The Lost Army

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Then I saw them come out!

  There was a line of prisoners shackled together, and a Persian officer was securing the first man’s chains to a horse’s saddle. I couldn’t recognize them because I was too far away, but I dared not go any closer. I waited until they had been led away and all the horsemen had disappeared, and then I crept up to the abandoned tent. Lying outside were the unburied bodies of our soldiers which had been mutilated by the Persians and left to the jackals. Soon the only thing left of those lads – who just a day before were so full of pluck – would be their bones.

  I looked inside the tent, but the lamps were gone and I could see nothing but murky darkness.

  I started walking back at a quick pace, keeping to the left bank of the river, and I reached our camp before daybreak.

  Sophos had been acclaimed commander by the great majority of the warriors. The other officers who had fallen in the ambush were simply replaced by a show of hands: Agasias the Stymphalian, Timas the Dardanian, Xanthi the Achaean and Cleanor the Arcadian were chosen, in addition to Xeno. By the time they had finished the sun was rising.

  No one had slept, no one had eaten. Those lads had nothing in them but a desperate will to survive.

  14

  MELISSA DRIED HER TEARS and tried to stop sobbing. ‘Are you sure it was them?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m certain. It was too dark to see their faces, but there were five of them and they were wearing Greek military tunics. I recognized them from the way they were walking. Who else could it have been?’

  ‘You didn’t hear anything? A word, a signal?’

  ‘No, I was too far away and I was afraid to get any closer. I stayed crouched down in the river mud so they wouldn’t see me, but once they had left, I saw what they left behind. The horror that wounded my eyes will be with me in my nightmares for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Did you see signs of torture?’

  ‘I told you, it was dark. The inside of the pavilion was pitch-black.’

  ‘If you had told me, I would have come with you.’

  ‘It’s better you didn’t. You might not have been able to control yourself, and we both would have been in trouble.’

  ‘Answer me honestly: do you think there is any chance that anyone has survived?’

  ‘What I think doesn’t matter. Fate has dragged us into events which are bigger than we are, and we’re like bits of straw in a windstorm. But if you want to hear my opinion, I think there is very little probability that anyone survived, but if anyone managed, it would be Menon.’

  Melissa’s face lit up and I instantly felt badly for raising her hopes. ‘Do you really think so?’ she asked.

  ‘I do, but I’m afraid what I think doesn’t count. They’re in a desperate situation. But Menon is the shrewdest and most intelligent of them all, and he never loses his head. The only way they’ll get him is if they kill him right away and don’t give him the chance to think his way out, or after he’s already tried everything. If there is a single chance for him to save himself, he’ll find it. Don’t torment yourself so, and think about surviving yourself; it’s not going to be easy for you either from now on.’

  Melissa dropped her head. ‘I know. With Menon gone, I’m easy prey again. You know, Abira, what I do in life and which arts I’ve perfected. But Menon defended me without asking for anything in exchange. I was the one who asked him to make love to me, to stay beside me in my bed. He almost seemed reluctant to accept.’

  ‘Maybe because he loved you, and he knew how likely it was that he would die and have to leave you alone without protection. He wanted you to be free to use the only truly powerful weapon you possess: your beauty.’

  I stayed with her until she fell asleep. As I walked back towards my tent, crossing behind the horse pen, I saw Sophos inspecting the guard when Neon came up and pulled him away, towards the pen. I stopped and stood stock-still; I had a feeling that something strange was about to happen. Neon was saying something. Sophos listened and seemed quite shaken; he reacted harshly and started to walk away, but Neon held on to his arm. I heard Neon shout, ‘Those are your orders and you have no choice!’ Then they started to quarrel heatedly in a dialect I couldn’t understand. Neon left then and Sophos remained alone. He folded his arms on the fence and rested his head on them as if he were being crushed by an unbearable thought. I held my breath. He was so close I could hear him panting. Then he lifted his head suddenly and gave the stake a great punch, cursing. He walked off in long strides.

  We set off as soon as we could, but all that day and the next we suffered continual attacks. The enemy wanted to see how easy it might be to wear down our resistance and to test the morale of our headless army. They soon realized they’d bitten off more than they could chew, but it was evident that we were vulnerable to attacks from their cavalry. As long as Ariaeus had been on our side, his horsemen had covered us, as had Cyrus’s. They were the best of the ruling class, young men who were extremely loyal and courageous. But we obviously couldn’t count on them now, and every time our warriors reacted to an attack, the Persians would swiftly and easily ride off beyond the range of our spears.

  Sophos kept his promise not to leave anyone behind. Anyone who was wounded or fell ill was well cared for. I wondered how he’d be able to keep his word when there were dozens, or hundreds, of men injured. Nicarchus of Arcadia journeyed with us, stretched out in a wagon. His belly was as swollen as a wineskin and as hard as leather, but every time we stopped to rest the surgeon would probe his wound with a silver tube and drain the evil humours from his bowels. His fever was very high, and the heat of the sun added to that of his body made him delirious. All night he groaned, and many of his comrades found themselves wishing that he would die, to end his agony and their own. I was sure that somewhere, a long way away, there was a person hoping with all their heart that he would come back, praying every day to a god to protect him from the countless perils of his profession and bring him home safe and sound. Those hopes and prayers deserved to be answered, because they were like Melissa’s thoughts for Menon, like mine for Xeno when he was not with me.

