lions, the cold kill of predation. It is work.
Our squad holds the women and children. At our feet bleats a carpet of goats and kids, pressing themselves against the wattle walls of the pen in such terror that the whole thing bows and threatens to topple. I still have no idea what we’re supposed to do. I peer across the pen to Barrel. Suddenly one of the dames pulls something from beneath her garment and thrusts it into his belly.
Barrel does not move, simply looks down with an expression of bland startlement, then lifts his eyes to the face of the matron, who stands motionless before him with a look of equal astonishment. She has stabbed him.
Barrel has his sword in his right hand. Absent all haste, he seizes the dame with his left hand by the fabric of her headdress and, in one short punch, drives the iron butt of his weapon into the center of her forehead. I turn to Lucas. We can hear the woman’s skull split all the way across the pen.
At once every Mack and Achaean turns in slaughter upon his captives. In moments, twenty women have become carcasses. Blood spills in quantities as if as many great wine jars had been tipped over at once. There is no struggle, for so swiftly and lethally do the Macedonians perform their labor that the victims have been stripped of life before they can even cry out. By no means is the act impelled by bloodlust, nor is satisfaction taken from it. On the contrary, the Macks evince exasperation, because this lot of females could have been sold for good money.
I am paralyzed with horror. It is one thing to recount such a holocaust from the secure remove of memory and another to behold it before one’s eyes. An Afghan woman clings to my knees, crying out in supplication. Two children bury their faces in her dress.
“Dice her!” a man’s voice bellows at me. It is one of the Macks I don’t know. Knuckles is his name. Lucas has moved beside me. “Obey, Matthias!” I turn to him as if in a dream. What shall I do? I am certainly not going to harm this poor, desperate mother.
A blow spins me round. Knuckles again. “Are you trying to kill me?” he roars. I have no idea what he’s talking about. He wallops me, an elbow to the jaw. As I reel I see him turn his blade upon the matron while her babes shrill in terror.
Lucas hauls me clear. We are outside the pens now. Mack cavalry is everywhere. You can see the foe by dozens, mounted, streaming away across the hills. Our fellows go after them.
I bolt through the streets. I am on my own now, striding between baked-brick hovels. Somehow I have lost my weapon. Macks in twos and threes dash past, trapping Afghans in dead ends and cutting them down. The foe- those butchers, that is, who have massacred our comrades in the desert-have all fled. What’s left is the village, the native yeomen who have given them sanctuary. I stalk through the chaos of downed walls and overturned carts. I understand that I have committed a capital felony by hesitating in the sheep pens. If one wench has a weapon, they all do. Immediate action must be taken. A soldier who cannot be counted on by his mates is more dangerous than an enemy. I grasp this. I keep running. In a lane I see Amyntas the sapper lance an Afghan low in the back. He is aiming between the shoulder blades, but as the man clambers up a wall, trying to escape, Amyntas’s nine-footer plunges into the meat of his buttocks, through the bowl of his hip, and out his belly. The man screams and falls back; Amyntas’s shaft snaps as the impaled Afghan’s weight twists it over. The poor fellow’s entrails spill from the ghastly gash opened by this plunge; they catch on the ladder beneath him, which is not a proper ladder but just a debarked tree with half-branches extending as steps. The man struggles to collect his guts, stuffing them back inside himself, all the while crying in horror. I turn and run. In the street more scenes of slaughter present themselves. I am trying to flee from the sight of them, in fear that their apparition will drive me mad. At the same time I know my mates will notice if I flee, so I seek to make my flight appear purposeful. That I am alone and apart from my unit is a whipping offense; that I have lost my weapon means death. And I have no blood on me. This is even worse. It gives me away. Everyone else is slathered with the stuff. I think frantically: Where can I get some blood to smear on myself?
