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.
‘Get out of the way!’ he shouted. ‘Do you want to delay the whole column?’
‘Forget it. I’m not leaving until I talk with the woman who’s inside.’
‘There’s no one in there! Only provisions.’
‘All right, then, I’ll talk to them.’
A small crowd had gathered already. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Cleanor glancing back in our direction with a nervous look. This confirmed my suspicions. ‘Melissa, get out of there!’ I yelled. ‘I know you’re in there! Come out, now.’
In the end, Melissa pulled back the drape that kept her hidden.
‘Abira . . . I haven’t seen you for ages.’
Meanwhile, the soldiers had slightly redirected their march, looping around us, so there was no longer any reason to hurry.
‘You’ve been hiding for a long time,’ I replied. ‘I’ve always looked for you.’
‘Well, now you’ve found me. What do you say we see each other for dinner this evening and talk then?’
‘No, it’s something we have to do now. See that girl over there, the pregnant one? She can barely take another step; she’s about to collapse in the snow and die, along with her baby. I haven’t fed and nursed her this far to watch her die now.’
‘So?’
‘You have to let her ride with you.’
‘I’m sorry, there’s no room.’
‘Then you get out.’
‘Are you crazy?’
‘I went all the way to the Persian camp for you that night, because you were yearning for news about Menon. I risked my life, and you can’t do this little thing for me? You are healthy as can be; you’ve got someone taking care of you. All you have to do is get out and walk while she rests and warms up. Then she can get out and walk for a while. For you it’s nothing, but for her it’s her life. Two lives, that is.’
Melissa was adamant. She simply couldn’t conceive of forgoing her own comfort. Her situation seemed bad enough to her, and she had no intention of giving it up for something worse.
‘I said get out.’
Melissa shook her head.
Lystra came close. ‘Please, let her be . . . I can make it alone.’
‘Hush now!’
Melissa tugged back the curtain. She had finished talking about it. That gesture made my blood rise. ‘Open that curtain, you simpering whore! Get out of there now!’
I tore the curtain out of her hand, grabbed her wrist and pulled at her with all my strength.
‘Stop that!’ she cried out. ‘Leave me alone! Cleanor! Help, Cleanor!’
Luck would have it that Cleanor was busy with something else: two mules loaded with provisions had fallen to their knees slightly beyond us and he and his men were trying to get them back on their feet.
I gave her a yank and made her fall in the snow. She started to scream even louder, but the soldiers were laughing; they were not about to interfere in a fight between women. She grabb
ed my foot and tried to pull me down, but I landed such a hard jab on her cheek that I knocked her flat, there on the ground. And while she was crying and snivelling, I helped the girl to get in. The mule-driver watched in dismay, not knowing which way to turn.
‘What are you looking at, you nitwit?’ I demanded. ‘Move your arse, damnit, move!’
I don’t know how or why, but he obeyed me. The way I had of cursing like a soldier must have surprised him, and I must have looked so enraged that he didn’t even try to protest. The little mule train started up again with me following. Melissa, seeing that no one was paying any attention to her, got to her feet and started walking.
‘Wait for me!’ she whined. ‘Wait up!’
I didn’t listen. And I didn’t even turn around when I heard her moaning. ‘I’m cold! My legs are freezing. I feel ill, I’m going to faint . . . help, somebody help me!’
In the end she gave up her crying and complaining and began plodding along. When we stopped for a rest, I took care of her. I put some snow into a bandage and wrapped it around her swollen eye and cheek.
‘I’m ugly! No one will want me.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re beautiful, and if you keep some snow on it the swelling will go down in no time. I’ve seen the surgeons use it. What’s more, you may even learn how to make do on your own. It’ll come in handy, we’re far from out of this mess yet.’
‘You hurt me.’
‘You hurt me too. We’re even.’
She dried her tears with the back of her sleeve and I felt a little sorry for her. ‘Look at that poor creature,’ I said, pointing to Lystra. ‘She could be having her baby at any minute. Imagine that you were in her situation. Try to hold out until evening. Then you’ll be able to rest.’
And thus we went on and on and on, without stopping, without resting. As the sky grew dimmer and dimmer a stiff, cold wind came up, numbing our limbs and cracking our lips. We went on this way for days. Every so often Lystra would ask to get out so Melissa could ride inside, but this embarrassed Melissa and she usually refused. She was becoming a strong woman, deserving of respect. The other women struggled on bravely as well. Not a whine or a whimper out of them; if one fell, another helped her up. In the evenings, they took needle and thread and fashioned footwear to use on the snow or mended the holes in their garments and the men’s. The cold had grown piercing and we had few opportunities to obtain provisions. Quarrels became frequent, especially between the men.
We were fighting a new, truly relentless enemy now, an enemy with no face but with a voice: the constant hiss of the wind. The winter.
Up and up we went. We had passed the first of the three towering peaks that I had seen glittering like diamonds from the hill beyond the ford on the turbulent river. It was the most impressive thing I had ever seen in my life.
Wide stripes of black rock that looked like petrified rivers descended from its sides. They stuck out of the snow, making me think of the backs of slumbering monsters, and they came all the way down to the path we were travelling on. Jutting from the sheer wall were black rocks, faceted and sparkling like gems; they were a little bigger than my fist. Perfect, extraordinary.
‘That’s a sleeping volcano,’ Xeno told me. ‘When it wakes up, it vomits rivers of red-hot rock that flow down its sides before they thicken and solidify into what you see there.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I heard about it from a friend who had been to Sicily and witnessed the fury of Mount Etna.’
‘What’s Sicily?’
‘It’s an island of the west that has a gigantic volcano that spits smoke, flames and molten rock which solidifies just like that. I’d like to go there one day and see it for myself.’
