The Lost Army (28 page)

The men obeyed. They unloaded the provisions, the tents and the weapons and piled all the wagons up in a single place. There was a moment’s hesitation, then one of the soldiers whom I’d never seen before took a brand from the fire and tossed it onto the heap. The flames caught almost at once, swept by the wind, and the dry, seasoned wood kindled instantly, crackling with little blue flames and bursting quickly into a gigantic bonfire that our enemies could surely see from afar. The intense light illuminated the warriors who stood in silence all around and seemed dazed as they watched their world catch fire.

None of them at that moment could have imagined what would happen when the flames turned to ash.

W
HEN THE FIRE
had begun to languish, another appeared at the foot of the mountains in the plain stretching out in front of us, a blaze of such size that the burning of our two or three hundred wagons seemed insignificant in comparison.

‘Look at that, Cleonimus!’ said one of the soldiers close to me. ‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know,’ grumbled his comrade, a thickset, swarthy lad.

Xeno was watching it too. He approached Sophos and the two of them spoke briefly. A couple of scouts rode off on horseback soon after, headed towards the site where the fire was burning. In the meantime the men had begun to walk off a few at a time, returning to the spot where the provisions had been unloaded so they could claim their own. Their weapons and tents, especially. There was still an abundance of food.

It was a difficult moment. They had all been accustomed to storing their belongings on a wagon; they always knew where and how they could find what they needed. Now they were forced to bundle them up roughly so they could load them onto an ass or a mule. Their quarrelling and cursing soon quietened down. The situation unfolding to the north was so spectacular that they were mostly struck dumb: looming above the mountains were masses of clouds, as black as pitch. Swollen and menacing, they hung over the immense chain, discharging blinding bolts of lightning which twisted and turned like serpents, as the roar of thunder tumbled down to the valley, rebounding off the dark craggy cliffs. I knew what the men were thinking. ‘That’s where we’re bound for.’

The land we were leaving behind us was hostile, true, but it was a land dominated by light and the heat of the sun. We were headed towards the kingdom of the night and of endless storms. If we turned south we could still feel the tepid breath of the land between the two rivers that caressed our faces. Looking north we could sense the distant, threatening air of the tempest. We stood between two enemy lands, but one held only the hostility of men, the other the hostility of the elements as well.

The scouts returned to report on the fires blazing down on the plain. Tissaphernes had burned down the last villages along the river so we could not stock up on provisions. The two horsemen had met up with hundreds of desperate farmers fleeing with their families, their shoulders bearing the burden of what little they had managed to save.

I tried to imagine what those people must be thinking. They had probably lived in peace since they were born, eking out the same poor, monotonous existence as the folk in the village I came from, but having everything they needed, food and shelter. All at once they no longer had anything. The fire had cancelled their past, present and future.

War.

When Xeno came to lie beside me, I asked, ‘What will we live on?’

‘What we find,’ he answered.

I asked no more questions. I understood well what he meant. From that moment on, we’d be consuming the resources of the territories we were crossing, like a flock of crows, like a swarm of locusts, leaving a desert behind us. All the men were sleeping now, thinking perhaps of the wives and the children they’d left at home, but tomorrow they would once again become the Ten Thousand, the demons of war, hiding the humanity of their faces behind the mask on their helmets, because from now on, every day and every night, for many days or months or even years, they would have to fight and win, or face death.

The next day there was just smoke rising from the plain, and Tissaphernes’s army was drawn up to defend the Great Crossroads. They thought we would try to turn back! But none of us could even begin to contemplate a direct clash with the most powerful empire on earth.

We set off on our way, leaving the Great Crossroads behind us. The road we travelled flanked a torrent that swirled and foamed as it rushed towards the Tigris. One of the warriors tried to test how deep it was, but his spear disappeared completely under water without touching the bottom.

Xeno and I had loaded our baggage on the backs of three mules, tied together to form a little train. I was at the front, pulling the first by its halter. I scanned the crowd trying to spot Melissa, but couldn’t find her. The path was not very wide, and the bulk of the army preceded us in a long line which was beginning to unwind at the end of the valley in the direction of a pass that we could now see clearly ahead of us, whenever the rays of the sun broke through the cover of dark clouds and illuminated the mountain peaks.

We started our climb up the mountain road which was strewn with sharp stones. At times the path would jut out above the valley or slope steeply over the raging torrent below, its water boiling with white foam, coursing over the gigantic boulders that poked out of the river and loomed at its edges. The mountainside was covered by forests full of age-old trees with enormous gnarled trunks.

The march was very tiring but exhilarating at the same time: I had never walked uphill for such a long way and I was suffering from the strain, from the scrapes to my arms and the cuts to my feet, but I was excited by the sensation of going higher and higher with each step.

I was used to travelling long distances, but always with the same field of vision, always surrounded by the flat, endless expanse of the steppe and the desert. But this was magnificent, the view changing constantly at practically every turn of the road. I was wonder-struck.

At a certain moment, I turned around and my attention was attracted by two different scenes, one in the distance, where Tissaphernes’s army was moving off westward like a long black snake slithering over the desert sand. The other was much closer: there was the pregnant girl I’d seen on her wagon.

The Persian general was leading his army towards Anatolia and towards the sea, to take possession of the province in Cyrus’s place. He was sure we’d all soon be dead amidst the steep mountains and precipitous peaks of the north, the region where the roaring wind was born. The girl, on the other hand, was lying at the side of the path, frantic, unable to move. For her, and for the child she carried, there was no tomorrow. No one stopped. The warriors marched past her, leaning on their spears, their cloaks sometimes brushing her face, but there was not one of them who reached out a hand.

