Steven Pressfield - The Afgan Campaign

“You are a disgrace! You discredit the Corps!” And he stalks out.

The captain still hasn’t spoken. He motions me to sit. He does too. He pours a cup for me from a pitcher. “It’s only water.”

I take it. The captain smiles. “Your brother Philip is somewhere out on the steppe. Otherwise we’d have him here, too, to reason with you.” He regards me. “But you wouldn’t listen to him either, would you?”

He takes a different document from a case and slides it toward me. “This is your rag sheet.” The record of my debts. The captain gives me a moment to scan it. It’s every tick I owe the army, for my horse, advances, allowances. The roll must run forty lines. “We’ll tear it up.” Next: my enlistment contract. “I’ll knock twelve months off.”

The captain meets my eye with a look that says, “Let’s cut through the crap.”

“You’re promoted to sergeant. You’ve earned a Bronze Lion; I see no reason not to make it a Silver. The award comes with two years’ pay. Bonuses on top, plus your oikos allowance. We’ll get your girl up to Nautaca. Make the winter a little warmer.”

He indicates the original report.

“You don’t have to sign. Just give me your word you won’t contradict its contents, verbally or in written communication.”

He’s very good. But each word renders me more furious. In my mind I see Lucas’s charred remains, being dragged in the dirt behind some Bactrian yaboo.

“You might as well kill me, sir, and get it over with.”

The colonel sighs. “By Zeus, you’re a hard knot.”

He stands. I’m waiting for the guards to come in and seize me. The portal rustles. I hear a step from the adjacent chamber. Light enters. A man follows.

It is Alexander.

The captain springs to his feet. I brace at rigid attention. The king comes all the way in. He entreats our pardon for entering unannounced. He has overheard our words from outside; he could not help himself. “Stand easy, Corporal.”

Alexander comes round front, where I can see him.

Our lord wears a plain winter cloak with no breastplate and no insignia save a single Gold Lion as a shoulder clasp. “The brigades move out in an hour. Forgive me if I don’t have much time.”

I am struck by how worn he looks. The contrast to his youthfulness, when we replacements first saw him two years ago, is overwhelming. He is only twenty-eight. Up close he looks forty. His skin is abraded to leather by sun and wind. His honey-colored hair holds streaks of silver. He dismisses the captain but does not sit himself, nor indicate that I may.

“I know what it means to lose a friend,” he says, “and in such a ghastly manner. I respect your courage in defying an order that seems to you unjust, and I understand that promise of reward offends your sense of honor.”

The chamber is close, no bigger than an eight-man tent, with nothing in it but a table, three chairs, and a stand for maps and charts.

“But you must understand what is at stake. We have a chance now to end this war, a chance that will not endure. Hours count. Amnesty must be extended to our Bactrian and Sogdian captives as quickly as possible, so it looks like a gesture of spirit and generosity, not a calculated act of politics.”

I am pierced to the heart by this token of our lord to address, as he would a commander of stature, a soldier of such mean rank.

“This is what war is,” says Alexander. “Glory has fled. One searches in vain for honor. We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of. Even victory, as Aeschylus says, in whose august glow all felonies are effaced, is not the same in this war. What remains? To prevent the needless waste of lives. Too many good men have perished without cause. More will join them if we don’t make this peace now.”

He straightens and meets my eye.

“I rescind the captain’s offer of promotion and reward. It’s an insult to your honor. Nor will I coerce you, Matthias, to take an action that runs counter to your code. Proceed as your conscience dictates. I shall take no measures against you, now or ever, nor will I permit any to be taken by others. Nothing is nobler than the love of friend for friend. Let it go at that.”

And he turns and exits.

Ten days later, near a scarp called by the Scythians Mana Karq, “Salt Bluffs,” a detachment of Massagetae appear under a banner of truce and present themselves to a forward unit attached to Hephaestion’s brigade, which comprises the right wing of the Macedonian northward thrust.

Their chiefs, the Massagetae claim, have Spitamenes’ head.

They will deliver this trophy to Alexander, they declare, if he will call off his advance and accept their undertakings of friendship.

Shinar has conceived.

She is pregnant. This time I won’t let her terminate it. She doesn’t want to, anyway. She’s happy. So am I.

Our division has gone into winter quarters at Nautaca. It’s the best place we’ve been. The city is sited atop an impregnable eminence, so there’s no work fortifying it, and what there is was completed by the engineers before they moved on to finish construction on Alexandria-on-the-Jaxartes.

At Frost Festival all line troopers receive their back wages. Mine is seven months’, with two years’ on top as a king’s premium. My third Bronze Lion has come through. A year’s pay goes with it and, better yet, the option to elect discharge at the end of my next bump. Three Lions equals a skip. Am I stupid? I’ll grab it with both hands! I’m flush. We all are.

The best part of Nautaca is Digger Town, the compound that the Corps of Engineers has put up for its own quarters and that we scuffs have now moved into. No tents for the engineers. They’ve built themselves real stone-and-timber barracks with a bathhouse, wood floors, and enclosed walkways to the latrines. When they move on at winter’s start to the Jaxartes, the compound is converted to a hospital. By midwinter the wounded have either recovered and rejoined their units or been moved back south to Bactra City.

Our fellows take over. Shinar and I get a room to ourselves with a window and a clay khef oven. An armload of kindling keeps the place toasty all night. Ghilla shares the space with us, along with her infant son, whom she has named Lucas. I have never been around a child. I adore the little fellow. We take naps together. He loves to sleep back-to-back. At first I am terrified I will roll over on him, but his squalling soon eases that fear. He has lungs like a flag sergeant. If Shinar’s child is a boy, we will name him Elias. The women have carpeted the floors for warmth and snugged down the roof. Our mates Boxer and Little Red have the next two rooms, with their women; Flag and Stephanos are in the cottages built for officers just down the lane.

We’re almost embarrassed to be so comfortable.

Winter’s chore is to prepare an offensive for spring. I’m a line sergeant now. I command a file of sixteen. I’m included in all platoon-level briefings and some even up to battalion.

I have written to my mother, telling her about Shinar. For once I can speak the truth in a letter.

When the Massagetae campaign ended, three months ago, our section was two hundred miles into the Wild Lands. Not a man was unwounded. The horses were hide-and-bones. Three storms struck in succession. I lost two toes and part of four fingers, including the top of my left thumb. Many suffered far worse. When at last the column staggered back into Nautaca, Shinar was waiting for me. She had come north alone, first to Maracanda, then to Alexandria-on-the-Jaxartes, finally to here.

When I saw her, bundled sole-to-crown among the crowd of wives and lovers at the intake gate, I knew I would look no farther for my life’s companion. No barracks had been built at that time, but the engineers had put up stables, still under construction but at least out of the wind.