The Afghan Campaign

by Steven Pressfield

  The moon sets. Dawn lacks two hours. We can hear servants in the foe’s camp packing up. At sunrise Spitamenes will move out. Perhaps we will survive after all, Lucas and I.

  But the lightening sky reveals a finish to our hopes.

  Villagers.

  Women and boys, a column approaching from Maracanda. They have marched out to pick the bones of the invader. They swarm in hundreds. It is a holiday to them.

  Lucas and I have hollowed out an undermine in the bank. Into this we burrow like rats. But the villagers and their dogs are nosing all over. In minutes we are discovered.

  Women and boys throng about our hiding place, cursing and hurling stones. We are hauled forth by lancers of Spitamenes’ Sogdian brigades. The dames and youths pelt us with rocks and beat us with sticks. My good arm is nearly wrenched from its socket. We are stabbed with knives, our eyes and hair are clawed at by fingernails. Two words are shouted over and over, utan and qoonan, which later we learn mean shit-eaters and curs. We offer no resistance. If anything, we try to appear more feeble and beaten than we are. It doesn’t work. Abuse redoubles. In the end the extravagance of the villagers’ assault is what saves us, as the lancers, who are at least soldiers bound by discipline, shield us and spirit us apart, prisoners to be interrogated by their superiors.

  Spitamenes has already ridden away with the lead elements. The rest of the column mounts up. No one knows what to do with us. A conference is held, of which Lucas and I can make out nothing except that no one wants the burden of our care and custody. It looks like they’re going to dump us with the crones and urchins. The warriors’ fever of trophy-taking has passed; they don’t want our hair, there’s no honor to it, and we have no weapons or armor to loot. “Ransom!” I call in as bold a voice as my bashed-in lungbox will offer, partly for the benefit of the Sogdians, hoping they’ll seize upon the idea, but mostly for Lucas, to rally him and give him hope. For my efforts I am hammered across the crown with a stone mace. When I shield my face, more blows beat upon my back and arms. My skull feels like a spike has been driven through it. To my astonishment, I discover that captivity has reanimated me. A bubble of hate ascends. I welcome it. Men are born liars and so am I. Already I have resolved to give these blackguards nothing, to learn all I can about them and to use every scrap of it to work them harm, as rapidly and pitilessly as I can. No one of the foe savvies “ransom,” of course. But the idea seems to have occurred to them on its own. At least that’s what we imagine the bucks are debating in such lively fashion. Meanwhile, the bitches and brats continue to spit on us through the cordon of our defenders; women even piss into their cupped hands and hurl this at us. The parley breaks up. We are handed over to two raw-looking braves, no older than sixteen, who bind our wrists in front of us and lash the rawhide thongs to the tails of two pack-ponies in the column. The animals are beaten into motion and so are we. Off we go at the hot trot. Stones and clods of dirt chase us half a mile down the road, with the pack of dames and striplings howling for our blood. Throughout all this Lucas and I offer not so much as a peep, nor even raise our eyes from the dirt. Things have gotten bad and they are going to get worse.

  26.

  Spitamenes’ warriors derive from five nations. Bactrians and Sogdians make up his main force. These are legitimate Afghans, clansmen from the land between the Hindu Kush and the Jaxartes; they fight as traditional cavalry, under civilized Persian and Persian-trained officers. The Wolf also has as infantry tribesmen of the south, from the Panjshir, Kabul, and Ghorband Valleys, from Ghazni and Kandahar and from the flatlands as far east as Artacoana. These are his true Afghan units. The remainder of his fighting men are Scyths. These are out-and-out savages. The first nation, the Sacae, are a mountain and desert people who subsist off their flocks and herds and follow the seasonal grass. The second, the Daans (“robbers”) make their living as brigands. The Daans are not as numerous as the Sacae but are far more warlike. Both are nomads of the steppes north of the Jaxartes, the so-called Wild Lands, who for centuries have chased out every imperial monarch who tried to make them knuckle under. Third and most fearsome of the Scythian nations are the Massagetae. These are a true warrior race, who scorn physical labor and who live by raiding and looting alone. The braves of the Massagetae dismount only to sleep. They are the most spectacular riders in the world. To them goes the glory of having slain in battle Cyrus the Great, two hundred years ago, defending their native steppe.

