The Lost Army (29 page)

‘How do you know if you don’t come out to see?’ I asked.

‘I can hear the talk of those who are outside watching.’

He was so absorbed in what he was writing that he wouldn’t be persuaded to leave his white scroll. I started back in, but something attracted my attention: a figure wrapped in a shawl approaching the house of one of our commanders, Cleanor. I thought I recognized a certain swing of the hips under a rather close-fitting gown, but it had become dark and I couldn’t completely trust my eyes.

When Xeno extinguished the lamp I was already half-asleep, in that torpor that lets you hear and feel what’s happening around you but won’t let you move. For a long time, I continued to hear the calls of the sentries, who were shouting out their name and unit in order to stay alert, then fatigue overcame me and I sank into silence.

W
HEN
I
OPENED
my eyes Xeno wasn’t there. In no time, the tent was struck and folded by our two servants and I stood there alone under the open sky swept by darkening clouds. The wind had started to blow furiously and I could hear a distant roll of thunder. Up high on the mountains I could see white columns of rain descending from the heavens and the oaks bending under the raging wind. I gathered all our things together as quickly as I could and loaded them onto the mules, making sure that the case with the white scroll was secured.

Xeno was with the other commanders who were meeting with Sophos to decide on the day’s business. I soon saw a group of our men departing with one of the prisoners, heading towards the pass. They were going to negotiate, to ask for free passage in exchange for the hostages. I didn’t think success was likely.

Our envoys soon returned. One of them had been wounded by a flying stone, and was limping. They hadn’t even been allowed to get close.

The only thing we knew about our enemy was their name. They were called Carduchi, Kardacha in their own language, and they considered themselves enemies of the Great King. From what I could see, they certainly were. The fact that we were also his enemies made no difference at all to them. At the end of their meeting, Sophos gave the orders that had been decided upon. All disabled animals would be abandoned and the prisoners freed, except for a few of them. To make sure that his orders were respected, he put a dozen officers along the road. Any of the soldiers caught trying to sneak off with a pretty girl or, depending on their taste, a good-looking boy, chosen from among the prisoners, was immediately stopped and forced to return them to the villages.

I saw that the dealer who hired his prostitutes out to the soldiers had left three or four of the girls behind. A couple of them were limping; they must have twisted an ankle on the rocky path we’d taken and they were certainly in no shape to continue climbing. A couple of the others weren’t well; they had caught some kind of fever. That bastard could have allowed them to ride on one of his mules, but he was evidently more worried about the animals than the women, given the situation. As much as it vexed me, there was nothing I could do. I was already saddled with one of them, and Xeno certainly wouldn’t have allowed me to help anyone else. He cared about the mules as well.

Sophos had shown the natives that he did not have hostile intentions, seeing that he hadn’t taken hostages, hadn’t allowed rape or violence, and not even plunder, forbidding the men to take any of the many bronze objects they’d found in the houses. But his show of good will had not helped in the least. Those savages were convinced of one thing alone: whoever set foot on their land had to die.

The army began to ascend towards the pass, and I ensured that the pregnant girl was hanging on to my mule’s tail and was tagging behind us. Every once in a while I’d call out to make sure she was still there, well aware that if she stumbled, no one would stop to help her.

Each of the warriors wore his full war gear. I could tell why they all had such big, muscular legs: ever since childhood, they’d practised walking for days at a time with the weight of their arms upon them. Their strength was impressive: they advanced with an enormous shield on their arms, chests covered with a shell of bronze, a heavy sword slung over their shoulders and a long, solid spear held tight in their fists as if it were all just a part of their bodies.

The army had a voice of its own, that changed with changing situations. It was a confused sound made up of all their voices and all the noises that accompanied them. On the plain, the roll of the drums and the wail of a flute helped measure their steps, but in the mountains it was different. They marched on as best they could, slower at times, or faster, and there was no room for drums or flutes. The silence was filled by the thousands and thousands of voices of warriors on the move. The sound they made was quite strange: the sum of many words, of sudden shouts, of braying and whinnying, of clanking metal at every step. There was no common beat, no harmonized chord, and yet the sounds united in a single voice. That voice could be suddenly hushed, at times, or turn gloomy. The jangling of the weapons might grow dominant and then the army spoke with a cutting, metallic voice, or the utterances of men might prevail, and be expressed as a buzzing or a deep grumbling, in a sound like mounting thunder or in a screeching as keen and sharp as the mountain peaks towering above us.

The path was getting steeper and steeper and yet our march continued unobstructed. But the sky was black with bloated clouds and it soon started to rain hard, a cold, dense, heavy rain that completely drenched me. I felt a trickle of water slipping between my shoulders and down my back and my hair was plastered to my forehead. My clothing clung to my legs and even made it difficult to walk. I was terrified of the lightning: rivers of fire that gashed the leaden sky and tore through the big black clouds that galloped dishevelled across the sky, enveloping the peaks in a thick, dark fog. The claps of thunder were so loud that they made my heart tremble inside my chest.

The warriors did not seem perturbed by the fury of the storm. They continued to advance at an even pace, planting their spears to mark their stride. They had lowered their helmets over their heads and with every flash, every bolt of lightning, their gleaming armour sparkled with bright bursts of light.

I turned around to look at the girl, who seemed to be totally depleted; I was counting the steps until she would certainly drop. She was thin and pale, livid with the cold, and her belly seemed huge and impossibly heavy. All the warmth she had in her body was defending the child within her, but soon he too would feel the cold, and that would be the end. She slipped and staggered and her utter fragility contrasted with the powerful stride of the bronze-covered soldiers. Whenever she stumbled her hand shot forward to protect her belly and she was continually cutting and wounding herself on the sharp rocks. I kept thinking of how long and difficult our journey was sure to become.

