When the lieutenant leaves, Dice spits out the story.
The party of Agathocles, Lucas, and Costas, escorting Spitamenes’ son, was fallen upon by Bactrian tribesmen only two days after striking out from the capture site. The foe had carried the Macks, bound and blindfolded, to a camp called Chalk Bluffs, where a multitude of their kinsmen had assembled. The clansmen nailed our countrymen to boards, painted them with pitch, and set them alight. Further outrages were performed upon them while they still lived. Then they were beheaded. Their remains were dragged behind the foe’s ponies until they broke apart and fell away.
I ask Dice how he knows this.
“The villains made boast of it. In a post to Alexander.”
Our troops, Dice says, found the skulls in the enemy camp immediately after the battle, in captured wagons of the Bactrians, along with our fellows’ weapons and kit, which the foe had taken as trophies.
Night falls. Mack patrols fan across the steppe, seeking Spitamenes, who has become now, in the snow, one set of tracks among thousands. Alexander prepares the brigades to give chase as soon as the Wolf is discovered. Our section under Stephanos has been pulled out of the line. No one tells us why. I do not sleep. I will not eat. Only one object animates my purpose: to return to action as soon as possible and pay these fiends out for the abominations they have visited upon my friend.
44.
But Headquarters has quarantined us. Our section has been segregated to a compound on the margins of the camp. Intelligence has set up two tents. That night they bring in our officers and chief sergeants—Stephanos, Flag, the two young lieutenants who were present when Spitamenes’ son was captured. What they’re asking, no one knows. When they’re finished, they direct our commanders to the opposite wing of the compound, so they can’t talk to us who haven’t been called yet.
My turn comes around midnight. A hailstorm has got up; pellets of ice rip through the camp, tearing up tents and windbreaks. The cold and din are indescribable.
The Headquarters lieutenant interviews me. This is in the same tent where he showed me Lucas’s notebook. He congratulates me and our company on our part in this glorious victory. I am to be decorated and promoted sergeant. Bonuses for all. Then he sets a document on the table before me. I am to read and sign it.
“You do read, Corporal?”
I regard him. “Barely.”
The scroll is a report of the action against Spitamenes. It is accurate within reason. Except at the finish, where it recounts the deaths of Lucas, Agathocles, and the journalist Costas. All are given heroic demises, in combat on the field.
“That isn’t how it happened,” I say.
The ice storm booms against the sailcloth of the tent. Coals in the brazier flare with the gale.
The lieutenant dismisses my statement. “All your mates have signed it.”
He shows me Flag’s mark, and Stephanos’s and the two lieutenants, and our officers all the way up to Bullock.
“Lucas and the others were killed,” I say, “days earlier, on the prairie. Run down by Afghan cavalry and butchered.”
“Please,” says the lieutenant. “Make your mark.”
Why, I ask, is it even necessary for me to sign? I’m only a corporal. Who cares what I say?
“Headquarters wants marks from all.”
If it hadn’t been so bitter cold, if I hadn’t been so exhausted, I might have scrawled my sign. Narik ta? What difference does it make? But the lieutenant’s manner puts my back up. With emotion I recount the capture of Spitamenes’ son on the steppe. I describe Agathocles’ insistence on delivering the prisoner to the column at once, and how Costas the correspondent and my friend Lucas volunteered to join the party that set off alone into the void. “The enemy caught them and massacred them. That’s what happened.”
“Will you sign, Corporal?”
“No.”
The lieutenant excuses himself. When he comes back, a captain accompanies him. This time they bring a secretary.
The captain is more affable than the lieutenant. Wine is brought, and bread and salt. We chat. It is discovered that we have friends in common. The captain, it seems, knew my brother Elias; he praises Elias’s valor and expresses grief at his untimely end.
“Look,” he says, “you and I know what happened to your friend Lucas. By Heracles, the brutes who did it deserve crucifixion!”
“Then let’s find them and give it to them.”
