The Afgan Campaign

48

Spring comes. Coenus’s brigade deploys south to the mountains. Alexander and the heavy divisions are already there.

For efficiency and mastery of combat arms, the world has seen nothing like this force. The king has been modernizing all winter, upgrading and expanding the corps’ capacities for mountain warfare. Siege gear that formerly needed transport by freight wagons and oxen has been simplified and stripped down so that it can be packed on the backs of mules. We have mountain catapults now that can sling a stone or a pot of flaming naphtha a fifth of a mile. Trains pack thin sheets of bronze to face mantlets of timber, rendering them flame- and fireproof. Tortoise-type carapaces have been fashioned, beneath which men can mount scaling ladders and not fear scalding oil or superheated sand. Carpentry shops have labored all winter producing block and tackle; rope-makers have laid in miles of cable. Ingenious mechanisms have been fashioned, like the mountain windlass that uses torsion bands instead of heavy iron ratchet teeth. Two of these, braced to boulders, can raise a siege tower forty feet high. In the past, mountain warfare has been limited to clashes between skirmishers, who sling missiles and scamper away, while siege warfare has been confined to the plains. No more. To take down these summit citadels, Alexander’s engineers have advanced siege technology to a whole new sphere and scale. The supply corps has half a thousand mules packing nothing but oil of terebinth-turpentine-for making incendiary bombs and as solvent to clean the blades of the axes, hewing mountain pines to be made into cat arms and tower timbers.

Mountain fortresses are assaulted by stages. A base camp is first established on the plain. Now come the provisions. Rations and fodder in hundreds of tons are rafted in by river or trucked overland via caravan or mule train. Now the first forward camp is raised in the foothills. Up come the convoys of supplies and materiel. The foe in this case has retired to four monumental strongholds. Imagine Mount Olympus. That’s what they’re like, mountain systems covering scores of square miles, with hundreds of approaches.

First to be invested, before winter has ended, is that fastness called by the troops the Sogdian Rock. The warlord Oxyartes is up there with eleven thousand troops and all their goods. The defenders are sitting on year-round springs, with enough provisions to hold out for years. When Alexander’s emissaries call for the Afghan’s surrender, Oxyartes taunts them, asking if our men have wings, for by no other means will we scale this stronghold.

Up trails and switchbacks come our supplies, on trains fifteen miles long, to the higher camps. For us scuffs, all hopes hang on negotiations. Oxyartes’ envoys shuttle in supposed secrecy in and out of camp. We know them all. We pave a highway for them. “What is wanting,” says Stephanos, “is for Alexander to pick one horse.”

One warlord to hand Afghanistan over to.

One chieftain to rule all others.

Supplies are in place by late winter. The summit is the size of a small county. Bare piney slopes approach, of loose scree and shingle, too steep even for mules. An assault is possible from the west, where the incline is least severe, but here Oxyartes has fortified the approaches with stone ramparts and great deadfalls of timber. South and north the faces loom impregnable. East is worse-raw stone for the approach march and sheer cliffs for the final four hundred feet.

Alexander calls the youth of the army together. He pledges twelve talents of gold to the first man to mount by this route to the summit and extravagant premiums to every trooper who joins him. Six hundred men set out by night, clawing their way up the face by means of iron tent pegs, which they wedge into fissures in the rock, and from which they belay one another by rope. Thirty-seven valiant souls plummet to their deaths. But three hundred reach the summit. When they show themselves in armor next dawn, the foe, believing Alexander must indeed possess winged warriors-or be, himself, a god-sues for peace.

Oxyartes and a handful of chiefs get away down a back track. But our rangers capture his suite in its entirety-horses, wagons, wife, and three daughters. The youngest, Roxane, is a proud beauty, said to be the darling of her father’s eye.

Will Alexander crucify her? Hold her as hostage? Will he ransom her? Exploit her father’s fears for her safety, to bring him to heel?

Not for nothing is our king acclaimed a genius of politics and war.

He appears before the army with the princess at his side.

He will marry her.