The Lost Army (49 page)

That’s who those mounds were dedicated to: to the ones who hadn’t made it. Their heroism, their valour, their courage. No other monument like them existed in all the world. This was no work commissioned by great wealth from a renowned artist and lavished with gold and bronze and precious marbles. No, those mounds had been raised by those who remained, each man adding a stone or two stones or a hundred, without the design of any architect, inspired only by their hearts.

At dusk I saw more than one of those young warriors off on his own, weeping. Others had gathered around the biggest mound and were raising their voices in a sad, majestic song that rose to the sky, where the first star was already shining.

The next day we started to march again, downhill this time. The Ten Thousand were leaving the world of the heights that they had crossed from one end to another. Solitary peaks, unending chains of mountains furrowed by turbulent rivers roaring through rapids and exploding into foaming falls, all behind them now. They were going back to the sea, from where they had started.

We crossed a wood of shrubs not much taller than a man, laden with purple flowers. Beyond them were green fields dotted with other marvellous blooms, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Here and there ran dozens of little brooks that carried down to the valley the water of the glaciers and the snows that had melted in the heat of what had become late spring. They splashed from one rock to another, releasing a fine mist that shone in sunlight with the colours of the rainbow. The sound of all this rushing water, of each little fall, the gurgling and bubbling that changed in tone and intensity at every stone, formed a single, indefinable, magical voice, joined by the chirping of the birds and the rustle of the leaves in the breeze.

This is how paradise on earth must have been, in the golden age, I thought. The bright reflection of the sun penetrating between the branches, glistening dewdrops, fragrances carried on the warm wind that blew in from the sea, redolent with other scents.

Our suffering truly seemed behind us, hardship and hunger a mere memory, but we soon were forced to realize that not everything would be so easy. A local tribe barred our path at a river, and only after long negotiations were we allowed to cross unscathed. When Xeno asked the young skirmisher who had stepped up to offer himself as an interpreter how he had learned the language of a people living so far from Greece, he replied, ‘I don’t know . . . I suddenly realized that I could understand them when they were speaking.’

It was a kind of miracle, with no easy explanation. Then the youth said that, as a child, he had been sold as a slave in Athens and so it was possible that he was a son of that people. His mother tongue had stayed buried in his mind, neglected for years and years, until his memory was awakened by an unexpected contact with his forgotten origins.

They were forced to fight further on, at a mountain ridge where a line of soldiers was drawn up: the Colchians, the people of the golden fleece!

I felt that I had stepped into a wondrous universe where truth and legend were mixing constantly, in which real visions were transfigured in fanciful settings.

This time Xeno led the charge, urging the warriors to seize this last pass. He rode up and down the ranks encouraging them, joking, cursing in his military jargon, until I heard him yell, ‘Let’s get on with it, we’re going to eat them alive!’

The men responded with a roar, launching themselves into the attack with fury and overwhelming power. The Colchians were swept away at the first assault and the army camped in several villages that we came upon before evening. Here something very strange happened. Hundreds of our men showed signs of poisoning: they grew exceedingly weak and feverish, with cramps and vomiting. It was said that they’d eaten honey that had intoxicated them, but I’d never heard of bees that could produce poisonous honey. Could they be immune to their own poison? I suspected other causes, and so did Xeno, I think, because he knew that the army had its enemies and that the reasons for wanting it annihilated had not gone away.

Fortunately, those who had fallen ill managed to get better fairly soon, and this helped to allay my suspicions that our persecution would have no end.

We set out again, and at last we reached the coast, which stretched out a long way before us. On the second day, the city of Trapezus appeared. A Greek city.

It had been over a year since our men had been able to speak their own language with a community of people, and their joy was immense. We camped outside the city, and while our commanders made contact with the authorities and tried to secure the help we needed to continue our journey, the men organized games and contests to thank the gods.

When the celebrations were over, it was time to make decisions. The assembled army, with all the ranks taking part, did not leave their officers much of a choice. No one wanted to march any further, face more combat, risk more losses. Their mission was concluded, as far as they were concerned, and they wanted to find a ship that would take them home. One of the soldiers even made a speech that seemed inspired by the monologues of the comic actors at the theatres, performing a parody of the soldier as hero. As if to say: we’ve had enough.

Sophos tried to obtain warships and cargo ships from the city authorities, but the results were disappointing. Only a couple of ships and ten or so smaller vessels were found. On top of everything else, one of the men who was an expert in navigation had been put in charge of the ships, but during the night he weighed anchor and set sail with one of the two warships. His name was Dexippus and he would be for ever remembered as a traitor.

The remaining vessels would certainly not suffice to transport the army, who were thus forced to make forays into the interior so that they could raid and plunder the villages of the native peoples, who defended themselves with tooth and nail. I didn’t witness any of those raids, because I stayed back at camp with the other women, the wounded and the convalescents, but I found out more than I wanted to know from the stories we’d listen to after dark: cruel tales of havoc and destruction, women and children jumping in flames from their houses only to have their bones crushed in the fall, fighters on both sides turned into human torches, ferocious hand-to-hand combat, massacres.

Did they have any choice? They would have preferred to buy what they needed in the markets, but they had little money left, and nothing precious to barter. Even I had begun to think like them, and I knew the law of survival was not something you could ignore. The horrors of war were a sad consequence of that law. Once the battle had begun, the pain, the blood, the agony of body and mind did the rest, and any semblance of decency was cancelled, any restraint overwhelmed. I was fortunate I didn’t have to watch it.

