The Afgan Campaign

12

We are assigned-Lucas and me and our mates Rags and Flea-to the regiment of Foot Companions under Coenus and the Persian lord Artabazus, or, more precisely, to this and its “flying column.” We fall in for reconfiguration the next day. Alexander has already moved on; his fast units have made away south for the Helmand Valley and what will become the city of Kandahar.

Coenus’s taxis is number two in the army, behind only Alexander’s elite brigades. The phalanx regiments stand in a hierarchy of precedence and prestige. In conventional order of battle, the senior brigade would hold the post of honor on the extreme right of the line, abutting the Royal Guards and Alexander’s Companion cavalry. In this new war, honor post means being handed the toughest and most hazardous operations, against the sternest elements of the foe.

This is not good news. For us rookies it’s worse. Mired in rank sixteen, Lucas and I are condemned to eat dirt all day in column, stagger into camp hours after dark, when all hot chow is gone and every dry bedding spot preempted. As “new onions,” we are slaves to every trooper senior in rank (which means the entire regiment) and obliged to mend his kit, scrounge for his forage and firewood, and stand his watch as well as our own. Worse, we are sick. Lucas ails with piles and diarrhea. I’ve got worms, and the soles of my feet are ribbons. To top off our misery, we have lost Flag, Tollo, and Stephanos, who have been reassigned to their original units. What can we do? In desperation, we approach our new Color Sergeant, whom the men call Thatch for the dense gray brush atop his crown, and, advertising ourselves as superior riders from cavalry-renowned Apollonia, request transfer to the unit’s mounted scouts.

“So you’re horsemen, are you?” our new chief inquires.

We’re centaurs!

“Outstanding,” says he-and assigns us as muleteers with the baggage.

Now we are truly screwed. As wranglers, we must rise three hours before dawn to rig and pack out the train, trek in the column’s bung all day, then toil till midnight putting up the mules and asses. The Wind of a Hundred Twenty Days has, by our count, ninety-one still to go. Despair would finish us, except for the miracle awaiting in Kandahar.

My brother.

Elias finds me in the city. Or to be exact, Stephanos finds him. Together they track me and Lucas down in the bazaar.

What joy to see him! Elias beams. “Can this be our own Little Philosopher?” He holds me at arm’s length, admiring my growth (I was fifteen the last time he saw me), then wraps me in a bone-crushing clinch. My brother weeps. I do too. “I never expected,” he says, “to see you alive.”

“Nor I you.”

My brother is a celebrity. Two Silver Lions and one Gold stud his scarlet cloak of Companion cavalry; his belt of snakeskin holds so many “spits”-iron rivets, one for each enemy slain-it seems made of metal. His mount (his seventh, he reports, since leaving Macedon) is a gorgeous chestnut mare called Meli, “Honey,” with a white blaze and four white stockings. He has two more in his string, geldings even handsomer, and a gorgeous Afghan mistress to boot; I will meet her tonight, when we celebrate. Elias, it seems, has only one more day in the city. Then he and his company-he is a warrant officer of Forward Operations-must head north up the valley of the Arghandab River, into the mountains, seeking alliances and pledges of supplies from the local maliks.

“Then the army is going over?” asks Lucas, confirming rumors we’ve been hearing for days.

Alexander’s aim, Elias bears out, is to cross the Hindu Kush before snow closes the passes. He will invade Afghanistan from the south-not the north, as previously planned-and attack Bessus and Spitamenes on the Bactrian plain. “Get yourself a fleece wrapper and stout snow boots. The lowest pass, they say, is two miles high.”

Elias leaves us in the market. Our chore that day, assigned by Thatch, is to hire sixteen new mules. “Get me beasts that can carry a load,” our chief has instructed Lucas and me that morning.

“Yes, Color Sergeant.”

“And, lads…”

We turn back.

“Pick some that look tasty. In case we need to eat ’em.”

The column, as configured now, employs thirty thousand horses and mules. But all have been hired out of Phrada and villages along the western track. Their owners won’t let us take them over the mountains, fearing to lose them to the cold or to bandits, and they won’t go up with them themselves. So the corps’ forward scouts put out the word for more. The region responds. On the littoral before the village of Gram Tal, the livestock market sprawls for miles. Tents and bichees — three-sided flies, stitched of goatskin-stretch in avenues like a city. Every mule, camel, and yaboo for a hundred miles has been collected, with their owners putting them out to rent.

What, you ask, is the difference between a horse and a mule? A mule is easier to catch. This is no small thing when packing out in the dark. Mules are better-tempered than horses. They form attachments; you can picket the leader and leave the others free. Mules’ front legs are longer than horses’; they don’t balk at downhills, and their bones don’t break as easily. Mules are less prone to panic. A horse mired in a snowdrift will burst its heart thrashing to get free; a mule has the sense to stand still and wait for help. Mules are more headstrong, though. A horse is loyal; if you fall and break a leg, a good mount will stick with you. A mule will give you that look that says, “Sorry, mate”-and make away at the hot trot.

