The Lost Army

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘I’m sorry, Abira. I can’t do it. I’m too afraid.’

  ‘But I can’t read.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I can’t help you.’

  ‘Then do as I’ve asked, convince Cleanor. I’ll worry about the rest. I can do it all myself.’

  Melissa let out a long sigh. ‘But don’t you understand that what you’re planning is insane?’

  ‘You still don’t understand. You’ve got to believe me. We have to discover what’s going on or we’ll all die. Please, Melissa . . .’

  Melissa hesitated, then said, ‘I’m not promising anything. I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘I know how brave you are.’

  We parted in front of Cleanor’s tent. By the time I got back to my tent, it was pitch-black outside.

  Xeno arrived late and seemed completely done in. The fires that had been lit filled the camp with light and heat. Many of the soldiers had gathered around them to warm themselves, or to take some embers for their own tents.

  I knew it wasn’t the best time to ask questions, but I plucked up my courage and spoke to Xeno while I was changing his bandages.

  ‘What will happen tomorrow?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They’ll blame you for having brought them into a completely unfamiliar land with no destination in sight.’

  ‘I have enough to worry about without you jumping in.’

  ‘I’m saying that because I care about you.’

  ‘If you care about me, shut up.’

  ‘No. You have to be prepared for what is going to happen tomorrow.’

  ‘Nothing will happen. In the daylight we’ll be able to trace the river bed, and we’ll carry on following it.’

  ‘You know you can trust me. Are you really certain, deep down, that the decision to follow the river was right? You have no second thoughts, no doubts? Don’t you feel badly about all the dead we’ve sown along our path, the comrades you’ve lost for refusing to stray from a road that goes nowhere?’

  Xeno spun around to face me and the reflection of the brazier lit up his eyes filled with tears. ‘Part of me has died with them,’ he replied. ‘But if I’m alive it’s only because fate has spared me. I’ve never shirked my duty. I’ve always faced the same risks, suffered the same wounds, the same cold, the hunger. I’ve shared my food when I’ve had enough. I might have died a hundred deaths in all the battles I’ve fought. If the gods have spared my life it means that I have a job to do: bring this army back home. Or if that’s not possible, find a new home for them.’

  ‘Found a new city, then. So it was true what Netus was saying.’

  ‘I’ve thought about it often, yes, but that doesn’t mean I’d be willing to sacrifice my comrades to my ambitions.’

  ‘But do you really think that the gods care about us, or about our fate? Is that what your teacher in Athens taught you? Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that the destiny of this army was either to win, or die? Why do you think Sophos has supported your proposal with such conviction? Only him, among all the officers? And why aren’t you writing any more?’

  ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘No. In your heart, you know that this road isn’t taking us anywhere and you don’t want to leave any trace of your error. You have made a mistake, Xeno, even if you’ve done it in good faith, but it was Sophos’s unconditional backing that sealed your error.’

  Xeno didn’t answer me and I imagined that he was mulling over all of the strange events that had punctuated our long march: the way that Sophos had appeared so suddenly and mysteriously out of nowhere, the ambush of our officers and Sophos’s immediate rise to the high command with that disturbing Neon character at his side, and finally this decision to persist in going in a direction that would end up scattering us to the winds.

  Again, I couldn’t help but interrupt his thoughts. ‘You know that the soldiers and even the officers and the generals talk to their women after they’ve made love? And that we women talk to each other? You told me how you were approached by Proxenus of Boeotia, and how your comrades were recruited.’

  ‘In secret. It was all done in secret.’

  ‘Right, you and all the others. Xeno, tell me – this is where the key to this whole mystery lies – tell me why you were all enlisted covertly. Why was all this secrecy necessary to begin with?’

  ‘So we could take the enemy by surprise.’

