The Lost Army (32 page)

While those negotiations were going on, a great number of enemies joined those who had seized the hill, and the two branches of our army – those who had occupied the pass and those struggling to make their way up – were trying to join forces. But accepting our offer to negotiate was apparently just a ruse on the part of the Carduchi. They suddenly attacked en masse, letting out wild yells and rolling huge boulders down the slope. I ran towards Lystra and pulled her to the ground beyond the edge of the path.

‘Your head!’ I shouted. ‘Keep your head down!’

A stone struck one of our mules full-on and knocked him down. I watched as he tried laboriously to get back up onto his feet and I realized that his backbone was broken. I’ll never forget the look of panicked terror in his staring eyes. One of the warriors passing alongside planted his javelin at the base of his skull with a clean blow and killed him. It put him out of his misery and allowed the column to press on.

As soon as the stones had stopped flying I raised my head and saw Xeno in the middle of the field leading his men in a counter-attack. He was racing madly towards the top of the hill on foot, enjoining his men to charge. There was no limit to his courage! He was ahead of them all, heedless of the volleys of arrows pounding into the ground all around him.

All at once, the roar of the avalanche sounded again as the Carduchi released more boulders and rocks against our men. And Xeno was shieldless! Moving so quickly to lead the attack, he had left it hanging from his horse’s back. I watched as a huge stone struck a rocky cliff and broke into four deadly projectiles. One of the men was hit full in the chest and hurled twenty paces away from where he was standing; another had his left thigh completely crushed. He fell to the ground howling in pain, but his cry was soon extinguished as the blood gushed out of his mangled limb in a matter of instants.

I could feel my heart bursting as I scanned the hail of stones and arrows for Xeno’s white crest. There it was, waving recklessly in defiance of the ministers of Death who were trying to sink their fangs into him like rabid dogs.

‘He’s going to fall,’ I said to myself. ‘Now,’ I thought, at every stone that brushed his helmet, every arrow that penetrated the ground a palm from his foot or that flew between his neck and his shoulder, not even grazing his skin.

I suddenly focused on a single arrow. It was sparkling, caught by a beam of sunlight, and I could perfectly make out its trajectory. My heart sank, this time I knew it would be the end of him, and of me, and Lystra and all those young combatants charging fearlessly up the hill behind him. The arrow sought Xeno’s chest, rushed towards it with whistling speed, but . . . never plunged into his flesh. It ricocheted, at the very last, off a plate of metal! A shield had been held out to cover him. A barrier of bronze, offered by a young hero to deflect the arrow, which thudded into the ground. Then, side by side, both of them protected by the gleaming shield, they made their way up behind the others. And the contingent that had occupied the pass the night before arrived to succour them as well. The ranks were drawn up in compact order, their red cloaks flaming in the midday light, their shields held high to blind the enemy.

As they closed in on the Carduchi, the brutish faces of the enemy showed signs of terror. They were no longer the dark phantoms of the night, mysterious spirits of the peaks loosing avalanches. They were shaggy shepherds covered with hides who were fleeing in every direction, stumbling over the dead and wounded. I watched as Timas of Dardania urged his men on, waving a red standard on his spear shaft. There was Cleanor raging like a lion at the head of his Arcadian battalion. Xanthi’s long locks bounced on his shoulders with his every leap. The sound of flutes marked the cadence of their advance as they marched on and roared out their war cry, ‘Alalalai! Alalalai!’

It was over. Beyond the pass the valley opened up and the men all stopped, leaning on their spears, to take a deep breath and realize they were still alive. I saw the white crest and forgot all about my pregnant friend. I yelled as loudly as I could, ‘Xeno! Xenooooo!’ and I raced towards him and threw my arms around him. I knew it would embarrass him, there in front of all the others, but I didn’t care in the least. I needed to feel his heart beating, see the sparkle in his eyes and the beads of sweat in his hair under the salleted helmet.

He held me close for a few moments, as if we were all alone, in front of the well at Beth Qadà. Then Sophos sought him out and he responded. But as soon as he could, he looked for the lad who had saved his life. His name was Eurylochus of Lusia, and he was very young indeed; he couldn’t have been any older than eighteen or nineteen. He had the feckless, open gaze of an adolescent but the shoulders and arms of a wrestler.

