The Lost Army Read online

  ‘I sighed and began to start back when I heard the sound of galloping to my left. I turned and in a cloud of dust shot through with moon beams I distinctly saw a horse ridden by a young man urging him forward at great speed. In a moment he was there before me. He pulled on the horse’s reins and jumped down.

  ‘Perhaps he too had been afraid he wouldn’t find me? Maybe he felt the same apprehension, the same desire, the same restlessness that poured through me? We ran into each other’s arms and kissed with an almost delirious feverishness . . .’

  Abira broke off, remembering that she was talking to young girls who had never known a man, and she looked down, confused. When she lifted her head she was weeping with heartfelt abandon, eyes misting over then spilling with tears as big as raindrops. She must have loved him more than we could even imagine. And suffered, tremendously. But a wave of modesty seemed to have come over her, and stopped her from telling the story of her passion to such inexperienced, innocent girls. We sat there and watched her for a long time, not knowing what to say or how to console her. At last she raised her head. She dried her eyes and returned to her tale.

  ‘That night I understood what my mother had meant. I knew that if I stayed in the village, if I gave in to my destiny and married an insignificant man, undeserving of a spirit as passionate as my own, I would end up being offended by the mere thought of him, and intimacy would be absolutely unbearable. I understood what it meant to be loved, swept away by another’s passion, our bodies and souls vibrating with the same intensity. This young warrior had made me touch the face of the moon and ride the back of the torrent.

  ‘We loved each other every night, for those few days that the army stayed encamped, and with each passing hour my anguish grew at the thought of how soon we would part. How could I live without him? How could I resign myself to the goats and sheep of Beth Qadà after mounting that spirited steed? How could I bear the sleepy lethargy of my village after knowing the heat that sets your flesh on fire and injects the light of folly into your eyes? I wanted desperately to talk to him, but he couldn’t have understood me. When he talked to me in his language, so smooth and soft and sweet, all I could hear was music.

  ‘Our last night.

  ‘We lay on the dried grass under the palms watching the myriad stars twinkling between the leaves, and I could feel the need to weep welling up in me. He was leaving, and would soon forget me. His life would oblige him to forget me: he’d see other villages, other cities, rivers, mountains, valleys and many, many other people. He was a warrior, betrothed to death, and he knew that every day could be his last. He would enjoy other women, why shouldn’t he? But what would become of me? How long would the memory of him torment me? How many times would I leave my bed on a hot summer night, dripping with sweat, awakened by the wind hissing over the rooftops of Beth Qadà?

  ‘It seemed that he could read my thoughts, and he put his arm around my shoulders and drew me close, filling me with his warmth. I asked him what his name was, but he answered with a word so difficult I would never even be able to remember it. I told him that my name was Abira and he repeated it easily, “Abira.”

  ‘I remember every instant of that night, the rustling of the leaves, the babbling of the river. Every kiss, every caress. I knew I’d never have anything like that again.

  ‘I was home before dawn, before my mother woke, when the wind still covered every other sound.

  ‘As I slipped under the rugs I heard a strange noise: the muffled pawing of thousands of horses’ hoofs on the cobblestones, a low neighing and snorting, and the drumroll of the war chariots. The army was striking camp! They were leaving!

  ‘I opened the window a crack in the hope of seeing him one last time. I watched and watched as thousands of infantry and cavalry men marched by, with their mules, asses and camels. But he was not among them!

  ‘My eyes searched the ranks of the mysterious red-cloaked warriors, but their faces were covered by strange-looking helmets that only let their eyes and mouth be seen, like a grotesque mask. If he were one of them, I’d never be able to recognize him. I gathered my courage and went outside. I leaned against the wall of my house, hoping that even if I couldn’t recognize him, he would recognize me and look my way, stop to say a word. Even a small gesture would enable me to keep him in my sights until he disappeared completely.

  ‘Nothing happened.

  ‘I went back to lie on my mat and I wept in silence.

  ‘The army filed by for hours. The people of our villages lined up on both sides of the road so as not to miss a moment of the spectacle. The elderly would compare this vision to others from their youth, the young would remember it as long as they lived and would tell the story to their grandchildren when they were old. I couldn’t care less about the parading troops. Of all of those thousands of men, only one was important, no, vital, to me.

  ‘Where was that army going? Where would they wreak death and destruction? I thought of how terrible men are, of how cruel, violent and bloodthirsty they can be. But the young man I’d known had a gentle look, a warm, deep voice: he was different from the rest, and the idea of not seeing him again knifed through me.

  ‘Would I forget him? Would this pain ever end? I would find other reasons to live, I tried to tell myself, I’d have children one day who would love me and keep me company and give meaning to my life. Did it matter who I had them with?

  ‘When the soldiers were gone the wind stirred up a dense cloud of dust and the last traces of the army dissolved into the mist.

  ‘I felt my mother’s eyes on me all that day, suspicious and cross. She must have sensed trouble in the way I was acting, in my look, in my dishevelled appearance, although what had happened was beyond her imagining. She asked me once or twice, “What’s wrong with you?”, not to have an answer but to gauge my reaction.

