The Afgan Campaign

23

The brigades at Cyropolis are granted three days’ rest. The men need it badly, but the break is even more critical for the horses and mules, who must get green forage or they’ll break down. The siege train has caught up with the army now. With it comes mail. I get twelve letters from Danae, all in one packet. The most recent is seven months old. Flag gives me half an hour to savor this correspondence. “Then get back to camp and be ready to move.”

I find a patch of shade beneath a mud-brick wall. In the square before me, our section and another are roping up women and children prisoners. As I said, Alexander has in this campaign for the first time permitted troopers to take captives and sell them for their own profit. Clearly our king’s object is less to put money in the men’s purses than to fire our zeal in rounding up every last dame and urchin, so that not so much as a runty whelp gets away to bear hope to his compatriots. We have thrown in together, our section and another, agreeing to divvy the proceeds of the day’s take.

I flop in the dust with Danae’s letters. Like every scuff, I arrange them first in order-most recent on top. That way I’ll know early if my darling has sent me a “Sorry, Sweetheart.”

Sure enough, she has.

Another man. Danae fears her youth passing. She loves me but…

Like all soldiers, I have dreaded this hour. I have rehearsed it and braced for it, expecting it to devastate me. Now in the event, I feel no distress. I feel nothing.

Across the square, the slavers are branding their catch. They’re all Arabs, these villains; they know a poor crop when they see one, and these Afghan brats and bitches are certainly that. Insolent, illiterate, in love with freedom, they can be domesticated no more than a pack of jackals. On the trail they will bolt or die.

Danae’s message is seven months old. It occurs to me that she has probably wed by now. Likely she is with child.

Some perverse impulse makes me open and read the other letters, the earlier ones when my betrothed is still mine. It is these that break my heart. The reality is apparent in lines unwritten that Danae has met and is growing attached to that man who now replaces me in her affections. Can I blame her?

I am with Shinar.

I have been for months.

I’m the one who has played false, not Danae.

The slavers appraise their inventory as they would horses or mules. They check teeth and feet. They take care when thrashing their stock (which they do with a cruelty exceeding even that of the Afghans themselves) not to inflict injury that will damage the goods.

I return to camp to find a blow-off going. Soldiers are not grim after massacres. They booze and crack wise. Have they taken prizes? Will there be a bonus or a step? If they have lost a friend, it enlarges their hatred of the foe. They feel no remorse. They have done a good day’s work.

I grab chow with Knuckles and Lucas. I say nothing about Danae’s letter. My mates are toting up the women and children in the day’s bag. Boxer is off making a deal with the Arabs. Knuckles reminds Lucas and me of our first fighting debacle, long months ago, in the village with the sheep pens.

“You’ve come a long way.”

“Rot in hell,” Lucas tells him.

Flag appears with orders. We are to be ready to move two hours before dawn. We’ll be part of the column heading south to pursue Spitamenes. Alexander will press north by forced marches to deal with the tribes beyond the Jaxartes. Knuckles stands and scratches. “How much did Boxer get?” He means for the slaves.

Flag makes no answer.

“What about those boys?” Knuckles cites three healthy youths we took captive in a quarry. Twelve or thirteen years old. Worth real money.

Flag squints away toward the mountains. “In the citadel,” he says, “some of our fellows stumbled onto the site where the Afghans butchered our garrison.”

He means all captives, in reprisal, will be put to the sword. There goes our slave money.

“What a war,” says Knuckles.