The Lost Army

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Xeno described the encounter as cordial: Tissaphernes and his companions shook Clearchus’s hand, as well as those of all the high officers, in turn. Then negotiations started. Tissaphernes said that the Great King did not wish them ill and that he was willing to allow them to leave even though many of his advisers thought he was creating a dangerous precedent. But they would have to accept certain conditions.

  Clearchus spoke then. ‘We were unaware of the true purpose of Cyrus’s expedition . . .’ In saying that, he was lying, and yet he was telling the truth. He was lying because he had always known the true reason for the expedition, and he was telling the truth because the greatest part of the army had been kept completely in the dark. ‘When, however, we found out about it, it seemed a cowardly act to abandon the man who had engaged us and who had provided for us until that moment, and so we fought loyally under his orders, winning victory at our battle position. But Cyrus is dead now and we are free of our obligations to him. We have no one to answer to but ourselves. Mark my words: we want one thing, and one thing alone. To return home. We have no interest in anything else here. As long as you do not hinder our return journey, everything will be fine. If you try to bar the way we will fight you to the last drop of blood. You know that I’ll do as I say.’

  The ambassadors looked at each other as the interpreter translated and then Tissaphernes spoke again. ‘I’ve told you. You are free to return to where you’ve come from, but no pillaging and no violence. You will buy what you need in the markets.’

  ‘And when we find no markets?’

  ‘Then you can take what you need from the land, but only as much as you need and only under our strict supervision. What is your answer?’

  Clearchus and his men withdrew in order to consult amongst themselves, but in reality the decision was already taken, seeing that the proposed conditions were reasonable.

  ‘We accept,’ was their answer.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Tissaphernes, ‘we shall return to the King so he may ratify the treaty. As soon as we have his assent, we’ll return here. We shall begin our journey to the coast together. The land I have been appointed to govern lies in the same direction. Do not move from here or, I warn you, the agreement will be cancelled.’

  Clearchus looked him straight in the eye. ‘I trust you aren’t thinking of hemming us into a trap. That would be quite unwise of you.’

  Tissaphernes smiled, revealing a double row of pearly white teeth under his thick black moustache. ‘If we’re going to be making such a long journey together, we should start trusting each other, wouldn’t you say?’

  Having said this he bade the commander farewell, mounted his horse and galloped off.

  ‘What do you think?’ Clearchus asked his men. Xeno replied that, seeing no alternative course of action, he would agree, but that the officers should decide. One by one, they declared their willingness to abide by Tissaphernes’s conditions.

  ‘Then we wait,’ said Clearchus.

  ‘We wait,’ retorted Menon of Thessaly. ‘But not for long.’ He walked off.

  Three days passed without anything happening and some of the men began to worry. Xeno accompanied me when I went to draw water because he feared a surprise attack. It seemed to me that the faith he had in the Persians’ good will was probably beginning to falter. As time passed the tension grew because we’d had no news and no one knew what to think.

  I went to visit Melissa, whom I hadn’t seen for days. I found her well set up in her tent with two servants waiting on her every need.

  ‘You’ve found a new friend?’ I asked.

  ‘I found the one I wanted.’

  ‘Menon?’

  Melissa nodded, smiling.

  ‘Unbelievable. When did that happen?’

  ‘The evening after the ambassadors arrived. He’d been consulting with the other officers, and he was heading back to his quarters when he happened to pass by my tent. I invited him to come in for a cool drink. Difficult to say no, with this heat. Palm wine with a little water and a touch of mint. I found a sweating jar at camp that I use to cool down the wine until it’s nice and frosty.’

  ‘How do you do that? What’s a sweating jar?’

  ‘It’s simple. They’re jars made of coarse clay and fired at a high temperature so they become porous. You just have to find a spot where there’s a little breeze and wet the jar down continuously to chill the liquid inside.’

  ‘I thought you’d seduced him with something else . . .’