  ‘ “Nothing,” I replied. “There’s nothing wrong with me.” But the very tone of my voice, hinting that I might burst into tears at any moment, belied my words.

  ‘The wind calmed towards evening. I took my jar and went to the well to draw water. I went later than usual so I wouldn’t have to put up with my friends’ chatter and their curiosity. When I got there the sun was nearly touching the horizon. I filled my jar and sat on the dry stump of a palm tree. The solitude and silence gave me some solace from the turmoil of my emotions. I couldn’t stop hot tears from falling, but it was good for me to cry, I told myself, I needed to let myself go so I could heal. Cranes were soaring overhead, a long line of them, flying south and filling the air with their cries.

  ‘How I wished I were one of them.

  ‘It was getting dark. I lifted the jug onto my head and turned around to go back to the village.

  ‘He was there in front of me.

  ‘At first I thought it was a hallucination, a vision I’d created out of my longing, but it was truly him. He had got off his horse and was walking towards me.

  ‘“Come away with me. Now,” he said in my language.

  ‘I was amazed. He’d said those words without a moment’s hesitation, without a single mistake, but when I answered him. “Where will we go? And my mother, can I go to say goodbye?” he shook his head. He couldn’t understand me. He’d learned those words in the right sequence and the right pronunciation because he wanted to be sure I’d understand him.

  ‘He repeated them again and I – who would have done anything just a few moments earlier to hear them, who was so desperate about his departure – was afraid, now, to make such a drastic, sudden decision. Leaving everything – my house, my family, my friends – to follow a stranger, a soldier who might die from one instant to the next, at his first skirmish, his first ambush, his first battle. What would happen to me then?

  ‘But my fear lasted just for a moment. The agony of never seeing him again rushed to take its place and I replied at once, “I’ll come with you.” He must have understood because he smiled. So he’d learned those words as well! He mounted his horse then gave me his hand so
that I could get on behind him. The horse set off at a lope, heading towards the path that led south, past the villages, but soon we were spotted by a girl walking towards the well with her jug. She recognized me and started shouting, “A soldier is kidnapping Abira! Run, hurry!”

  ‘A group of farmers returning from the fields ran towards us, waving their tools in the air. My warrior pushed the horse into a gallop then, and managed to rush past them before they could form a closed line to bar our way. They were near enough by then to clearly see that it was me holding on to him and not the other way around. It was no kidnapping; I was making my escape.’

  ABIRA FELL SILENT again and let out a long sigh. Those memories seemed to weigh on her heart; just talking about them was opening old wounds that had never healed. Now we understood why she’d been stoned upon her return to Beth Qadà. She had abandoned her family, her clan, her village, her betrothed, to run off with a stranger whom she’d given herself to shamelessly. She’d broken all the rules that a girl like her could possibly break and her punishment had to serve as a lesson for all the others.

  She stared straight into my eyes then and asked, ‘My parents, are they still in the village? Are they well?’

  I hesitated.

  ‘Tell me the truth,’ she insisted, and she seemed to steel herself to hear bad news.

  Strange, I thought, that she’d never asked us about her parents before. Maybe she had a feeling that she didn’t want us to confirm. Whatever she was thinking, there was still something about her I couldn’t quite figure out; a mysterious, enigmatic quality that must have had something to do with surviving her own murder. She’d crossed the thin line that separates life and death, I thought. She had taken a look beyond that line and had seen the world of the dead. Her question was more than a premonition; as if she were seeking a truth that her soul was already sure of.

  ‘Your mother is dead,’ replied Abisag. ‘Of malignant fever. Shortly after you left.’

  ‘My father?’

  ‘Your father was alive when you returned.’

  ‘I know. I thought I saw him throwing stones with the others. Dishonour weighs more heavily on men.’

  ‘He died on the night of your stoning,’ I said. ‘It was a sudden death.’

  Upon hearing those words, Abira stiffened. Her eyes became glassy and unseeing. I’m certain that behind that vacant stare was a vision of the Underworld.

  Abisag put a hand on her shoulder, trying to bring her back to the real world. ‘You told us that your adventure – your running off with the soldier, the passage of that great army through the Villages of the Belt, everything that happened later – started with the story of two brothers. Tell us that story, Abira.’

  Abira started with a shiver and pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders.

  ‘Another time,’ she sighed. ‘Another time.’

  3

  SEVERAL DAYS PASSED before Abira felt like talking with us again. In the meantime we’d found her a little work that she could do in secret, and make a living for herself. We couldn’t keep sneaking food from our homes; someone was bound to notice sooner or later. All the same, any time we were sent out to tend the flocks we tried to take enough lunch with us so that some would be left over for her.

  We helped her to fix up her shack so that she could spend the autumn and winter there and we visited every time we brought water back from the well. We learned a lot of things from her. The man she’d fallen in love with had such a complicated name that she always called him Xeno. She stayed by his side for the whole of their grand adventure. It was he who had told her the story of the two brothers who would change the history of our whole world. Other parts of the story she gathered from the many people she met during that endless journey.

