Steven Pressfield - The Afgan Campaign

Lucas and I confirm this. We saw it with our own eyes when we were captives.

Costas backs up Stephanos’s supposition. “Persian-trained officers”-meaning Spitamenes-“bring their sons when they believe they’re entering a fight to the death. The youth must be on hand to witness his father’s heroism in victory-or to secure from violation his remains in defeat.”

In other words, something big is coming.

A rider must be dispatched back to column. A row breaks out over this. Agathocles, the intelligence officer, demands custody of Spitamenes’ son. Whatever the meaning of the lad’s presence, his physical person must be delivered at once-to Coenus and then to Alexander. The boy represents a significant counter in the game of war and peace. Agathocles will bring the prize in himself. He commands Stephanos to detail an escort.

Stephanos refuses.

Agathocles, the poet declares, will be run down by the foe in hours, alone on the steppe with only a few men. “You must stay with the main body, sir.” Both lieutenants defer to Stephanos, though they outrank him, in favor of his experience in war and his fame as a soldier. The poet orders the column organized, prisoners bound, and our wounded tended to. We will move out as a body, as soon as we’re able.

Agathocles insists on starting off with Spitamenes’ son at once. Time, he says, is of the essence. He demands a guide and eight men on fast horses.

Stephanos laughs in his face. It goes without saying that our commander despises the intelligence officer’s unspoken motive: to claim for himself the glory of this capture.

“I’m not going to argue with you, Color Sergeant,” says Agathocles.

“Nor I with you,” answers Stephanos. He will not risk the loss of so valuable a prisoner, nor any Mack sent onto the steppe to protect him.

Costas steps up. “I’ll go.”

The parley cracks up. Flag points into the badlands. “They bleed blood out there, correspondent, not ink.”

To his credit, the chronicler stands fast. “Then I’ll write my story in it.”

Agathocles’ patience has run out. “If you refuse to give me men, poet, then come yourself. Protect me. Or do you lack the belly?”

I have rarely seen Stephanos parted from his self-command. But Agathocles, now, drives him to it. Flag and Lucas have to step in, restraining Stephanos.

Agathocles calls for horses. His aide picks out men to form an escort. Several are Daans, never to be trusted; the Macks who come forward can charitably be called opportunists. I glance to Lucas. Something has to be done. “I’ll go,” I say.

My mate blocks me.

“You went with Tollo.”

He means it’s his turn to risk his neck for no good reason.

Stephanos bars everyone. “No one’s going!”

But Agathocles is already in the saddle. His rank is full captain; Stephanos is only a color sergeant. The other riders bring their prize captive. Lucas takes up his arms and kit; he mounts; Agathocles again orders Stephanos to remember his station.

I catch Lucas’s bridle. Into his saddle-pouch I press my woolen overcloak and a sack of kishar and lentils. He takes my hand.

“Whatever happens to me, brother,” he says, “tell the truth.”

It takes six days, pushing our animals and prisoners, to relink with the main column. This is at Gabae, the trading camp on the frontier between Sogdiana and the Wild Lands. We catch up with the siege train; the fighting elements have already pushed north. The Wolf’s tribesmen, a scout tells us, are massing above the border. “Looks like an all-in skull-buster.”

No one has seen Lucas or Costas or Agathocles. The capture of Spitamenes’ son is news to them. They have heard nothing and know nothing.

We drop our prisoners and press north along the military highway, or what has become the military highway. Mule trains of hundreds bring up rations and heavy gear. How far ahead is Coenus? No one knows. Where is Spitamenes? The rear-boggers give us the blank stare.

Our animals are too fagged to keep pace. They need a day. We carve a camp alongside the trudging supply column, in an icecrusted wash in the middle of nothing. Gales howl. We chop sod for a windbreak. Plunging my pike into the turf, I pull up a skull. Flag digs up a hip joint. The site is a barrow. An ancient burial mound.

Soldiers are superstitious. “I ain’t bonzing here,” says Dice.

We bed down with the muleteers. Breakfast is wine and millet scratch, both frozen. We share it with a squad of Paeonian lancers-Alexander’s elite scouts-who have ridden three days without rest from Nautaca.

“Where’s the king?”

“Coming fast, mates. And bringing every bat and bumper!”

The lancers wolf their gruel, then spur north, putting the supply column behind them.

By postnoon Alexander’s merc cavalry are passing. Rumor says his Royal Squadron of Companions-and he himself-have already pushed past Gabae by the eastern caravan trace. They’re ahead of us.

We slog on. The supply train has plenty of dry fodder, but their sergeants won’t let us have it. Every bale is tagged for a line unit. We have nothing for our ponies. The steppe sprawls gray and frozen; grass is frost-stiff straw. Our horses’ turds gush like soup.

Still no one has word of Lucas.

My mind searches for reasons. “You’re thinking again,” says Flag.

In this multitude, he reasons, what’s the chance of getting news of one man? Besides, it’s almost certain Lucas got through. “They’re heroes, him and that captain. It was their report that set off this whole show.”

I want to believe it. It makes sense; the timing of it rings right. Lucas is probably in camp with forward elements right now. He’s with Coenus and Alexander, soaking up the glory.

We press on. A thaw hits. The steppe becomes a bog. Laden mules sink halfway to their hocks; wagons are mired by scores. The lane of the column’s passage looks like a field plowed by oxen. It’s so miserable, death itself sounds like a vacation. Better than another night’s kip in this slop.

It rains all day, the tenth and eleventh. Our horses are skeletons. We look like ghosts. Then on the twelfth, the temperature plummets. The heavens dump sleet, then snow. We come over a rise. Ahead: an assembly area. Quartermasters route us off the highway behind a range of hills.

We have caught up with the front. Tents and field kitchens. Mack infantry in thousands, all arming for battle. No half-pikes. Full-length sarissas. Stephanos sends me to find someone from Coenus’s brigade to report to. It’s impossible. The site spreads for miles. We’re among elements of Alexander’s elite merc cav. Their horses make ours look like dogs. Before I can spot a familiar face or a standard I recognize, a colonel’s aide calls us to mount and ride. The fight isn’t tomorrow, it’s now.

Still no one has seen Lucas.

I have never seen men so eager for battle. Twenty-seven months of frustration have driven our Macks more than a little mad. They want to crack skulls. They burn to make widows.

Our companies form up under Bullock in a vale alongside a line of catapults being fixed to their limbers. Unit strength is supposed to be 256. Count tops out at 91. Nobody cares. Wherever a man finds himself, let him pick a crew and slot in.

Stephanos canters the line, forming us into wedges. We’ll be backing up the merc cav. “I don’t suppose,” Flag says, “anyone has anything like actual orders.”

Stephanos indicates the mercs. “Just do what they do.”

The hired cav are Phrygians and Cappadocians. You can tell by their pointy caps. We don’t even speak the same language. Dice reins alongside Boxer and Little Red. “Welcome to gang-fuck!” He’s laughing.