The Afgan Campaign

33

The army reaches Maracanda on Daesius 28, midsummer. A letter is waiting for me from my brother Philip at Bactra City.

Elias has died.

His woman Daria poisoned him. I know, I can’t believe it either. She was caught introducing aconite into the rations of others in the hospital. Apparently she’d been dosing Elias in small quantities all winter. I have his ashes. I shall send them home to Mother. I won’t leave him out here.

I am struck dumb to read this. It can’t be true! I strain at the letter, to make certain the handwriting is Philip’s. How can Elias be dead? He was well! I saw him just ninety days ago!

Forgive me, brother, for communicating this unhappy report by post. But you must know at once. Army regulations permit a brother to escort his brother’s remains home. You must do this, Matthias. I have set the process in motion through Headquarters Bactra City. I am certain that approval will not be withheld.

Home? I know at once that this is out of the question. I cannot leave Lucas and Flag and Stephanos. I cannot leave my mates.

I have to sit. The letter has been delivered by pouch rider, along with everyone else’s mail, in camp on the Many Blessings. I pass the letter to Flag. He scans it in silence and hands it on. Everyone reads it.

My mates are as shaken as I. Not just by Elias’s death (he was a favorite of all), but by its manner. Suddenly the war seems more un-winnable than ever.

Worse news comes by verbal report. There’s a reason our patrols have not encountered Spitamenes all summer. The Desert Wolf has been raiding in our rear. He crossed the Oxus two months ago, heading south with six thousand Daan, Sacae, and Massagetae horse, despite our saturation coverage of the region. He has captured Bani Mis and both Bactra-region freight compounds, constructed last winter. More massacres. Our general Craterus is defending central Afghanistan with four brigades; he has chased the Wolf but lost him, as usual, north in the steppe country.

I respond at once to Philip, declining his offer with respect.

Elias.

Must I speak of my brother now in the past tense? Must I say “was”?

Elias was Mother’s darling; how will she endure his loss? How will our sister Eleni? Will Philip inform them of Daria?

The next ten days pass like a hundred. Grief has overhauled me. I have ducked it for so long. Since Father. Tollo. Rags, Flea, Knuckles, Torch and Turtle, Tower and Pollard.

Now Elias.

It all catches up to me.

I saw my brother last just before the Big Push stepped off. He was in the officers infirmary at Bactra City. A wound of the foot, got not in action but from stepping on a nail on his way to the latrine. This is a grand joke to him. The surgeons bled him to defend against lockjaw. It works. I visit him twice. He seems in fine spirits. I spend six weeks in the field, training. When I get back, a note tells me Elias has been moved from the hospital to a private home. I go straight over.

When I enter, I see his right leg elevated. The foot has been amputated. The stump starts twelve inches below the knee.

“Don’t go green on me, brother,” pronounces Elias gaily. “I’ve got what every soldier dreams of-a ticket home!”

Daria is with him. She sleeps on a fleece at his bedside. We talk of everything except what’s in front of us. Each time I look at my brother, tears well.

“Will you control that please, Matthias? It’s unsoldierly.”

Daria brings chai and sesame cakes. To witness the tenderness with which she cares for Elias makes my eyes burn.

My brother counsels me. He wants me out of a line company. The army owes him, he says. He can get me a headquarters job. We argue. I assure him I am with a crack outfit; I’m safer than in my own bed at home.

“This is no game, Matthias…”

I assure him I’m aware of that.

“…nor shall we best this foe, as we have all others.”

My brother has lost his first love, the army. His grief endows him with a kind of clarity.

“Listen to me, Matthias. I’m going to tell you how to fight this war. You will do as I instruct you, as I am your elder and I so command.”

He makes me promise. His eyes hold me like our mother’s, the color of iron.

“Show the foe no mercy. What he tells you will be a lie. Fear his women more than his men and act toward them with greater implacability. You will be told to take prisoners to sell as slaves. Do not. Kill them. That is the only way you will get out of here alive.”

My brother regards me gravely.

“I know you, Matthias. The more you come to know this country, the more sympathy you will feel for the foe. You will admire his fighting qualities and respect his love of freedom. You will see him as a human being, not unlike our own highlanders, and thus worthy of respect.

“Forget this. Howsoever legitimate such sentiments may be, if you indulge them they will bring you to grief. We are here and we must win. The sooner we bring the foe to his senses, the better for us and the better for him.

“Now listen to me carefully, for what I tell you now is most critical of all.

“We are wrong to be here. The enemy are better men than we are, and their cause, which is liberty, is just. Never tell yourself otherwise. If you do, you will go mad. Fight the foe as you would fight hell itself. Seek nowhere for honor. You will not find it. Get yourself a ‘ticket home’ if you can. And if you can’t, kill the enemy to the last man.”