  She confirmed for us what we’d heard from our parents during long winter nights: that one of those two brothers was a prince of the empire. He was the one leading the army through our villages when Abira met her love. The story that had swept through so many lives and had been on the lips of countless people poured out in the words ofthat fragile, frightened woman whom we had freed from under a heap of stones. We learned the story from her, starting at the end of that autumn. Three fifteen-year-old girls who had never seen anything outside our villages and would never see any more than that in our whole lives.

  THE QUEEN MOTHER, Parysatis, had two sons. The elder was Artaxerxes, and the younger was called Cyrus, like the founder of the dynasty. When the Great King died, he left the throne to his firstborn as was customary. But the Queen Mother was vexed at this, because Cyrus was her favourite: he was more handsome, more intelligent and more charming than his brother and he greatly resembled her; he had the same fluid grace that she’d had as a young woman, when she was forced to marry a man she detested, the man who was the image of his first son, Artaxerxes. The Queen had procured the governance of a very wealthy province, Lydia, located on the shores of the western sea, for her son Cyrus, but in her heart of hearts she had always hoped that some day she’d be given the chance to raise him up higher.

  Powerful women are capable of acting in a way that normal women would never even dream of.

  She was well practised at disguising her thoughts and her plans; she used her influence covertly to achieve the objectives she had set for herself. Intrigue was her favourite pastime, in addition to playing chess, a game she had mastered. Belts were her passion.

  Every day she wore a different exquisitely woven and embroidered belt. Belts of silk, of byssus, of silver and of gold, adorned with superbly crafted buckles from Egypt and Syria, Anatolia and Greece. It was said that she wanted silver only from distant Iberia because of its matchless milky tone, and lapis lazuli only from remote Bactria because of the great number of golden flecks it contained.

  Cyrus arrived in Lydia when he was but a boy of twenty-two, but his innate shrewdness and sharp intelligence led him to grasp at once what moves were required on that complicated chessboard where the two most powerful cities of Greece – Athens and Sparta – had been fighting for over thirty years without either of them gaining the upper hand.

  He decided to help the Spartans for a single reason: they were the most formidable warriors existing in the known world, and one day they would take up arms for him. They were the warriors of the red cloaks and bronze mask-like helmets who struck fear into any opponent. Athens, on the other hand, was the Queen of the Seas, and to defeat her it was necessary to commission a mighty fleet and load it up with archers, slingsmen and expert crews led by the best commanders. Eighty years before, those two Greek cities had united against the Great King Xerxes and defeated his fleet, the greatest of all times. Now Cyrus knew he had to set them against each other, goad them into wearing themselves out in an exhausting conflict until the moment came when he could tilt the scales in favour of the Spartans. Beholden to him, Sparta would support him in the venture most dear to his heart: seizing the throne!

  Thanks to his support Sparta won the war and Athens had to bow to a humiliating peace agreement. Thousands of men from both sides found themselves in a devastated land where they saw no hope of a livelihood.

  That’s how men are: for some mysterious reason they are seized, at regular intervals, by a blood frenzy, a drunken violence that they can’t resist. They deploy themselves on vast open fields, lined up one alongside another, and wait for a signal. When that trumpet sounds, they charge the enemy formation, which is full of other men who have done absolutely no harm to them. They hurl themselves into the attack, yelling with all the breath they have. They’re shouting so loudly to quiet the fear that grips them. In the moment before the attack many of them tremble and break out into a cold sweat, others weep in silence, some lose control of their urine, which flows warm down their legs and wets the ground they stand on.

  In that moment they’re waiting for death. Black-cloaked Chera swoops down among their ranks and her empty sockets eye those who will fall first, then those who will die later and finally those who will suff
er for days from their wounds before dying. The men feel her eyes upon them and they shudder.

  That moment is so unbearable that if it were to last for any length of time it would kill them. No commander prolongs it any more than is strictly necessary: as soon as he can, he unleashes the attack. They cover the ground that separates them from their foes as quickly as they can, running, then crashing against the enemy like the surf on cliffs. The collision is terrifying. In those first moments there is so much blood shed that it soaks the ground beneath them. Iron sinks into flesh, skulls are bludgeoned, spears pierce shields and breastplates, cleaving hearts, lacerating chests and bellies. There is no fending off such a storm of fury.

  This horrible butchery can last for only an hour or little more, before one of the two formations breaks down and starts to withdraw. The retreat often becomes a disorderly rout, and that’s when the bloodletting becomes slaughter. Those who flee are massacred without pity for as long as the victors’ strength endures. At dusk representatives of the two sides meet on neutral ground and negotiate a truce, then each side gathers up its dead.

  There you have it, the folly of men. Episodes like the one I’ve just described, which I saw myself with my own eyes time and time again, were repeated endlessly during the thirty years of war between Sparta and Athens, mowing down the flower of their youth.

  For years and years the young men of both powers – and their fathers too! – did one thing only, fight, and those who survived all those years of war knew no other way of life but combat. Among them was the man I fell in love with as I was drawing water from the well at Beth Qadà: Xeno.

  When we met he had already covered over two hundred parasangs with Cyrus’s forces, and by then he knew exactly where the army was heading and what the aim of the expedition was. And yet he was not a soldier, as I had imagined when I saw the weapons he carried. Not then, not at the start, at least.