The Lost Army (13 page)

At a certain distance his groups of females looked on with a detached air certainly not fitting to the tragedy they’d witnessed, and as Xeno picked up his dagger and started to skin the animal, they began grazing again, nibbling here and there at the wild wheat stubble.

It made me sad to watch the scene, man’s crafty victory over that spirited animal that ran like the wind, whipping the air with his bristly tail. It seemed brutal and unfair, and I was sorry I had seen it.

That day Xeno suddenly became very popular among the soldiers who had appreciated his public lesson in elementary cavalry tactics. He’d shown them he was a man of action. When that evening he invited a large circle of men to join him in feasting on the well-roasted meat – including Clearchus, Socrates and Agias with their adjutant and subordinate officers – his popularity grew even further. Menon, who hadn’t been invited, was nowhere to be seen that evening. Sophos showed up late and cast a wary eye at the remains of the banquet.

‘What does it taste like?’ he asked, but then walked off into the dark without waiting for an answer.

Xeno muttered, ‘To me it tastes like venison.’ It was his way of saying that it had a gamey flavour, but having slain a male, it couldn’t have been otherwise.

Sophos was still very elusive, although Xeno tried in vain to involve him in various conversations. He kept an eye on the newcomer, especially when he saw him approaching Clearchus’s tent. I would watch as Xeno attempted a casual stroll in the vicinity, perhaps trying to listen in on whatever they were saying, but as far as I knew he never managed to hear anything worthwhile.

That night we heard the yelping of jackals fighting over the donkey’s carcass. At dawn we set off on our journey once again and for the first time I was approached by some of the other women. They seemed to want to befriend me, or get to know me, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Not yet.

The hills to the north got further and further away, and we could begin to see the green foliage of the trees bordering the Euphrates.

The Great River.

We camped on a slight rise overlooking the banks and that night I couldn’t sleep. I sat on a palm stump and couldn’t take my eyes off the glitter of the water in the moonlight. If I saw a branch or a log floating by I’d try to imagine where it was coming from, how long it had travelled before I’d caught a glimpse of it. Very few people in my village had ever seen the Euphrates – we called it
Purattu
in our language – and they had exaggerated its size until it became so wide you could barely see the other shore.

The next day the sun’s light revealed the city located at the ford. It was the only point where you could cross that stretch of the river and a number of caravans were crowding around, waiting to pass from one side to the other. There were also ferries going across, but those who had large animals with them – like horses, mules, asses or camels – were crossing on foot. The confusion was incredible! The costumes, languages, colours, the shouting and braying, people fighting, even, arguing in loud, discordant voices. The caravans were led by men who had crossed mountains and deserts to bring goods of every description from the countries of Asia to the sea and the port cities where they would be loaded on ships departing for other destinations. The name of the city we could see meant ‘ford’ and it was populated mainly by Phoenicians who had made it their staging post towards the interior.

‘Do you see that water?’ asked Xeno, approaching me. ‘See how fast it’s flowing? In two days’ time it will be under the bridges of Babylon. It will take us the better part of a month. The water never sleeps, it travels by day and by night, it fears no obstacles. Nothing can stop it until it reaches the sea, which is its final destination.’

Again, the sea. ‘Why do all rivers go to the sea?’ I asked.

‘It’s simple,’ he answered me. ‘Rivers are born up high, on the mountains, and the sea is down low, in the cavities of the earth that need to be filled.’

‘So all you have to do is follow a river, any river or stream, and you’ll surely reach the sea?’

‘That’s right. You can’t go wrong.’

Xeno’s words struck a deep chord in me, I’m not sure why. Maybe certain phrases we pronounce are involuntarily prophetic, in one way or in the exactly opposite way, like oracles.

‘Can I ask you another question?’ I asked.

‘Yes, if it’s the last. We have to get ready to ford the river.’

‘What about the sea? Is there one alone? Or, if there are many, do they flow into one another or remain separate like closed basins?’

‘They flow into the river Ocean that surrounds the earth.’

‘All of them?’

