The Lost Army

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘Have you seen them yourself ?’ Xeno asked the younger of the two.

  ‘Certainly. I passed yesterday on that path down there,’ he said, pointing to a pale line that cut across the green plain, ‘and if you ask me, I don’t think they’ll see the sun set tomorrow.’

  The news was confirmed when night fell and we could see a number of fires burning at the foot of the hill. Xeno summoned all the available officers.

  ‘There are only two thousand of us,’ he began. ‘There were more than four thousand of them, and see how they’ve ended up. If we wait and attack tomorrow, even with the aid of our cavalry I don’t think we’ll have any chance of breaking through the encirclement.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ nodded Timas. ‘What are you thinking?’

  Xeno meditated in silence for a while, then said, ‘Listen. We must create the impression that we are ten, twenty times stronger than we are. Those barbarians down there must be made to think that the Arcadians and Achaeans they’re surrounding were only the advance guard, that we’re the bulk of the army. Oh, if only Commander Chirisophus were with us!’

  ‘Well, he’s not here,’ replied Timas. ‘We have to get out of this one on our own. What’s the plan of battle?’

  ‘I know it’s dangerous, but we have to split up into groups. Yes, that’s what we’ll do. Each group will set fire to anything and everything on its path that can burn: huts, shepherd’s shacks, straw, bales of hay, isolated houses, fences, granaries, stables, anything and everything. Not trees or bushes or stubble, though. We don’t want them to think it’s a wild fire. It has to look to them like an act of ruthless military retaliation.’

  ‘That’s right,’ approved Timas. ‘We’ll scare the crap out of them. They’ll think we’re putting the whole country to fire and sword.’

  ‘Exactly. The fires will allow us to keep track of where each of the groups is, but remember to leave any area in flames behind you as soon as possible; the wind can change direction and you don’t want to become trapped. Come on men, let’s get going.’

  The men formed groups of about fifty, lit torches from the braziers we always carried with us and, fanning out over the countryside, began to set fire to anything that could burn. The flames burst out all over the fields and spread rapidly until the whole plain was ablaze. In keeping with Xeno’s instructions, the individual fires increasingly converged on the area around the hill, giving the impression of a huge army come to break up the siege.

  When dawn broke and the hill was finally visible there was no longer a soul there. Neither the besiegers nor the besieged. Only ash and smoking campfires and a number of fallen soldiers from both sides strewn over the hillside.

  ‘What in Hades has happened here?’ yelled Timas as he cantered back and forth. ‘Where did they all go?’

  Xeno’s eyes were darting all around, trying to grasp how the place had come to be completely deserted, until one of the interpreters arrived, saying he’d spoken to a shepherd. ‘He saw soldiers descending the hillside and moving quickly out towards the coast, just before dawn, as soon as the fires had gone out.’

  ‘It’s them,’ said Xeno. He summoned Timas and ordered him to lead the infantry while he rode ahead with the cavalry to make contact. It wasn’t long before he caught up with the Achaeans and the Arcadians, and there was great shouting and jubilation, as though they’d awakened from a nightmare.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve realized that splitting off from the rest of the army was ill-advised. You’ve certainly paid for your mistake, with the lives of many of your comrades,’ said Xeno. ‘I hope the ones who had the idea in the first place were among those we lost.’

  Xanthi was the first to step forward. He was grimy and wild-eyed with fatigue and tension. ‘You’re right, we were idiots. I don’t know what got into us . . .’

  Agasias ran towards Xeno and embraced him. ‘You saved us from being completely wiped out. We couldn’t have held out for long on that hill.’

  ‘What happened last night, then?’

  ‘As soon as we saw the fires, we knew it was you and the enemies realized it too and they cut and ran. But since you hadn’t come forward, and we were afraid those barbarians might come back, we thought it best to get away as fast as we could. And here we are.’

  ‘All right. But enough is enough. We won’t split up again. Let’s wait for Timas with the heavy infantry and then we’ll march to the coast. The natives won’t trouble us again.’

