Classic Aubrey Menen by Aubrey Menen

Author:Aubrey Menen [MENEN, AUBREY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-14-306854-9
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2010-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Alexander next sent a request across the river for permission to buy a certain sort of hard timber. It was to repair his siege engines, but his message said it was to repair the wagons in his baggage train.

‘My spies tell me,’ the Chief Brahmin told King Ambhi, ‘that he needs this wood for the main pillars of those machines he uses to batter down walls. They are excellently designed. I calculate that they could make a breach in the walls of Taxila after the third blow. Let us make him a present of all the wood he needs.’

‘Certainly,’ said King Ambhi, and the wood was immediately floated across the river.

When Alexander and his generals saw it being hauled up the bank, they were more than ever convinced that they were dealing with simpletons. Thus the Indians were convinced that the Macedonians were ignoramuses; the Macedonians were sure the Indians were fools; and the stage was properly set for the historic meeting between the East and the West. It did, in fact, take place on the first available auspicious day.

If the human beings concerned did not rise to the great occasion, the animals on both sides did. Alexander transported the best of his horses across the river on rafts, and since these animals were the finest that the whole world of the Mediterranean had to offer, they were a spectacle in themselves. Ambhi, for his part, had fifty men working for two days to paint his state elephants. Designs of a dozen different colours were painted on their broad foreheads and around their eyes. Golden cones were fitted over the tips of their tusks, and golden bells in great chains were hung from their ears. Enormous coverings, heavily embroidered, were put across their backs, and on each was strapped a howdah of wrought metal and wood, ending in a gilded dome.

Alexander and his cavalry landed half a mile down the river from the meeting place and rode to it in procession—Alexander in his gilded armour that had been made by the master sculptors of Pergamon, the Companions in their helmets with huge ceremonial plumes, each of a different colour. Around their shoulders all wore cloaks of Tyrian purple, which fell over the hindquarters of horses that had been groomed till they glistened. As the cavalcade moved forward, boys and girls from Taxila strewed flowers under the hooves of the horses.

Ambhi's elephants were drawn up in a semicircle. As the Macedonians came in sight, Ambhi gave a signal. The elephants raised their trunks. Out crashed the terrifying sound of the royal salute, a combination of bellow and scream that can come only from the cavernous throat of an elephant. The horses instantly reared on their hind legs and for a few moments all was confusion among the Macedonians. Ambhi looked over to the howdah next to his, where the Chief Brahmin sat. They exchanged satisfied smiles.

Alexander ordered his cavalcade to halt. The two groups were some three hundred yards apart and for the moment nobody knew what to do.

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