Wunderry Plus subscribers can listen to Tides of History early and ad free right now.

Join Wunderry Plus in the Wundery app or on Apple Podcasts. When the wind blew through the steep-sided gorges and between the spiky ridges, howled like a living thing giving voice to its displeasure

at the presence of these interloper's. There were thousands of them tramping along the

packed dirt of the trackway leading up into the mountains.

None of them had ever been through this country before.

They didn't speak the local language and had only the vaguest idea of what the region

and its inhabitants were called. Home was a very long way away and their chances of seeing it again were slim.

All of them knew that. They had treked eastward across Asia Minor, through Syria, and into Babylonia in the company of the Persian prince Cyrus.

Now Cyrus was dead, his head and right hand having parted company from the rest of his body.

His rebellion had been crushed, and the great king of Persia wanted them gone from his lands and preferably dead.

But a force of 10,000 Greek soldiers wasn't a lost cause.

They still had their spears, swords, shields, helmets, and armor.

Most had fought in the long war between Athens and Sparta, some for both sides. Their loyalty was to anyone who paid them and in the absence of a paymaster, pure survival, do well enough. The Persians were far behind them now, still down on the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates.

It had pursued the retreating mercenaries along the great rivers and passed the ruins of

cities that still bore the marks of wars long since forgotten. Then the climb had begun. Up into the snow-covered

mountains, lands inhabited by fierce tribesmen who hurled javelins and ambushed

any stragglers too slow to keep up with the main body. But the weather was worse. It was winter, and the snow piled up higher than a man. Snow blindness took summer. Frostbite got more. Fingers and toes turned black.

Despair hung over them like a cloud. Yet still they marched, stealing food

when they could, fighting off their ambushes, singing songs and

offering meager sacrifices to the gods in the hope they might render some assistance to these Greeks

so far from home.

Home, that was the watchword. But when they really thought about it, where was home? What was it? There were

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