The Lost Army (8 page)

He smiled. ‘Why do you want to learn to write? What would you do with it?’

‘I don’t know, but I like the idea that my thoughts would remain alive even after my voice has disappeared.’

‘That’s a good reason, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.’ And that was that.

But Xeno’s art fascinated me, so that I started drawing marks anyway, on sand or wood or rocks, and I knew that some would be rubbed away by the wind and others by water, while others, perhaps, might still be there years, even centuries, from now.

After the army left Sardis we travelled up the Meander river until we reached the high plain, stopping in a beautiful place where one of Cyrus’s summer palaces was located. There was a spring inside a cave there where you could see a skin hanging, the flayed hide of some wild animal. Xeno told me a story then that I’d never heard before.

In that cave had lived a satyr, a creature that was half man and half goat, called Marsyas. He was one of the creatures of the woods who protect the shepherds and their flocks, and he would often sit alongside the stream to play his flute, a simple reed instrument. The melody he coaxed from his flute was sublime, deeper and more tender than a nightingale’s song. A melody that evoked shadowy recesses and moss with a strain that recalled the burbling of a mountain spring, a harmony that blended with the wind rustling the leaves of the poplar trees. He became so enamoured of his own music that he believed no one could play as well as he could, not even Apollo, who was the god of music for the Greeks. Apollo heard his boasting and appeared before him suddenly one afternoon in the late spring, as radiant as the light of the sun.

‘You challenge me?’ he demanded in anger.

The satyr did not back down. ‘That was not my intention, but I’m proud of my music and I’m not afraid to measure myself against anyone. Not even you, O Shining One.’

‘Challenging a god is not something you can do without putting yourself at great risk. If you won, your glory would know no bounds. Your punishment in case of defeat would have to be proportionate.’

‘And what would that be?’ asked the satyr.

‘You would be flayed alive. I myself would strip you of your skin.’ Thus saying he drew a razor-sharp dagger made of an unfamiliar, blinding metal.

‘Pardon me, O Shining One,’ said the satyr then. ‘How may I be certain that your judgement will be impartial? You risk nothing. I risk death, and an atrocious one at that.’

‘The contest will be judged by the nine Muses, the supreme divinities of harmony, of music, of dance, of poetry, of all the highest manifestations of human and divine nature. The only beings who can join the world of the mortals with that of the immortals. Nine is an odd number, so their verdict will favour one of us.’

Marsyas was so intrigued by the idea of vying with a god that he thought of nothing else and accepted the terms of the challenge. Or perhaps the god, jealous of his art, fogged the satyr’s judgement.

The contest took place the next day, as evening was falling, at the peak of Mount Argeus, still white with snow.

Marsyas was first. He put his lips to his reed flute and blew into it the sweetest and most intense of melodies. The warbling of the birds ceased, even the wind subsided and a profound calm descended upon the woods and fields. The creatures of the forest listened enchanted to the song of the satyr, the rapturous music that blended all of their voices, all of the sylvan moans and whispers, the silvery tinkling of the waterfalls and the slow trickle of the caves, the trill of the skylark and the screech of the owl, the symphony of April rain on leaves and branches. An echo reflected the sound, magnified it, multiplied it over the crags of the huge, solitary mountain and through her ravines until mother earth vibrated down to her most hidden depths.

Marsyas’s flute let out a final long piercing peal that softened into a deeper, darker note, then into a tremor that faded into dazed silence.

It was Apollo’s turn then. The outline of his figure could barely be made out in the flaming radiance of the aura that surrounded him, but a lyre suddenly appeared in his hand, his fingers plucked the strings and the instrument burst into sound.

