The Ten Thousand

by Michael Curtis Ford

  One such chase after a troop of wild asses led me miles away from the main body of the army, into rugged terrain and down a steep ravine, where my horse tripped in a hole. Her leg snapped like a straw and she threw me over her head onto some sharp rocks. I must have lain unconscious for some time, for when I awoke the sun was low in the sky and my companions were nowhere to be found. We had strung ourselves out in the relay hunting technique and they had probably not realized until hours later that I was not among them. My head was pounding like a hammer on an anvil, from both my fall and the heat that had been beating on me all afternoon, and in one very ill-considered moment, I emptied my entire water bag, swilling greedily for a minute and then pouring the rest of the brackish Euphrates water over my aching head, to little relief.

  The horse was lying on the ground nearby, screaming like a child and in spasms from the heat and pain of the compound fracture in her leg. She had to be killed, which I did regretfully and with some difficulty, by crushing her skull with a rock. I then climbed to the top of the ridge to take my bearings, and in the last light of the day, I thought I could discern the cloud of dust raised by the army in the distance as it marched across the desert. I struck out in that direction at a trot, accompanied by my ever-lengthening black double, and doggedly kept up the pace for most of the night. I guided myself by the stars, pausing only briefly for rest near the half-buried skeletons of three mules from an earlier party of travelers, the bones so white and clean that they seemed almost incandescent in the moonlight.

  The next morning, as the sun rose, I saw again the cloud of dust-but realized to my dismay that it was at the same distance as the night before, and that in reality it was not dust at all, but only the normal smudging of the horizon caused by the waves of heat rising from the sand and rocks. By now I was afraid, and deathly thirsty, for after trotting all night I still had not drunk anything since swigging my last water the previous afternoon. Toward midday I felt I could go no farther, and finding a sparse shelter from the fierce sun in a small rocky ditch, I sank down and prepared to die.

  The next morning I awoke to the faint tinkling of bells. My mouth tasted foul and wool-like, and my skin hot and sensitive to the touch. I realized vaguely that I was suffering from fever, and that I must have been for some time, perhaps hours, for in my delirium and irritation I had scratched off the scant garments I had been wearing and they lay shredded in the dust beside me. I stared for a time at the vast, sterile sky, trying to clear my mind, to gain my bearings, wondering why I was not yet dead, when I heard the sound again, the distant tinkle of bells.

  Rising shakily to my feet I looked around but could see little from my cramped position in the ditch. My knees wobbling, the impulse to retch rising up in my throat, I consciously and carefully placed my feet in natural toeholds in the slope and pulled myself up to the top. The distance was no higher than a man's head, but for all my weakness it seemed the summit of Mount Olympus. Flopping there on my belly, I rested for some minutes, my eyes struggling to focus, until I was able to lurch to my feet and blearily scan the surrounding area for the source of the sound.

  It was not difficult to find. Thirty yards away milled a small flock of yellowish sheep, their filthy coats deeply encrusted with the dust and burrs of the desert, their eyes peering dumbly from beneath unsheared locks of fleece falling over their faces as they meandered calmly down a barely visible trail in the gravel. The powerful, musty smell of their unwashed fleece wafted toward me, an oddly comforting sensation. The sheep were unaware or uncaring of my presence, and continued their soft bleating and clanking of tiny bronze bells as if I were of no greater account than a stump or a wizened desert bush.

  Not so their mistress, however. The young girl, who was wearing a flowing and dirty garment the color of her animals, with a thin linen rag tied loosely over her head as shelter from the sun, could not have been more than twelve or thirteen years old. She had been accompanying her flock on the side parallel to my ditch, and now stood no more than fifteen feet away from me, staring in dumbfounded astonishment at the enormous, glassy-eyed giant who had reared up before her stark naked, seemingly from the ground itself. I had not even the presence of mind to cover myself with my hands, or to gesture to her for a swig of water from the sack I saw hanging across her shoulder, for the blackness closed in on me in a rush from the sides of my vision, inexorably narrowing my sight to a mere pinprick of a tunnel, a tiny circle centered on the sweating water bag before me. I stumbled toward her blindly with my hands outstretched, hearing her gasp and scream as if from a tremendous distance, and then even my needle-eye view of the bag went black and disappeared.

  I woke as if returning from that same impossible distance, the girl's wail of anguish still ringing in my ears, and I lay motionless for a long time, my eyes closed, attempting to judge my location by the feel of my shoulder blades beneath me and the weight of the fabric covering me. My mouth felt as if mice had nested in it, given painful birth, and died. The wailing continued and I cautiously opened one bleary, bloodshot eye.