  It is to these devils that Lucas and I are handed over. They already hold half a dozen other Mack prisoners. The force splits up. Spitamenes and his Bactrians have spurred off toward Maracanda. The Sacae and Daans scatter for their villages, or more accurately to the migrant bivouacs where their women and children wait with the enclosed wagons that constitute their homes. The Massagetae, our captors, drive north for the Jaxartes. This movement comes by no means in one bunch. Rather the various clans and bands break up, each bolting in its own direction. Lucas and I have been hooded, with the other captives, but in such rags that we can steal a glance between the weave. Even blindfolded, one can estimate numbers of cavalry from their sound, and bearing can be guessed at by the sun. I gauge two thousand in this drove of Massagetae (the nation, we have been told, numbers well over 100,000), which breaks up now into no fewer than a hundred bands. Our group is about forty. A buck has been placed in charge of us, who speaks good Dari and a smattering of Greek. We can communicate. His method of interrogation is straightforward. He shouts questions through the sacks over our heads; if we answer unsatisfactorily or with insufficient promptitude, he bashes our ribs, knees, and kidneys with a cudgel that we haven’t seen but that feels like a field club.

  I am suffering terribly with my skull and arm. It is worse for Lucas, whose wound of the face weeps blood and will not stop; with the heat and the infernal Afghan insects, the hood over his head becomes an oven in which he roasts. His ribs and hobbled knee torture him further. And, for both of us, the terror of death. “If I die,” he tells me when we stop the first night, “don’t let the army cook up some phony story. Tell my people what really happened.”

  As for my own end, I make no such scruple. “Tell ’em the biggest-balled lie you can think of.”

  On the move the Massagetae subsist on curds and blood. The latter they tap from the veins of their stock by means of a sharpened reed; they close the wound with spit and mud. No one makes a fuss over this, least of all the animals. The warriors supplement this dish with a species of rice or millet meal, not unlike our own “scratch,” which they eat cold with dried grapes, lentils, or walnuts. For spirits they pack khoumiss, fermented mare’s milk. Like us they hunt on the tramp, so that meat from the odd bustard or wild goat finds its way into the pot. The Massagetae kindle fires only in daytime, when they break on the march. They move again at night. Days are blistering in this season, nights bone-rattling cold. No halt lasts longer than a few hours, except at certain defensible eminences and cave complexes. There, the troop snoozes the day round—men and ponies.

  On the trek the Massagetae sing. A chantey will drone for hours, led first by one brave, then another, till every desperado in the column has taken his turn. Excepting the most precipitous pitches, no man dismounts. The Massagetae do everything from horseback, including heed nature’s call. In their lexicon, to walk is the province of women and dogs. Lucas and I and the others are driven until we can no longer stagger; then we are dragged. Care is reserved only for the ponies that haul us. When our weight becomes too much to pull, we are lashed upright onto our yaboos’ backs, with staves wedged beneath our elbows and our wrists bound before us, ankles tied together beneath the animal’s bellies. When we lose our balance and topple, which we do again and again, we are left to hang upside down. Our skulls pound into rocks along the trail. We bleed from ankles, wrists, mouths, and ears. Crossing streams our heads plunge underwater, that is, when they’re not being bludgeoned by whatever logs and boulders our beasts hump us over. Amazingly we manage, inverted, to get enough of a slos
h to keep from perishing of thirst. When the party makes camp, our hoods are removed; we are allowed a feed, then spread-eagled on our backs and staked to the ground. The first night, one not-unintelligent-looking fellow appears and stands over me, saying nothing. Clearly he is assessing me as an example of the European invader. He studies my face with grave concentration, then bends and picks up a weighty stone. I brace to have my brains bashed, but the buck only lifts my neck and slips the pillow gently beneath.

  On the tramp I hold the image of Shinar before me. This gives me strength. What would she think if she knew? Would it gratify her? Has word of the massacre reached her? Does she fear for my life?

  Resolutions present themselves. I make deals with heaven. If I get out of this alive, I vow to…what? Take better care of Shinar? Discover some means to bridge the gulf between us?