The captain’s concern, he says, is for the kin of the bereaved.
“What good will the truth do your friend’s mother and sister? Will it ease their suffering? How will they remember their beloved boy?”
“As he was,” I say.
“No. They’ll see him butchered. Is that what you want?”
He slides the paper across.
“Your friend was a hero, Corporal. Let his loved ones remember him that way.”
Now I’m getting really chapped. I slide the chair back and start to rise.
“Sit down,” commands the captain.
I stand up.
“Put your ass in that chair, damn you!”
I obey.
But I won’t sign.
Two Hyrcanian lancers man the portal. They escort me outside, to an unused supply tent. I am to wait there, speaking to no one. Dice and Boxer are called in to the captain’s tent. They finish and are sent off to the good part of the camp. It’s now the middle of the night. The ice storm lets up, succeeded by hyperborean cold.
At dawn I’m called back. It’s the same captain, alone this time. “All right,” he says. “It’s a cover story.”
He meets my eyes, as if to communicate that I’m special; he’s going to clue me in on the true noise.
“Headquarters believes it vital that no word of these atrocities reach the army’s ears.”
“Why not?”
“Twelve hundred Bactrians and Sogdians surrendered to us yesterday. Alexander wants to integrate them into the corps. These hundreds will bring in hundreds more. But if our fellows learn of what happened…”
I get it.
“This is about peace,” says the captain. “It’s about ending this bung-fucked war!”
I ask him about the post the Bactrians sent to our king. “Don’t the troops know from that?”
“That message was buried the instant it showed up. The only ones who know about it are the officers in this compound and a couple of your mates whom we told when we brought them in.”
On a side table sits a steaming pot of lentils and chicken. There’s wine and barley mooch. The captain asks if I’ve eaten. I’m not hungry, I say.
“What line are you defending, Corporal? By Zeus, why won’t you sign?”
I know I’m being mulish. What difference does one lousy ink-scratch make in the scheme of things?
“Listen to me, son. This order comes straight from Alexander. Don’t you love your king?”
I do.
But I won’t sign.
“Do you understand how important this is? We’re talking about men’s lives! If peace can be made this winter, we save an entire spring campaign.”
I understand.
“Do you imagine,” the captain asks, “that Command will let one pigheaded corporal stand in the way of shortening this war?”
“Are you threatening me, sir?”
“I’m begging you, man.”
45.
I spend the morning frozen in the supply tent.
I understand Command’s predicament. I understand its solution. The phony report will be sent home to Macedon; it will be accepted without hesitation. Headquarters will publish it here throughout the army. No one who has signed it can then call it false. The Bactrians and Sogdians will be enrolled in the corps; they will bring in their cousins and brothers. It’s sound strategy. If I were a staff officer, I’d contrive it too.
But I still won’t sign.
One of the guards set over me is an Arcadian mercenary. Pole-mon is his name, a good fellow;
I know him from the city-building at Kandahar. He sneaks me some stew and half a jar of wine. “What’s the bone?” he asks. Why am I being so stubborn?
I tell him about Lucas, how the truth meant everything to him.
“Mate, you don’t know how deep you’re in it. These fuckers aren’t dogging around.”
Yes, I say. “I’m sure they’ve got a story made up about me too.”
“Damn right they have. And I’ll sign it. We all will.”
Exhaustion has shattered me, but I can’t sleep. In my mind I see Lucas’s eyes. I can’t let him down. I steel myself for the worst that can be thrown at me. I will not prove false to my friend.
By midmorning the camp is boiling with action. Spitamenes’ trail has been picked up. Orders are being issued. Alexander’s brigades will push off by noon. Our company will rejoin its division. Everyone but me.
This is the keenest torture yet. I cannot be left behind!
I am kicked out of the supply tent, so its contents can be broken down into mule-loads for the march out. Back in the first tent, I can hear my mates outside, rigging up. I can’t stand it. New guards are posted over me. I’m supposed to sit and say nothing, but my jailers let up when Flag and Stephanos, mounted to move out, rein outside.