  The greased leather tent was small and bare, and I could see through the open flap that it was just becoming dusk. A low fire of dried sheep patties smoldered just outside, and I heard the comforting sounds of people shuffling about slowly and chatting as they moved between their chores. The wailing was not a sound of fear or anguish, as I had first suspected when coming to my fever-charged senses, but was rather the serene humming of the girl, who sat calmly in the far corner of the tent, gently pounding some substance with a small stone pestle. I stared at her in the dim light without moving, this time noticing her long black hair braided in a complicated pattern and wrapped around her head, and her loose-fitting robe, the same as I had seen her wearing earlier. The garment completely covered her shoulders, back and legs, so unlike the light and airy chiton Athenian women wear on summer nights. The girl's face was just beginning to show the leaner lines of the woman she was becoming, yet she still retained the soft, trusting innocence of a child. Her expression, as she softly scraped and pounded, was one of deep absorption in the simple task she was performing, and contentment at her progress. I rustled slightly, and her humming stopped as she looked over at me, staring for a moment as if startled for the second time that day to see me before her. This time, however, her face broke in a delighted smile, and she quickly stood up and approached me, kneeling by my side on the floor. She picked up the water skin lying nearby, and pulling out the bone plug, she held the opening up to my mouth in offering. I seized the skin and gulped greedily, but she pulled it away from me with a laugh, exclaiming softly in what sounded like remonstration, and then took the skin with her as she slipped out the door.

  I heard excited voices outside and then the tent flaps were lifted open and several people stepped into the tiny room. They were short and thin, and all of them, men and women alike, wore garments of the same rough, dirty weave. Most strangely, their hands and faces were completely covered in stained rags, as if in protection against the heat and dust of the desert. Only their dark, piercing eyes were visible through the complicated wrappings. They chattered softly in their incomprehensible, guttural language as they stared down at my body prone beneath the blanket. An old woman entered, the only one with her face uncovered, displaying a visage at first glance as wrinkled and prunelike as the Pythia's. As she bent over me in the dim light, however, and I peered at her more closely in my feverish fog, her face took on a horrifying cast: dark, glittering eyes set not over a nose, but rather over two open nostrils, like the end of a boar's snout, and teeth bared in a hideous grin, as if protruding so far that the narrow lips were unable to cover them. I clenched my eyes shut and willed myself to regain lucidity, to emerge from this vision of pig-people, as does someone who is dreaming, yet knows he is dreaming, and in his dream commands himself to awaken.

  The woman passed her hand over my face and forehead, just above the surface of my skin but not touching it-feeling, I suppose, for signs of my fever. When I anxiously o
pened my eyes again, however, I saw not a woman's hand, but rather the rounded, stumpy foot of a pig, discolored and misshapen, passing in and out of the shadows over my face. She apparently detected the feverish heat emanating from my skin, for turning to the girl who was hovering at her shoulder, she said something in a sharp tone that sent the girl scurrying out. Next the old pig-woman gently drew the thin blanket off my body, leaving me again exposed in a state of nature, to the evident amazement of the observers in the tent, whose eyes ranged up and down my limbs as their voices dropped to whispers. I sat up and feebly attempted to pull the blanket back over me, but a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea swept over me, and I lay back down quickly, resolving simply to endure the nightmare until the comforting light of morning.

  The girl returned a few minutes later with an earthen jar bearing a substance redolent of vinegar, but with a sharper, ranker odor. This she proceeded to pour liberally on some freshly laundered rags produced from a basket in a corner. Oblivious to my feeble protests, the girl gently swabbed my entire body with this potion, lifting limbs and mopping out folds and crevices, as the pig-woman gave her instructions. The mysterious healing substance left my irritated rashes feeling cool and comforted, as when you climb wet out of the bath and feel a chilling breeze on your damp skin. They chatted quietly to each other as they performed their task, the woman pointing out places the girl had missed and laughing softly at her wondering questions, while I alternately clenched and opened my filmy, swollen eyes in fear and curiosity, trying desperately to recover clear vision. I finally resorted to my other senses, my ears particularly, attempting to divine what the women might be saying. The girl repeated a word constantly while looking at the woman, a vocative I took to mean "grandmother" or something of the sort, while the old woman repeated a word back to her in return: the girl's name, Nasiq.

  Thus I lay for two days and two nights, though I know this to be true only because I was informed later by my comrades. My own reckoning of time was confused, floating as I was between delirium and lucidity, terror and exhaustion. Nasiq faithfully dampened my body with the cooling substance several times a day, while two of the men, whom I took to be Nasiq's father and brother, peeked in occasionally to check on my progress. Sometimes their faces were covered, other times their own boar-snouts were exposed, as they asked questions of me in their tongue, to which I was unable to respond, and offered pieces of charred lizard or coarse flat bread. Grandmother scolded them away in irritation, enforcing on me her regimen of small doses of water, supplemented by spoonfuls of a kind of gamy broth administered by Nasiq. The grandmother's kind yet brusque method of healing, nurturing yet never touching, contrasted with the girl's lingering glances and cool fingers resting gently on my forehead after my bathing. Several times, however, the old woman spoke to her sharply, causing the tears to well in her eyes as she stood up and left the tent to do her grandmother's bidding. Weak and confused as I was at the time, I am hard pressed now to know how much of what I remember is true, and how much a mere feverish dream.