‘I owe you my life,’ Xeno told him.

Eurylochus smiled broadly. ‘Don’t mention it. Those sorry goats sure took a trouncing and we saved our skins, at least for the moment. That’s all that matters.’

We encountered another group of villages, all abandoned as well, and the men were able to rest and to shelter from the damp and chill of the night. There were provisions there for the taking and even some wine. One of Xanthi’s men found it hidden inside some cisterns which had been cut into the rock and internally coated with plaster. There was enough to make half of the army drunk, and Sophos immediately ordered it to be placed under surveillance. He couldn’t rule out that the natives had left it there deliberately: such strong wine, and so much of it, could be as effective as any weapon in this situation. No one was fooled by the apparent tranquillity of the evening. By now they knew what to expect from the Carduchi.

When the men were preparing to rest, Xeno’s adjutant arrived with the interpreter, bearing news that left us all speechless.

‘They’ve accepted, Commander,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked Xeno.

‘A truce to gather the fallen.’

Xeno stared at him incredulously. ‘On what conditions?’

‘We gather our dead, they gather theirs.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘They also want . . .’ he looked around until he spotted the guide who had led Agasias and his men to the pass, ‘. . . him.’

‘The guide? That’s fine with me.’

B
UT IT WASN
’
T
fine with him. When he realized that he was being turned over to his fellow tribesmen, the man was desperate. He wept and implored, prostrating himself before each of the commanders, who he’d learned to recognize by the crests on their helmets and their richly decorated armour, and clutching at their hands. Pushed away by one he knelt before another, embracing his knees, begging with such impassioned pleas that he could have moved a heart of stone. They knew what atrocious punishment awaited him, and he knew even better. When he had caved in to their threats, he’d probably thought they’d keep him with us, finding it useful to have someone who was familiar with the landscape, and that he might well be let go when they no longer needed him. Maybe he’d worked out a plan of who he would turn to then, relatives or friends in some remote village where no one would ever learn of his betrayal.

He could never have imagined that, alive, he would be traded for the dead.

They dragged him away, but as they were taking him to his destiny, he turned to me. I don’t know why, towards a woman who counted for nothing. Perhaps he’d seen compassion in my expression. And I saw in his eyes the same panicked terror as I’d seen in my mule when, hit by a boulder, he knew instantly that half of his body was already dead.

Our men climbed up the path on which they had fought just hours ago, carrying lighted torches to illuminate their way, followed by porters with makeshift stretchers. They returned late that night with the bodies of our fallen.

There were at least thirty of them, mowed down in the full of their youth. They had survived the great battle at the Gates of Babylon only to meet with an obscure, insignificant death in a barbarous land. I looked at them one by one and could not quell my tears.

The sight of a twenty-year-old boy pale with death, his filmy eyes locked in a blind stare, truly breaks your heart.

Xeno officiated over the ceremony. An army battalion was drawn up to render last honours while the flutes played a tense, high-pitched music which sounded itself like a cry of pain. The bodies were burned on three large wooden pyres. The earthenware pots in which the ashes were collected were sprinkled with wine and the names of the fallen were shouted ten times as the men jabbed their spears towards the sky. As the light cast by the flames reddened their shields and breastplates, the swords of the fallen were plunged into the fire until they were red-hot and then ritually bent so that no one could ever use them again. The swords were buried with the urns.

The men’s voices joined then in song, in a dark, melancholy dirge like those I heard during the warm nights in Syria under the starry desert sky. I almost thought I could hear Menon’s strong, singular voice rising above those of his comrades. But he was gone, like the young lads who’d just burned in the fire. To think that I’d seen them only that morning, clambering up those steep slopes, helping each other up with the shafts of their spears, calling back and forth by name to keep up their courage, to chase off the death that was sniffing at their trails like a starving wolf. The sad, powerful song of their friends accompanied them into the other world, that blind world where the air is dust and the bread is clay.

