Steven Pressfield (8 page)

I ask Stephanos how he can be a poet and a soldier. Aren't the vocations in conflict, if not irreconcilable?

Again he evades the question, returning to the subject of war-names. “Consider our friend Flag here. Did you know he was a
math-ematicos
in his earlier life?”

A teacher of music and geometry?

“He will not confirm this, Matthias,” Stephanos continues, “but I have seen him take up a hand-harp and produce melodies sweet as nectar.”

I ask, “Where do you come from, Flag?”

“I can't remember.”

“Oh, come on!”

“It's slipped my mind.”

Ash perches beside me on his sheepskin.
“Narik ta?”
he says. What difference does it make? (Literally, “So, then?”)

Stephanos approves with a laugh. “Do you grasp, Matthias, the depth and subtlety of the Afghan religion?”

“I do not.”

“When our friend Ash asks, ‘What difference does it make?'—he is not speaking from despair or hopelessness, as you or I might, employing the same phrase. Rather he propounds a pure philosophical query: What difference
does
it make?”

“All the difference in the world!” I reply. “This is no religion. It offers no hope; it negates free will, action, enterprise. It's the antithesis of everything this army stands for, for what does Alexander's achievement mean if not the power of a single man's will?”

“And what achievement is that?”

“Look around you!”

At this, the litter breaks up.

“So then,” Stephanos asks me, “is conquest
your
religion?”

“Action is. And virtue. As you and Flag and our king embody it.”

“Do we now?”

The veterans snort into their muffled fleeces. It's getting too cold to keep up this colloquium.

“You know,” Stephanos says, “I've taken to you from the start, Matthias. Shall I tell you why?”

“Because,” says Flag, “he never shuts up.”

“Because he asks questions.”

“That's his problem.”

“And one day he might get answers.”

Chattering teeth compel the symposium to a close. Stephanos rises, to make his rounds of the sentry posts.

“You ask, my friend, how I can be a soldier and a poet? I answer: How can one be a soldier and
not
a poet?”

We sleep that night beside a pocket lake. Waking, a mountain ram and his ewes eye us from a cleft above. When we rattle stones around them, the flock scampers up the face as nimbly as you or I would mount a flight of stairs.

That day we make contact with the enemy. It becomes a real fight. In it Lucas kills his first man. The fellow hurls a great stone, then rushes upon him with dagger and sword. Lucas impales him on his half-pike. The enemy takes minutes to die. Lucas squats at the fellow's shoulder, too stricken to offer aid, bawling like a child.

14.

On the ninth day, we rotate back to column. A parcel is waiting for me—small and heavy—delivered, I am told, by a courier from Headquarters Expeditionary Force. The litter presses round. I undo the tie.

To my astonishment, the packet holds six golden
darics
—half a year's pay. Next to the coins nestles a Bronze Lion, the decoration awarded to soldiers wounded in battle. My name is on it. “This must be a mistake.”

Flag reads the citation. The medal is for the night in the cordoned village, when I failed so ingloriously in the hovel with the old Afghan. Only the actions ascribed to me by headquarters are outrageous fiction, painting me a hero.

“Well, I can't keep this,” I say.

“Why not? You were wounded in action.”

“I stabbed myself!”

“What difference does that make?”

The squad howls. Flag and Tollo stifle laughter. Clearly it is they who put me in for this counterfeit commendation. Tollo divides the gold, setting one
daric
in my fist and distributing the rest to the litter.

“One month's pay belongs to you, my boy, and the rest to your mates. That's only fair. As for the Bronze Lion, the time will come, believe me, when you'll earn one for real, and the army, rump-stuffed as it is, won't stand you up for a gob of spit.”

And he pins the medallion to my cloak.

“Take it now, while you've got it.”

         

I
USE THE
daric
to buy freedom for the girl Biscuits. We are back on the trail when Ash again puts the whip to her. I will not bear this a second time. I haul him off, declaring to him (an argument I have rehearsed in my head) that he has no right to render his property unserviceable to the army, which has contracted for it in good faith, and that if he disables the maid by his mistreatment of her, I will see that he loses his hire-pay.

“Then, damn the army,” says Ash. “It must buy this property.”

“It will, you wretched villain!”

I pay him the whole
daric
. Of course, the army won't make it good. In the end I am disciplined for exceeding my authority—ludicrous, as the only elements I outrank are mules and slaves—and endure several perfunctory stripes, delivered by Lucas in his capacity as second-from-the-bottom in the litter, much to Ash's gratification. “Now,” says he, “you own a mouth to feed. May it eat you out of house and home.”