  We camped on the beach at Calpe. It was a beautiful place, a peninsula that extended into the sea with a magnificent natural harbour, and I was able to embrace Melissa again, to my great joy. She was still with Cleanor, thank the gods. We also saw Aristonymus of Methydria, one of the mightiest warriors of the entire army, who spoke up as soon as he saw me. ‘You know, girl, your writer really saved our arses this time. If it hadn’t been for him, we all would have ended up impaled.’ Xeno would have been proud to hear that, but at that moment he was off scouting the territory: the soil was rich and fertile and there was a spring gushing with pure water. The vast, almost circular peninsula was connected by an isthmus to the mainland.

  I knew what he was thinking: that this would have been an ideal place to found a colony. Halfway between Heraclea and Byzantium, it was guaranteed a future of prosperity. Before the sun had begun to set, he started making plans to go back the next day and bury our dead, organizing a unit headed by the skirmishers and escorted by the cavalry.

  I overheard Timas asking him, ‘Where’s Commander Chirisophus?’

  ‘He’ll be at Chrysopolis by now,’ replied Xeno. Chrysopolis, as I would see later, was opposite Byzantium on the Asiatic side of the straits.

  ‘Chrysopolis? I hardly think so,’ protested Timas. ‘It’s too far.’

  Cleanor walked up. ‘I heard one of our scouts say that he’s not far from here.’

  ‘Here? Where?’ asked Xeno.

  ‘Down there,’ replied Cleanor, pointing west. ‘About thirty stadia away.’

  ‘So close? Why doesn’t he head back and join us?’ asked Xeno again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Cleanor, and off he went. The matter did not interest him, or perhaps he just didn’t want to get involved.

  Xeno had his horse made ready and set off in the direction Cleanor had indicated.

  I found myself standing alone in the middle of the camp, and I was suddenly seized by an impulse so strong I could not help but act on it. I wanted to know what was happening to Commander Sophos, where he was and why he hadn’t met up with us here at the beach of Calpe. I felt bound to him; I somehow sensed that his destiny was mine.

  I entered our tent and put on one of Xeno’s tunics, wrapped myself in a cloak that reached down to my feet and covered my head with a helmet. I found a horse tied to a fence and mounted him as best I could, dug in my heels and urged him down the road that led west. I’d never ridden a horse but I’d watched Xeno plenty of times. The animal was good-tempered, and I reached Commander Sophos’s camp quite quickly. I stopped the first officer I came across and said, ‘I’m Commander Xenophon’s attendant. I must speak to him immediately.’

  ‘He’s in Commander Chirisophus’s tent,’ the man replied. ‘That dark one, down there.’ He seemed preoccupied, burdened by some gloomy thought. Then he added, ‘The commander is quite ill.’ I gave a nod, tied my horse and made my way towards the tent. As I was walking I noticed a small twenty-oar warship, its bow pointing at the beach. A red standard at the stern had a strange symbol: two lines that met at the top and opened wide at the bottom. It looked like a sign of the Greek alphabet.

  There was a sentry in front of the tent. I approached and said in a low voice, ‘I’m Commander Xenophon’s attendant. I know he’s inside. I have a message to deliver, so I’ll wait here.’

  The sentry nodded.

  I recognized the two voices I knew so well and could hear them distinctly because we were isolated from the rest of the camp.

  Xeno’s: ‘How is tha
t possible?’

  Sophos, in a weary tone: ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been well for days and I was taking a medicine. It wasn’t the first time. It had always helped me in the past. But this morning it made me feel ill. Quite ill.’

  I could picture his face clammy with sweat, his hair pasted to his forehead, his chest rising and falling as he struggled to breathe.

  ‘Where did that ship at anchor by the beach come from?’

  ‘Cleander. He sent it. He’s the Spartan officer who governs Byzantium.’

  ‘Did you meet with them? What do they want?’

  ‘Yes, yesterday . . . They were waiting for me here. They wanted to know a lot of things . . . about the battle, about our long march.’

