The Ten Thousand

by Michael Curtis Ford

  The enemy fled with many killed, and the Rhodians even captured Tiribazus' tent, filled with slaves and gold and silver utensils, proving that the treacherous satrap was directly involved in the proceeding. To us, however, the gold was worthless. More valuable were the twenty purebred cavalry horses left behind, not sufficient to make up for those lost on our previous foray into the mountains, but welcome nonetheless, for the troops were hungry.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE PRESENCE OF evil in the air was like a stench or a cloud, as I slipped over to Asteria's hut the next evening in an attempt to clear the poisoned atmosphere that had intruded between us. It was not like the constant tension of an army in retreat, an army besieged, which is something different, a background irritation like the distant roaring of a river, or the faint smell of a dead animal that one has not been able to find and bury, but to which one eventually becomes accustomed. The feeling that evening was distinct, a sharp wrenching of the gut, a bristling on the back of the neck, the sense that something was terribly wrong or dangerous in the world, the feeling that one is being watched by an evil deity, or worse, that the evil is in oneself.

  Approaching the low doorway of the stone beehive structure, I gave my customary whistle to let Asteria know I was there, and was mildly surprised that she did not answer. Still, this was nothing-she might have been sleeping, or away, and so I stooped low at the waist and entered.

  The phosphorescent white drifts reflecting through the door illuminated a sight for which I was not prepared, the consummation of the evil portent I had been sensing. Even before my eyes registered the sight, my ears were assaulted by the muffled, heavy breathing, the barely stifled grunts. Asteria was lying flat on her belly in the dirt, her legs spread out straight behind her, while a large, muscular figure kneeled above her buttocks, his knees digging painfully into the backs of her thighs. His left arm was stretched out toward her neck, and in the faint light I could see in that hand the evil gleam of metal, Asteria's own dagger, while his right hand fumbled clumsily at his groin as he worked at untying and loosening the loin straps under his tunic. He was facing away from me and had not even heard me enter for all his caprine snorting, and all I could see was his smoothly arched back and legs, the dolphinlike dorsal ridge of his spine straining at the skin of his back. What transfixed me, however, leaving me momentarily frozen in astonishment, was the sight of the enormous, pink, puckered burn scar on the brute's right shoulder, as cracked and ugly as the last time I had seen it twelve years before. Asteria had craned her head back over her shoulder to peer at me, her eyes pleading with mine in silent desperation.

  Fifty years later I can still recall the snapping of my nerves, the feeling that whether he were man or god he had only minutes left to live. Despite his skills at hand-to-hand combat, Antinous did not stand a chance. Having burst into the hut at his most vulnerable moment, I reacted almost instantly, seizing him by the hair with a roar, lifting him bodily into the air and slamming him back against the wall with all my strength, in one motion. I noticed that if anything he was bigger than I had remembered, but I too had grown, and was now more than a match for his bulk. His face registered a series of emotions: first shock and surprise, followed by pain at being hurled so brutally against the wall, then a glint of recognition and a narrow, evil smile, as he made my face out in the darkness. His loosened clothing had fallen off, exposing his obscene and tumescent nakedness, and in my rage I forced my knee up between his thighs and rammed it three times into his crotch with all my strength. He screamed and rolled his eyes back in his head in pain. When I let go his hair, he collapsed in agony to his knees, then onto his side, gasping for breath, where I left him retching and glaring at me with watery, hate-filled eyes, as he mourned the ten seconds of my rage that had resulted in the permanent loss of his manhood.

  I turned back to Asteria without a second glance at Antinous. She had pushed herself up onto her knees and crawled over to the far wall where she now huddled, her arms wrapped around herself, looking at me with eyes as horrified as those of the writhing creature across the floor. As I crouched and reached my hand out to her, she reflexively flinched, as if afraid of me as well, then immediately came to herself, and burying her face in her hands began sobbing frantically.