I slowed down, taking advantage of the fact that Xeno was far off, bringing up the rearguard with his horsemen, and then I stopped. I tied the leading mule to a small oak tree and approached the girl.

‘Get up now,’ I ordered her.

‘I can’t!’

‘Don’t be stupid! Do you want to be devoured by the beasts of the forest? They’ll eat you alive, a little at a time, and then they’ll start on that little bastard you’re carrying in your belly. Get up right now, you idiot, or we’ll fall behind and it will be all over for both of us!’

I was convincing, and with a little help the girl managed to get to her feet and follow me to where I’d left the mules.

‘Now hold on to the tail of the last mule and let him pull you. Don’t you dare let go, or I’ll beat you to death myself. Are you listening?’

‘I’m listening,’ she answered.

‘All right. We’re moving on, then.’

I wondered where Melissa was, and I was afraid that she wasn’t much better off than that girl holding on to the tail of my third mule. I wondered too what had happened to Nicarchus the Arcadian, the boy who’d saved us all by overcoming the agony of his torn gut to raise the alarm. I would have liked to ask the surgeons what had become of him. They surely knew, but I was afraid of getting an answer that I didn’t want to hear, and this stopped me. I’d already understood that certain things you’re better off not knowing.

We soon reached the pass, a saddle between two forested peaks. The army had already started down the other side. When it was our turn to cross, I caught a glimpse of several villages nestling in the folds of the mountain, built of the same stone as the cliffs. It was difficult to distinguish them from the surrounding countryside. The atmosphere was strangely calm. At first there was birdsong and then not even that. Perhaps they’d been hushed by the imminent storm, announced by the dark clouds gathering at the peaks. We finally reached the valley and entered the villages.

There wasn’t a living soul.

Our men looked around in bewilderment. It was clear that those houses had been inhabited until just a few hours earlier. There were animals in the pens, pots on the tables, fires going out in the hearths. I brought the pregnant girl into one of the houses so she could warm herself at the fire and get something to eat. It was very cold outside.

The soldiers started to sack the houses but Sophos stopped them. He climbed up onto a rocky spur and spoke out. ‘I want no one to touch anything here! Listen to me: we take only what we need to eat, nothing more. They’ll understand that we don’t have hostile intentions; let’s hope that will suffice to hold them back. Look around you: we have to cross all these mountains, using passes like the one we just came through. They’re waiting somewhere, and they can tear us to pieces if they want to. They know every inch of their territory. They could be anywhere, and we wouldn’t even know it; they could easily strike at any moment. Our strength is in the phalanx, standing shoulder to shoulder on open ground. Strung out in long lines we are completely vulnerable. We have to do all we can not to make enemies.’

The men grumbled a little, but obeyed. I’d come to understand, that in that army, the orders were carried out, but the soldiers had to be convinced first by their commanders that they were doing the right thing.

They searched the villages and gathered all the provisions they could find at the centre of a little square, calculating how many animals we could bring along to guarantee our survival as long as possible. As they were searching they realized that there were women and children in some of the caves, hastily hidden behind the vegetation. They were rounded up and put under guard. Maybe they had refused to follow their men up to the mountains, perhaps there hadn’t been time. It was an important find, and the commanders were cheered: they had hostages now, who could be exchanged for our unhindered passage. But I did not share their enthusiasm, and I didn’t think the inhabitants of those villages would bend so easily.

T
HE COLUMN OF
our men on the march was so long that when the last ones arrived it was already getting dark. They didn’t bring good news. After crossing the pass, they’d been attacked from behind by the natives. They’d lost four of their comrades, felled by a hail of arrows and stones, and they were carrying about ten wounded with them. Their welcome into that wild land.

Xeno and his rearguard had captured a few prisoners: shepherds who hadn’t wanted to abandon their flocks.

At that point, everyone looked for shelter for the night. Competition was fierce. The officers were first, and settled in the houses. The others scrambled to find a space in the remaining structures. No one wanted to sleep outdoors because it was very cold and the night promised to be damp. Obviously, the buildings could not house even a quarter of our soldiers. Those who had managed to locate their tents pitched them, others built makeshift shelters using leafy branches and mats or settled under the canopies meant to protect the animals.

I wondered what would become of that poor pregnant girl the next day, and whether I’d be able to drag her along to the next pass hanging on to the tail of my mule.

Xeno had the servants pitch our tent and I even managed to cook something for dinner. He hadn’t given up writing. By lamplight he opened his case, extracted a white scroll, fastened it to the edges of the cover, as if it were a table top, and proceeded to trace out letters in his language. I wanted so badly to know what he was writing, but he’d already told me what he thought; that it ‘wasn’t necessary’ for me to know. There were times, when he was in a good humour or after we’d made love, that he read me what he’d written. Many of the things he talked about I had noticed myself, but I’d seen them with different eyes. Actually, I’d seen and noticed much more than what he’d thought to write, things he took no account of. I would tell him about them, precisely and with an abundance of details, but I knew they’d never be included on the white scroll that he unwound a little nearly every day, filling it up with tiny, regular marks, perfectly aligned. That’s the way he thought, after all: precise, organized, and in a certain way predictable, and yet here and there I saw a leap, a stumble, a sudden quickening of the characters, and I thought, that’s where he’s expressing emotion.

I went outside before lying down to rest and I looked around. I wasn’t alone. There were many others looking northward because the mountaintops were studded with fires: our enemies were observing us from up above. I called out, ‘Xeno!’

‘I know,’ his voice answered calmly. ‘There are fires on the mountains.’