The Lost Army

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘Parysatis has calculated well. Masabates was not among her son’s top five. This time the dice were loaded to allow her to win, and when she claimed Masabates as her prize the King immediately realized that he had condemned a faithful servant to a horrible death, but a king’s word is carved in stone, and can’t be taken back.

  ‘The Queen Mother had him flayed alive and ordered his skin to be hung from a reed trellis where he could see it. Then she had him impaled using three intersecting poles. His death was quicker than Mithridates’s but no less painful’ This happened just a few days before Durgat had been captured at the villages with the other servants and their escort.

  Durgat said that she had been present, with a basket of figs in her arms, when the King complained to his mother that she had inflicted a horrible death on a good servant. The Queen Mother shrugged and said, ‘What a fuss over a worthless old eunuch! I didn’t say a word when I lost one thousand gold darics in a single game.’ Then she took a fig from Durgat’s basket, peeled it with maddening slowness and bit into it, curling her lip just like a tiger does.

  As Durgat was finishing her story Xeno appeared and found himself face-to-face with Menon of Thessaly. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked curtly.

  ‘Just passing through,’ replied Menon.

  ‘Pass some other way,’ replied Xeno, frowning. I saw Menon’s hand slip to the hilt of his sword and I shot him a look to stop him. He shook his blond mane and grinned. ‘Another time, writer. Our day will come. While you’re waiting, have your lady friend tell you a story or two. You’ll find them interesting.’

  He left, the wind billowing up under that absurd white cloak. Like the sail on a boat.

  I ASKED DURGAT whether she’d rather return to the Queen or go on with us. ‘You’re free, if you want to be. You must decide for yourself. If you come with us, I think we’ll be on the coast in a couple of months. There are incredible cities on the seafront, the climate is good and the fields are fertile. You might find a good man who will marry you, and raise a family.’

  Durgat lowered her eyes for a moment without speaking. She was a pretty girl, with pitch-black hair and eyes and a dark complexion. She dressed with a certain flair and was even wearing ornaments: a drop of amber at her throat hung from a silver chain.

  ‘You’re very good to offer to take me with you, but I know I’m safe where I am now. You just have to close your ears and your eyes, obey always, even when you’re not told to do anything, predict the Queen’s needs and satisfy her every desire, and all is fine.’

  I couldn’t believe I’d heard the words ‘all is fine’ from a person who’d had a close encounter with the unimaginably ferocious acts she’d just told me about, a person who was at the service of a human beast who was capable of immense cruelty and of sudden, devastating mood changes. I realized that a person deprived of her freedom and her dignity can grow accustomed to anything and everything.

  Durgat continued, ‘You’re doing this because you’re in love, I can see that, and I understand you. I’m not used to this kind of life. But . . . that’s not the only reason . . .’ she broke off, looking straight into my eyes with an intense expression.

  There was a message in her eyes, as there had been in mine when I silently implored Menon not to draw his sword against my Xeno. She wouldn’t say another word; she had already warned me that she found it best to close her ears and her eyes. So, best not to hear and not to see . . . what? What was it that she knew but couldn’t tell me? What Durgat had given me was a gift that I couldn’t understand or benefit from. I didn’t press her to say anything more because her expression was eloquent; it was impossible for her to go any further. She’d already given me what she could and the mere idea that she might be considered responsible for a prohibited revelation was more than enough to sew her mouth shut. Precisely because she’d decided to return to her cage.

  ‘I’ll ask Xeno to leave you here in the village. Your people will find you when they pass through, or you’ll be picked up by Tissaphernes’s men who are camped one parasang east of here.’

  ‘I’m very grateful to you. Believe me, I would have liked to stay with you and become your friend. You’re a lot like I am, you know? Maybe because we speak the same language and come from similar places. I’m from Aleppo.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I replied, and my gaze sought the point that had just caught her attention. Something up on a low hill, behind the villages: it was Menon’s white cloak.

  Xeno called me and I joined him, and began preparing our supper.

  He realized that my mind was somewhere far away. ‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.