“Sign,” says Flag, with a look that communicates, “It’s all rubbish anyway.” Stephanos taps his skull, meaning don’t be such a hardhead.
I am taken away again. This time to the king’s precinct. Another tent, bigger, with compartments. I stew through midday. Where is my horse? Has she been taken care of? The portal opens; the captain from yesterday enters. This time he has a staff colonel with him. The colonel says he’s through pissing around. He slaps the document down and commands me to sign it.
I will not.
“Hell take you!” The colonel pounds the table. “Do you want to make me a murderer?”
I hold at attention.
“You are a disgrace! You discredit the Corps!” And he stalks out.
The captain still hasn’t spoken. He motions me to sit. He does too. He pours a cup for me from a pitcher. “It’s only water.”
I take it. The captain smiles. “Your brother Philip is somewhere out on the steppe. Otherwise we’d have him here, too, to reason with you.” He regards me. “But you wouldn’t listen to him either, would you?”
He takes a different document from a case and slides it toward me. “This is your rag sheet.” The record of my debts. The captain gives me a moment to scan it. It’s every tick I owe the army, for my horse, advances, allowances. The roll must run forty lines. “We’ll tear it up.” Next: my enlistment contract. “I’ll knock twelve months off.”
The captain meets my eye with a look that says, “Let’s cut through the crap.”
“You’re promoted to sergeant. You’ve earned a Bronze Lion; I see no reason not to make it a Silver. The award comes with two years’ pay. Bonuses on top, plus your oikos allowance. We’ll get your girl up to Nautaca. Make the winter a little warmer.”
He indicates the original report.
“You don’t have to sign. Just give me your word you won’t contradict its contents, verbally or in written communication.”
He’s very good. But each word renders me more furious. In my mind I see Lucas’s charred remains, being dragged in the dirt behind some Bactrian yaboo.
“You might as well kill me, sir, and get it over with.”
The colonel sighs. “By Zeus, you’re a hard knot.”
He stands. I’m waiting for the guards to come in and seize me. The portal rustles. I hear a step from the adjacent chamber. Light enters. A man follows.
It is Alexander.
46.
The captain springs to his feet. I brace at rigid attention. The king comes all the way in. He entreats our pardon for entering unannounced. He has overheard our words from outside; he could not help himself. “Stand easy, Corporal.”
Alexander comes round front, where I can see him.
Our lord wears a plain winter cloak with no breastplate and no insignia save a single Gold Lion as a shoulder clasp. “The brigades move out in an hour. Forgive me if I don’t have much time.”
I am struck by how worn he looks. The contrast to his youthfulness, when we replacements first saw him two years ago, is overwhelming. He is only twenty-eight. Up close he looks forty. His skin is abraded to leather by sun and wind. His honey-colored hair holds streaks of silver. He dismisses the captain but does not sit himself, nor indicate that I may.
“I know what it means to lose a friend,” he says, “and in such a ghastly manner. I respect your courage in defying an order that seems to you unjust, and I understand that promise of reward offends your sense of honor.”
The chamber is close, no bigger than an eight-man tent, with nothing in it but a table, three chairs, and a stand for maps and charts.
“But you must understand what is at stake. We have a chance now to end this war, a chance that will not endure. Hours count. Amnesty must be extended to our Bactrian and Sogdian captives as quickly as possible, so it looks like a gesture of spirit and generosity, not a calculated act of politics.”
I am pierced to the heart by this token of our lord to address, as he would a commander of stature, a soldier of such mean rank.
“This is what war is,” says Alexander. “Glory has fled. One searches in vain for honor. We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of. Even victory, as Aeschylus says,
in whose august glow all felonies are effaced,
is not the same in this war. What remains? To prevent the needless waste of lives. Too many good men have perished without cause. More will join them if we don’t make this peace now.”
