren glance I had seen in that instant before she did so had said everything. I sat in silence, gazing out into the darkness.

"I'm not well, Theo," she finally murmured. "My belly is churning. Female problems." She cringed involuntarily when my shoulder brushed against hers, as if her skin had become overly sensitive, as after a severe sunburn.

I wrapped the bread and offered to bring her something more soothing. "Soup? The Rhodians have just killed a goat and are boiling it up…"

Asteria blanched and turned her head away. Again I remained silent, wondering what words I should use, then finally decided to simply unburden myself, for with her I had said everything, and had nothing left to hide.