The Afgan Campaign

21

Our litter returns from the rabbit-hunt to find four-fifths of the army across the Oxus. The camp blazes with excitement. The war may soon be over! Spitamenes and Oxyartes have sent messengers to Alexander. They have taken the pretender Bessus into custody. They will turn him over to Macedonian justice if our king will give them peace. Of course he will. The treaty may be signed in days.

A further bonus awaits us: horses.

In our absence downvalley, Alexander has discharged with honor three cavalry squadrons of Thessaly, 660 men. He is sending them home richer than princes. Their mounts go up for sale. We’re all too broke to buy one, of course. The army steps in; it will pick up the tariff. The price is one bump: eighteen months’ extension of enlistment. “Take it or leave it,” says Stephanos. He takes it and so do we. We cross the Oxus as mounted infantry.

Our orders, now, are to scour the region for riding stock to replace that lost in the mountains and the Stone Desert. Alexander wants seven thousand mounts and remounts, fit to ride, by fall. By then Afghanistan will be incorporated into the empire. The army will recross the Hindu Kush, this time for India, before the first snows.

I love my horse. She’s a Nisaean mare-milk-colored, with a brand on her right quarter in the shape of a panther. Her name is Chione, “Snow.” She cost three silver talents when her original rider acquired her in Media. I got her for half. A steal. She’s nine years old and boasts more wounds than Alexander. Her conformation is only ordinary, though she has a strong neck, long legs, and a deep, powerful chest. She has quirks. She likes to be fed from a manger; she won’t touch hay, even oats, spread on the earth. She is spooked by anything white. She nips. She butts. She will not be hobbled. She is terrified of bees. She loves pears and will eat mulberries till she makes herself sick.

She is also a first-rate cavalry mount. Hare-quick from a standing start, she will hold a line like a carpenter’s rule and not balk at any trench, wall, or obstacle. She can gallop boot to boot without skippering-seeking to outpace her wing mounts-and in the wedge she turns like a swallow in a flock. I do not train her; she trains me. She is the finest horse I have ever owned and I love her as dearly as my own mother.

As mounted infantry, we receive the same allowance for feed and care, called a “stunt,” as regular cavalrymen. We use this to hire grooms, namely our women. Ghilla stays with Lucas; Shinar keeps with me. Our stunt of a drachma a day covers expenses with ease, and the best part is, in steppe country where our mounts can graze, we get to stick the overage into our purse.

And we’re making a killing in the horse trade.

The tribesmen know the war is almost over. Every bandit wants to unload his ponies. In half a month our outfit acquires more stock than we can herd and more new friends than we can play host to. Returning from the prairie east of Maracanda, we escort 310 horses and nearly as many men-Bactrians, Sogdians, even a few wild Daans and Massagetae-all eager to sign up for pay with Alexander. Spirits are high. We have all become the best of mates.

One night an incident occurs.

A brave of the Sogdians takes a fancy to Shinar. He offers a fine colt for her. Clearly he expects me to comply. The hour approaches midnight; the settlement is our Macedonian camp, within which several score of these wildhearts have congregated, all cockeyed on khoumiss — fermented mare’s milk-and randy as stallions. The situation calls for no small delicacy. To offend the fellow (who is backed by a number of his equally assholed mates) could precipitate a fracas, even a bloodbath.

I explain to the Sogdian, with respect, that Shinar is my wife.

This elicits gales of hilarity. In the Afghans’ eyes, the girl is clearly outcasted. The buck intends, it is plain, to pass her round to his mates like a banquet favor.

“What fault do you find with my colt?” he asks, meaning the price he offers.

“None. It is a fine animal.”

He turns palms up, as if to say, Then let’s make a deal.

“The woman,” I repeat, “is my wife.”

The brave now believes I am toying with him. I disrespect him. I have affronted his pride.

Flag appears and defuses the moment. He buys the colt for three times its worth. The buck and his cronies, satisfied, take their party elsewhere.

Except now Shinar is furious. She stalks off in outrage. How have I offended her? I have no idea. Ghilla goes after her. Even she can’t bring her back.

At dawn when the column moves out, Shinar is missing. Someone has found her hair, hacked off and thrown on the ground. What this means, I can’t begin to guess.

Over the next two nights, Ghilla seeks to enlighten me. That the Afghan buck sought to degrade Shinar as a whore was insult enough, reminding her as it did of the terrible vulnerability of her station. But that I would claim her as my wife, when she was not (and, more critically, when her Afghan countrymen knew she was not), is insult on top of insult.

I don’t get it. Didn’t I defend her? Wasn’t I ready to shed blood on her account?

Ghilla sighs. “Can you be so blind as to how she feels about you?”

“Oh please. Don’t tell me that.”

“When you say she is your wife, when she is not and can never be, you rub her nose in her bitter fate.”

