We were told by our guides that the sea, and safety, was scarcely more than two hundred miles distant, half a month's march, though Xenophon was reluctant to give credit to this information and unnecessarily raise the hopes of the exhausted troops. Word nevertheless spread rapidly that we were approaching our final stage, and the men's pace perceptibly quickened, their limping seemed to recover somewhat, and they carried their shields with slightly more aplomb.
And then we came to the River.
The recent snowmelt had raised the icy waters of the Harpasos to a level far too high for a safe crossing. After all the rivers we had successfully crossed in the past half year, this flow, which was not even shown on the crude maps devised for us by our seers, stopped us dead in our tracks. The silt in the water was so thick it was impossible even to determine the river's depth. Xenophon sent scouts on horseback in both directions to try to identify a passable ford, and by sunset both parties had returned. The team that had scouted south failed to find a crossing, and in fact reported that the river was joined by another tributary several miles downstream, widening it further and rendering it even more dangerous. The squad that had traveled north was slightly more fortunate, having encountered a hunting party of local Chalybian tribesmen, whom they had quickly run down and pressed into service.
Their leader was a morose and surly individual, a hunter with the unlikely name of Charon, who was familiar with the river and agreed under duress to guide us to a point he said would be passable, though not without a certain degree of difficulty. With Charon guiding the main party, the heavy troops slashed their way upstream for two days over rocky ground and through brushy ravines. Xenophon trailed behind with a smaller contingent of light-armed troops to protect our rear and what little provisions remained in the limping wagons and sleds. Finally arriving at Charon's objective, we saw that the water still appeared as fast and as deep as before, though the man swore that here it could be traversed by the army, with proper precautions. Gazing due west in the direction we were to ford, the low sun had turned the sky blood red, reflecting its hellish color into the murky water and the yellowish foam of the rapids, and my stomach knotted. I again felt the massed, unintelligible chanting and dark, minor chords of the Syracusan chorus surging up from my bowels, like magma throbbing underground, threatening to burst.
The hills on this side of the river were heavily wooded, and while half the troops made camp, collected firewood, and threw up defensive palisades and trenching, Xenophon ordered the rest to venture into the forest to cut light trees and lash them together for rafts. He had no illusions that we would be able to build a sufficient number of vessels for all the men and beasts-most of them would have to make do with their soon-to-be-developed swimming and floating skills-yet still, he hoped that with at least a few rafts we would be able to ferry across some of the wounded and most of our supplies, without further endangering our own lives.
For three days we were occupied in this task, under intermittently pouring and freezing rain that caused the river to swell even higher. Those among the soldiers who could not swim, which is to say most, kept to their work with a grim determination, though even tough Spartans, who would not hesitate to leap into pitched battle against a charging Scythian horseman, were as nervous as children at the thought of crossing the raging torrent they now faced. Spartans are land creatures and hate water crossings, though by this point of our journey one might have thought they would be accustomed to them. This roaring, murderous flow, however, carried in its silt the fear and fury of unknown lands hundreds of miles upstream, the ice and mystery of uninhabitable regions, perhaps even fearsome creatures and strange gods lurking beneath its surface. A man at the age I was then, burning with life, can normally no more foresee or contemplate his death than he can the lives of his descendants a thousand or two thousand years in the future. If death were to overtake him, it would be a complete surprise, unanticipated, with hardly a thought or reflection as to its meaning or impact. During those three days of staring at the river, however, I aged fifty years, and devoted as much thought to my death as I do now in my old age, when surrounded by it I can hardly escape reflecting on it. On the appointed day the weather had cleared somewhat, but the skies still glowered. The seers sacrificed the two youngest sheep still remaining to us, in lieu of the lambs that would have been more pleasing to the river gods, slitting their throats so that the blood would flow into the water. Without waiting even for the priests to divine the gods' response, or perhaps purposely ignoring it out of fear, Xenophon ordered Charon to lead the first flotilla of small ferries across, each stacked high with our precious grain, the arms and armor remaining to us, a few bleating sheep and the terrified wounded men. The sides of the rafts were held fast by soldiers, those who could swim grasping the downstream side and shouting encouragement to those who could not swim, who were pressed by the current, panic-stricken, against the upstream sides of the rafts, praying to the gods for strength to be able to maintain their grip in the icy water. I had heard as a child that smearing the body with oil would help a swimmer retain body heat, so after quietly reminding Xenophon of this, he ordered the precious oil casks opened, which we had been carrying for anointing the dead, and every man was given a cup of it with which to coat his body. Each swimmer had small sections of split logs strapped precariously to his chest and back, in an effort to keep him afloat if he became separated from the raft, at least long enough to be washed ashore downstream before he died of cold or drowning.
As was their custom, the soldiers entered the water naked, save only their sandals, and each carried a silver coin or two, what little they had left from their last stipends, held in their cheeks for safekeeping. Chirisophus joked grimly that this measure would also save the survivors the expense of placing an obol in the mouths of the dead to pay their final toll, if the crossing was not successful. As the first rafts and soldiers entered the water, those on shore watched the progress of their comrades with hope, then busied themselves with their own preparations.