  For six days the band presses north. At intervals, other war parties intersect our course; parleys are held, news exchanged. Clearly something is afoot to the north and east. The tribesmen confer with eager animation. Then the bands go their ways.

  The Afghan wasteland, which appears barren and featureless to European eyes, holds to these tribesmen trunk roads and thoroughfares as unmistakable as the Athens-Corinth highway or the Persian Royal Road. The desert contains for them inns and serais, places of worship, public squares, and marketplaces. They know every twist of it, where the sweet springs are, and green grazing, and every overnight out of the wind. The band beats from one buried cache to the next. Night descends; the company dismounts and digs. Our chief (whom Lucas and I, between ourselves, call “Hook” for his nose) oversees. Up from a bunker come bichees and jerked gazelle, ghalla (dried bean curd), weapons, clothing, and wine. Packing out next dawn, the clan buries all spare gear and grub—kishar, ground cloths, an extra bridle—for whatever group comes along next. “To dal Iskandera chounessi,” says our guard. “Alexander doesn’t have this.”

  Interrogations have evolved beyond the routine nightly wallopings. We have picked up a few words, Lucas and I. And our guardian, Ham, has revealed himself to know a good deal more Greek than he originally let on. We are propped against boulders in groups of four with our hands free but our ankles staked to the dirt. The chieftain Hook grills us now. He wants to know why we follow Alexander. Are we of the same tribe? Related by blood or marriage? When we answer no, his mystification deepens. Why have we come here? What do we seek? He gestures to the wasteland. “Have you trekked a thousand leagues to rob us of our poverty?”

  Hook’s name is Baropamisiates, Man of the Hills.

  He wants to know of our country, Macedon. Can horses be raised there? How many wives may a man own? West of our borders, do the heavens truly plunge to the sea?

  Beyond all, Hook is curious about Alexander. That our lord is of less-than-average height confounds and infuriates the Afghan.

  “If the gods had willed that your king’s bodily stature should be equal to his greed, the earth itself could not contain him, but with one hand he would touch the rising sun, and with the other the setting. What kind of man desires that which he can never attain? From Europe he passes to Asia, and from Asia to Europe. Mountains and deserts cannot stop him, nor mighty seas check his advance.”

  Hook lectures us on the folly of monarchs past, who brought war to the free peoples of the plains—Semiramis, doughty Sargon, Cyrus the Great.

  “This prideful tyrant, styling himself Chosen of God, whose servants carried before him an image in gold of the sun…his bones lie mingled now with our dust and his entrails have been scattered, a feast for dogs and crows.”

  The Afghans, Hook declares, possess two invincible confederates: the scale of their land and its desolation. “Your king may defeat us, but he can never overcome such allies.”

  It is a misconception to think of the desert as level plain, flat as a tabletop, over which travel is simply a matter of direction and speed. On the contrary, the waste is a maze of natural snares and pitfalls, bluffs and blind canyons. Rivers of quicksand appear amid rocky scarp; salt marshes materialize in the midst of sand barrens. Rifts a quarter mile deep pop up out of nowhere and cannot be gotten round. An enemy who knows his way through such country possesses an insurmountable advantage. In flight he can lure his pursuers onto spurs or dead-end promontories, from which the only way out is back the way you came, or bait you into labyrinths of gorges and ravines, from which he can escape but you can’t. He can get you lost, run you in circles. And always there is water, or the lack of it. Navigating such wilderness without precise knowledge of its springs and wells is suicidal. A unit can work no more than two days in any direction; men and horses simply can’t carry enough water to get out and back. Native guides are useless. They all work for the enemy. An Afghan who aids the invader returns to his village to find his wife and children butchered, or waiting themselves to butcher him. The foe bested in a fight makes his getaway with ease while you in the chase must negotiate a tangle of defiles and dry courses, knowing always that the enemy is a master of the feigned flight and the double-back ambush.

  In all this, our captors take pains to instruct us. Hoods and blindfolds have been dispensed with now. Our jailers want us to see what we and our king are up against. By the time the band crosses the Jaxartes (at night on bhoosa bags with the horses swimming alongside), we are no longer even guarded. Where can we run?