‘Will you take me with you?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I will. We’ll never be parted again.’
Tears came to my eyes when I heard him say that, but the wind nearly froze them as they tried to make their way down my cheeks. Xeno was an extraordinary man, and I’d done the right thing to trust him, and follow him on that adventure. Even if I died, even if our journey ended here on the desolate icy expanse we were crossing, I would have no regrets.
The difficulties increased day by day. It was no longer a mere question of hardships that must be overcome, it was a matter of life or death. Whoever found a shelter or lit a fire lived, whoever didn’t find one perished. After a few days of marching it started snowing again, but this time there was nothing beautiful or pleasurable about it. It wasn’t the big white flakes I’d seen dancing in the light of the hearth against the dark sky, looking out of a safe shelter. It was needles of ice that the ceaseless, vicious wind drove straight into our faces. No matter how you tried to defend yourself, the freezing air got the better of you: it stabbed your limbs like a dagger, stiffened your movements, blinded your sight, lashed at your clothes and at the cloaks that we tried to hold tight.
The hiss of the wind had grown deafening; it wounded your ears like a continuous, inhuman scream. We moved through a nebulous atmosphere where everything was uncertain, every figure a ghost, or a larva, that you could barely see in the driving sleet. Fatigue and cold eroded your will with every step you took, creating a sense of deadly prostration that it was almost impossible to fight off. The animals were exposed to the same harsh conditions. You’d see them, overloaded and exhausted, keeling over all at once in the snow. No one even tried to save the baggage, because no one had a drop of energy above what was required to place one foot after another.
The wolves came then, and devoured the mules and horses while they were still alive. The animals’ brays of pain and terror echoed through the valley below before coming to an abrupt end in the milky squall.
Towards evening the storm would seem to die down, but then there were ghostly presences that loomed all around us, frightening and disturbing. The long, mournful howling of wolves resounded from the mountains and the forests bowed under the snow. Sometimes at night we could see their red eyes glittering in the dark in the firelight. You’d often hear a brief, desperate yelp from the dogs who followed us and we knew that they’d fallen victim to a hunger more powerful and ferocious than their own.
I WAS ASTONISHED at Melissa’s heroism: Melissa – the beautiful, irresistible girl who’d become a legend when she ran naked from Cyrus’s tent to the Greek camp, the girl whom every soldier longed to possess at any cost, even perhaps that of his own life – walked through the knee-deep snow with incredible endurance, leaving the only protected place in the long column of warriors and women on the march to Lystra, the lowest of the low, the little prostitute struggling to bear her child.
There was no space any longer for love. When darkness overtook us we’d stop where we were to seek some sort of shelter so we could lie down and steal a few hours’ sleep from the night. The guard shifts were very brief; few could resist the intense cold and it often happened that when one sentry went to relieve another he’d find him cold and stiff, a mummy of ice propped up against a tree with glassy wide-open eyes.
One day towards evening we arrived at a level clearing in the lee of high cliffs to the north that held back the snow. All around were dozens of charred stumps, perhaps the aftermath of a summer fire. Some of the soldiers began to chop them down with axes, others bundled together the dry branches and then those who guarded our most precious belongings – the clay jars holding embers buried under ash – lit the fires. Everyone immediately thronged around, and then they lit more fires, and still more, but by the time the tail of the column caught up, it was almost dark and the wood had been all used up. The men were loath to make room so that the newcomers could warm themselves around the fires already burning. At that point quarrels and shoving matches broke out. Some reached for their weapons, while others devoted themselves to an even more shameful business: selling a place by the fire. They demanded to be paid with wheat, wine, oil, blankets, shoes, anything that would guarantee their survival for another day or another couple of hours.
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br /> I realized that our soldiers were surrendering to the most terrible of enemies: selfishness. Cleanor of Arcadia, that bull of a man, saw this happening, saw one of his men refusing to give up his place to a comrade who had nothing to give him in exchange. He hurled himself at the soldier who had become so unprincipled, grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him towards the burning fire. ‘You want to be where it’s nice and hot? You like the heat, you bastard? I’ll help you get some, you son of a bitch!’ The man tried to resist, but nothing could hold back Cleanor in a rage. He pushed him further and further until the cloak the soldier was wearing caught fire. At that point the commander let go and the man ran away screaming and burning like a torch. He threw himself onto the ground and rolled through the snow. He saved his own life, but he would always wear the scars of his shame.
Among the last to arrive was Xeno.
As always.
His place was at the rear, to gather those who fell, to encourage the weary warriors, to make a show of discipline and courage, to set an example. He never tired. With him were Lycius, Aristonymus and Eurylochus, daring, fearless fighters all, gifted with formidable strength and an indomitable will. But at times, even their resolve was not enough. Sometimes nothing they could do would get a man who had fallen back to his feet, no amount of shaking or slapping or punching. They’d even try to get their goat by yelling, ‘Get up, you worm! You good-for-nothing coward! You bastard son of a whore!’ Nothing would work. One of the surgeons said that the little they were eating was not giving them sufficient strength to fight the cold, the wind, their fatigue. They needed more to eat, or they would die. So Xeno pushed forward on his steed, searching among the pack animals until he found a little food to give to his exhausted boys.
Some of them got up.
Others crumbled and didn’t rise again. A white shroud covered them and their last words were carried away on the howling wind.
22
WHILE SOPHOS was out on reconnaissance with his men, Xeno realized that the soldiers weren’t going to make it unless he could convince them to rally. He had them draw up, there in the snow. The commanders called them to attention and the men stood like soldiers, despite their exhaustion, with courage and dignity, gripping the hilts of their spears with hands livid with the cold. Their knuckles white, fingernails dark.
The Lost Army Page 28