A fist seizes me from behind. Tollo. He has found me out. Without a word he drives me out of the lane and into a dirt courtyard. Half a dozen Macks fill the space. Tollo propels me through the low entry of a hut, into a cramped dark room. I crack my skull so hard on the lintel it nearly knocks me cold. Tollo shoves me toward something in the center of the room. A man. A striking-looking Afghan, probably fifty, held by two Macks I don’t recognize. The captive’s teeth have been knocked out; his mouth is a mass of blood. He’s on his knees. Tollo seizes my right hand and shoves the hilt of a gut-cutter, the short Spartan-type sword, into it.
No need to issue an order. What I must do is clear.
I cannot.
“Air him out!” Tollo bawls at me. How? I have no idea what type of blow to strike. The Afghan’s eyes fasten onto mine. He says something in his tongue that I can’t understand. I feel Tollo’s blade touch my neck. The old man repeats his curse, shouting now.
I thrust my blade into his gut. But I have not struck hard enough; the man squirms sideways with a cry; I feel my edge glance off the cage of his ribs and squirt free. I have not even drawn blood. Tollo cuffs me hard, appending a sheaf of obscenities. I can hear men laughing behind me. I feel a burning shame. The two Macks who hold the old man wrest him back before me. He is spitting into my face now, screaming that same oath. I seize my hilt with both hands and drive the blade, uppercutting, into his belly. But now I have pushed too far. The swordpoint has run clear through him and shot out the far side. It is jammed between the ribs of his back. The blade is stuck. I can’t get it out. I hear the two Macks behind me, convulsed with hysterics. Tollo pummels me again. I set my heel on the old man’s chest and haul the sword clear. His guts open, but he loses not a jot of animation. He continues to spit and curse me.
I raise the weapon and plunge it, aiming for the big artery of the foe’s thigh, but somehow I cut not him but myself. A gash opens on my right leg, from which blood sheets in quantities unimaginable. I am beside myself with shame, mortification, fear, rage, and grief. Now even Tollo is laughing. Somehow a dog has got into the room. It sets up a dreadful racket. The Afghan keeps spitting on me. A form moves into my vision above me and on my left. I feel, more than see, a fist seize the old man by the hair; the form delivers one powerful backhand slash, then a second and third. The captive’s head comes off. Marrow gushes from the cervical spine, painting the killer’s feet.
It is Flag. He drops the head; it plops onto the floor with the sound of a squashed melon. The Macks release the headless body. It pitches forward onto me, sheeting blood from the void of its neck. I puke up everything I have eaten for the last three days.
Outside, I am aware of the sorry spectacle I present. Unlike my veteran countrymen, whose spear hands and smock fronts are lacquered like skilled workmen of the slaughterhouse, I am soaked from thigh to heel with alien blood and with my own, and with vomit, piss, and dirt. Lucas stanches my wound. I recognize the Mack colonel Bullock as he passes with several officers, eyeing me with bemusement and contempt.
“What’s this then?” he inquires.
Tollo emerges from the hut. “The New Corps.”
Bullock shakes his head. “God help us.”
8
I am too ashamed to take chow that night. Tollo has to order me. I strip my clothes but can’t wash them. “Burn ’em,” says Flag.
Our outfit is on the trot two hours before dawn, Lucas and I mounted on yaboos, with our pack-asses with the trailers following on. Chase-riders of our outfit have kept up all night with those Afghans who got away. They guide us by stations. The enemy’s numbers are about fifty, half horseback and half on foot; we are above two hundred, all mounted, leaving aside those wounded and others left behind to hold the village and to raze three more settlements down-valley.
We ride four days. The word for that country is tora balan, “black stones.” Waterless badlands creased by serried basalt ridges. It’s like riding down the streets of a city. You proceed by canyons pinched between ridges, whose courses may be blind or dry or both. Ten times a day we backtrack out of dead ends. Our party has Afghan guides, but they’re worthless except to find water and forage, and the only reason they do this is so they themselves don’t starve. Our mounts wear down after the second day. The pursuit looks more like a death march.