  North of the river, a succession of jagged spurs intersects the plain. We are in the Wild Lands now. The band mounts into the hills, working up a track so precarious that even these peerless riders must dismount and walk. I am thinking, not even scorpions can live in this hell. Then we round a shoulder and there appears the prettiest little camp one could imagine. Lasses and dames of striking comeliness dash into the arms of fathers and husbands; proud-looking youths relieve the warriors of their horses and of those captured at the river massacre. Lucas and I are shoved, arms pinioned, into a dead end between high rocks. Savage matrons and urchins surround us.

  Will we be dismembered now?

  Our interrogator leaves us. All the bucks do. The women and boys begin probing at us. They pull our hair and stick their fingers into our ears. Some poke our bellies with sticks, others pinch our skin. Our eyelids are prized open. One crone thrusts her claw into my mouth; when I recoil, she picks up a stone and bashes me between the eyes. Another squaw gropes for my testicles. I scream. Our interrogator’s name, as I said, is Ham. I bawl this in terror.

  In moments the youth appears, trailed by half a dozen of his countrymen. They convulse with laughter. Ham makes us understand that the dames and brats have been told that all Macks are not men but devils; they are just checking to see.

  All next day the matrons troop at our shoulders. They batter us with flung stones and bash our backs and legs with clubs. Our wrists have been bound behind us. Descending rocky defiles, the women kick our feet out from under; they hoot with glee when we crack our skulls in the falls. Lucas suffers terribly with his eye and ribs; the dames discover this and torment him without letup. They don’t hate us, that’s not the impetus behind their cruelty. We are indeed devils to them. Our straw-colored hair and hazel eyes are the signs to these tribeswomen, not of a race of fellow humans, but of the spawn of hell. When Lucas’s eye begins to weep dark fluid, the females poke at it and lick the discharge from their fingertips, confounded to discover that we Macedonians bleed blood just like them. Finally around dusk they get bored and leave us. “By Zeus,” croaks Lucas, “I could not have survived another hour.”

  Only one maid of the band has refrained from participation in this savaging—a lass of fifteen, with eyes like obsidian and hair black as a raven’s wing. Now, when we prisoners are staked down for the night, she slips to us through shadow, kneeling beside Lucas to swab his eye with the bunched-up weave of her pettu, which she has soaked with cold springwater. I am staked three feet away, beside another captive named Medon; I feel my chest heave with emotion, to witness such an act of mercy in this terrible place.

&nb
sp; Suddenly a man appears from the darkness. He wrenches the girl to her feet and begins cuffing her violently. His curses accuse her of some felony we can’t decipher; the maid puts up no defense. In moments, half the war party has assembled. The clansmen are howling; Lucas and I and the other prisoners shout back. The girl did nothing! Let her loose, you sons of whores! The man clutches the child before him by the hair; the tribesmen roar approval. The brute turns toward us captives. A curved khofari knife flashes in his hand. He shows it to us, slowly and deliberately, then draws the blade across the girl’s throat, slicing so hard and so deep he almost severs her spine. I am screaming. We all are. The man dumps the maid into the dirt at his feet. He does not linger, even for the count of twenty it takes for the poor girl’s blood to form a lake on the stone. He simply turns and strides off, surrounded by tribesmen trumpeting their approval. “God Almighty!” cries Medon. “Who is that man? Why did he do that?”

  Ham and his mates stare down at the butchered child. “He is her father.”

  Women drag the lass’s body into the darkness. She has violated, Ham tells us, the code of A’shaara. The crime is not us Macks’ for being aided, but the girl’s for aiding us. The suddenness and monstrousness of the act have stricken us mute. How can such a thing be possible? Can a father slaughter his own daughter?

  Sleep is out of the question. We huddle, shivering in our rags. Our captors kick us to our feet sometime in the second watch. We expect, all of us, to be slaughtered like the raven-haired girl. But our jailers have forgotten her completely. Ham and an older brave haul Lucas and me to a crest with a thirty-mile vantage. The rest of the band has already collected. Ham points to a line of fires in the far distance—as many, it seems, as stars in the heavens.