  The idea of thwarting fate gave me great satisfaction, and I worked hard to help Nicarchus battle against death who, like a jackal, prowled around his wagon at night, eager to carry him off to the land of listless ghosts.

  We crossed a river on a bridge of boats and proceeded in the direction of an abandoned city the locals called Al Sarruti.

  I realized that there were quite a few women travelling with the expedition; a long line of them walked alongside the wagons being used for the wounded. They were all very young and scared to death in such a precarious situation. Some of them were pregnant, and I wondered how they would be able to make it through long marches and endure privation and hardships of every kind. The men who were their lovers or whose keeping they were in would certainly have preferred not to put them through such strenuous conditions, but the women had no choice, except for migrating to the enemy camp, which must have seemed altogether too dangerous.

  The difficulties were beginning now, that much was clear. What we’d experienced until that moment was nothing; we’d had food and drink, at least, and we’d had our commanders, men who inspired courage and always made the right decisions. I knew that just because I was in love with Xeno, that didn’t mean that he was equal to the task he’d set out to accomplish. Could he really lead his comrades to safety? Sophos impressed me as being up to the job, now that he’d come out into the open. But there was something he was hiding, something he wouldn’t say. Maybe other men would emerge, others who had remained in the background until then.

  One evening as I was cooking dinner with the little we had left to us, I told Xeno about the night of the ambush, how I swam down the river until I reached the pavilion and saw our generals dragged away in chains. I told him I’d discovered how the enemy had surprised them by lying in wait under the water, breathing through reeds.

  My story upset him: he couldn’t believe I�
�d done something that only a man could do to his mind. But what disturbed him most was the reason why I’d done it: to bring Melissa news of the man she loved, even though that man was Menon of Thessaly, whom Xeno despised.

  ‘Are you going to write about your disdain for him in your diary?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly,’ he replied, ‘every man will have the fame he deserves.’

  ‘But you’re the one who’s deciding what kind of fame he deserves, and that’s not fair. What do you know of his life? Haven’t you ever thought that back in your city someone might be writing even worse things about you?’

  Xeno seemed astonished, perhaps more because I was able to formulate such a statement in Greek than for the substance of what I’d said.

  I told him about the other scene I’d witnessed, the quarrel between Neon and Sophos, but he seemed not to grant it any importance. It was nothing to fret about, he said, certainly just some minor difference in opinion. I couldn’t stop worrying about it, though. I’d never seen Sophos in such a state.

  I remained awake that night long after Xeno had fallen asleep. I was looking out towards the west, towards the land I’d come from, when I saw strange shapes passing in the darkness, shadows that quickly slipped away. I thought I could hear voices as well from somewhere in the distance.

  There were boats on the Tigris.

  I looked over at Melissa’s wagon, covered by a tent, and wondered what would become of her. I listened to the shrieking of the night birds and imagined that I was hearing the cries of our commanders, tortured and killed, angry ghosts crossing the threshold of the night.

  Then nothing.

  I was awakened by a strange noise that I couldn’t identify and I woke Xeno.

  ‘What is that?’ I asked him.

  ‘I don’t know. The wind can bring sounds from a great distance.’

  The wind . . . whenever I heard it blowing, I wondered whether it was the kind that merely raised the dust in Beth Qadà or whether it was the kind that roared and announced some extraordinary event.

  ‘It’s the sound of an army approaching!’ exclaimed Xeno. ‘Don’t move from here.’

  He put on his armour and went to find Sophos and the others.

  The officers spread the alarm in silence. I watched as the men woke their sleeping comrades and before long the entire army was ready to march, while a small cavalry unit commanded by Xeno rode off in the direction of the noise, which was growing more and more distinct. A barely visible pallor was beginning to lighten the horizon to the east, behind a line of barren hills. In the meantime we resumed our journey; I had the mules yoked and the tent loaded on to the wagon. The servant was used to obeying me when Xeno was not around. Next to me was a girl on another wagon. She was pregnant.

  ‘Do you know who the father of your child is?’ I asked her.

  She gestured at the long line of warriors winding before us in the darkness. ‘One of them,’ she replied, and goaded the mules pulling her wagon.

  We soon arrived at the edge of a gully that intersected our path. It was a deep fracture in the ground, a splitting of the sandy rock that reached from west to east for a long stretch. The walls were steep and at the bottom lay huge boulders, scattered here and there as if tossed by a giant’s hand.

  It was completely dry, but during the winter it must fill up with muddy water dumped by violent storms back in the mountains; I’d seen that kind of sudden flooding often where I came from. The boulders must have been tumbled about by the raging flood waters.