‘I said only one question. Yes, that’s right. All of them.’

I would have liked to ask him how he knew that all of them flowed into the Ocean, but I’d already asked one question too many.

From the top of the hill we watched the fording: the river was quite shallow even though it was the end of spring and the army crossed it on foot with no difficulty. First a group of scouts on horseback and then all the others. Again, there was no resistance from the other side. That seemed strange to me but I said nothing.

‘Curious, isn’t it?’ a voice rang out behind me, as if my own thoughts had been spoken aloud. ‘No resistance here either. General Abrocomas isn’t looking for a fight. He’s disappeared.’

Xeno turned and found Sophos at his back, appearing as suddenly as he had when we were camping near Tarsus.

‘It doesn’t seem so strange to me. Abrocomas simply doesn’t feel up to tangling with Cyrus. That’s all.’

‘You know that’s not true,’ retorted Sophos. Then he spurred his horse down the slope towards the ford.

Once across the river, we continued our journey, heading south. The countryside was flat and level but when the sun sank into the horizon, becoming an enormous red sphere, that empty, arid, abandoned expanse was transformed. Under the midday sun, the steppe was white and blinding. After dark, it was transfigured. The tiniest rocks or salt crystals glittered with iridescent reflections. Wild grasses that were invisible by day took shape, their stems, touched by the evening breeze, vibrated like the strings of a lyre, and their shadows grew taller and taller as the sun descended, ready to flatten in a moment when it dipped beneath the horizon.

The further we got from my village, the more I felt prey to a panicky lightheadedness, a fear of the emptiness around me. When the feeling overcame me I would seek out Xeno, the only person I knew among the thousands and thousands that passed in front of me, that flowed beneath my gaze. But he too was like the steppe, arid and parched by day, no different from anyone else. I couldn’t have expected anything different: no man in the Greek army would ever be attentive to a woman in the light of day, wary of his comrades’ derision.

But after the sun had fallen, when night descended and the endless expanse of the steppe became animated with fleeting shadows, with the rustling of invisible wings, when a strange kind of serenity spread over the camp and everywhere the men sat around campfires conversing in dozens of different dialects, then Xeno changed as well. He squeezed my hand in the dark or brushed my hair with his hand or my lips with a light kiss.

At moments like this I felt that I wasn’t sorry for having abandoned my family and my friends, the quiet summer evenings, the suspended, timeless atmosphere surrounding the well at Beth Qadà.

T
HE LAST FRESH MEAT
we’d have for a long time was consumed during the first days of march along the Euphrates, and again it was thanks to Xeno’s hunting skill. There were great numbers of birds as big as chickens which were rather easy to catch. They rose up in a brief panicky flight and all you had to do was chase them for a while to tire them out and you could capture them with your hands. There were hundreds of them. At first I couldn’t understand why they didn’t fly away, didn’t try to escape. Then I realized that they were all females with nests and that all their flapping and fluttering was meant to lure intruders away from their clutch. In other words, they were sacrificing themselves to save their chicks. Many of the soldiers followed Xeno’s example and threw their weapons to the ground to run off after the birds. The less agile of them ended up empty-handed and in a heap, rolling in the dust; others ran like mad without succeeding in grabbing their prey. They had plenty of fun doing it, laughing and making a real racket. Each time that one of them managed to capture his bird, cries and shouts of jubilation came from the rest of the army as if they were watching a wrestling match or a race. They shouted out the name of the lucky man, who raised his trophy high over his head for all to see.

I was incredulous as I stood there watching them. The most terrible warriors of the known world, tumbling around like children in the dust. Some of them got too close to the slippery river banks and ended up in the water, or slid into the mud and came out covered from head to foot.

The meat was delicious. I was surprised that it was so tasty, considering the birds were nesting. But after that we had to go back to our supplies, to the flour, wheat and olive oil that every unit carried along. We even had a market travelling with us, but the foods you could buy there cost a lot.