T
HE NEXT DAY
we set off again and we soon realized that any illusions we had of peace were mistaken. The enemy was even more aggressive, the path steeper and more difficult. The territory we were crossing was the roughest we’d seen, an endless chain of high mountains where no truce could hold. Negotiating our way out was unthinkable: the savages at our heels wanted us all dead, from the first to the last.

Their relentless attacks began again, hill after hill, peak after peak. Xeno was in the vanguard this time, on his horse, and Sophos brought up the rear. Big grey clouds scudded across the sky, as long and thin as the iron shafts of their spears, fleeing south against the direction of our march. Xeno would have interpreted that as a bad omen.

But he moved forward with incredible vigour and speed: each time we neared a height from which enemies might strike us or bar our way, he charged forward to occupy it, followed by his men. If the hill was already in enemy hands, he attacked with untiring ardour. But the Carduchi were quite astute; they would often leave a position before it was attacked and go off to hide or to occupy another position. It was easy for them to melt away: they were wearing hides and carried only a bow, while our men were clad in iron and bronze and carried a huge shield; every step cost them twice as much effort.

The Carduchi wanted to wear them down, to strip them of all energy and then, perhaps, to inflict the killing blow when they became too exhausted to take another step. But they didn’t know the red cloaks. I watched Eurylochus of Lusia, the lad who had saved Xeno with his shield, fighting like a young animal. He would pick up the fallen Carduchi arrows and hurl them back where they’d come from like javelins, often finding his mark. And there were Agasias’s dark arms, shining with sweat, striking out with tireless fury, mowing down men like blades of wheat, forging his way through blood and screams. Timas and Cleanor urged their battalions upwards, first one, then the other, so one group could catch their breath while the others fought on. Their bearing up under this immense strain, the wounds they took and the blood they shed, afforded us the protection we needed to go on. The long train of baggage animals, servants, and women advanced slowly, one step after another, towards a resting point that we could only imagine.

The day came to an end. The sun settled behind the foliage of the forests, the last screams died into death rattles or breathless panting, a falcon soared high up above, and then, suddenly, just before dusk, a wide valley opened up before us.

Our eyes rested on a vision of peace.

The vast plain was encircled by hills. The land rolled gently up and down and a slight rise sealed the opposite end. The valley was crossed from side to side by a crystal torrent. In the crook of this stream rose a steep hill which glowed red in the sunset and was topped by a village. Stone houses – the first we’d seen in a long while. Thatched roofs, small windows and low doors. A path cut into the rocky hillside descended towards the stream and a girl dressed in red and green, her black hair bound with bright copper rings, made her way down balancing a cushion with a jar on her head. Such silence greeted the sight that I thought I could hear the jingling of the rings she wore at her ankles.

We made our way up to the village and were finally able to sleep in a sheltered place, in one of the many houses. Others settled into the granaries or under the canopies that protected the animals.

Sophos posted sentries all around the village, and a second line at the foot of the hill that encircled the clearing.

Everyone hoped it was over.

No one believed it.

The girl we’d seen descending towards the river didn’t come back. I found myself thinking of her graceful, proud bearing and wondering whether we’d seen a vision, a divinity of the mountains or the river, abandoning the lonely, deserted village to disappear into the forest or into the pure waters that flowed between rocks and sand.

The soldiers lit fires. It was clear that we were being watched, so we might as well enjoy some hot food, finally. Xeno invited Eurylochus and Nicarchus the Arcadians, together with Sophos and Cleanor, to our table. I wasn’t sure whether it was meant to be their final supper. Would they promise to meet again in the Underworld, like that king of the red cloaks who, eighty years earlier, had dared to challenge the biggest Persian army of all time? Xeno had told me the story of that king named Leonidas, a man who had become a legend. A king who refused to wear a crown or a mitre or embroidered garments. He wore only a tunic of coarse wool and a red cloak, like the three hundred young men who died with him that day because they wouldn’t surrender and give up their freedom, at a place called the Fiery Gates. When the Great King demanded that they give up their arms, Leonidas replied, in a rough soldier’s dialect: ‘Molòn labé.’ Come and get them! A moving story, words I’d never forget.