50

The wedding of Alexander and Roxane will be held at Bactra City, atop the great fortress, Bal Teghrib. The rites will be celebrated outdoors, in the Persian fashion. The captains of the corps-and half the princes of Afghanistan, it seems-will assemble in their finery at Koh-i-Waz, the palace of the warlord Chorienes.

Flag will take his discharge from the army. Going home. His salary and bonuses, counting premiums from five Silver Lions and a Gold, come to twenty-two years’ wages. He’s rich.

I’m filing my papers too. I’ve got the equivalent of six years’ pay coming.

Fourteen hundred couples-Macks and their foreign brides-will take their vows along with our king and his princess on this happy day. Half, we hear, have elected Afghan postings. They’ll settle with their brides in the various garrison Alexandrias-Artacoana, Kandahar, Ghazni, Kabul, even Alexandria-the-Furthermost. Every trooper will receive at least a handsome farm; officers will be awarded estates. “They’ll never see Macedon again,” says Flag. “The witless bastards.”

No such folly for him or me. We’ll take our skip and never look back. Flag himself will not farm at home, he says. “The life of a country huntsman for me. I’ll sire a pack of brats and train them up in the hill chase. We’ll raise horses. You and Shinar will visit every summer. You’ll try to get me to put in a crop but, by Zeus, I won’t do it!”

I ask him seriously: Can he really put the army behind him?

“Fuck the army,” says he. “Who needs it?”

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