If you wonder what makes Alexander’s army superior to all rivals, among other things, it is this: No one ever tells you anything. You have to figure everything out for yourself. This promotes initiative. In other armies, scuffs like Lucas and me would be paralyzed to take action absent superiors’ orders. In Alexander’s corps, a sergeant is as ready to seize responsibility as a captain, and a private as a sergeant.

Alas, this self-initiative works against us now, as every other rear-ranker of the baggage train, dispatched on the same errand as we, either pulls rank or plain chucks us out of the public way. We are novices; the vets eat us alive. Worse, a column of twelve thousand rested troops, including all four phalanx brigades from Ecbatana, have here caught up with the army. They need mules too. They swamp the marketplace. Lucas and I are supposed to return to camp with sixteen animals. By day’s end our string numbers eight of the scruffiest plugs in Asia; we have no idea where to scrounge up the second eight. The region has been picked clean. To add to our troubles, we’ve had to lay out double to an Afghan stock-trader named Ashnagur, whom we call Ash, who is reaming us royally. Lucas and I have barely enough cash for two more mules. How will we get eight? Ash takes pity on us, invites us into his bichee, which he shares with a clan of at least twenty, for a feed of chicken and rice, with curds and plates of chupatties, flat bread, delivered by his wife or one of his daughters, we can’t tell which, as all we glimpse are her hands as she passes the meal through the half-open flap. We dine on carpets on the packed-dirt floor.

“Mules can be expensive,” Ash observes.

We tell him we are learning this.

“Women are cheaper.”

We don’t understand.

Our host mimes the hefting of a cargo pack. “Three women can carry as much as one mule and eat only half. And at night in camp,” he grins, “you can get a leg over.”

We find our way to my brother’s quarters two hours before midnight. Elias and two other Companions have rented a house in Gram Tal, the town that will become the city of Kandahar.

The place is packed when we enter and booming with timbrel and kithara. Tapers light the hall. We can’t find Elias. On campaign there is no such thing as an andron, a room for men only. Here wives and lovers dine at their men’s shoulders. We run into Costas, the young correspondent we met on the track from Phrada. He becomes our guide. Four separate banquets pack the apartments; our countrymen are so blind and so affable, it takes us a quarter of an hour to work through to the rear chamber, where my brother and his mates host their salon.

The room is low and broad and laid out Afghan-style, no couches or chairs, everyone on carpets on the floor. Macks in various stages of inebriation litter the chamber, some passed out in corners, others sprawled against walls. The main body surrounds a low table, animated with conversation. Elias hails us. We are crunched in beside him and his lady. Costas carries a bumper of wine, which he contributes to the krater, to round applause. The troopers are all from F.O., Forward Operations; every man swanks the black-and-tan scarf that marks him as Reconnaissance.

My brother bawls introductions. At his back stands an Afghan shikari. The word means “mountain wolf.” These are guides, ferocious-looking specimens who accompany all forward cavalry. I have never seen one up close. The man is between fifty and sixty, lean as a reed, with great black mustaches that he keeps rigid with paraffin. His trousers are baggy khurgans bloused into lambskin boots, with vest, jacket, and pettu, the long woolen wrap that serves as greatcoat, wind shelter, and sleeping roll. He carries the standard three Afghan knives, tucked into a crimson sash round his waist, and packs as well two javelins of cornel wood with blades of iron. Elias makes no introductions; to do so apparently would violate proper form. I know from his letters that Elias’s familiarity with the northern tribes is extensive. He has fought Bactrian and Sogdian cavalry in the Babylonian and Persian campaigns, and, serving after victory as a courier to them and later an envoy, has brought in numbers for hire in special units under Alexander. Elias owns acquaintance with the two great barons, Spitamenes and Oxyartes, who ride with the pretender Bessus now on the Bactrian side of the mountains. He says nothing of this throughout the evening, nor do I observe him exchange a single word with his guide, though the man remains at his shoulder-standing, never taking a seat-all night.

I beg Elias to pull strings and get me and Lucas included in his company; we will serve even as grooms. With a laugh my brother dismisses this, citing several transparent pretexts. Clearly he is protecting me. Forward Operations is dangerous. “Drink up,” he shouts. “We’ll talk later.”

I am astonished at the quantities of spirits my brother pours down. In Macedon, Elias was always the most moderate of topers. Now he is tight as a clam. They all are. Liquor is hard, distilled from rye and barley, fiery enough to gag a horse. I try to keep up but the room starts spinning. My brother sees and grins with delight. Sozzled as he is, he has lost no sense. When he rises to pour a libation, not a drop spills.

