“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.
“Then the army is going over?” asks Lucas, confirming rumors we’ve been hearing for days.
Alexander’s aim, Elias bears out, is to cross the Hindu Kush before snow closes the passes. He will invade Afghanistan from the south-not the north, as previously planned-and attack Bessus and Spitamenes on the Bactrian plain. “Get yourself a fleece wrapper and stout snow boots. The lowest pass, they say, is two miles high.”
Elias leaves us in the market. Our chore that day, assigned by Thatch, is to hire sixteen new mules. “Get me beasts that can carry a load,” our chief has instructed Lucas and me that morning.
“Yes, Color Sergeant.”
“And, lads…”
We turn back.
“Pick some that look tasty. In case we need to eat ’em.”
The column, as configured now, employs thirty thousand horses and mules. But all have been hired out of Phrada and villages along the western track. Their owners won’t let us take them over the mountains, fearing to lose them to the cold or to bandits, and they won’t go up with them themselves. So the corps’ forward scouts put out the word for more. The region responds. On the littoral before the village of Gram Tal, the livestock market sprawls for miles. Tents and bichees — three-sided flies, stitched of goatskin-stretch in avenues like a city. Every mule, camel, and yaboo for a hundred miles has been collected, with their owners putting them out to rent.
What, you ask, is the difference between a horse and a mule? A mule is easier to catch. This is no small thing when packing out in the dark. Mules are better-tempered than horses. They form attachments; you can picket the leader and leave the others free. Mules’ front legs are longer than horses’; they don’t balk at downhills, and their bones don’t break as easily. Mules are less prone to panic. A horse mired in a snowdrift will burst its heart thrashing to get free; a mule has the sense to stand still and wait for help. Mules are more headstrong, though. A horse is loyal; if you fall and break a leg, a good mount will stick with you. A mule will give you that look that says, “Sorry, mate”-and make away at the hot trot.
If you wonder what makes Alexander’s army superior to all rivals, among other things, it is this: No one ever tells you anything. You have to figure everything out for yourself. This promotes initiative. In other armies, scuffs like Lucas and me would be paralyzed to take action absent superiors’ orders. In Alexander’s corps, a sergeant is as ready to seize responsibility as a captain, and a private as a sergeant.
Alas, this self-initiative works against us now, as every other rear-ranker of the baggage train, dispatched on the same errand as we, either pulls rank or plain chucks us out of the public way. We are novices; the vets eat us alive. Worse, a column of twelve thousand rested troops, including all four phalanx brigades from Ecbatana, have here caught up with the army. They need mules too. They swamp the marketplace. Lucas and I are supposed to return to camp with sixteen animals. By day’s end our string numbers eight of the scruffiest plugs in Asia; we have no idea where to scrounge up the second eight. The region has been picked clean. To add to our troubles, we’ve had to lay out double to an Afghan stock-trader named Ashnagur, whom we call Ash, who is reaming us royally. Lucas and I have barely enough cash for two more mules. How will we get eight? Ash takes pity on us, invites us into his bichee, which he shares with a clan of at least twenty, for a feed of chicken and rice, with curds and plates of chupatties, flat bread, delivered by his wife or one of his daughters, we can’t tell which, as all we glimpse are her hands as she passes the meal through the half-open flap. We dine on carpets on the packed-dirt floor.
“Mules can be expensive,” Ash observes.
We tell him we are learning this.
“Women are cheaper.”
We don’t understand.
Our host mimes the hefting of a cargo pack. “Three women can carry as much as one mule and eat only half. And at night in camp,” he grins, “you can get a leg over.”
We find our way to my brother’s quarters two hours before midnight. Elias and two other Companions have rented a house in Gram Tal, the town that will become the city of Kandahar.
The place is packed when we enter and booming with timbrel and kithara. Tapers light the hall. We can’t find Elias. On campaign there is no such thing as an andron, a room for men only. Here wives and lovers dine at their men’s shoulders. We run into Costas, the young correspondent we met on the track from Phrada. He becomes our guide. Four separate banquets pack the apartments; our countrymen are so blind and so affable, it takes us a quarter of an hour to work through to the rear chamber, where my brother and his mates host their salon.
The room is low and broad and laid out Afghan-style, no couches or chairs, everyone on carpets on the floor. Macks in various stages of inebriation litter the chamber, some passed out in corners, others sprawled against walls. The main body surrounds a low table, animated with conversation. Elias hails us. We are crunched in beside him and his lady. Costas carries a bumper of wine, which he contributes to the krater, to round applause. The troopers are all from F.O., Forward Operations; every man swanks the black-and-tan scarf that marks him as Reconnaissance.
My brother bawls introductions. At his back stands an Afghan shikari. The word means “mountain wolf.” These are guides, ferocious-looking specimens who accompany all forward cavalry. I have never seen one up close. The man is between fifty and sixty, lean as a reed, with great black mustaches that he keeps rigid with paraffin. His trousers are baggy khurgans bloused into lambskin boots, with vest, jacket, and pettu, the long woolen wrap that serves as greatcoat, wind shelter, and sleeping roll. He carries the standard three Afghan knives, tucked into a crimson sash round his waist, and packs as well two javelins of cornel wood with blades of iron. Elias makes no introductions; to do so apparently would violate proper form. I know from his letters that Elias’s familiarity with the northern tribes is extensive. He has fought Bactrian and Sogdian cavalry in the Babylonian and Persian campaigns, and, serving after victory as a courier to them and later an envoy, has brought in numbers for hire in special units under Alexander. Elias owns acquaintance with the two great barons, Spitamenes and Oxyartes, who ride with the pretender Bessus now on the Bactrian side of the mountains. He says nothing of this throughout the evening, nor do I observe him exchange a single word with his guide, though the man remains at his shoulder-standing, never taking a seat-all night.
I beg Elias to pull strings and get me and Lucas included in his company; we will serve even as grooms. With a laugh my brother dismisses this, citing several transparent pretexts. Clearly he is protecting me. Forward Operations is dangerous. “Drink up,” he shouts. “We’ll talk later.”
I am astonished at the quantities of spirits my brother pours down. In Macedon, Elias was always the most moderate of topers. Now he is tight as a clam. They all are. Liquor is hard, distilled from rye and barley, fiery enough to gag a horse. I try to keep up but the room starts spinning. My brother sees and grins with delight. Sozzled as he is, he has lost no sense. When he rises to pour a libation, not a drop spills.
As the evening’s revels unspool, I get a chance to study him. His hair falls in curls to his shoulders, copper