He straightens and meets my eye.
“I rescind the captain’s offer of promotion and reward. It’s an insult to your honor. Nor will I coerce you, Matthias, to take an action that runs counter to your code. Proceed as your conscience dictates. I shall take no measures against you, now or ever, nor will I permit any to be taken by others. Nothing is nobler than the love of friend for friend. Let it go at that.”
And he turns and exits.
Ten days later, near a scarp called by the Scythians Mana Karq, “Salt Bluffs,” a detachment of Massagetae appear under a banner of truce and present themselves to a forward unit attached to Hephaestion’s brigade, which comprises the right wing of the Macedonian northward thrust.
Their chiefs, the Massagetae claim, have Spitamenes’ head.
They will deliver this trophy to Alexander, they declare, if he will call off his advance and accept their undertakings of friendship.
BOOK EIGHT
An End to Hostilities
47.
Shinar has conceived.
She is pregnant. This time I won’t let her terminate it. She doesn’t want to, anyway. She’s happy. So am I.
Our division has gone into winter quarters at Nautaca. It’s the best place we’ve been. The city is sited atop an impregnable eminence, so there’s no work fortifying it, and what there is was completed by the engineers before they moved on to finish construction on Alexandria-on-the-Jaxartes.
At Frost Festival all line troopers receive their back wages. Mine is seven months’, with two years’ on top as a king’s premium. My third Bronze Lion has come through. A year’s pay goes with it and, better yet, the option to elect discharge at the end of my next bump. Three Lions equals a skip. Am I stupid? I’ll grab it with both hands! I’m flush. We all are.
The best part of Nautaca is Digger Town, the compound that the Corps of Engineers has put up for its own quarters and that we scuffs have now moved into. No tents for the engineers. They’ve built themselves real stone-and-timber barracks with a bathhouse, wood floors, and enclosed walkways to the latrines. When they move on at winter’s start to the Jaxartes, the compound is converted to a hospital. By midwinter the wounded have either recovered and rejoined their units or been moved back south to Bactra City.
Our fellows take over. Sh
inar and I get a room to ourselves with a window and a clay khef oven. An armload of kindling keeps the place toasty all night. Ghilla shares the space with us, along with her infant son, whom she has named Lucas. I have never been around a child. I adore the little fellow. We take naps together. He loves to sleep back-to-back. At first I am terrified I will roll over on him, but his squalling soon eases that fear. He has lungs like a flag sergeant. If Shinar’s child is a boy, we will name him Elias. The women have carpeted the floors for warmth and snugged down the roof. Our mates Boxer and Little Red have the next two rooms, with their women; Flag and Stephanos are in the cottages built for officers just down the lane.
We’re almost embarrassed to be so comfortable.
Winter’s chore is to prepare an offensive for spring. I’m a line sergeant now. I command a file of sixteen. I’m included in all platoon-level briefings and some even up to battalion.
I have written to my mother, telling her about Shinar. For once I can speak the truth in a letter.
When the Massagetae campaign ended, three months ago, our section was two hundred miles into the Wild Lands. Not a man was unwounded. The horses were hide-and-bones. Three storms struck in succession. I lost two toes and part of four fingers, including the top of my left thumb. Many suffered far worse. When at last the column staggered back into Nautaca, Shinar was waiting for me. She had come north alone, first to Maracanda, then to Alexandria-on-the-Jaxartes, finally to here.
When I saw her, bundled sole-to-crown among the crowd of wives and lovers at the intake gate, I knew I would look no farther for my life’s companion. No barracks had been built at that time, but the engineers had put up stables, still under construction but at least out of the wind.
There Shinar takes me. I fall into the straw in a stupor. When I awake, as I do for days in fits of terror and dislocation, I see her tending to Snow. She rubs the mare down, dries and wraps her feet, gets good grain and sweet water into her belly. “What about me?” I groan.
“I’ll get to you in good time,” she says.
The Afghan Campaign Page 23