The Ten Thousand (34 page)
THE TROOPS' MORALE had dropped like a stone. Thus far we had spent over a week in these villages, accomplishing nothing but losing huge numbers of our men and animals to the bitter weather, exhausting our able-bodied troops by relentless forays into the mountains to attack local fighters who seemed to melt into the woods. Xenophon made endless rounds among the huts at night, dispensing what cheer he himself was able to muster, rewarding those who themselves took responsibility for furthering the march, and setting a strenuous example by working harder than the lowest battle squire. The man was exhausted, and I worried constantly for his sanity; yet still he pushed on.
The army finally marched, a forced effort beginning in the predawn darkness, in a final race to prevent the enemy from collecting themselves and occupying the narrows north of us. This time, upon our departure Xenophon looked at me with a more confident, or perhaps resigned, expression.
"You're more at peace with your decision to march this time," I noted. He looked at me curiously.
"I'm always at peace with the orders I give. I don't always know the results, and that's what worries me."
"Last time we were turned back by the snow," I said. "What makes you so confident of the outcome this time?"
I need not have asked, however, for the acrid stench of the black smoke, and the surprised shouts of the men outside our hut gave me all the answer I needed.
"I've ordered the villages torched," he said, "both in retribution for Tiribazus' treachery, and to eliminate any temptation we might have to return once more."
That night we reached the heights from which the barbarians had meant to attack us, and were able to pass through without a struggle. In their ignorance, Tiribazus' troops failed to realize that had they occupied the impregnable position instead of us, it would have meant the destruction of the entire Hellenic army in the frozen snows below.
We continued on, six miserable days to the upper Tigris, so different from its warm, placid offspring downstream, and then another six over a wretched, windswept plain, across which a north wind whipped mercilessly, blowing directly into our eyes and burning us as if by the rays of the sun, leaving our exposed skin dry, parched, and cracking. Xenophon's face, as well as those of Chirisophus and the others, had become faces I no longer recognized, all of them melding into one, with fierce, staring eyes, sunken cheeks and ragged, infested beards that erased all traces of personal features that had once been the marks of their humanity, blurring their individual identities and reducing them to a mere species. We forgot everything but the need to keep constantly moving, to take one more step forward, and because each day was so like the day before, each gray night so like each drab day, time no longer mattered. We communicated in grunts or gestures. True speech took too much effort.
The snow had no structure, no bottom. Men sank into it to their waists or their chests, causing us to lose countless animals and supplies and dozens of soldiers, many of whom simply vanished from sight forever, falling on their faces and disappearing in their exhaustion, unable to rise again. Even the most able-bodied were faint with hunger and cold, and Xenophon realized that part of the problem stemmed not from frozen feet but from empty stomachs. He personally made the rounds of the army, scavenging stores and supplies and sending the strongest runners back along the trail and out on either side. He sought those who had fallen and given themselves up to die, forcing them to eat a bit, even stale bread or raw horseflesh unfit for maggots, and urging them, sometimes at the cost of blows to the face, to rise and stagger on. I saw him pull a tattered Rhodian boy from the snow, slapping his face and shaking him like a rag doll until the youth finally shouted in protest and choked down some cold oats soaked in milk which in better times would have been used as fodder for the asses. Xenophon watched him closely until he saw him begin lurching along toward the rest of the wraithlike troops, and then he moved on to the next dark patch he saw lying forlornly in the snow under a thin cloak, to begin the process over again. I didn't have the heart to tell him that as soon as he was out of sight, the Rhodian boy again lay down in the snow while the troops passed silently by. If a man was going to die in any case, this was the easiest and most painless way. He just lay down and waited, doing nothing, patient as the Fates, until sweet death came in the form of a gentle, frozen sleep, and his heart simply slowed down and stopped. To men bearing excruciating pain, hunger, and exhaustion, the notion of such a respite from suffering, such an easy welcome into the gods' embrace, was a seductive siren song impossible to resist.