  ‘You mean this?’ she smiled, touching her lap. ‘Not so soon. Later . . . after he’d sat down, and relaxed, after he’d sipped that lovely, cool, refreshing drink. After I’d washed him with a soft sponge and dried him with fine, lavender-scented linen . . .’

  ‘I don’t think there’s a man that can resist you. You could seduce the Great King himself.’

  ‘I’ve had a little experience . . . Menon gave in to my caresses, but he never truly let himself go. He’s incredibly wary and distrustful; something terrible must have happened to him in the past, but I couldn’t get him to say a word about it.’

  ‘Did he sleep with you?’

  ‘Just one night. Naked, but with his sword at his side. The one time I got up to get a drink I found it at my throat. You were right: it was like sleeping with a leopard. The first thing you realize is that he could kill you as easily as he drinks a glass of water. Kill anyone, I mean, without distinction.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  ‘And yet there’s something mysterious in him that fascinates me. His fierceness, so sudden and yet so cold-blooded. He’s allowed this unchecked aggressiveness to grow in him, but I think it must spring from an experience of extreme suffering and terror. That night I heard him cry out in his sleep. It was just before dawn, when you dream things you can’t remember when you awake. A horrible, inhuman cry.’

  I truly admired Melissa just then; not only did she have a perfect body and face, but such a rich range of emotions, such a sharp mind. She was one of those people who change the way you look at things, someone I never would have met had I remained at Beth Qadà,

  ‘Do you have any idea of what we’re in for here?’ asked Melissa. ‘Menon hasn’t said a word and I don’t dare ask him.’

  ‘Xeno’s troubled because nothing’s happening. Too many days have gone by. The scouts say that we’re shut in between the Tigris and a canal. Clearchus doesn’t want to move because he’s worried about violating the truce and giving Ariaeus an excuse to abandon us to our destiny.’

  Melissa poured me a cup of her magical beverage and watched with a fond expression as I drank. ‘Have you thought of what you’ll do if things take a turn for the worse?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If the army is wiped out by the Persians. If they kill your Xeno.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I could survive without him.’

  ‘That’s nonsense. We have to survive, no matter what. A woman as desirable as you are can always find a way to survive. All you need to do is identify the most powerful male. He may be a king or a prince or an army commander; he’ll protect you and give you everything you deserve in exchange for your favours.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d be very good at that. If you succeed, maybe you can protect me as well. I’m too stupid, Melissa. I’m one of those women who fall in love. For a lifetime. You are already a legend, the beauty who ran naked from Ariaeus’s camp to the lines of Greek solders who were cheering you on. Not even cold-eyed Menon could resist your charms.’

  Melissa sighed. ‘Menon . . . I’m afraid he might be the one who does for me. You know, I’ve never fallen in love with anyone in all my life, but that heartless young man makes me tremble . . .’

  I saw a shadow of doubt in Melissa’s amber eyes and I left then, so that I wouldn’t have to answer the question she might have asked me next.

  TWENTY DAYS PASSED before the ambassadors returned, and I think it was pure folly to wait so long without doing anything. I
don’t know why nothing happened, in the end. The Great King had accepted our terms and thus we began our return. That night Xeno and I made love because the fear of an imminent catastrophe was allayed and the warm, quiet night air, smelling of hay, urged us into each other’s arms. Then we left the tent and sat on the dry grass to look at the starry sky. We could hear the buzz of the camp all around us; the low voices of the soldiers, the barking of the stray dogs that wandered among the tents. No one was singing, though. Everyone’s thoughts were suffused with misgiving and a sense of gloom. The immense army they had faced at Cunaxa had given the men an idea of how vast the empire was, extending around us in all directions, and of how many obstacles stood in our way.

  ‘Do you think we’ll be taking the same road back?’ I asked Xeno. ‘Will we pass through my villages?’ I felt deep dismay at the idea. If our route took us through the Villages of the Belt, the circle would close for me, and I’d probably be left behind so Xeno could take up his life again where he had left it, a life he was certainly eager to get back to.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘Wherever my mind turns, I have doubts and uncertainties. We have to follow the Persians, who hate us and will be watching everything we do. We’re a foreign body festering inside their country. They’re afraid to face us, but they know that in one way or another, we’ll have to be destroyed.’