  ‘What exactly did they ask you?’ insisted Xeno, as if Sophos’s answer hadn’t satisfied him.

  ‘You know,’ replied Sophos’s voice, ever more wearily. ‘They asked me why . . . why we’re here.’

  A long silence followed. But I could hear the soft whistle of Sophos’s breathing.

  His voice, again. ‘I told you. I’ll never see Sparta. Never again . . .’

  ‘You’ve won so many battles . . . you’ll win this one as well. The army needs you.’

  ‘You’ll command them. They want you all dead . . . but you, Xenophon, you’ll take them home. Take them all back home.’

  Then, the silence of death.

  I slipped away as the sentry protested, ‘Hey, didn’t you say you needed . . .’

  ‘I’ll be back,’ I replied as I set off to where I’d left my horse. I mounted him and led him slightly off the path so I’d be hidden by the vegetation that fringed the beach.

  I didn’t see Xeno until more than an hour later, when the sun had already begun to set.

  I was preparing dinner in front of our tent over the embers of some pine branches I’d gathered in the wood. He came up and sat next to the fire as if he were cold.

  ‘Commander Chirisophus is dead,’ he said in a flat voice.

  ‘Sophos . . . dead? Was there a battle?’

  ‘No. He was poisoned.’

  I didn’t ask anything else. He must have thought I could draw my own conclusions.

  Xeno began to eat in silence, but after two or three mouthfuls he pushed his plate away. There was a sound: flutes, their tune carried by the evening breeze blowing from the west. The same that had accompanied our long march, across deserts and mountains, for months and months. But this time the music was slow, tense, full of despair. Xeno listened, thoughtfully. The sound of the flutes was soon joined by a chorus of voices.

  The loud buzz of the men going about their evening chores in the camp suddenly hushed, then died down completely. One after another, the soldiers turned towards the sound and one after another they rose to their feet. Xeno looked at me, then turned towards the soldiers and shouted, ‘Commander Chirisophus is dead!’

  He grabbed his spear and set off at a run towards his horse.

  ‘Wait!’ I shouted. ‘I want to come with you!’

  Xeno was mounted already, but he leaned down and stretched out a hand. He hoisted me onto the horse’s rump behind him and raced off towards the west.

  As we got closer, the sound of the flutes grew more distinct and we could soon make out a line of warriors carrying a litter on their shoulders with the body of their commander, completely dressed in his best armour. At his side was the great crested helmet that symbolized his rank. A pyre had been erected at the eastern edge of the camp, made of pine trunks and branches. Four warriors stood around it, holding their torches high. Just as an officer was approaching to order them to lower their torches, another music rose in the distance: the warbling of flutes and a powerful drum beat, sounding a marching cadence.

  Xeno turned in the direction of the sound and saw a long line of warriors bearing lighted torches advancing along the coast towards us. The flames were reflected in the still waters of the gulf, shedding a scarlet reflection that lapped at the keel of the beached warship. The last rays of the dying sun were swallowed up by the sea. Xeno turned to me. ‘Our men,’ he said, his eyes veiled with tears.

  The warriors continued to arrive: Arcadians, Achaeans, Messenians, Laconians, all decked out in their armour, gripping their spears. They silently took their places in the ranks, filling in file after file, behind their comrades already in formation around the litter.

  The entire army was present. All the survivors of the long march. When Chirisophus’s body was placed on the pyre, when the four warriors set fire to the branches and the flames flared up in the sea breeze and illuminated the clearing, Agasias the Stymphalian shouted, ‘Alalalai!’

  He unsheathed his sword and started to beat it against his shield. The same shout erupted from thousands of mouths, thousands of swords glinted in the vermilion light of the blaze and were pounded hard on their bronze shields, with inexhaustible energy, until at last the flames began to subside.

  The commander’s sword was seared in the fire and ritually bent. His ashes and bones were gathered in an urn and then his name was shouted out ten times so that the echo would never die.