Those who did have the will to live, but simply not the strength to keep up, suffered the most. Unable to make it to the night's campsite with the main body of troops, they would spend the night foodless and fireless where darkness finally overtook them. It was rare that any of these men survived until morning. Small parties of the enemy were constantly following like vultures, picking off stragglers and robbing them of their pitiful belongings, carrying off disabled animals that we ourselves were not sufficiently quick to butcher for food, harassing us at every turn.
Men who had the fortitude to walk miles even after losing their toes to frostbite would be stricken down by an unexpected calamity: blindness by snow, which rendered them helpless, even when led by a kindly companion by a leash or belt, because the depth of the snow and roughness of the terrain made walking without vision impossible. Those astute enough to realize the problem improvised eye-shades, or simply marched holding a black object in front of their eyes, but it was too late for others. These men we saw kneeling piteously in the snow as we passed, their eyes swollen shut, fluid streaming from the corners, as they implored their comrades, who themselves could barely stand, to lead or carry them to safety.
Our feet were the worst problem, however. Good leather sandals, with heavy oxhide soles, will serve a man well in battle, even allowing him to tread through fire, but will last only a couple of months under marching conditions, even with nightly repairs, and the troops' footwear had long past outlived its usefulness. The absence of oxen and camp followers to tan the leather and manufacture the footwear meant that the men had to improvise their own, most often with the newly flayed hides of mules that had fallen by the wayside. These the troops would skin even without waiting for the pitiful animal to completely die, to gulp down the meat and blood while still warm, and obtain a precious supply of hide before the enemy or their other colleagues arrived. Unless it froze solid first, a dead mule would be stripped of everything within minutes, leaving the carrion birds nothing to pick at but bloody bones. At the next campsite the men would be seen diligently trading scraps of leather among themselves, improvising needles from bone and thread from sinew, making crude sandals from unscraped hide that had been the cover for living flesh only hours before. It was difficult to tell, looking at the men's feet, whether the blood that stained them red was from their own blisters and missing toes, or from the freshly flayed hides. Anyone who did not take care to make the straps much looser than he otherwise would have soon learned a painful lesson, as the fresh hides shrank at night when they dried, cutting deep into a man's numb flesh, then freezing solid if he stood still for more than a moment or two. More than one able-bodied man lost his life when his mule-hide sandals lamed him and forced him to stay behind, weeping in the snow.
Because of the harshness of the journey, the army was spread out for miles, making communications between the van and the rear guard difficult. One night, after fighting the north wind all day, Xenophon's troops arrived at the camp hours after dark, only to find that the earlier arrivals had gathered every bit of scarce firewood available, and refused to let our frozen soldiers near their fires unless bribed with wheat or any other eatables they might have. When I reported this to Xenophon, his tired face darkened in anger, and he marched furiously over to Chirisophus' fire to confront him.
"Chirisophus!" he sputtered, "My men arrive after yours because they were
assigned
to the rear guard, to cover your ass! Yet when they arrive they find no food or shelter, while your men are comfortable. Are we one army or two?"
Chirisophus looked up calmly from the hunk of dried meat he was gnawing, his irritation at being interrupted readily apparent. He deliberately allowed the smile on his face to fade slowly, and coolly met Xenophon's angry stare. "My men arrived and scavenged for firewood themselves," he said in measured tones. "They built shelters and
made
themselves comfortable. Yours can do the same. My men will be up and marching before dawn as the vanguard. Why don't you just let your poor tired boys sleep late in the morning, General?"
Xenophon stared at him in astonishment. "We don't have a vanguard and a rear guard," he said after a pause. "We have two separate armies. And since that is the case, I'll take your advice. I'll tell my troops to sleep late, and then join either army they wish, and if they all wish to join yours, I'll march alone." Chirisophus stopped chewing and looked up at Xenophon with frank interest.
"We'll give you a head start in the morning to be out of your way," he continued. "Naturally the Rhodian slingers will stick with me, as will the cavalry. All of Proxenus' old troops will stay as well, I imagine, both Thebans and Spartans. That would be fifteen hundred hoplites and five hundred light infantry. Since I took over Proxenus' command, I'll also keep his remaining supplies. Naturally I'd expect you to be fair and allow any Athenians and other Attics in your brigade to transfer to my army—I'd hate to see my countrymen marching under duress with Spartans."
