“Please note, my friends, that I have made good and generous offers to the native peoples. I intend them no harm. I would make them our allies and friends. I abhor this kind of fighting. If an alternative existed, I would seize it at once. But the foe will not have it. We have seen his methods. We have no choice but to adapt to them.”
The king speaks of will-our own and the enemy’s. The foe, he declares, has no chance of overcoming us in the field. But if he can sap our resolution by his doggedness, his relentlessness; if he can appall us by his acts of barbarity, he can, if not defeat us, then prevent us from defeating him. Our will must master the enemy’s. Our resolve must outlast his.
“The types of operations we are now compelled to wage; methods of pursuit, of capture and interrogation; the treatment of so-called noncombatants; all actions we take in this theater-these are war too. And you are the warriors who must perform these acts. That said, I am not insensitive to the fact that numbers of you have fathers and brothers who have sought and found glory in an entirely different kind of war, and that you may not have the stomach for this sterner, less illustrious type. It is not my object to compel you. Nor will I force a voice vote here on the spot, for I know that, with the influence of your comrades upon you, many will cry out with enthusiasm for any course I suggest, and this will intimidate others and carry them, like one of these swift Afghan rivers, along a course they do not in their hearts wish to follow.
“Therefore let this assembly conclude. Let the evening and the morrow pass. Take time, each of you, to consult his own heart, to confer with his mates. Decide what you want to do. Do you, then, speak in private with your sergeants and warrant officers. If you believe you cannot participate in this war, either the corps will find other ways to use you, in supply, support, or garrison service, or, if you so desire, you may join one of the columns returning home, with no hard feelings and full pay for time in service, including the trek to Macedon. Full pay and bonuses for those who remain.”
At this, the assembly explodes. Alexander again calls for silence.
“But if you elect to remain, my friends, know what I demand of you: that you commit yourselves wholeheartedly to this undertaking. No grumbling. No holding back. Fight alongside your officers and comrades; fight alongside your king. Know that it is my object to bring into subjection all lands formerly held by the throne of Persia. That means India. It means Afghanistan. Make no mistake, this country is vital to our cause. It constitutes the gateway to the Punjab, the indispensable highway between West and East; it must be subdued before we can move on.
“More important perhaps, the Bactrian plain has been for centuries the invasion route for Scythian nomads. These barbarians have ravaged this country again and again, sweeping down out of the Wild Lands to the north and fleeing back into them. Along this frontier, two hundred years ago, Cyrus the Great erected a wall of forts to keep out these savages. Here he himself fell, cut down by the horse tribesmen we call Massagetae. He failed. We shall not. We will pursue the barbarian into his sanctuaries and strike such terror that he will beg for peace. This country must be secured. That is what you are here to do, and that is what we shall do. When the job is done, we will cross the Hindu Kush into India, where I hope to find and to deliver into your hands not only wealth beyond even that which we now possess, but a more honorable form of enemy and a nobler kind of war.
“But before India comes Afghanistan.
“That’s it, my friends. Get some meat in your bellies. Find a place to rest your bones. I know the trials of this theater are not what you expected. But you are proud sons of a celebrated nation. As your fathers and brothers have overcome every force of man or nature, so shall you, never fear. Rest today. Tomorrow you will join your regiments.”
12
We are assigned-Lucas and me and our mates Rags and Flea-to the regiment of Foot Companions under Coenus and the Persian lord Artabazus, or, more precisely, to this and its “flying column.” We fall in for reconfiguration the next day. Alexander has already moved on; his fast units have made away south for the Helmand Valley and what will become the city of Kandahar.
Coenus’s taxis is number two in the army, behind only Alexander’s elite brigades. The phalanx regiments stand in a hierarchy of precedence and prestige. In conventional order of battle, the senior brigade would hold the post of honor on the extreme right of the line, abutting the Royal Guards and Alexander’s Companion cavalry. In this new war, honor post means being handed the toughest and most hazardous operations, against the sternest elements of the foe.
This is not good news. For us rookies it’s worse. Mired in rank sixteen, Lucas and I are condemned to eat dirt all day in column, stagger into camp hours after dark, when all hot chow is gone and every dry bedding spot preempted. As “new onions,” we are slaves to every trooper senior in rank (which means the entire regiment) and obliged to mend his kit, scrounge for his forage and firewood, and stand his watch as well as our own. Worse, we are sick. Lucas ails with piles and diarrhea. I’ve got worms, and the soles of my feet are ribbons. To top off our misery, we have lost Flag, Tollo, and Stephanos, who have been reassigned to their original units. What can we do? In desperation, we approach our new Color Sergeant, whom the men call Thatch for the dense gray brush atop his crown, and, advertising ourselves as superior riders from cavalry-renowned Apollonia, request transfer to the unit’s mounted scouts.
“So you’re horsemen, are you?” our new chief inquires.
We’re centaurs!
“Outstanding,” says he-and assigns us as muleteers with the baggage.
Now we are truly screwed. As wranglers, we must rise three hours before dawn to rig and pack out the train, trek in the column’s bung all day, then toil till midnight putting up the mules and asses. The Wind of a Hundred Twenty Days has, by our count, ninety-one still to go. Despair would finish us, except for the miracle awaiting in Kandahar.
My brother.
Elias finds me in the city. Or to be exact, Stephanos finds him. Together they track me and Lucas down in the bazaar.
What joy to see him! Elias beams. “Can this be our own Little Philosopher?” He holds me at arm’s length, admiring my growth (I was fifteen the last time he saw me), then wraps me in a bone-crushing clinch. My brother weeps. I do too. “I never expected,” he says, “to see you alive.”
“Nor I you.”
My brother is a celebrity. Two Silver Lions and one Gold stud his scarlet cloak of Companion cavalry; his belt of snakeskin holds so many “spits”-iron rivets, one for each enemy slain-it seems made of metal. His mount (his seventh, he reports, since leaving Macedon) is a gorgeous chestnut mare called Meli, “Honey,” with a white blaze and four white stockings. He has two more in his string, geldings even handsomer, and a gorgeous Afghan mistress to boot; I will meet her tonight, when we celebrate. Elias, it seems, has only one more day in the city. Then he and his company-he is a warrant officer of Forward Operations-must head north up the valley of the Arghandab River, into the mountains, seeking alliances and pledges of supplies from the local maliks.