The Lost Army

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  The warriors hesitated for a moment, and then exploded into a roar, raising their spears to the sky.

  THE RED CLOAKS went back to wherever they had come from.

  Xeno managed to get Seuthes to pay the army, partly in money and partly in livestock, and we set off again at the beginning of spring. When we arrived in Asia, Xeno found himself so badly off that he had to sell his horse. He was not a man easily moved, but this time he was truly anguished. He stroked his steed’s long mane, laid his cheek against the magnificent animal’s head. He couldn’t stand to be parted from Halys. He was selling a faithful, generous friend. He was suffering, and ashamed.

  Halys seemed to understand that this was their farewell. He snorted and whinnied, and pawed at the ground. When Xeno handed the reins to the dealer, the horse reared up and hammered the air with his front hoofs.

  Xeno bit his lip and turned away to hide his tears.

  I felt sorry for him. Why was it all ending this way? His fervent love of adventure, his wild dreams of greatness and glory, the torrid nights of love we’d shared. It had shattered, all of it; day by day it was crumbling away.

  Xeno was increasingly obsessed by religion. His biggest concern was always where to find animals he could sacrifice so as to learn the will of the gods. He would try to interpret the omen himself, his hands fumbling through the steaming bowels of the victims, or would enlist the aid of seers and soothsayers.

  The dream was dying slowly in the grey, monotonous fog that smothered our hearts and minds.

  But the army was hungry.

  There would be no pay until we reached the assembly point and so, to survive, the army began again to do what it had always done: raiding and plundering. This time it was the properties of Persian noblemen who lived in the inland villas and castles.

  During one of those attacks, Agasias of Stymphalus, the fearless warrior, hero of a thousand battles, inseparable companion, was mortally wounded. Xeno wasn’t with him when it happened, and anyway there was nothing to be done: an arrow had pierced his liver. Cleanor ran to him under a rain of darts, and covered him with his shield. I saw what was happening and tried to bring them some bandages, but I had to crouch behind a boulder just short of where they were to avoid getting killed myself. I could hear the arrows crackling like hail against the stone that protected me and against Cleanor’s bronze shield.

  ‘Leave me,’ I could hear Agasias telling him. ‘Save yourself. It was bound to happen sooner or later.’

  ‘No,’ replied Cleanor, sobbing. ‘Not like this . . . not now. . .’

  ‘One arrow is like another, my friend. What difference does it make? We sell our lives to the highest bidder, but in the end . . . in the end, we’re all hired out . . . by death.’

  Cleanor closed his eyes and ran off to rally the men for a counter-attack.

  Xeno wasn’t there for the counter-attack either. He was back in camp. His main worry had become preserving the booty. He knew that every time the sun rose he had to feed his boys, like a father, and to feed the gods with the victims of his sacrifices.

  AS WE NEARED our destination, a couple of officers from the invasion force arrived to make contact with us. They were Bion and Nausiclides of Sparta, and they became quite friendly with Xeno. A few days later, having learned that he had been forced to sell the horse that he was so fond of, they managed to buy him back and they brought him to Xeno. That was another scene I shall never forget. Xeno saw his horse at a distance and knew him at once; he started shouting, ‘Halys! Halys!’ With a sharp tug of his proud head, the horse jerked the reins free of the hands of the servant who was leading him and set off at a gallop, neighing and whipping the air with his tail.

  I think they were both crying as they got closer, as Halys’s master stroked his velvety muzzle and fiery nostrils.

  Finally, late that spring, we reached our destination and Xeno delivered the survivors of the Ten Thousand to the Spartan commander, Thibron. After two years of incredible adventures they were once again waging war against their old enemy.

  I said goodbye to Melissa and she sobbed in my arms. Xeno bade farewell to his remaining friends: Timas whose eyes were black as night, Cleanor the bull, Xanthi of the flowing locks, and Neon, the enigmatic heir of Commander Sophos, and then all the others as well.

  And then he was alone.