  ‘That girl that we found here, the one who had been captured,’ I answered. ‘I promised that you would free her.’

  ‘I don’t think so! You’re too jealous to let another woman share our tent, and a pretty one at that. Am I right?’

  ‘Of course you are.’ I smiled. ‘You know me well! Then can I tell her that she can go back to where she came from?’

  ‘Yes, tell her that. Let’s hope that nothing bad happens to her.’

  ‘Durgat belongs to the Queen Mother Parysatis. She has only to say her name and her path will clear, even in the middle of a pack of wolves, believe me.’

  ‘Fine, then.’ But he continued to steal looks in my direction; he must have sensed that my mind remained elsewhere.

  When evening fell a stiff wind came up, snapping the loose edges of the tent and rustling the palm fronds so loudly that I couldn’t fall asleep. I couldn’t get Durgat’s enigmatic expression out of my mind, that intense look she gave me when she stopped talking.

  There was something she couldn’t tell me, something she knew but couldn’t say. Why? Something dangerous, a threat that hung over our heads, something she’d overheard in the chambers of the Queen Mother or in the King’s pavilion. What else could it be? But we knew we were up against danger every day; a sudden attack, an ambush, running out of food or water, poisoned wells . . . so many dangers lay between us and the sea. What threat could be more serious than the many we’d already experienced?

  I tried to work out the sequence of what had happened to her, and how she must be feeling, in order to find an answer. She had heard something that concerned us, that had to do with our army, but perhaps she hadn’t even completely understood it. Then she’d been sent to the villages to buy provisions and had been captured by our men. Xeno and I had protected her from the violence she might have suffered and she was grateful to us for this reason. What she had seen at our camp must have reminded her of something she’d heard in the royal palace, and she was trying to warn me. She was trying to say, ‘There’s something in store for you. I know what it is but I can’t tell you because I’m going back to the Queen and if their plot is foiled it will be easy to trace the person who revealed their plans. And there’s no limit to the suffering they’d inflict upon me. So you have to try to understand.’

  Right, that must be it. If I couldn’t understand now, I would be able to understand later, by being careful, keeping my eyes open, trying to take advantage of any clue or signal. Xeno pulled me close. He couldn’t sleep either, with the wind.

  ‘You know, in my village, the wind – in certain seasons or at certain times – makes a strange noise, like a roar,’ I whispered into Xeno’s ear. ‘The old people say that when the wind roars like that something extraordinary is about to happen. We heard the wind’s voice three days before your army passed through Beth Qadà.’

  ‘So you think it’s trying to tell us something now?’

  ‘Maybe. But here we’re too far from home for me to understand.’

  The wind died down before dawn and I managed to get some rest. That night Melissa had slept alone, because Menon was out on patrol with his Thessalonians. He came back when the sun was high, having lost three of his own men and having killed ten or so of Tissaphernes’s. The situation had continued to worsen day by day; there were constant skirmishes with the Persians but also with
Ariaeus’s Asians, who clearly had taken sides with Tissaphernes, openly spurning the oaths and promises they had made with the Greeks.

  From then on, clashes of that sort intensified, usually without any apparent trigger. The strange thing was that Clearchus and the other commanders didn’t seem overly concerned.

  ‘They’re provoking you,’ I told Xeno. ‘They want to goad you into doing something. Attacking maybe, and falling into a trap.’

  ‘Clearchus doesn’t think so,’ Xeno replied. ‘He doesn’t see any pattern in the aggression. You see, the closer we get to the mountains, the less fertile land there is, and this means we’re competing for the same scarce resources. Plus, we don’t like them and they don’t like us. That’s all. We’ll be on the road together for at least the next three months, so we’ll have to put up with it.’

  We resumed our northward journey three days later. Before leaving, I said goodbye to Durgat. She hugged me and gave me that same look again, as if to say: ‘Watch out.’ What she said was ‘Good luck.’

  ‘Good luck to you too,’ I replied and got into the wagon.

  We advanced with the rising sun at our right for about twenty days. The skirmishing continued between our army and small groups of Persian cavalry until we encountered another river which flowed into the Tigris from the east, which we crossed on a boat bridge.