The clouds grew closer and closer. Ever since I can remember, the clouds I’d seen were high in the sky, tiny and white, but now I wondered what it might soon feel like to touch them. The path took a sharp turn to the left and I watched as the entire column paraded before me. There was Cleanor, not too far away, cutting an imposing figure even in this rain. He was followed by his horse and two servants, and then by a strange apparatus: two mules, one in front of the other, harnessed together carrying two long beams on which a makeshift carrier had been fashioned, covered with tanned hides. A shelter of enviable wellbeing given the miserable conditions we found ourselves in.

What treasure was guarded in the litter swaying with the gait of the mules? I did not doubt for an instant that the treasure was Melissa, with what she kept warm between her thighs.

At that same moment I heard a cry and a group of Carduchi charged at our advance guard. The bugles blared and the warriors ran towards the head of the column, scrambling up the slippery slope, until they could draw up in frontal formation. The attackers lunged against a wall of shields, were impaled on the spears pointing forward, and many of them fell at first impact. The others were surrounded by our skirmishers and massacred. The march resumed under the pounding rain.

When it came my turn, I passed by the fallen and could see them for myself; their bodies were scattered over the terrain and among the rocks. Most of them were piled up on top of each other along the same line, the others were on higher ground, where our scouts had encircled and killed them off as they tried to flee. They were shaggy-looking men, with long hair and beards, wearing tunics of coarse wool and tall rawhide boots. Their weapons were large knives like those used by butchers. Poor people who were defending their land and their families against invincible warriors. I thought of how much courage it must have taken to attack automatons of bronze and iron, all of them faceless and looking exactly the same, looking like the creatures that populate nightmares, creatures born of a nonhuman seed. I imagined the moment in which their bodies would be returned to their huts, greeted by the wailing of widows and orphaned children.

Perhaps they hadn’t understood that all we wanted was to pass through and that we would never come back. They hadn’t even gone back to their villages, to see for themselves that we’d taken only food and touched nothing else. I was sure that those dead bodies would kindle hatred and the thirst for revenge. There would be more battles and more ferocious clashes, more dead and more wounded. Crossing that land would be an ordeal. Not only the men, but the very earth and sky, were against us.

Much later I saw Xeno bringing up the rear of the column with his horsemen on foot; I could tell it was him by the crest of his helmet. I could see that he was constantly putting himself in harm’s way and I trembled for him. I took another look at the pregnant girl who was limping along, clinging tight to the mule’s tail. I knew what a docile animal he was, used to dragging a weight that wasn’t his. But it would have taken nothing more than a single kick of his frightful hoofs to cut short two lives at once.

I really couldn’t understand what energy was holding her together. I thought of the mysterious force that impels each creature on this earth to preserve his own life and his children’s. I thought of how many lives I’d seen cut short since I’d set off with Xeno and how few I’d helped to save. Death had certainly taken no notice of my efforts; the lives she had snatched for herself greatly outnumbered those I had tried to wrest away from her.

An idea came to me. I was still reflecting when I saw the head of the column being swallowed up into the swollen cloud that covered the mountain peak.

And disappear.

T
HERE
’
S NOTHING
all that strange about entering a cloud. From far away it looks like something that has a shape and a consistency, but the closer you get, the more its shape goes away and it just becomes a mass of denser air, a kind of fog that envelops and surrounds you. Sounds are muted, voices are lower, figures fade into one another and become confused. Sometimes you can’t tell things apart. Our men looked like shadows come up from the Underworld. The swaying of their cloaks seemed a natural phenomenon like the rustling of the leaves or the waving of the tall grass on the mountain’s slopes.

When we finally arrived at the crest, we heard shouting and the clanging of weapons coming from the rearguard and I felt panic-stricken. Xeno was always out there, ahead of all the others. How would he be able to fight off the enemy hidden in the fog, lurking among the trees or behind the rocks? Would I ever see him again?

The clouds opened in front of us, revealing a terrain which was even steeper and more impervious than what we’d left behind: a rocky ridge crossed by a path that rose towards the top of the mountain. I realized that on this kind of terrain you can never be sure of arriving anywhere. After one peak you find another, even higher than the first. What looks close can be very far and what seems far away can in reality be relatively near to you. You had to continuously adapt your gait to the ever-changing ground.

Luckily, the storm had calmed and only a few occasional drops were falling. But you still could be pelted suddenly when the stiff wind shook the tree branches above you. All at once, something happened that really alarmed me: the speed of marching suddenly picked up. The men were advancing faster and faster, for no reason that I could understand. Although you could never know what was happening at the head or at the end of such a long column, each one of us had to adapt to the movement of the army as a whole, in front and in back of us, just as every muscle in the sinuous body of a snake contributes to making him glide forward.

The path was rising steeply and walking was very strenuous, and yet the army was moving faster. We women wouldn’t have been able to keep up such a fast pace for long and I was stupidly making it even harder for myself to breathe by urging on the pregnant girl, encouraging her not to give up. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the awkward, desperate jerks of her body as she strove to keep her balance; I could hear the yelps of pain escaping her at every step. Wasn’t there anyone at all who could help me? We were invisible to them, all they cared about was the mules. The mules were precious, we didn’t even exist. Xeno was too busy with his new duties as a commander, in showing off what he was worth and how wrong everyone had been about him. The man who everyone had sarcastically called ‘the writer’ was now charging about on his horse with extraordinary mastery, striking with great precision, killing and wounding, attacking and falling back, utterly tireless and always mindful, with every move he made, with every sway of the crest on his helmet, of the effect he was having on the others.