  ‘Why should that be so?’ I pleaded. ‘The Great King himself has agreed to let us leave. He laid down his conditions and you gave your consent.’

  ‘That’s true. Everything seems perfect, nothing’s wrong, and yet there’s no logic in such behaviour. If we make it back, and tell everyone how easy it was to get practically all the way to one of their capitals, others could try to repeat the same endeavour. It’s a risk the Persians cannot run. It’s also true that the last word is never spoken, the paths of destiny are often inscrutable.’

  ‘So if tomorrow your fears do turn out to be misplaced, what can we expect to happen?’

  Tissaphernes has been nominated governor of Lydia in Cyrus’s place and so he has to make his way to his province. We’ll be sharing the same road because we’re going in the same direction, and this will allow them to keep an eye on us. We’ll be travelling up the Tigris until we reach the base of the Taurus mountains. There we’ll turn west towards the Cilician Gates, the pass that connects Syria with Anatolia, and we’ll pass rather close to your villages, four or five parasangs, a day’s march to the south.’

  ‘So it would be easy for you to take me back to Beth Qadà, where we met.’

  ‘Not of my own will,’ he said. ‘I’d miss you very much, too much . . . You know, where I come from they tell stories of heroes who return after long journeys bringing a barbarian girl back with them . . .’

  ‘How do the stories end?’

  ‘That’s not important . . .’ replied Xeno and stopped talking all at once. My eyes followed his as they scanned the camp and stopped short at a figure on horseback, riding in silence in the tall grass.

  Sophos.

  WE STARTED OFF at dawn. After marching for two days we met up with a wall of mud bricks cemented together with asphalt and two days later we reached the banks of the Tigris, which we crossed on a boat bridge. Xeno recorded all of the place names and distances on his tablet and I could see him marking out the direction of our journey on the wax, based on the position of the sun. Beyond the river was a biggish city, encircled by another wall of mud bricks, like the ones we use to build our houses at Beth Qadà. There for the first time we went to a market. Our men yoked the mules to the wagons and went to buy what was needed to feed the whole army. I had never seen the quantity of food needed to satisfy the hunger of ten thousand men. It was an enormous amount, although it was made up of very few items, because they had to buy up what the market offered: wheat, barley, turnips and legumes, freshwater fish. The mutton, goat and poultry all went to the officers, like Proxenus, Menon, Agasias and Glous. Clearchus and his circle always ate the same things their soldiers did. Only one beverage was available, palm wine, but only for those who could afford it.

  I noticed that the various units had put their money together and entrusted a single person to buy the provisions for all of them; he would provide an accounting of how the money had been spent and when it ran out they would contribute again to form a new reserve. The officers, except for Clearchus and his staff, sent their adjutants. Xeno had not lost his passion for hunting. When possible he would go out with a bow, arrows and javelins, and he nearly always came back with some prey: a wild rabbit, some ducks, a young gazelle, once, that stared at me with big, glassy eyes.

  Ariaeus and his army who, in theory, were allied to us, joined Tissaphernes instead. They camped at a single site, all together, but our men took great care to pitch their tents elsewhere as we had from the start, at a distance of a parasang or even further. We wouldn’t even have known where the Asians were, if it hadn’t been for the smoke of their campfires.

  This situation led to obsessive, pessimistic second-guessing: who knows what they’ve got in mind? Who knows what traps or tricks they’re thinking up? That bastard Ariaeus was in league with them. Barbarians one and all, what could they have expected?

  It is not difficult to imagine that the same kind of suspicions were circulating in the other camp and what had started out as a transfer of two army units in the direction of the sea soon became an undeclared war, both sides spying and jumping to conclusions, the tension spiralling out of control, day and night.