  YES, ALONE. Because I was no longer the same person that I’d been for him until then. Alone, because he had lost the army, his only homeland, and I could certainly not fill that huge void. His heart had been broken, and was full of despair. I knew that soon I would not be enough for him.

  My story with Xeno was ending, I could feel it. The story that started when I met a young warrior at the well one spring evening long, long ago.

  Despite this we continued to journey together, the two of us and our servant, barely talking, until we reached a city on the coast where Xeno thought he would get news from home.

  And so he did.

  There was a letter for him, held by the priest of the temple of Artemis. He sat on a marble bench under the colonnade and read it intently. I stood in silence, awaiting my verdict.

  In the end, I couldn’t stand the tension that was wringing at my heart, and I spoke.

  ‘I hope there’s not bad news,’ I said.

  ‘No. My family is well.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  He seemed to hesitate.

  ‘Is there something else?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, lowering his gaze. ‘I have a wife.’

  I felt my heart exploding in my chest, but I forced myself to speak. ‘I’m sorry . . . what does that mean, “I have a wife”?’

  ‘It means that my parents have chosen a bride for me and that I will marry her.’

  The tears were pouring down my cheeks now and I was futilely trying to dry them with the sleeve of my tunic. There would be no Italy, no Sicily, no beautiful cities that I’d dreamed of seeing with him. For me there would be nothing. No adventure, no journey, nothing.

  He looked at me with a gentle gaze. ‘Don’t cry. I won’t send you away. I can keep you with me . . . you can stay with some relatives of mine, and we’ll be able to see each other now and then.’

  ‘No, I won’t come,’ I replied with no hesitation. ‘That’s not a life I could live. But don’t worry. When I left with you, I knew it wouldn’t be for always. I’ve been preparing myself every day for when this moment would arrive.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ he replied. ‘Where could you go on your own?’

  ‘Home. I have no other place to go.’

  ‘Home? You don’t even know how to get there.’

  ‘I’ll find it. Farewell, Xeno.’

  He looked at me with a deeply troubled look and for an instant I hoped with all my heart that he would stop me. Even as I was already walking down the temple steps I was hoping that he’d call me back and that we’d find a ship and sail to Italy . . . I finally heard his voice. ‘Wait!’

  He was running behind me and I turned to embrace him.

  He was holding out his hand. ‘At least take this,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to buy yourself food, pay for your passage . . . Please, take it.’ He gave me a bag full of money.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. And I ran away in tears.

  Epilogue

  ABIRA ENDED HER STORY one early winter night in the hut by the river. She’d left the city on the coast in the late spring and headed east, paying for passage with a caravan of Arabs bound for Jaffa. It took her thirty-two days to reach and cross the Cilician Gates. And another fifteen to arrive, on foot, at Beth Qadà.

  When she stopped talking, there were hundreds of questions we were dying to ask her. We were curious about all sorts of things; so much of what she had told us had sparked our imaginations. We’d fantasized about them on our own but we’d never wanted to interrupt her tale, which was made even more fascinating by her enchanting voice, which trembled and shook and sighed as she narrated the stories of men
and nature. But there were some questions we simply couldn’t stifle.

  ‘How did you feel,’ I asked her, ‘after Xeno disappointed you so terribly?’

  ‘I thought that in any case I’d lived a life that was worth a thousand lives. I travelled through lands that none of you will ever see, I met extraordinary men and women. I bathed in rivers whose waters came from mountains as high as the sky, rushing into seas so distant their waves had never been ploughed by a ship, and into the river Ocean that encircles the earth.

  ‘I felt suffocating heat and bone-chilling cold and I saw more stars in the night sky than I’ll ever see again in all my life. I saw solitary fortresses perched on peaks covered with snow and ice, steep chasms and golden beaches, promontories carpeted with forests thousands of years old, peoples I never knew existed, garbed in strange and fascinating costumes. And I was loved . . .’