  ‘How was that supposed to work? There were one hundred thousand Asians at Sardis with Cyrus, and we marched with them all the way to the battlefield. How was such a huge force going to be kept secret? Don’t you think the Great King had spies in the territories we crossed? Cyrus must have known that. There must have been another reason, and I’m sure you know what it is. You must know! If you can get at that reason, the mystery will be solved, and we’ll be able to understand what still lies in store for us.’

  In the long silence that followed, in which every sound was swallowed up by the snow which had started falling again, I was reminded of my ordeal with Lystra, and of the dream I’d had of the misty white horseman who appeared when I’d already given in to death’s intoxicating caress. Perhaps the gods had a mission for me as well? Perhaps it was a god who had descended from the sky and had transported me on his wings to the outskirts of camp, so I could be found? Sometimes . . . yes, thinking about it, I was sure that that mysterious horseman rode a winged steed.

  Xeno never answered me that night. Perhaps his fatigue weighed so heavy on his eyelids that he was prevented from pronouncing a single word, or perhaps he could not accept that a simple girl, a little barbarian from the East, could have understood something that had escaped him or that, more probably, he had never wanted to admit to himself.

  I let him sleep, in the tepid warmth of the brazier, on the ram’s fleece that made me think of Xeno’s legend. But still I had one piece missing from the puzzle and I needed someone who could help me put it all together. Not Melissa, I didn’t think she would have, or could obtain, the information I was looking for. It would have to be one of the officers, or a soldier, someone who wouldn’t be able to refuse.

  Nicarchus the Arcadian! The man whose belly had been slashed open by the Persians, on that sorry day our generals were betrayed. I had helped nurse him back to health. Surely he would help me now.

  THE NEXT DAY the heavens split up into patches of broad blue sky, making the river banks discernible. A group of scouts found the sheet of ice that covered it, buried under the snow. But the moment of panic had not completely subsided. Once again Sophos’s uncompromising will prevailed, strengthening my suspicions about him, especially now that Xeno seemed to be nursing doubts himself. I wasn’t told what the staff officers said during their meeting with the commander, but there were rumours of a stormy, bad-tempered encounter that concluded only when Sophos threatened to go on alone with whoever wanted to follow him.

  It was evident that such a solution would be a disaster: if the army divided in two, the part cut adrift would risk immediate annihilation, and the other soon after. Sophos claimed that if we went on until the ice on the river melted, we’d have no further problems. The worst would soon be over. This claim of his worried me even more.

  We continued to follow the river for two days. At the end of our second day’s marching we crossed a very narrow saddle between two sheer rock walls and we camped on an area of flat ground on the other side.

  Looking for one man among a thousand who are marching in a column over a distance of half a parasang is a pretty desperate endeavour, but I knew where and how the Arcadians set up camp at every stop, and after asking around a little, I managed to find him.

  ‘How’s your stomach?’ I asked him before he’d realized who I was.

  ‘Is that you, girl? My gut’s not in bad shape. Hurts me now and then, and bothers me a little when it’s been empty for days and all I’ve had to eat is snow. But, as they say, it could have been worse.’

  ‘I have to talk
to you.’

  ‘I was hoping you wanted to do more than talk.’

  ‘If Xeno heard you, he’d rip you back open from top to bottom. But he’d cut your balls off first.’

  ‘I’m all ears, then,’ he said, with his wide smile.

  ‘Tell me about the Great War.’

  ‘The Great War? Why?’

  ‘No asking why. Just answer me.’

  Nicarchus shot me a crooked look, as if trying to fathom why I could be asking such a strange question. Then he said, ‘I wasn’t in the Great War. I was too young.’

  Right. How could I not have known that?

  ‘. . . but our commander is always filling our heads with his exploits. But you know, girl, that war lasted thirty years. There isn’t anyone in the world who could tell you everything that happened, except maybe for . . . right, why don’t you ask your Xeno, the writer? He knows much more than I do.’

  ‘Because he has important matters to look after, and if he has any time left over, he writes.’

  ‘That makes sense.’

  ‘I’m only interested in the end of the war. What happened before this adventure began?’