As the evening’s revels unspool, I get a chance to study him. His hair falls in curls to his shoulders, copper shot through with gray, concealing a scar that can only be from the blow of a saber, descending from beneath his left ear, half of which has been sheared off, traversing his jaw all the way to his chin. Two fingers are missing on his left hand. His right arm is frozen at a permanent angle; when he reaches to the bowl, he has to use his shoulder or he can’t make the stretch. Twice he excuses himself to relieve his bladder. Both times he can rise only with the aid of his mistress, not from intoxication, I reckon, but because the sinews of his back refuse to unseize. He notes me watching and laughs. “You disapprove my bibulations, little brother! But tomorrow at dawn, while you groan in bed with your eyes nailed shut, I’ll be in the saddle, ready for anything.”

I believe him. His kit is threadbare, his skin burnt to leather by the sun. He is a warrior. His mates too. None wear beards. Like Alexander, the Companions of Forward Operations all favor the clean-shaven look.

Elias’s mistress occupies the square of carpet next to mine, but, as with his guide, my brother demurs at introducing her. She is lovely, a Pactyan from the country around Ghazni, though I will not learn this till later. That she and the other wives and ladies are included in the all-male sanctuary of the drinking party is a breach of decorum unthinkable in Macedon and worthy of murder here in the East. No one notices or cares. In lulls in the revels, Elias’s bride teaches me phrases in Dari. Her Greek is studded with soldiers’ profanities, which she offers with a charming ingenuousness. I am falling a little in love with her myself. I cannot get her to tell me how she met my brother or under what circumstances they came to be joined. She volunteers news of our elder brother Philip, though. He has returned safely from India. He rides now with an elite detachment of mountain rangers; they are already over the Hindu Kush and into northern Afghanistan, behind enemy lines, seeking tribal alliances for Alexander. Their packhorses’ bundles are freighted with gold.

Past midnight Costas the chronicler gets into a shoutdown with two of Elias’s comrades. They clash over the recent plot against the king. At Phrada, Alexander has brought his commander of Companion cavalry-Philotas, son of Parmenio-before the army on charges of treason. The corps has convicted the man and put him to death. Philotas’s father Parmenio, seventy years old and the army’s senior general since Philip’s day, has been executed as well, at Alexander’s orders, though no evidence links him to his son’s crime. Many in the army have voiced outrage at this. Alexander, further, has taken action against some twenty other officers who had bonds to the family of Parmenio, executing some, dismissing or imprisoning others. My brother’s mates defend these acts. Such is the law of kings since before Agamemnon, declares a captain named Demetrius. “If a man plots against the throne, not only must he pay with his own life but with those of every male of his family, including infants. Otherwise, those spared will seek revenge, if not immediately, then later. Never is such action more imperative than now, with the army at war, in an enemy land.”

With a smile, Costas applauds the captain’s sentiments. “My friend, you cite the war between ourselves and the Afghans. That’s not the campaign Alexander is waging. His war is within the army, between the Old Corps and the New.”

The Companions will not hear Alexander’s name impeached, even in jest. “Do you dare,” says the captain, “call the king conspirator?”

“I remark only,” replies the correspondent, “on the convenience of these convictions.”

Have you not noticed, says Costas, that half the army is now foreign? The corps, which at campaign’s start had been virtually all-Macedonian, has become more alien than native, more mercenary than free, more Persian and Median, Syrian, Armenian, Lydian, Cappadocian than European. “Look around you, brothers. Two-thirds of our cavalry were fighting against us a year ago. To whom are these foreigners loyal? That man, only, to whose clemency they owe their lives, and upon whose favor their hopes and fortunes depend.”

“What is your point, friend?”

“My point, brave captain, is that this war, which all of us believed had finished half a year ago, is about to become a second war, whose end no man can see. Do you imagine that your regiments will mop up Afghanistan and be home before Frost Festival? Never! Our king fashions for himself a new army, with which he will fight here and eastward forever. Overthrowing the Persian Empire is the least of his conquests. He has vanquished you, and you don’t even know it!”

“Do not condescend to us, thou obituarist.”

It is my brother who speaks. The room turns toward him. “You have told us to look around. We say the same to you.” Elias’s gesture takes in the soused and sprawling company. “Here are men, damn your bones, at whose shoulders stands Death, yet who will ride out with tomorrow’s dawn to face Him. What do we care where our king leads us, or against whom? He is our lord!”

At this the chamber explodes.

“His right arm has vanquished our enemies! His might has lifted us from obscurity to renown! By his will, the wide world is given into our hands! What are we without him? Where would we be, serving another?”

The hall booms with citation after citation.

“Do you know Xenophon’s Cyropaedia?” my brother demands of the correspondent.

With you, we are not afraid, even in the enemy’s land.

Without you, we are afraid, even to go home.

We part, Elias and I, beneath the stars. Tomorrow will take him away into the mountains. He clasps me in a farewell embrace. “Don’t you want to know,” I ask, “about Mother and Eleni?” Our younger sister.

Yes, yes, of course.

But as I tell him, I see his attention wander. The shikari boosts my brother’s consort into the saddle. She waits. I break off.

Elias meets my eyes with an expression at once caring and stern. “Don’t waste your time thinking of home, Matthias. It can’t help and can only hurt.”