Next day Shinar is back. She resumes her duties as my groom, but will not speak to me or meet my gaze. She won’t tell me why she chopped off her hair. Fine. I am in a theater of war three thousand miles from home. This is drama enough. I refuse to participate in any additional theatrics.

Two days later our column reaches Adana, first in the string of Seven Forts. Alexander has been here some days past; the place has surrendered and been welcomed into the fold. Alexander himself has pressed on to the Jaxartes, ultimate outpost of the empire of Persia.

Here our king will halt.

Here, at this frontier, Alexander will mark the limit of his northern advance.

A Mack garrison holds Adana. The six other Fort Cities, we learn, have fallen without a shout. Our mates garrison them too. The news is all good. Now that Bessus has been arrested, his Daan, Sacae, and Massagetae allies have made off to their native steppe north of the Jaxartes; his Bactrians and Sogdians have scattered to their villages. The warlords have agreed to peace. Alexander has presented Spitamenes and Oxyartes with prize Nisaean chargers and has sent back to Bactra City for more gifts of honor. He will convene a congress on the Jaxartes. There, in a ceremony, he will make the Afghan barons his kinsmen and incorporate into the army at top pay whichever of their sons and princes wish to enroll themselves in the ongoing adventure. The warlords themselves, if they desire, will ride with Alexander’s Companions when the army advances to India.

Our company reaches the Jaxartes two days later. New stock pens have been erected outside Alexander’s camp. Quartermasters log in our 310 ponies (other companies have brought in over 4,000, with another 3,000, we hear, at the Seven Forts). Ten days more and the corps will have made good all its losses in pack and riding stock.

Our share is a slick fortune. The litter is flush. I pay off my debts, with enough left over to refurbish my kit and even address some of Snow’s infirmities. The lads rally for a bust-up along the river. The whores’ camp has caught up with the army; we have flute-girls for those without women, and enough pank and nazz to get properly varnished.

I collect a bouquet of lupines to make peace with Shinar. She won’t have it. She stalks away, down to the river.

Oh hell.

“Am I a beast to you?” She confronts me when I follow her. “I have heard your soldier’s saying, ‘Who sheds his blood for King and Corps…’ Do you think I don’t know what this means?”

I tell her she hasn’t heard me say it.

“It means,” she says, “that we are animals to you. What you do in this foreign land means nothing. Ghilla is nothing to Lucas, and I am nothing to you.”

“Is that why you cut your hair off?”

“Yes.”

“And why you ran away?”

“Yes.”

Would you have preferred it, I ask, if I gave you to that young buck to be passed around to his cronies?

She accuses me of twisting everything.

“Should I have left you with Ash? Should I have trekked on, leaving you beaten by the side of the trail?”

“I am not your wife!”

“What does that mean? Are you relieved or angry?” I catch her by both shoulders. “Shinar. Shinar…”

“You should respect me. I have saved your life!”

Respect? I remind her it was I who bought her freedom.

“I don’t want freedom! What can I do with freedom?”

I don’t get it. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing. I want nothing from you.”

She starts throwing her kit together. I have watched other Macks in a hundred dust-ups with Afghan women. Now I’m the idiot. I can’t believe it.

“Where are you going?”

“What do you care?”

Again I marvel at her Greek. “Where did you learn to speak so well?”

“From you.”

Exasperation overcomes me. I order her back to camp. She confronts me with arms folded. “Can’t you understand, Matthias? I have lost everything. I have nothing but you.”

And she breaks down. I take her in my arms. For once she doesn’t fight me.

“Shinar,” I tell her, “when I first saw you in the mountains, I was struck to the heart by your beauty. Your eyes, your skin. The way the wind blew your hair across your face…”

I am no lover. I’m no good at this stuff. All I can do is tell her what she makes me feel. It seems to help. Little by little she relents. I make her promise not to run away again.

“Were you unhappy when I was gone?” she asks.

“Yes. I had no one to fight with.”

We climb the hill back to camp with our arms around each other. Nights get cold fast in that country; her woman’s warmth feels good at my side. Already I am looking forward to evening’s end.

But when we reach the bonfire, instead of a blow-out in full blaze, we find Rags and Little Red kicking sand onto dead ashes. Horses are being saddled for action, arms and armor are being trundled up.

“Red, what’s happened?”

Flag appears on horseback, leading my mare. He’s in armor, with his half-pike in his fist and my kit and weapons across my animal’s back.

“Our dear friend Spitamenes,” he says. “He couldn’t let us finish our party.”

The Wolf, Flag reports, has struck again with treachery. Crossing the Jaxartes by night with four thousand, he has attacked and overrun all Seven Forts. He has massacred our garrisons. The whole country has gone up in flames.

Flag slings me my gear.

The war, it appears, is not over. It has just begun.