  ‘Well, the Athenians lost and the Spartans won.’

  ‘But some time before that, weren’t they fighting on the same side? At the time of the Fiery Gates?’

  ‘That was then. Now they’re fighting over who gets to be friends with the Persians. Funny, no?’

  ‘Whose side were the Persians on?’

  ‘Sparta’s.’

  ‘I can’t believe it!’

  ‘That’s how it was. They couldn’t have won at sea against Athens if they hadn’t had money from the Persians. The Persians were happy to give it to them, because they wanted to destroy the Athenian fleet that had become their nightmare.’

  ‘So who was giving Sparta the money?’

  ‘Prince Cyrus. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Our Prince Cyrus?’

  ‘None other.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘You do? What do you understand?’

  ‘What I needed to know. Don’t tell anyone I asked you these questions. Please.’

  ‘I won’t. But I haven’t given away any secrets. Everyone knows what I’ve told you.’

  ‘Everyone except me. Thank you, boy. Farewell. Try to make it home in one piece.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ he said, with a smile that was more tired this time.

  From the way he shook his head I could tell that he couldn’t make sense of my visit, but the gleam in his eyes told me that he’d been happy to see me.

  My heart was pounding with emotion. When I’d left my village, I never could have imagined the events that I would be witnessing, never would have believed that I’d be solving mysteries so much bigger than I was, reasoning through events that had changed the destiny of entire nations. Now everything suddenly seemed clear: Cyrus had wanted the throne, and to win it he needed the best soldiers in the world, the red cloaks, as many as he could get. Along with the soldiers that the Spartans had trained in the art of war. But the problem was that the Spartans were allied with Cyrus’s brother, the Great King Artaxerxes, and this was the heart of the dilemma: if Cyrus had succeeded in his aim and defeated his brother, he would have owed his throne to the Spartans, and they would stand to gain enormous advantages from such a situation. But if Cyrus didn’t succeed, Sparta would have to make the Great King think that she knew nothing about his expedition, that Cyrus had recruited the warriors on his own, without ever consulting them. This was the crux of the matter, and the reason why it had to remain secret! The Spartans wanted to play both games at once, and make sure that they came out on top, no matter who won.

  But then, once the operation was launched, they must have started worrying: what if the situation slipped out of their control? What if the unexpected happened? There had to be a way to ensure that they would not lose the initiative. There had to be someone, someone who knew what he had to do, who would directly obey their orders. That’s why, shortly before I met Xeno, Sophos showed up out of nowhere. That’s why no one knew anything about him, or Neon.

  The truth was that there was no second plan: the Ten Thousand had to win or die. Or better yet, disappear. No one could be allowed to survive and to reveal what was behind Cyrus’s extraordinary, foolhardy expedition.

  Things had not gone according to plan, however. Cyrus’s army had lost but the Ten Thousand had won. They had survived, and this made them very dangerous: even though they were mercenaries, they were living proof that Sparta had betrayed her alliance with the most powerful empire on earth. They had betrayed the Great King by helping his brother to try to kill him.

  I arrived at an inescapable conclusion, but I simply could not believe it. I sat on a stone to soak in a little of the sun’s rays with my eyes closed and I let my mind dwell on this thought: Sophos had been sent to take any survivors somewhere they would not – could not – come back from, and Xeno’s identification of the river had perfectly suited his purpose. All Sophos had to do was back him up. This obviously suggested something else: that Xeno was certainly mistaken, and that we were heading straight for the end, our end. Towards a destination from which we would never return.

  There had to be a way to prove it. Any time I had tried to convince Xeno to see things my way, he had refused even to consider the possibility. Faced with such an enormity, there was no telling what he might do. Poor Xeno continued to think that the greatest danger came from the Great King. I needed proof to convince him that there was a danger that was even greater, born of double-dealing. The only place I could find evidence was Sophos’s tent.