  "He… he was waiting for me when I entered the hut… caught me by surprise, he said he would kill me if I didn't do it…"

  I let her sobs run their course for a moment, while the bleeding Antinous rolled and grimaced, all the while staring at us with his face contorted in fury.

  Suddenly Asteria's shuddered convulsions stopped, and she was silent for a second, before slowly turning her face to look straight at the man who only moments before had held her life in his hands. She stared silently, as if considering his fate, before whispering to me, in a low, constricted voice, "He will survive."

  I must have muttered some comforting platitude to her, about his having learned a hard lesson, but she stopped me with a finger on my lips. I then understood her meaning, and my blood ran cold. Asteria continued to stare at me, and I realized from the silence that Antinous, too, was now lying still, quivering like a freshly caught hare, watching me intently through the penumbra.

  My heart sank as I realized what had to be done, and Asteria slowly stood, keeping her eyes fixed on me the whole while as if willing her strength into my backbone. Antinous began muttering at me as I approached him.

  "You killed my brother," he grunted, "and now you've destroyed my offspring as well. Have you not taken enough from me?"

  I paused for a moment and stared at him, searching his face, but his eyes glared back at me in hate, without a glimmer of remorse. Without further hesitation, I stuffed his filthy loincloth into his mouth and lifted him roughly by the hair. Shoving his dead weight through the low door into the snow outside, I followed immediately behind and then half dragged, half carried him to the dark copse several hundred feet behind the low outbuilding, where I dropped him onto the frozen crust of snow. Antinous lay on his belly, motionless and panting, a dark stain radiating out from his pelvis. As I stepped over his back with one foot to straddle him from behind, my mind flooded with memories, and I wondered that this pathetic creature was the same man who had forced Aedon into such a position years ago in his sadistic training regimen. "You'll live," he had said then, though I would not offer him now this same meager assurance. As I grasped his hair to jerk his head back and expose his pulsing throat, he gave a deep, wrenching shudder. I saw a reflection in his eyes, the disembodied head and shoulders of a man I did not recognize, and I paused for a moment to consider whether this truly was part of the gods' plan.

  Antinous held his breath, waiting in agony, as I stared down at him; and then almost against my will, I released my grip on his hair. His head flopped back down onto the crusted snow and I heard him heave a great, convulsive breath. I did not wait to see what he would do next; I felt drained and empty, incapable of even wondering whether he would live or die. I trudged slowly to the hut, without looking back.

  The agony of hate, the agony of love. This time there was no separation of the elements.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE TROOPS' MORALE had dropped like a stone. Thus far we had spent over a week in these villages, accomplishing nothing but losing huge numbers of our men and animals to the bitter weather, exhausting our able-bodied troops by relentless forays into the mountains to attack local fighters who seemed to melt into the woods. Xenophon made endless rounds among the huts at night, dispensing what cheer he himself was able to muster, rewarding those who themselves took responsibility for furthering the march, and setting a strenuous example by working harder than the lowest battle squire. The man was exhausted, and I worried constantly for his sanity; yet still he pushed on.

  The army finally marched, a forced effort beginning in the predawn darkness, in a final race to prevent the enemy from collecting themselves and occupying the narrows north of us. This time, upon our departure Xenophon looked at me with a more
confident, or perhaps resigned, expression.

  "You're more at peace with your decision to march this time," I noted. He looked at me curiously.

  "I'm always at peace with the orders I give. I don't always know the results, and that's what worries me."

  "Last time we were turned back by the snow," I said. "What makes you so confident of the outcome this time?"

  I need not have asked, however, for the acrid stench of the black smoke, and the surprised shouts of the men outside our hut gave me all the answer I needed.

  "I've ordered the villages torched," he said, "both in retribution for Tiribazus' treachery, and to eliminate any temptation we might have to return once more."