  Once we had reached the other side, Clearchus summoned all the generals and demanded to know if any of them had ordered his men to take the initiative against the Persian troops, but they replied that they had always obeyed his orders, that is, not retaliating unless they were attacked directly. Clearchus said he wanted to put an end to this problem, once and for all.

  ‘How do you propose to do that?’ asked Sophos, present with Neon, who had become his shadow.

  ‘I’m going to ask to meet with Tissaphernes. A summit between their high command and ours.’

  ‘And you hope to resolve something?’ asked Sophos.

  ‘I do. This situation is as damaging to them as it is to us. Tissaphernes knows that if this builds into a direct clash, they would take considerable losses, at best. At worst it would be a complete trouncing. Our men are in top form and well acclimatized. They’re ready for an all-out attack. They’d welcome it, in fact.’

  ‘How would you organize a meeting, if he agrees?’ asked Socrates of Achaea.

  ‘On neutral ground, halfway between the two camps. With a limited escort: no more than fifty men on either side. I want lads who are wide awake, and quick on the draw.’

  ‘Leave that to me,’ said Menon.

  ‘Fine. Send out a group to arrange it today. They’ll have to name a time and a place. I’ll take care of the rest.’

  That evening Socrates had dinner with us in front of our tent and told us all about their meeting. He was quite cheerful and seemed certain that all would go according to plan. I wasn’t sure of this in the least. It was only after Socrates had gone that everything suddenly fell into place, or so it seemed to me, and I asked Xeno to listen to me, even if I was only a woman.

  ‘This is what Durgat was trying to tell me: there’s deadly danger looming ahead; we could be annihilated. She knew, but she couldn’t tell me. Haven’t you wondered why the attacks, the quarrels, the insults have multiplied of late without any precise reason? Our men are heading straight into a trap, I’m sure of it. You have to stop them.’

  Xeno shook his head, perplexed. ‘It’s just your impression. That girl didn’t say anything because she had nothing to say.’

  ‘You’re wrong. She spoke to me in the language of women, the language of intuition, of instinct. She knew that I would understand, that I would foresee the danger. It was her way of thanking me without putting her own life at risk. You must convince them not to go!’

  Xeno seemed untroubled. I had tears in my eyes and was shaking. He tried to calm me.

  ‘There’s no reason for you to get so upset. All Clearchus is doing is setting up a preliminary contact. We don’t even know if Tissaphernes will accept to meet or whether he’ll be willing to negotiate. When we get his answer we’ll talk about it.’

  ‘Talk about it now. Go to Clearchus yourself, or get Socrates to speak to him.’

  ‘And what am I supposed to say, that there was a girl who stared at you with a funny look in her eye? Come on now, try not to think about it. Sleep now, and tomorrow, when our envoys come back, we’ll know whether the meeting is going to take place or not.’

  I was expecting that. Who would ever take a woman’s babbling seriously?

  I didn’t close an eye all night.

  13

  OUR EMISSARIES RETURNED next morning just after dawn, pleased at the positive outcome of their mission. Tissaphernes had not only agreed to the summit meeting, but declared that he welcomed the chance to put an end to all the difficulties and misunderstandings that had arisen. He had even chosen the meeting site: a pavilion at a short distance from the Tigris, at three stadia from their camp and from our own.

  Clearchus decided to depart that very morning. The four generals accompanied him: Agias the Arcadian, Socrates the Achaean, Menon the Thessalian and Proxenus the Boeotian. Behind them were twenty battalion commanders and an escort of fifty of the strongest and bravest men. I tried to make Xeno understand the enormity of the danger they were headed for. ‘Why all those men? Wouldn’t a couple of representatives, chosen for their wisdom and intelligence, be sufficient? Why not Clearchus alone?’

  ‘It seems that Tissaphernes insisted, he wants our officers to meet his. He’s organized a banquet with an exchange of gifts. He wants to create a climate of mutual trust,’ Xeno replied.