  The army began to file out, one man after another, each making his way back to his own tent. Darkness settled over the field and the flames were slowly extinguished. We returned as well, our horse walking at a slow pace along the deserted beach.

  ‘Now what will we do?’ I asked, to break the unbearable silence.

  ‘I don’t know,’ answered Xeno. He said nothing else.

  XENO DID NOT forget the comrades who lay unburied on the hill where the army had been besieged, abandoned there after the battle in which the Arcadians and Achaeans risked annihilation. He couldn’t stand the thought of leaving them to the mercy of predators and of the elements. He left the next morning with a sizeable force to see them to their final rest.

  They circled around to approach the hill from the direction of the villages. It was a painful task that they faced: the bodies had been left there for more than five days and were already decomposing. Dogs and wild animals had ravaged the remains. Many of the men were no longer recognizable. Xeno had expected something of the sort, and had taken the veterans with him, knowing they would be better able to bear such a harrowing sight. Each of the fallen was buried with a short and simple rite, as the situation demanded, but not without tears. Seeing the comrades who they’d lived side by side with reduced to those conditions was heart-breaking. The men who had shared that endless adventure with them, run all the same risks, protected each other to the death. The friends whose voices they could still hear, singing, joking. An unspeakable torment.

  The closer they came to the hill, the worse the sights they saw. There the fallen warriors were still clinging to one another in the last throes of hand-to-hand combat, one on top of another, weapons protruding from their chests, necks, stomachs. Strangely, not even the natives had been back to gather their dead, perhaps still fearing the reprisal of an army much greater in size than the one that actually remained.

  It took all day to bury the fallen, but in the end many of the men were still missing. A mound of stones was raised to commemorate them, crowned with rings of braided oak and pine branches. Then each of the men gave his comrades a last farewell, in the way he felt best: a phrase, a wish, a memory, in the hope it would reach them in the dark houses of Hades. They returned to the camp in silence, with heavy hearts.

  In the days that followed the army reunited in a single camp, but the situation we found ourselves in became nearly unbearable, even grotesque. Over time, Xeno’s religious convictions had grown so strong that they had prevailed over any other considerations. The army wanted to move on, but Xeno insisted on offering a daily sacrifice to the gods, asking a priest to examine the entrails. An ill omen emerged every time. And the days passed without any decision being made. Some insinuated that the augur was secretly conspiring with Xeno to found a colony there and was trying to prevent the army from moving on, so that the project could take root. Xeno was indignant
and asked the soldiers to choose a seer they trusted who would oversee the inspection of the entrails. Since the outcome continued unfavourable, provisions began to run low.

  After this had gone on for some time, Neon, Sophos’s lieutenant – perhaps meaning to demonstrate that he was worth as much as the late commander – led his unit on a raid inland without consulting the others.

  It was a disaster. Neon was attacked by the troops of the Persian governor of the region as his men were intent on sacking some villages, and suffered heavy losses. A few of the soldiers broke ranks and returned to the main camp to report the news of the rout, and Xeno flew off to assist the survivors of that sorry expedition. They returned all together as evening was falling, defeated and depressed. It seemed that the army was doomed to lose one man after another until there were no more left to lose.

  Dinner hadn’t even been prepared yet when the enemy troops attacked the camp, forcing our men into an impromptu counter-attack, with yet more losses. The generals ordered a double circle of sentries to stand guard all night.

  Xeno was shattered.

  ‘It’s the end, isn’t it?’ I asked him.

  No answer.

  ‘Who were those men who attacked us?’

  ‘The troops of the Persian governor.’

  ‘So there’s no way out for us. You don’t have to explain anything any more: I understand what’s going on. The closer we get to your homeland, the more the noose tightens. The Persians and the Spartans want the same thing, for different reasons: to see the army destroyed.’

  Xeno didn’t even try to deny it. ‘That’s why I wanted to keep the men here. I would have saved them by founding a colony. But they still want to go home.’

  ‘And they’ll walk straight into a trap.’