  That night we reached the heights from which the barbarians had meant to attack us, and were able to pass through without a struggle. In their ignorance, Tiribazus' troops failed to realize that had they occupied the impregnable position instead of us, it would have meant the destruction of the entire Hellenic army in the frozen snows below.

  We continued on, six miserable days to the upper Tigris, so different from its warm, placid offspring downstream, and then another six over a wretched, windswept plain, across which a north wind whipped mercilessly, blowing directly into our eyes and burning us as if by the rays of the sun, leaving our exposed skin dry, parched, and cracking. Xenophon's face, as well as those of Chirisophus and the others, had become faces I no longer recognized, all of them melding into one, with fierce, staring eyes, sunken cheeks and ragged, infested beards that erased all traces of personal features that had once been the marks of their humanity, blurring their individual identities and reducing them to a mere species. We forgot everything but the need to keep constantly moving, to take one more step forward, and because each day was so like the day before, each gray night so like each drab day, time no longer mattered. We communicated in grunts or gestures. True speech took too much effort.

  The snow had no structure, no bottom. Men sank into it to their waists or their chests, causing us to lose countless animals and supplies and dozens of soldiers, many of whom simply vanished from sight forever, falling on their faces and disappearing in their exhaustion, unable to rise again. Even the most able-bodied were faint with hunger and cold, and Xenophon realized that part of the problem stemmed not from frozen feet but from empty stomachs. He personally made the rounds of the army, scavenging stores and supplies and sending the strongest runners back along the trail and out on either side. He sought those who had fallen and given themselves up to die, forcing them to eat a bit, even stale bread or raw horseflesh unfit for maggots, and urging them, sometimes at the cost of blows to the face, to rise and stagger on. I saw him pull a tattered Rhodian boy from the snow, slapping his face and shaking him like a rag doll until the youth finally shouted in protest and choked down some cold oats soaked in milk which in better times would have been used as fodder for the asses. Xenophon watched him closely until he saw him begin lurching along toward the rest of the wraithlike troops, and then he moved on to the next dark patch he saw lying forlornly in the snow under a thin cloak, to begin the process over again. I didn't have the heart to tell him that as soon as he was out of sight, the Rhodian boy again lay down in the snow while the troops passed silently by. If a man was going to die in any case, this was the easiest and most painless way. He just lay down and waited, doing nothing, patient as the Fates, until sweet death came in the form of a gentle, frozen sleep, and his heart simply slowed down and stopped. To men bearing excruciating pain, hunger, and exhaustion, the notion of such a respite from suffering, such an easy welcome into the gods' embrace, was a seductive siren song impossible to resist.

  Those who did have the will to live, but simply not the strength to keep up, suffered the most. Unable to make it to the night's campsite with the main body of troops, they would spend the night foodless and fireless where darkness finally overtook them. It was rare that any of these men survived until morning. Small parties of the enemy were constantly following like vultures, picking off stragglers and robbing them of their pitiful belongings, carrying off disabled animals that we ourselves were not sufficiently quick to butcher for food, harassing us at every turn.

  Men who had the fortitude to walk miles even after losing their toes to frostbite would be stricken down by an unexpected calamity: blindness by snow, which rendered them helpless, even when led by a kindly companion by a leash or belt, because the depth of the snow and roughness of the terrain made walking without vision impossible. Those astute enough to realize the problem improvised eye-shades, or simply marched holding a black object in front of their eyes, but it was too late for others. These men we saw kneeling piteously in the snow as we passed, their eyes swollen shut, fluid streaming from the corners, as they implored their comrades, who themselves could barely stand, to lead or carry them to safety.

