The Lost Army (37 page)

Sophos seemed furious and ordered the men to put out the fires immediately. A score of them ran over with buckets and shovels to throw snow on the houses because the water had frozen. It was futile: they had roofs of wood and thatch, and were burned to ash in no time. The blackened ruins that remained were an insult to the blinding white of the village. The people who had lived in those houses were huddled together, and weeping.

Sophos had the assembly sounded and the men drew up on a level clearing outside the village.

‘Who set those houses on fire?’ he demanded.

‘They just caught fire,’ mumbled some.

‘All of them? Fine. If those responsible for this act of bravado come forward and confess, they’ll get off with a punishment. But if I have to find them out, and I will find them, I shall apply the maximum penalty: they will be executed. We have a pact with the Persians: they allow us to pass through, we do not burn their villages. Whoever was playing with fire today has jeopardized the lives of all his comrades.’

About twenty soldiers, heads hanging, took a step forward. One by one.

‘Why?’ asked Sophos.

‘We thought we’d be leaving today.’

‘And so you thought nothing of depriving these people of a roof at the height of the winter.’

No one said a word.

‘All right. You’ve acted like idiots and you will have to learn at your own expense what it means to be without a roof in the winter. Tonight you’ll sleep in the open, outside the perimeter guarded by the sentries. If you don’t survive, all the better: I’ll be free of a bunch of idiots. But first you’ll help the inhabitants of the houses you’ve burned to repair the roofs and to put in new windows and doors.’

The men obeyed. When night fell they were escorted outside the watch circle and abandoned there, with a dagger, a cloak and a shield as their only means of survival.

I
FELT BADLY FOR THEM
.

They had been irresponsible and stupid. They had burned down the houses of poor people who had never done them any harm. But wasn’t it normal to have twenty dolts in a group of ten thousand?

After all, they hadn’t killed anyone. And they risked paying for their bluster with their lives.

‘If it stays clear, they’ll die,’ said Xeno.

‘Why?’

‘Otherwise they’ll be killed by the enemy when they realize they’re outside our sentry ring.’

‘But why should a cloudless sky kill them?’

‘Because heat escapes upwards: if there are clouds, they keep it down. It’s like having a roof over your head.’

‘Does Sophos’s order hold for everyone?’

‘It does for you.’

‘But I’m not a soldier.’

‘That doesn’t change anything. Chirisophus’s orders hold for everyone. He is the high commander, and what’s more, they deserve this. It’s right that they experience for themselves what it means not to have a roof in a land like this, in this season, at night.’

I tried to think of a way to carry out some blankets, but Xeno warned me not to do it. I settled into a chair by the window and every now and then I’d check the sky: I could see clouds drifting in from the west, but they were still very far away. If they didn’t get here in time to cover the sky, those boys out there would be dead.

Xeno told me a story, one of those that they act out in their theatres. The story of a girl like me who disobeyed the orders of the king of her city out of the pity she felt for two young men: her brothers.

‘The king of an ancient city of my land, called Thebes, had decided to leave his kingdom to his two sons, but he made them swear a pact. They would share the rule of the city by governing one year at a time, alternating with each other. At the end of the first year, the son who had been in charge would leave the city, and the other would enter and reign for that year. Unfortunately, their thirst for power won out, and when Polynices showed up to take his turn, the other, Eteocles, refused to leave the city. So Polynices contracted an alliance with six kings and laid siege to Thebes.

‘The warriors on both sides fought furiously, stoked by implacable hate. The two brothers finally decided to face off in a duel, but their fight to the death left no victor. Both brothers died from their wounds.

‘Their successor, whose name was Creon, decreed that the bodies should be left unburied, as a warning for anyone who went against blood ties or broke the faith of a sworn promise.

‘The two brothers had a sister named Antigone, who was betrothed to Creon’s son. She chose not to heed the will of the king, who had threatened to execute anyone who defied him. Antigone gave her brothers a ritual burial by tossing a few handfuls of dust onto their bodies. She was surprised by the king’s guard and was brought to justice. Antigone proclaimed herself innocent, claiming that there was a higher law than that of the king and the government: the law of the heart, of pity for the dead, no matter how heinous a crime they had been guilty of. Every person had a moral obligation to provide funeral rites for his relatives: a law of the soul and the conscience, superior to any law established by man.’

As Xeno told me the story of Antigone, time had passed without my realizing it, and when I turned to the window I could see that the snow was falling thickly. The sky was white and every trace of human presence had been cancelled. The magical vision that enchanted me so – who could ever have imagined amidst the dust of Beth Qadà that a similar miracle could exist! – those marvellous white flakes, millions of icy butterflies suspended in a dance of love before surrendering to the light foamy blanket on the ground, did not let me forget that nature is always cruel, and that what for me was enchanting – sitting here by the warmth of the fire – could be deadly for others.

‘So how did the story end up?’ I asked, as if awakening from a dream.

‘Badly,’ replied Xeno. ‘A long chain of deaths. So don’t go getting any strange ideas. Sleep now. I’m going to inspect the guard corps.’

But I’d already made up my mind and Xeno’s story only convinced me further – why else would he have told it to me? I would take fleeces and goatskins to those stupid boys out there in the snow protected only by their cloaks. But as I was gathering them up, a trumpet blare tore through the still atmosphere with a long alarm call. I dropped the skins and went outside. There were big fires burning on the mountains all around us, huge blazes shooting out red flares that formed a tremulous red halo in the falling snow.