Marsyas knew the sounds that a lyre could make and he knew that his flute was capable of more mood and more colour, more notes high and low, but the god’s instrument had all of this in a single string and much, much more. He heard Apollo’s fingers unleash the crash of the sea and the roar of thunder with such power that Mount Argeus trembled all the way down to its roots, raising whole flocks of birds from the treetops in a concerted rustling of wings. And then, as soon as that roar died down, another string vibrated and then another and another still and their vibrations mixed and cascaded in a breathless race, uniting into a chorus of wondrous clarity and majestic power. The shrill notes chased one another at an ever swifter pace with iridescent splashes of silvery outbursts, dark echoes of horns, luminous flares of dazzling sound which surged out into solemn, vast resonance.

Marsyas himself was enthralled. His eyes filled with tears, his expression spoke of wonder and enchantment. And thus was he condemned. Nothing in his music had moved the impassive demeanour of the god; every note of Apollo’s music, on the contrary, poured into the dark eyes of the satyr. The Muses had no doubts in awarding the victory to Apollo. All of them, except one, beautiful Terpsichore, the muse of dance. Distraught over the fate of the woodland creature, she did not join her vote to those of her companions, risking the wrath of the god of light. But her gesture did not prevent the cruel punishment of him who had dared to make such a sacrilegious challenge.

Two winged spirits appeared all at once at the sides of the god and put their hands on Marsyas, tying him to the branch of a large tree, securing his feet so he could not escape. He implored mercy, in vain. The god flayed him alive and screaming. Apollo proceeded with serene detachment, stripping the skin of man and beast from him and leaving him mangled and bloody to the wild animals of the forest.

No one knew how that dry hide ended up in the cave above the source of the river that bore his name, or whether it was another false relic stitched together craftily from the skin of a man and the hide of a goat. But the story was terrible and disturbing nonetheless, and it could mean but one thing: the gods are jealous of their perfection, their beauty and their infinite power. Anyone who so much as gets close to them will arouse their suspicion and push them to strike out with a vengeance so that the distance between man and god will always remain insurmountable. But if that were true it would mean that the gods fear us, that the spark of intelligence born of our fragile, perishable nature frightens them somehow, makes them worry that one day, maybe a long time from now, we could become like them.

On the high plain, stories blossomed and flourished like the poppies that painted the fields and slopes of the hills red. Many of them concerned Midas, the king of Phrygia, who had bid the god Dionysus to transform everything he touched into gold, nearly causing his own death by starvation. The god took back that ruinous gift, but he gave the king two donkey’s ears to remind him of his foolishness. The king hid them under a wide hat, and the only person to know about them was his barber, who the king had sworn to secrecy and threatened with death should he let the word out. This poor man could not keep such a huge, intolerable secret but was wise enough to realize that he must not confide in anyone, since anything he said would quickly get back to the asinine ears of the king. The poor man was dying nonetheless to tell his secret, so he dug a hole in the river bank and whispered inside, ‘Midas has donkey’s ears,’ then filled it back up again and warily made his way home. But a bed of reeds grew where the hole had been and every time the wind blew, they whispered that phrase endlessly, ‘Midas has donkey’s ears . . .’

Further on, when we had nearly reached Cappadocia, the army stopped near a spring to stock up on water, and there we heard another story about King Midas. There was a satyr named Silenus who was a follower of Dionysus’s. This creature was gifted with extraordinary wisdom, but it was practically impossible to force him to share his knowledge unless he could be enticed by wine, for he was an insatiable drinker. Midas mixed wine with the water of the spring and the satyr drank so much that he became drunk and Midas succeeded in tying him up for long enough to compel him to reveal all his secrets.

This was obviously a very tranquil time for the army. No one was worried, there were no enemies in sight, the men were being paid regularly. So there was time even to tell fables. But over one hundred thousand men cannot move without being noticed. Soon the first worrisome events would occur, signals that the advancing army had awakened a huge, wrathful empire. The Great King, in Susa, surely knew we were coming.