  All that evening I pondered, waiting for Xeno and the others to return from a hunting party, an activity he always excelled in. As expected, they made a good haul: eight deer, four porcupines, two boars, half a dozen hares trapped in snares and some magnificently coloured birds. The males had a long pointed tail made of bronze-coloured feathers and incredible plumage on their necks and wings. The females’ coats were less showy, but their meat was even tastier. In honour of the river that we were following and that he thought was the Phasis, he called those birds ‘phasants’, and he saved some of the feathers for me, so I could use them as ornaments.

  The abundant meal put the men in a good humour and dissipated the sour mood of disheartenment and suspicion that was rife in the camp. The fact that their chief commander was so sure of himself started to seem like a good omen.

  I had a lot to worry about. What would happen if I found nothing in Sophos’s tent or, worse yet, was caught red-handed searching through his baggage? Would Xeno defend me or would he abandon me to my destiny? Would Melissa help me as I’d asked?

  My thoughts turned to Lystra and her never-born child and I hoped that they could hear me and help me. I imagined the baby, with skin as wrinkled as an old man’s, sitting in the endless Elysian fields and playing with the sterile asphodel blossoms. I’d become accustomed to the afterworld of the Greeks, even more wretched than our own.

  I needed to dispel the anxious thoughts crowding my mind so that they wouldn’t torment my dreams, and so I thought I’d take a walk at the edge of camp. I was holding my cloak tightly to defend myself against the chill evening air when a disquieting image stopped me short.

  In the light reflected from the fires, at the end of a line of deep, black footprints, stood a man wrapped in a grey cloak whose back was turned to me. His head was hunched between his shoulders so I could barely make it out.

  I approached until I was just a few steps away and with a courage that surprised me, I asked, ‘Who are you?’

  The man turned and my heart nearly jumped out of my chest: one of his hands held a quartered animal, a hare or a rabbit, while the other held its raw liver, which he was gorging himself on. Its blood was smeared all over his face.

  I instantly realized who it was: one of the augurs whom I’d seen celebrating propitiatory rites at times of great difficulty.

  ‘What are
you doing?’ I stammered.

  The man replied with a dark, gurgling voice. ‘I’ve sacrificed this animal to the divinities of the night . . . I’ve inspected his liver to interpret their will . . .’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I must devour it to learn the truth.’

  ‘What truth?’

  The seer’s face twisted into a grimace.

  ‘Death . . . which death we are destined for.’

  25

  ALTHOUGH MY SEARCHING had brought me close to a conclusion, the next step, the one that would give me proof, seemed to be drawing further and further away.

  The following morning dawned even clearer than the day before, so the sun in the cloudless blue sky revealed the snaking presence of the river bed under its snowy blanket. It wound from one side to another of a vast snowy basin of flat land completely surrounded by mountain crests. Like a ‘crater’, Xeno said, seeing that its shape was similar to a type of Greek vase of that name. At the end of the plain, directly opposite the point from which we had entered, was another pass, probably crossed by the river which could then flow on towards an unknown sea.

  Sophos remained convinced of his plan and the clear view of the river seemed to give Xeno new faith in his hypothesis. The rest of the army acquiesced patiently, certain if nothing else that the heavy stride of the warriors was unstoppable and would take them to their final destination. All that was needed was perseverance, courage, energy, discipline. The winter would end, that much was sure, and the land would soon be free of its icy grip.

  But how many comrades had fallen in the meantime, during the long march, thinning out our ranks day by day? Many girls – like Lystra, who was always on my mind – had lost their lives as well, laid low by one crisis after another. But what was really bothering me that morning was that beyond the edge of the crater you could see more mountains in the distance, with peaks even taller than those surrounding us. The sight threw Xeno into a state of consternation, and made me realize that the time to act had come. If I succeeded in finding something in Sophos’s tent, I could convince Xeno to call a meeting and call on the assembly to turn back. The soldiers still thought highly of him and not even Sophos could oppose a decision taken by the whole army.