  There were only two or three points where crossing was possible, paths – trampled by the passage of herds of goats and sheep – which cut down the steep wall, crossed the bottom and climbed up the other side. Only one of the three paths would allow for us to cross in the wagons, but there was considerable risk in attempting it in that hour of darkness preceding the dawn. Two of the wagons tipped over and had to be pushed back upright using the tent poles for leverage and set back on track. The servants compensated for the unnatural angle of descent by using spear shafts to prop the top-heavy wagons up so they wouldn’t take another tumble. The infantry and cavalry used the other two narrower paths.

  Sophos, Agasias, Timas, Xanthi and Cleanor rode ahead, turning often to guide our passage. They rode at a distance of twenty or thirty paces and continuously called out to one another, but without raising their voices. They were all very young, between twenty and thirty, and strongly built, and they had taken their new assignments very seriously. But although I’d never strictly been a part of the military expedition, even I couldn’t help but think of the commanders we’d lost.

  Sophos kept his head turned and his eyes trained to the east, at the point where the sun would be rising. All at once, rays of light shone out from behind the hills and Sophos turned to the south. He was looking for something, and I looked the same way. A light flashed repeatedly on the plain, and Sophos exclaimed, ‘It’s Xeno! The signal, they’re coming. We’ll do as we’ve decided.’

  Upon hearing his order, the officers on horseback rode fast to the foot of the gully and each one took position at the head of his unit. The men broke ranks at once and groped their way up the opposite bank any way they could. Our convoy, with the wagons, the pack animals, the women and the non-combatants, had reached the bottom of the gully and was starting to struggle its way up the other side. I began to think that the soldiers had forgotten about us and were leaving us behind. I saw two officers up on the opposite edge of the gully making wide gestures as if to hasten our ascent, but I didn’t want to separate myself from the others.

  As I was starting to climb up the slope I heard a galloping noise behind me and thought that all was lost. But it was our men on horseback, the scouts commanded by Xeno, who had given the signal and who were now racing down the path behind us at breakneck speed.

  Xeno yelled, ‘Abandon the wagons! Get up to the other side, now! Leave the wagons behind!’

  The other scouts were shouting out as well. ‘Move, run as fast as you can, leave the wagons behind, the enemy is at our heels!’

  We all got out of the wagons and clambered as fast as we could up towards the outer edge of the gully. I saw Melissa stumbling and crying out with pain and rushed to help her. The fancy sandals she wore weren’t suitable for climbing and her tender feet had never trodden jagged stones and splinters of black flint. She wounded herself with every step she took. I tried to lift her off the ground and drag her towards the top, but I couldn’t do it alone. I was desperate and completely out of breath and I yelled as loudly as I could, ‘Xenooo!’ and there he was next to me, smiling behind the mask of his helmet. He knew I needed him, even before I called.

  He pulled us both up to the top in no time as the other men were helping the other unfortunates in our company.

  ‘Everyone behind the rocks!’ shouted Sophos and we scrambled to obey him, as we could already hear the thunder of Persian horses galloping at our backs. As soon as we reached shelter, I looked back, panting, to the spot where Sophos and Xeno had gone and . . . nothing! There was no one to be seen.

  ‘Where have they gone?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘They’ve left us alone!’ whimpered Melissa. ‘They’ve gone off and deserted us.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. They’re on foot as we are, they can’t have disappeared.’ I hushed her because the Persian horsemen were emerging from the rim of the gully. They pulled up short in surprise, scanning the empty expanse of dry grassland. The profound silence was disturbed only by a light breeze that bent the tall grass and set white dandelion tufts adrift. But not for long.

  A high-pitched, rhythmic battle cry burst out, followed by the clanging of metal on metal. Our men had been invisible because they were all crouched down in the grass and they rose to their feet all at once, in perfect formation!

  Ten thousand shields joined in a wall of bronze, ten thousand spears jutted forward menacingly, thousands of red cloaks fluttered in the wind like standards. Their helmets covered their faces. I’d
never seen them look like that and it was an awesome sight indeed. Behind their bronze helmets, all you could see were the eyes and mouth, and this transformed each man into an otherworldly being. Their faces disappeared but their eyes flashed in the dark and every movement of their heads was ominous. Their bare-faced adversaries could imagine any kind of ferocious power behind those metallic masks. Their faces were inscrutable, their bearing charged with dire intent.

  The Persian horsemen tried to overcome their shock and they attacked at an order from their commander, but our men were too close and were already advancing. There was no room for the horses to gain momentum; the spears were upon them. The phalanx advanced like a machine, and nothing could stand in its way. The horsemen tried in vain to breach the line. At each attempt the ranks closed tight and the files doubled up so that the men behind pressed their comrades forward with their shields. Their spears cleaved the bodies of their enemies and the battle turned into a massacre. I watched in horror as men and horses fell headlong into the gully, tumbling over each other, leaving shreds of flesh and splashes of blood on the sharp stones and shards of black flint.

  The phalanx opened then and let through the archers, slings-men and javelin-throwers who showered the survivors with a hail of lethal darts. When we could finally approach the brink of the gully ourselves, the sun shone triumphantly in a pure blue sky but the ground . . . the ground was a slaughterhouse. The Persian cavalry squadron was reduced to a confused, atrocious pile of bloodied bodies and the excruciating groans of the dying broke my heart.