Chirisophus' face reddened and his eyes bulged in anger. He stood up and faced Xenophon, their chests almost touching, though the leathery old soldier stood half a head shorter than his younger colleague. Xenophon did not flinch, but continued ticking off tasks like a shopping list:
"Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to simply call a meeting of the joint forces, and allow everyone to walk over to whichever side they wish. I will, however, be happy to leave you with the sledges and wagons, Chirisophus, as well as any remaining camp followers that have sneaked along with the troops, to ensure your comfort..."
Chirisophus snorted in disgust and looked away. "By Zeus, General," he said resignedly, "can't you take a joke? I had no idea you were so sensitive about your men sleeping late." He sat down again by the fire and began poking at it sullenly. "Perhaps my men have been a bit too eager about settling in for the night after they arrive. I'll have a talk with them and order them to clear a space for your stragglers from now on. Try not to drag so far behind, though, will you?"
Xenophon assented silently with a nod of his head, and wheeled around to return to his troops. "That old son of a bitch is going to have to be dealt with sooner or later," he muttered, to no one in particular.
The next day, Xenophon saw, would be a test of his settlement with Chirisophus, for the weather and the marching conditions were even worse, if that was possible. We were traveling in a long, straggling line, each man and animal fending for himself. As the provisions' were depleted, each empty wagon was abandoned, to conserve our strength. A few of the soldiers who had wandered off the path ran across a black patch in the snow where it seemed to have thawed, and indeed it had, because of a tiny hot spring welling up from the ground beneath. Twenty half-dead soldiers crawled and crowded their way into it, soaking their feet and legs in the steaming soup, neglecting even to scrape away a small side-hole from the main spring where they could mix the near-boiling sulfur water with snow to bring it to the proper temperature. These men, their feet already numb from the freezing temperatures and frostbite, and their skin already loose from gangrene, were horrified to see skin and flesh slough off of their own accord after dipping their limbs in the hot water, defying their frantic attempts to save their feet by tightly binding the loose meat to their bones with rags.
When I told Xenophon what had happened, he waded through the snow to the spring and ordered them, then begged them, to get up and continue walking, imploring them in the name of their mothers and wives to make an effort to move on, threatening them with abandonment at the hands of the enemy. He even resorted to brutality, forcing them up by beatings, but the men simply went limp. "Cut my throat if you wish," one said, "but I will not march." In desperation at the gathering darkness, he determined that the best strategy was to make one supreme effort to frighten away the marauding enemy bowmen who were picking off our stragglers and remaining supplies. Gathering those able-bodied men of his rear guard he could find, he set off through the woods on a noisy, crashing chase, floundering and smashing through the snow, while the disabled soldiers dying at the hot spring did their best to contribute to the ruckus themselves by shouting as loudly as they were able and beating their spears on their shields as they lay prone in the water. The astonished enemy, who for the most part were hotheaded local adolescents and farmers untrained in warfare, were terrified that a pitched battle might be falling upon them, and dove for cover or ran for their lives.
Xenophon spent the entire night tramping up and down the line as I accompanied him, assisting stragglers through the deep snowdrifts, posting guards where he was able, pleading with the strongest of the light troops to search with us, pulling out from the snow those too weak to march, forcing those who still had strength to keep moving so as not to freeze to death, distributing any minuscule rations still available. Chirisophus, meanwhile, who was two or three miles farther on, had encountered a village, a collection of fifty ancient huts scattered about in an irregular circle, with other villages nearby and within sight. As soon as he had secured the area, he sent his own hoplites, as well as men from the villages themselves, to assist us in bringing up the rearguard, assuring Xenophon that space would be saved in the villages, selected by lot, for all those able to survive the remaining miles of the march. Glad we were to see these men, too, for by now a good part of the rear guard had given up hope and had simply lain down to die. It took Chirisophus' tough Spartans most of the day to haul them, dead and alive, walking and staggering, into the miserable collection of little stone structures, which to us looked like heaven itself.