The landscape was changing, becoming bleaker and more arid the further south we went. Even the banks of the Euphrates were barren. The river coursed through a deep bed of sandstone which left no space for grass to grow, let alone trees. The hay and fodder we were carrying were enough at first to feed the pack animals, but then the forage ran out and the animals began to die. They were butchered, then, and the meat distributed to the troops: it was tough and stringy, but there was nothing else.

Cyrus often showed his face and Xeno was able to speak with him more than once, along with Proxenus of Boeotia and Agias of Arcadia. The prince was usually surrounded by the noblemen who accompanied him and by his guard. They were young, vigorous men, splendidly decked out with golden bracelets at their wrists and golden-hilted and sheathed swords at their sides. Their eyes were constantly on their prince, to ensure that his every need was attended to. I remember how they reacted the day we happened to reach a bend in the river. There was vegetation there: grass, flowers and plants, and the column almost instinctively veered in that direction, seeking shelter from the brutal heat. But then one of the wagons got stuck in the mud. It was carrying an important load: javelins and spears, trappings for the horses, even money perhaps. There must have been something precious in those bags, from the way Cyrus frowned. At the merest wrinkle of his brow, all of the noblemen jumped off their horses, dressed as they were with their embroidered trousers and cloaks fringed with silver and gold, and dived into the mire to push the wagon back out, to stop it from sinking.

Day after day we marched, and the conditions grew harsher and more taxing, especially for the women. I travelled on a wagon drawn by a pair of mules because I was Xeno’s woman, but almost all of the baggage animals had died, and I’d often see the others – the slaves and prostitutes – trudging through the dust behind their masters, and this troubled me. There were differences between them too. The prettier ones were on mule-back or on a wagon so they wouldn’t wear themselves out, the others were on foot.

There was no relief until nightfall. Then you could bathe in the river, and although the stream beds were dry, they abounded in withered shrubs and bushes that could be used to start a fire and cook what little we had. The sky extended its black dome over the camp, dotted with an infinity of twinkling lights, and you could hear the cries of the night birds and the howling of jackals from the depths of the immense, boundless desert. Almost none of the men had ever seen the desert. They came from a land of small valleys and high mountains, of narrow coves and golden beaches, a land that changed at nearly every step of your journey, every day and every hour. The desert was always the same, they complained, as vast and flat as the sea in a dead calm. Even the air was unfamiliar, and disquieting. When the moon was full, the white of the chalky terrain and the dark blue of the sky were pervaded by an unreal azure light, still and somehow terrifying in its eerie strangeness.

The further we got from the sea, the more the men felt the need to sing together at night or to talk quietly, sitting around the fire until late. I didn’t understand the words to their songs but I could feel the emotion. It was homesickness. Those bronze warriors ached for their families, for their children and their wives, for the villages where they hoped to return rich and respected, so they could talk about their adventures one day, as old men, tell their stories to children gathered around the hearth on a cold winter evening. The burbling of the river outside the camp and the low hum of the men sitting around campfires inside combined to form a diffuse, indistinct murmur, and yet the voice of the river was created by the ruffling of countless tiny waves and barely visible ripples, and the other sound was in reality made up of thousands of voices telling a myriad of different stories, the stories of each one of the Ten Thousand who had pushed themselves further than any man of their race had ever dared to venture.

S
INCE THE START OF
their mission, the army had never done battle, except for Menon of Thessaly’s incursion at Tarsus, and for the time being the expedition still felt more like an excursion or an exploratory expedition than like a military endeavour. But every morning that the sun came up, every time the warriors took up their arms and started on their march, their eyes scanned the horizon along its entire breadth, looking for a sign, an indication of human presence, of movement of any sort from that vast, monotonous territory. When would the enemy appear? They had no doubts that it would happen. By day or night, at dawn or dusk, they would make their presence felt. Perhaps at their backs or perhaps face-to-face, barring their way. Perhaps with a swift cavalry raid. And yet the days passed and nothing happened. The dust, the sun, the suffocating temperature, the shimmering of the air on the earth’s scorched surfaces, the midday dust devils: these were their constant companions. When would the enemy arrive?