  ‘What did you think when you returned here, to the village? What did you think you’d find here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought that my family would have welcomed me back and that with time they might even have forgotten what I’d done. I thought that I’d ask for the forgiveness of the boy I had been betrothed to, and try to explain the reasons for my irrevocable choice. Not that I thought he, or anyone, could understand. Or maybe, without realizing it, I was journeying towards death. Towards those who would kill me.’

  ‘They didn’t kill you,’ said Abisag.

  ‘Yes they did. That’s what they meant to do, kill me. And intentions are stronger than actions. I’m alive by pure chance. A trick of fate and a gift from your hearts.’

  ‘Abira,’ Mermah broke in, ‘what was it that wounded you so deeply when Melissa read you the words that Xeno had written? Was it only that he didn’t mention those who had fallen in the great battle, or was there something else?’

  Abira looked at us distractedly, wondering perhaps if it was right to reveal something that was never meant to be divulged, but then she answered: ‘Yes, it was that, but there were other things as well . . .’ and she stopped. Was she thinking of Xeno? Yes, she must have been, because her eyes were shiny.

  The wind was blowing again. It rattled the hut’s reed matting and slipped inside our clothes, giving us an uneasy chill, as the evening held its dark hands out over the rooftops of Beth Qadà.

  ‘Other things,’ she said finally. ‘The first is how he remembered the death of Commander Sophos – “Chirisophus by this time was dead as a result of taking a drug while he was feverish” – that’s all he wrote, nothing else. So few words that I can remember every one of them. So few words for the man who had chosen obedience over all else, scrapping every bit of humanity, and had accepted a horrifying mission: to lead Ten Thousand soldiers into a void. The man who always remained at their head, ready to sacrifice himself, to endure the same pain, to suffer as much as a human heart can possibly suffer, ready to be their commander to the bitter end. The man who at the end let himself be convinced to rebel and to accept the penalty of his disobedience, to pay with his life for his decision of passing the command to him, to Xeno, so that Xeno could lead the army to safety.’

  ‘But Xeno did his duty,’ I said. ‘He did save the army.’

  ‘Yes. But, not to grieve for a man like Sophos, his best friend, the man with whom he shared every instant of that desperate march, not to commemorate his greatness, the light and the dark in his soul . . . that is simply mean-hearted. There’s no other explanation. And there is no greater pain than to have to admit such a thing to yourself about the man you love.’

  We really couldn’t completely understand what she was saying because she had grown accustomed to a closeness with men who were demons and gods at the same time. Beings whom we found it hard to imagine and would never have met. That’s why we let the wind speak for long, endless moments, the rasping wind with its hint of the winter chill.

  ‘And then?’ piped up Abisag, finally.

  ‘And then,’ replied Abira, ‘something about me.’

  We watched her, holding our breath, waiting to hear what she would say.

  ‘“From here, Xenophon entered Thrace; he had nothing with him but his servant and his horse.” I was there, too,’ she said. ‘I was there with him.’ And she burst into tears.

  ELLING US the story of her journey and her experiences, it was as if Abira had emptied out her soul. Her vital energy had dissipated and dissolved into the air. Our care and food and affection had restored her to life, but now it seemed as if she didn’t know what to do with it. She didn’t want us to see her in such a melancholy mood because she didn’t want to appear ungrateful. But if it was true that she’d come back to die, I wondered whether our saving her just meant that her fate had been postponed, but not changed. After her dreams and her reason for living were destroyed, she had decided to act like the Ten Thousand who had left a place only to wander at great length and then to return to that very same place. She wanted to close the circle.

  My friends and I spoke of nothing but Abira when we brought the flocks out to pasture. Abira, and the people she’d told us about. It almost felt as if we knew them, and would recognize them if they appeared in front of us. Sometimes Abisag, who was the most naive of all of us, imagined that Xeno would return for her. Maybe he would realize that he couldn’t live without her and maybe at that very moment he was tracing Abira’s steps along the route that led to the Cilician Gates and to the Villages of the Belt. She liked to imagine that he would show up one evening at the well, dressed in shining armour, on a horse that pawed at the ground, as he waited for Abira to come to draw water. She could just see them running into each other’s arms and promising never to part again.