The warriors left the houses they had occupied, armed and wearing their cloaks. Sophos and his commanders addressed the soldiers. ‘It’s too dangerous to lodge separately in small groups. They could surprise us in our sleep under the cover of night and massacre us in silence. We’ll spend the night all together at the centre of the main village, armed and ready for combat! Anyone found hiding inside a house will be thrown out of the camp with only a cloak and a dagger.’

And so it was. The men scattered straw taken from the haylofts over the ground and lay down all together. Only the women remained in the houses. I joined Lystra, who I’d found cover for in a barn, where the body heat of the animals would protect her from the frost.

It snowed all night, and next morning we woke up to a thick white layer covering the ground. Our men were sluggish and sore, but the hay, straw and raw wool cloaks had protected them through the long night.

The twenty men who had been driven outside the ring of sentries seemed to have disappeared. Those idiots must have wandered off in search of shelter and got themselves killed.

‘So much the worse for them,’ observed Xeno. ‘They should have thought about it beforehand.’ But he hadn’t even finished speaking when the blanket of snow erupted at various spots and the twenty warriors arose like spectres from the Underworld.

‘Will you look at those bastards!’ exclaimed Xeno. They’d survived by propping up their shields with dried branches and covering them with their cloaks, thus creating tiny but effective shelters that preserved their body heat. Curled up beneath their shields, they were protected from the cold all night long.

Xeno burst out laughing and the others had a chuckle as well at seeing their comrades returning unscathed to their units.

But now the soldiers had to be shaken from their lethargy before the enemy attacked.

Xeno set an example. He got to his feet, grabbed an axe and started splitting wood bare-chested. By then it was broad daylight, and although the air was cold, the sun’s rays were warm. The daggers of ice that were hanging from the roofs of the houses began to drip as the sun got hotter. Inspired by Xeno’s example, the others set to work as well and in no time the camp was full of concerted activity. They found some animal fat, as well as an ointment made from a plant that grew in the area. They set it over the fire to melt it, and the girls were called upon to grease and massage the chests and backs of the numb soldiers to help them regain a little energy. Since most of them were no older than twenty, that wasn’t such a difficult chore.

Breakfast was prepared and the men were soon ready for action. A group of scouts was sent up into the mountains for reconnaissance and they returned towards midday with a prisoner who knew many things. Tiribazus was planning an ambush, at a choke point in the mountains up ahead.

It was starting all over again: a battle at every pass, an ambush at every bottleneck. There was a curse hanging over our heads, a fate that just wouldn’t relent, poised to strike us again and again. But the Ten Thousand didn’t seem concerned: as soon as they’d been informed of the situation, there was no hesitation. After their meal, they donned their armour and set off at a marching pace.

The sky was clouding over, but that made our trek easier: the glare of sun on snow was worse than in the desert. When the light was so blinding, you had to squeeze your eyes shut until they were mere slits.

The sight of the army moving through the snowy landscape was amazing: a long, dark serpent unwinding slowly over the clean white blanket of snow. I wondered how they could identify the road, since all the pathways had been covered up, but in this case, we had little leeway: our route headed straight for a line of mountains set across it, topped by a peak that was much higher than all the rest. After a couple of hours, a light infantry detachment struck out from the rest of the army and aimed straight for the pass, following a shortcut which the prisoner had indicated. They wanted to occupy the pass before Tiribazus’s troops got there.

The peltasts were followed by a contingent of heavy infantry: the red cloaks with their heavy shields. The first group were to take the pass, the second were to defend it if the enemy counterattacked.

Before evening our men had seized the pass and succeeded in driving off the Armenians and other mercenaries who had been sent after them. They occupied Tiribazus’s camp, which was full of every sort of bounty. If the satrap of Armenia had been planning to boast of this exploit to the Great King, he would have to think again. And I would just have to stop worrying so much. The dark thoughts that were obsessing me that morning had dissipated before dusk: there seemed to be no obstacle that our army could not overcome.

The losses we’d suffered up to that point had been limited. Three or four hundred men in all, including those who had died later of their wounds. I was shocked to realize that I had started to think like a soldier. Three or four hundred men dead in battle was a huge number, too, too many. Even if there had been one hundred, or fifty, or even one alone, it would have been too many. The death of any twenty-year-old was a tragedy, a disaster. For him, for the parents who had brought him into this world, for the woman who loved him, for the children he would never have. For everything that had been taken from him and that he’d never get back. And because ever since the beginning of our world, another man like him had never been born, and no one like him would exist until the end of time.

We reached the well head of the Euphrates, as tiny at its source as the Tigris. It seemed a sacred place to me, because the river was the father and the god of my land. Without it everything would be arid, the unopposed reign of the desert. When we crossed it the water reached nearly to our waists, and I can still remember that it was so cold it made my legs go numb.

The snow became deeper and deeper as we advanced, and whenever we stopped in some village the warriors would seek out lengths of cloth to cover their legs, which were customarily bare, and wrap their feet, but even so it was biting cold. As long as they kept walking it wasn’t too bad, but when they stopped they had to stamp their feet on the ground so they wouldn’t freeze.

We advanced in this way for several days, continuing upwards, passing along the slopes of soaring mountains of solid rock, standing out white against the blue sky or grey when it was cloudy. The air cut your face like a knife.

I realized that Lystra was flagging fast. Walking through the deep snow was incredibly laborious, and she was all stomach. She was close to giving up entirely. One day, as I was trying to help her to get up, I spotted the two mules carrying a litter that I’d first seen at the start of our trek across the Carduchian mountains, and I remembered a plan I’d hatched back then. I let go of Lystra and ran as fast as I could to stop the first mule. The servant leading the little convoy raised the reins to strike me with them, but I managed to dodge the blow.