I’
VE OFTEN WONDERED
how many stories populate the villages of the world, stories of kings and queens or of humble peasants or the mysterious creatures of the woods and rivers. Every cluster of houses or huts has its own, but only very few grow and spread and become known beyond local confines. Xeno told me many stories about his homeland during those long nights when we were stretched out next to one another after making love. He told me of a war that lasted ten years against a city in Asia called Ilium, and the story of a small king of the western islands who called himself ‘no one’, but who had journeyed over all the seas, defeating monsters, giants, enchantresses. He had even descended into the land of the dead. When in the end he came back to his island home he found his house full of pretenders to his throne who had devoured his riches and wooed his wife. He killed them all, except one: a poet.

He was right to spare the poet: those who sing tales should never die because they give us what we could never have otherwise. They see far beyond our horizons, as if they lived on the peak of the highest mountain. They hear sounds and voices that we don’t hear, they live many lives simultaneously and they suffer and rejoice as if these many lives were real and concrete. They experience love, grief, hope with an intensity unknown even to the gods. I’ve always been convinced that they are a race unto themselves. There are gods, there are human beings. And then there are poets. They are born when the heavens and the earth are at peace. Or when a bolt of lightning flashes out in the deep of night and strikes the cradle of a baby but does not kill him, brushing him only with its fiery caress.

I liked the story of that wandering king and every night I had Xeno tell me a little more. I imagined myself in the part of his bride, a queen with a long unpronounceable name. She had waited twenty years for her husband’s return, not out of servile devotion, but because she couldn’t be satisfied with anything less than her hero with his multi-faceted mind.

‘Bend this bow, if you are capable of it,’ she had said to her suitors, ‘and I will choose the one among you who succeeds.’ Knowing that none of them could ever succeed. And then she had thrown herself into the arms of her husband who had finally returned to her, for only he knew the secret that united them: he had built their wedding bed nestled in the branches of an olive tree. How lovely to sleep in the arms of an olive tree, like birds in a nest. Only he could have had such an idea. How happy they must have been in that bed, the young prince and princess of a happy land, contemplating the future of their newborn son. And I shivered as I thought of the horrors of the war they had yet to experience.

I was certain that the same would happen to us. It was only a question of time.

The first ominous signs had already emerged before Xeno and I even met, when the army was crossing the vast highlands. The morale of the troops was low, in both the Greek and Asian camps. Xeno knew why: money. Cyrus hadn’t been paying the men for some time. Strange . . . very strange indeed. Cyrus was immensely wealthy: how could he not have enough money to sustain the costs of an expedition against an indigenous tribe? Xeno thought he knew the reason, but the troops certainly didn’t, nor did many of their officers. Some of the men had become suspicious and were spreading stories that were fomenting tension and unrest in the camps. Fortunately something happened that changed the mood of the soldiers, at least for a while.

One day the army had stopped at the centre of a huge clearing, surrounded by woods of poplar and willow. As evening approached, a great procession of warriors arrived at their camp, escorting a carriage covered by fluttering veils. Inside was a woman of incredible beauty. A queen. The queen of Cilicia. Cilicia was the land that bordered on my own, but it was much more fertile and luxuriant. It overlooked the foaming sea and was rich with olive groves and vineyards. Her husband, the sovereign of that beautiful land, must have been worried. Although Cilicia was theoretically independent, he was still a subject of the Great King, and his kingdom was on the direction of march of Prince Cyrus. At this point, it wasn’t hard to guess at his objective. If the Cilician king opposed Cyrus’s advance, he would be mown down. If he didn’t stand up to him, the Great King would demand to know why he hadn’t been stopped, and the Great King was not a man to quarrel with. He probably decided that it was best to face one problem at a time, and Cyrus’s approaching army was the closest and most pressing. The only true weapon that the king had at his disposal was the beauty of his wife: an invincible weapon, stronger than any army. All it would take was a little money and a queen in the prince’s bed and this problem, at least, would be solved. Money and beautiful women move mountains, and the two together would crumble any bulwark.