  Sweet, silly Abisag.

  The days passed and the sky was always darker. The days grew shorter and sometimes the storms raging over the peaks of Mount Taurus would push their way to our villages, the wind an angry whistle.

  Then one night, after we were already curled up under our covers, thinking of her so sad and alone in that little hut by the river, we heard the wind that roars! The wind that announces an extraordinary event.

  Towards morning, a little before dawn, we heard the dogs yelping and then barking furiously. I got up and went on tiptoe to the window. The clustered houses of the other villages stood out against a pearl sky.

  What was happening? The atmosphere was just like that day when Abira had been stoned. I could feel a strange, mounting excitement, growing stronger and stronger, out of control, while the dogs howled at invisible presences crossing the steppe.

  I went outside dressed as I was, in my nightgown, wrapping a blanket around me, and went to wake up Mermah and Abisag. I met them along the road. They couldn’t sleep either.

  Together we left the village and went, arm-in-arm, towards the well. We were guided only by an indefinable sensation, following a kind of premonition that they say can come to young virgins when they first discover the mystery of their lunar period.

  The roaring suddenly stopped, giving way to a dry, continuous wind, taut as a bow-string. A dust storm was advancing across the steppe. In no time, the outlines of things were lost. Real shapes became no more than shadows in the swirling dust. We pulled the blankets up to cover our heads and mouths and walked on until we could make out the figure of Abira. It was unmistakably her, standing straight and still outside the hut, her gown glued to her shapely body by the desert wind. She wasn’t facing us, but seemed to be watching something . . . We crouched down in the shelter of a thicket of palm trees so we wouldn’t be seen, and looked in the same direction.

  ‘Look!’ gasped Mermah.

  ‘Where?’ asked Abisag.

  ‘Over there, to the right.’

  A nebulous shape was advancing towards us in the direction of Abira’s hut, a ghostly figure that was becoming gradually more distinct as it approached and emerged from the dust. We heard the soft snorting of a horse and the jingle of armour.

  He passed so close that we could have touched him: a horsem
an, wearing a polished suit of armour covered by a white cape, mounted on a powerful stallion, black as a crow’s wing. Abira was coming towards him, her step uncertain as if she were trying to understand what kind of an apparition was materializing before her. Then we saw astonishment fill her eyes as she stood stock-still, watching him dismount from his horse and take off his helmet, freeing a head of blond hair as fine as silk.

  Mermah moved and inadvertently snapped a twig. The noise made the warrior spin round and we saw his face. As beautiful as a god, with penetrating, blue-grey eyes. His sword already flashed in his hand.

  ‘It’s Menon!’ whispered Abisag, her voice full of admiration and wonder. ‘It’s him.’

  He was the snowy god who had appeared in the middle of the raging storm and had saved her from a frozen death, he the indistinct apparition that fluttered over mountains and forests, always too far away to see, he who everyone had thought dead together with the other commanders, the only one of them who could have survived: Menon, blond and fierce.

  Abira came closer and they stood facing each other for a long time, both enveloped by his huge wind-whipped white cloak. We heard no words, saw no gestures. I had to imagine their deep, intense looks. Then the warrior helped her onto his stallion, leapt up behind her and touched his heels to the horse’s flanks.

  We came out of our hiding place with tears in our eyes as we watched them ride away and slowly disappear into the dust.

  Author’s Note

  This story is based on one of the most famous works of Greek literature, the Anabasis, written by Xenophon of Athens. It is the diary of the expedition of ten thousand Greek mercenaries hired by the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger, who was plotting to overthrow his brother Artaxerxes, the Great King of the Persians, and seize his throne. One hundred thousand Asian soldiers joined them in the endeavour, but the Greeks were considered the spearhead of the entire army, those who would enable Cyrus to fulfil his ambitions.