  Fortunately, our men were level-headed enough to avoid direct contact, which would have inevitably resulted in skirmishes, but what they tried to avoid often happened by chance. Groups of our auxiliaries going out to gather forage often ran into Persian troops who were out for the same reason, and furious fights broke out, sometimes actual combat with casualties. It took Clearchus with all of his authority to prevent the officers from going out in full battle gear to avenge their dead and wounded.

  The further north we advanced along the left bank of the Tigris, the tenser and more difficult the situation became, because the areas where forage could be gathered or provisions bought were becoming rarer and rarer, and competition for what was available was becoming more vicious almost step by step. Xeno was one of the few who had worried when things were going well, but events were proving him right now. What would happen when the tension built up to a real crisis? I would watch Clearchus as he carried out inspection at night, surrounded by his guard. At times he would venture out close to the Persian outposts. Their campfires extended over a vast area and gave the measure of the enormous discrepancy between the two armies. No one was fooled any more over where Ariaeus’s loyalty lay: if push came to shove he would certainly do battle against us.

  One night, around the second guard shift, I heard the sounds of a violent quarrel: it was Menon, who wanted to lead his men on a night raid into the Persian camp. He was sure he could cause a slaughter, and throw the entire army into a panic, after which an all-out assault by the rest of the Greek forces would wipe out the whole bunch.

  ‘Let me go!’ he was shouting. ‘They’re not expecting it. Can’t you hear the row they’re making? They’re all half-drunk. We’ll butcher them like sheep. They killed two of my men today! Whoever touches Menon’s men is dead. Dead! Understand?’

  He was crazed, like an animal who has scented blood. No one could have stopped him except for Clearchus, but I’m convinced that had he been set loose, Menon would have done all that he promised and more. He was so furious that his plan was being thwarted that I was afraid he would draw his sword against his own commander, but Clearchus’s grim resolve stifled his rage and prevented events from getting out of hand. At least for the moment.

  I noticed Sophos watching the scene silently from a distance. Lately I’d started seeing him with an officer of Socrates’s battalion, a youngish man who didn’t talk much but had the reputation of being a formidable combatant. He was from a city in the south, Xeno told me.
He knew his name, Neon, but nothing else about him. The fact that they both had little to say seemed to be the only thing they had in common.

  We crossed another river and sighted another city in the distance where we were able to buy provisions at the market, then we forged on into a barren territory where the only things growing were on the banks of the Tigris. Although it was late autumn it was still hot, and the long marches under a scorching sun put both man and animal to the test. Many days had passed since the day that Clearchus had met Tissaphernes and had signed the truce agreement, but since that time there had been no contact, no meeting, no signal.

  Only once did a message arrive from the Persian camp. We were camped in the vicinity of a group of villages that reminded me of the place I was born and that I hadn’t seen in so long. A Persian horseman appeared at dawn and waited, immobile, on his horse, until Clearchus approached him. The man told him, in stilted Greek, that as a sign of his good will, Tissaphernes was granting them permission to take what they needed from those villages.

  At first, Xeno and the others thought that it had to be a trap, an invitation to plunder with the intent of scattering our men among the houses and down the alleyways of that small settlement, in order to unleash a surprise attack and finish them off. But Agasias, who had gone ahead to reconnoitre, reported that there were no Persians within a range of two parasangs and that this meant that they had no intention of assaulting us.

  At this point, Clearchus posted several groups of scouts at a certain distance from the enemy camp and sent the others to sack the villages. By evening, little was left in those humble communities of farmers and shepherds, and the inhabitants would be exposed to the risk of starvation during the winter months. They’d lost their harvest, their pack and draught animals and their farmyard animals as well. None of the men who were sacking the villages of those poor wretches asked themselves the reason for such indulgence on the part of the enemy, but I did. There had to be a reason, and it wasn’t hard to find. Those villages had the same name as mine: the ‘Villages of Parysatis’. That is, they were named after the Queen Mother, and that authorized pillaging had to be an explicit insult to her majesty.