After we’d been camped in the same place for a month, the army had created a void all around us. There were no villages left to be sacked in a range of one or two days’ march. We had to move on. The inhabitants of Trapezus had long had enough of us, and would have done anything to see us gone. At that point it was decided that the non-combatants would board the ships and the available vessels would put to sea: in this way, the amount of food we needed would also be greatly diminished. The command of the fleet was entrusted to Netus, the officer who’d often had differences of opinion with Xeno. It seems that he is writing his own story of the expedition; I’d love to know what he has written.

So the wounded and the sick, the older men and the remaining women left by sea. Yes, the girls were leaving. The girls who had cheered on the warriors at the turbulent river as if they were athletes at the stadium, the girls who had held them in their arms when they returned from battle, curing and salving their wounds, consoling them and alleviating the hardships of living, of fighting, of facing death every day and every night. The girls who had kissed them and loved them because the next day might be their last. The girls who had followed them to the end of the earth and who had mourned them on their funeral pyres as if they were their brides, sisters, mothers.

They were leaving.

I stayed with Xeno. Melissa stayed with Cleanor, and so did a few others who had become the constant companions of some of the officers. The march resumed again, along the coast. We never lost sight of the sea. For a while we could see ships and boats sailing in convoy and sometimes I thought I could see the girls waving to us with brightly coloured cloths flying in the wind. I’d get a lump in my throat and I couldn’t hold back my tears. I couldn’t stop thinking about Lystra. About her striving to deliver her baby in the freezing cold, about my own desperation and solitude. Death had demanded his due: a poor slave and a child who would never be born. And in the bright sunshine that reflected off the sea in a million sparkles, I thought of the mysterious divinity of the storm who had taken me into his arms and flown me to the outskirts of the camp so that I could be found. Perhaps he was made of snow and had melted with spring’s return, perhaps his spirit now surged through the fast-flowing torrents that rushed down the valleys and plunged into the sea.

We reached the first important city after several days of marching and, I’m not sure why, the bitter moment of counting up the survivors arrived. Officially, to know how many mouths were left to feed. The army was drawn up in full order, and the officers commanding each unit loudly called out the roll. When the name of one of the survivors was called, you’d hear ‘Present!’, but often the call was met with a long silence. Although the officer knew he was calling a dead man, he’d repeat the name because that was what the military tradition demanded, and only after prolonged silence did he go on to the next name. As the roll continued, the expressions of those present darkened, because each silence corresponded to a comrade, a friend, a brother who had lost his life, and brought up memories of blood and suffering.

I remembered that although I’d always called them the Ten Thousand there had been considerably more to start with, about thirteen thousand five hundred. Of these only eight thousand six hundred answered the call. Almost five thousand men had died of the cold, hunger, wounds. Most of them in the last grievous battle of the crater.

The soldiers also divided up the booty that had been plundered in all of the assaults conducted during the expedition. The tenth part was offered to the gods, and the rest was divided according to rank, among the generals, the battalion commanders and the soldiers.

I was really struck by the fact that Sophos refused his due. He left his whole entitlement to his field adjutant, Neon of Asine. I was watching Xeno when the supreme commander gave up his share: his initial expression of surprise changed to one of sad realization. Sophos had told Xeno he would never return to Sparta, and his actions revealed how convinced he was of this.

After we’d left that city we arrived at the border of a territory inhabited by savages who had divided into two factions. We allied with the faction that agreed to let us pass and attacked the other. They called themselves ‘tower-dwellers’ in their language because their chiefs lived in wooden towers that loomed above the huts in their settlements.

It was another bloody battle that resulted in many losses, but our men were victorious once again. When the Greeks formed up, obedient to their commanders, when they made a wall with their shields and shouted out their terrible war cry in unison, no one could resist them. No one could even bear the sight of their ranks advancing in compact order to the sound of flutes and drums.

After our victory, our allies showed us their villages and the chieftains introduced their children, extraordinary creatures, I must say. They fattened them up on certain nuts that grew in their territory that were inedible if you tried them raw, but delicious if you roasted or boiled them and peeled off their leather-coloured shell. Those children were broader than they were tall, barded with layers of fat. Their flesh was very pale and completely covered with colourful tattoos. They looked something like talismans that you’d offer to the gods to appease their wrath. They wouldn’t have been good for anything else.

The men were very active and even quite intrusive. They would try – in plain sight! – to mount the girls who had remained among us, as if they were animals. Melissa was hotly contended for, and a brawl would certainly have broken out had the interpreters and local guides not interceded and made appropriate explanations on both sides.

Xeno told me that he thought those were the most barbarous of any of the barbarians we had encountered. In fact, they did in public what the Greeks did in private, like have intercourse with a woman or perform their bodily functions, and in private what the Greeks did in public, like talking or dancing.

I saw them myself, dancing or carrying on a conversation, all alone. It was fascinating. They were a people who lived in a natural state, without cunning or hypocrisy, but that didn’t make them any less fierce. It made me think that ferocity was a part of being human, especially for men, although women were certainly not immune to it. I recalled what Menon had told me about the tortures inflicted by the Queen Mother on those who had boasted of killing her son; they’d left me sick with horror.

We had ample provisions now, and plunder, and pack animals. The situation had changed greatly. I couldn’t help but notice, however, that Sophos, that is, Commander Chirisophus, had grown detached. He occupied himself with marginal tasks, like looking for ships. He no longer appeared in public meetings, you’d never see him inspecting the troops. He seemed to want to melt away, as if he were no longer needed or no longer had a role to play. Who knows, maybe he was planning on slipping away as suddenly as he had appeared. Maybe one morning he just wouldn’t be there any more.