  Our feet were the worst problem, however. Good leather sandals, with heavy oxhide soles, will serve a man well in battle, even allowing him to tread through fire, but will last only a couple of months under marching conditions, even with nightly repairs, and the troops' footwear had long past outlived its usefulness. The absence of oxen and camp followers to tan the leather and manufacture the footwear meant that the men had to improvise their own, most often with the newly flayed hides of mules that had fallen by the wayside. These the troops would skin even without waiting for the pitiful animal to completely die, to gulp down the meat and blood while still warm, and obtain a precious supply of hide before the enemy or their other colleagues arrived. Unless it froze solid first, a dead mule would be stripped of everything within minutes, leaving the carrion birds nothing to pick at but bloody bones. At the next campsite the men would be seen diligently trading scraps of leather among themselves, improvising needles from bone and thread from sinew, making crude sandals from unscraped hide that had been the cover for living flesh only hours before. It was difficult to tell, looking at the men's feet, whether the blood that stained them red was from their own blisters and missing toes, or from the freshly flayed hides. Anyone who did not take care to make the straps much looser than he otherwise would have soon learned a painful lesson, as the fresh hides shrank at night when they dried, cutting deep into a man's numb flesh, then freezing solid if he stood still for more than a moment or two. More than one able-bodied man lost his life when his mule-hide sandals lamed him and forced him to stay behind, weeping in the snow.

  Because of the harshness of the journey, the army was spread out for miles, making communications between the van and the rear guard difficult. One night, after fighting the north wind all day, Xenophon's troops arrived at the camp hours after dark, only to find that the earlier arrivals had gathered every bit of scarce firewood available, and refused to let our frozen soldiers near their fires unless bribed with wheat or any other eatables they might have. When I reported this to Xenophon, his tired face darkened in anger, and he marched furiously over to Chirisophus' fire to confront him.

  "Chirisophus!" he sputtered, "My men arrive after yours because they were assigned to the rear guard, to cover your ass! Yet when they arrive they find no food or shelter, while your men are comfortable. Are we one army or two?"

  Chirisophus looked up calmly from the hunk of dried meat he was gnawing, his irritation at being interrupted readily apparent. He deliberately allowed the smile on his face to fade slowly, and coolly met Xenophon's angry stare. "My men arrived and scavenged for firewood themselves," he said in measured tones. "They built shelters and made themselves comfortable. Yours can do the same. My men will be up and marching before dawn as the vanguard. Why don't you just let your poor tired boys sleep late in the morning, General?"

  Xenophon stared at him in astonishment. "We don't have a vanguard and a rear guard," he said after a pause. "We have two separate armies. And since that is the case, I'll take your advice. I'll tell my troops to sleep late, and then join either army they wish, and if they all wish to join yours, I'll march alone." Chirisophus stopped chewing and look
ed up at Xenophon with frank interest.

  "We'll give you a head start in the morning to be out of your way," he continued. "Naturally the Rhodian slingers will stick with me, as will the cavalry. All of Proxenus' old troops will stay as well, I imagine, both Thebans and Spartans. That would be fifteen hundred hoplites and five hundred light infantry. Since I took over Proxenus' command, I'll also keep his remaining supplies. Naturally I'd expect you to be fair and allow any Athenians and other Attics in your brigade to transfer to my army-I'd hate to see my countrymen marching under duress with Spartans."

  Chirisophus' face reddened and his eyes bulged in anger. He stood up and faced Xenophon, their chests almost touching, though the leathery old soldier stood half a head shorter than his younger colleague. Xenophon did not flinch, but continued ticking off tasks like a shopping list:

  "Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to simply call a meeting of the joint forces, and allow everyone to walk over to whichever side they wish. I will, however, be happy to leave you with the sledges and wagons, Chirisophus, as well as any remaining camp followers that have sneaked along with the troops, to ensure your comfort…"

  Chirisophus snorted in disgust and looked away. "By Zeus, General," he said resignedly, "can't you take a joke? I had no idea you were so sensitive about your men sleeping late." He sat down again by the fire and began poking at it sullenly. "Perhaps my men have been a bit too eager about settling in for the night after they arrive. I'll have a talk with them and order them to clear a space for your stragglers from now on. Try not to drag so far behind, though, will you?"