  The afternoon of the third day I awoke to the pounding of hooves and shouts of men. This first flurry of activity outside the tent, however, was followed shortly afterwards by further shouts, this time of dismay, accompanied by the sound of the quick departure of the horses who had just arrived. My fever had broken by now and I was feeling much more alert, yet terribly weak, when I thought I heard Proxenus' gravelly voice calling me from a distance. With great effort, I raised myself to my elbow. The tent flap flew open and Nasiq rushed in with a worried expression on her face. Feeling my forehead for fever and peering into my eyes for a sign that I had regained my senses, she seemed satisfied for the moment and helped me to drink from the water skin. After that, chatting softly in her language, she motioned to me to rise, which I did painfully and trembling. I was surprised to observe, as if I were an outsider objectively viewing the scene, that I had lost all traces of my former shyness at being naked in the young girl's presence. She, however, stared at my body as if noticing it for the first time, and clucking as if in reproach, snatched up my blanket and wrapped it modestly around my chest under my armpits, securing it with a bone pin she pulled from her hair. She then motioned for me to stoop down and emerge from the tent.

  Shakily I made my way out and stood blinking in the bright sunlight, still unable to see clearly through my sun-damaged eyes. Nasiq led me slowly to a small, thorny tree a few steps away, propping me against it as the world spun dizzily around me. This was the first time I had been out of the tent, and as I sluggishly examined my surroundings, I was surprised to see that Nasiq's tent was not the only such shelter, but rather formed part of a small nomadic village of perhaps twenty such structures, all of the same greasy hide, with small fires smoking in front of each. There were no signs of any other inhabitants, however, pig-people or otherwise.

  Suddenly a man emerged into view from my side, a man familiar to me, yet oddly timorous and cringing. I recognized him as one of Cyrus' native interpreters, on whom we had relied heavily in recent days, since he was from this desert area and spoke the languages of several of its tribes. He stood apart from me and in rapid babbling sharply ordered Nasiq back from me as well, which she obeyed, reluctantly it seemed. He then addressed me, in broken Greek.

  "Theo, Proxenus is here, we have found you. You come now?"

  My jaw dropped. So that was Proxenus' voice I had heard a few minutes before, calling me. I looked at the interpreter in confusion.

  "Where is he? I don't know if I can walk," I said with effort. "Ask Proxenus to come, or have the girl's father help me to go to him."

  The interpreter looked at me wide-eyed, and began wringing his hands as he struggled for words. "Proxenus say you come, he not come, must not touch these people, these… sick people."

  I painfully pushed myself to my feet, scraping my back up the rough bark of the tree, and staggered after the man. I glanced at the other tents, wondering vaguely why I saw no people, recalling the sounds of children's laughter and household chores outside Nasiq's tent during my days of convalescence. Rounding the last of the tents in the small compound, however, I stopped dead, swaying in my exhaustion. Every person in the village had been rounded up into a small, milling clump. Men, women and sobbing children stood in a tight circle, their faces contorted and their limbs in various stages of wrap. They were guarded by three Greek archers with their bows drawn and arrows aimed straight into the terrified group. Proxenus was overseeing the operation, while Nicarchus stood nervously nearby, holding the reins of several horses in his hand and impatiently glancing at the village from which I had made my painful shuffle.

  "Theo, are you alive, or are you a shade?" Proxenus shouted, yet he did not run toward me in greeting as I would have expected, nor make any move to assist me in my progress. "Make your way around the lepers as quickly as you can, and go to that horse tied to the bush."

  Lepers? I started in horror, wondering whom he could mean, and then with a growing sense of understanding, I looked more closely at the pig-people of the village, now clearly visible in the bright sunshine. Nasiq's grandmother stood in the front of the wretched knot of wailing women, she alone silent, almost defiant. As before, she refused to cover her face, challenging me to stare at her absent nose, the cracked and sloughing lips that refused to cover her teeth, the thin hair, missing in entire clumps from her scaling scalp. Looking straight at me, she raised her arm in a blessing or a curse, and I recoiled at the rounded stump of her forelimb, bereft of all fingers, the skin raw and bleeding.

  "Move, Theo!" Proxenus shouted at me, startling me from where I had been rooted in my repulsion. I staggered to the horse Proxenus indicated, and one of the archers quickly ran over to me, ordered me out of my ragged blanket, and tossed me a clean loincloth from his own kit. I stepped out of the blanket and put on the new garment, as the entire population of the village, now silent, watched me. The soldier laboriously helped me climb onto the horse's back, to which he tied me in a prone positi
on, my face resting against the back of the animal's neck to prevent me from slipping off in my weakness. He then walked back to the rest of the horses.

  Proxenus gave an order, and the archers relaxed their guard, gesturing to the village people to return to their tents. I heard him gruffly tell the interpreter to thank Nasiq's father for his trouble and saw him flip the man a gold daric, which landed in the dust at his feet. Nasiq's father looked up at Proxenus on his horse, and then down at the coin in confusion, and I realized that he was unable to pick it up with his rag-wrapped stumps. He called to one of the boys who, like Nasiq, appeared not to be affected by the blight. The child came running over, and at the man's instructions solemnly picked up the coin and pocketed it. Both then turned without a further word or glance, and walked slowly, and with great dignity, back into the compound.