  ‘I can’t believe this! Seasoned men, with years of battlefield experience, can’t understand that they may be walking into a trap? Just reflect for a moment and try to imagine what would happen if what I’m afraid of turns out to be true. Your entire army would be decapitated, in one fell swoop. The whole general staff, dead and gone.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ replied Xeno. ‘Do you think it would be easy to do in such formidable combatants? Clearchus is not stupid; he has taken all the necessary precautions. The terrain is perfectly flat, as you’ve seen; there’s no place for a large force to hide. Clearchus’s plan is intelligent: leave at once, so as not to give them time for any plotting. Believe me, to take out seventy-five of our men is no easy matter; it would take at least three hundred of them. More, if they wanted to be on the safe side. And where would all these men be hiding? Calm down, and don’t say a word of this to anyone; you’ll make me appear ridiculous.’

  That’s what he said to me, but I wanted to shout at them not to go, not to put themselves in such awful danger. I was sure that what I was feeling wasn’t simply nerves, or some wild imagining, but a true premonition. I didn’t say a word but I stood at the edge of the road with a water jug in my hands and I watched them go. They left on horseback. Clearchus rode first, clad in his iron armour decorated in gold, his black cloak on his shoulders. Behind him were Socrates of Achaea, with his embossed bronze breastplate, and Agias of Arcadia with breastplate and greaves in silver-plated bronze, both wearing light blue cloaks. Proxenus of Boeotia wore black like Clearchus, but his cuirass was made of white linen decorated with strips of red leather and a painted gorgon on his chest. The last of the generals was Menon of Thessaly. He shone in his polished bronze armour with highlights in gold. His greaves were trimmed with silver and he carried his white-crested helmet under his left arm. White, as always, was the long cloak elegantly draped over the rump of his stallion. Behind them rode the battalion commanders in rows of four. Alongside them, in two groups of twenty-five, were the guards.

  When Menon passed I stared at him with such a distressed expression that he noticed, and answered me with a reassuring gesture, as if to say, ‘Nothing will happen.’ Then he turned his head and nodded to someone behind me and I turned in the same direction.

  Melissa was standing there wrapped in a military cape that reached
down to her knees. Her right hand was raised.

  She had tears in her eyes.

  TIME SEEMED to stand still. Tension flowed through the camp as if the future of the entire army depended on the outcome of that meeting, which was actually true. The men spoke quietly among themselves in small groups. Some of them climbed to the top of the knolls that rose alongside the camp to see if they could catch a glimpse of someone returning. Others, from below, cupped their hands to shout up asking whether they’d spotted anything. I wasn’t the only person worried.

  The sun seemed nailed to the centre of the sky.

  I went to find Melissa.

  ‘Did he say anything before he left?’ I asked.

  ‘He kissed me,’ she answered.

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He didn’t tell you what he thought of this mission?’

  ‘No. He seemed fine.’

  ‘Then why are you crying?’

  ‘Because I’m afraid . . .’

  ‘A woman in love is always apprehensive when she feels her man might be in danger. It’s like a dizziness, you feel lightheaded, empty-headed . . .’

  ‘You’re lucky. Your Xeno never has to fight.’

  ‘That’s not true. There are at least two full suits of armour on our wagon, and he wants to play his part. He fought at Cunaxa and he will again. The situation is worsening day by day and the moment will come when any man capable of using a sword will be indispensable. I’m just praying to the gods that all our men come back safe and sound. If they do, we’ll have nothing to fear. We should try to keep our spirits up. Xeno says that Clearchus is a judicious man and he’ll surely have taken every precaution. They’ll come back and this nightmare will be nothing but a memory.’

  Melissa fell silent, absorbed in her thoughts, and then sighed. ‘Why does Xeno hate Menon?’

  ‘He doesn’t hate him. Maybe he’s afraid of him. They’re too different, they come from different worlds. Xeno was educated by great teachers in the art of virtue, Menon learned about life on the battlefield. Xeno dreamed of becoming a protagonist in the political life of his city, Menon has always only had to worry about surviving, about avoiding injury and death . . .’