I cut Biscuits loose on the trail, stuffing her kit with
kishar,
dried goat meat, and lentils; Ash chips in a swift kick to get her started back down the mountain. I watch her booger off and congratulate myself on a deed well turned.

Ten minutes later she's back in line, packing her same sack of sesame. No threat I can offer will make her wing away.

It turns out to be not so simple, purchasing a woman's liberty. Strictly speaking, Biscuits is not a slave; she belongs to no one, not Ash, not even herself. In the Afghan lexicon of
tor
—matters concerning the honor of women—every female must be
az hakak,
“in the guardianship of” a male—her father before she's married; then husband; finally brother, uncle, even son if her spouse dies or is killed. The tail of the shirt is I'm now that guardian. “You are her husband,” Ash giggles. “She is your wife.”

My predicament becomes a source of amusement to Flag and Tollo, who warn that I have violated the Afghan code of
nangwali
. If the girl's male kin show up, I'll have to kill them or they'll kill me. My mates regard this as great sport.

“What you must understand, Meckie” (this is what Ash calls all of us, his version of Mack, for Macedonian), “is that a woman like this”—and he elevates both palms as if warding off a curse—“is
nawarzal,
unclean, and
affir,
unacceptable.”

“Then let her work on for pay.”

“I am but a poor man.”

“You are a pirate.”

What can I do? I leave Biscuits with Ash and let him continue collecting her pay from the army. I can't get him to give her even a tenth. Such an arrangement would set, he declares, “an unwholesome precedent.”

Through the course of this clash I come to appreciate the old gaffer. He begins sharing his table with me, or I should say his rock by the side of the trail. I am not so insensitive as to be unaware of the compliment.

One night I write a letter to my fiancée. Ash looks on. “You tell her everything, Meckie?”

“Everything she needs to know.”

And he cackles gaily.

15.

The army winters at Bagram, a garrison town built centuries past by Cyrus the Great, in the temperate high valley at the foot of the central massif. Two rivers, the Kophen (or Kabul) and the Panjshir, water a broad, peak-rimmed plain.

The place is paradise for the moment. It possesses abundant cantonments for the army, dry fodder for the animals, and flat ground to train on. The northern passes, we are told, lie already under twenty feet of snow. The accumulation will reach sixty by midwinter. Not even Alexander can figure a way across into Bactria. As Ash predicted, we will not get at Bessus and Spitamenes till spring.

Mule and camel trains continue to work up from Kandahar, bringing armor, weapons, grain, and horses for the coming assault. My brother Elias's woman has come up with one of the columns. Her name is Daria. Her beauty makes her something of a celebrity, at least among the Macks. The Afghans abhor her—and every other native daughter who has taken up with the invader. She and Elias take apartments in the old section of Kapisa, a pleasant lane under winter mulberry trees and wild plums. They establish a salon. I am able to place Biscuits in her service. A weight off my mind.

The army trains and begins construction of another garrison town. This one will be called Alexandria-under-the-Caucasus.

We see the king all the time now. Every day he makes the rounds of the regiments in training, accompanied by only a couple of couriers and a page or two as bodyguards. He dismounts and instructs the men personally. The troops adore him.

We live in sixteen-man tents with packed-straw floors. The women do the cooking and the service work. Even Lucas has a girl now, the long-legged Ghilla. I am the last of our litter to hold myself apart, though, I confess, I have taken on occasion to visiting the day-raters. Am I faithless to my betrothed? I am drinking more than I used to. You have to, for the cold and the boredom.

Ash has stayed on. The army pays for foddering his stock. He will cross the mountains with us in the spring. The women, he has dismissed. Why feed them, he says, when they can find work in the new town or else catch on as “chickens,” the lowest rung of camp wives.

To my wonder, I have become quite close to the old villain. He has mates everywhere. As rookies, Lucas and I are assigned every drudge detail; we never finish before dark. We wind up taking chow more with the Afghans attached to the army than with our own Macks. In normal times, Ash explains, his tribe, the Dadicai, would be feuding fiercely with at least two or three others. Now, under invasion, they are all the best of mates—Pactyans, including the Apyratai and Hygenni; Thyraoi and Thamanai; Maioni, Sattagyadai, a hundred others. I ask Ash how he can accept employment from Alexander if he hates us so much. “In the end we will drive you out, Meckie.”

And he laughs and passes me another
chupattie
.

Lucas is still suffering terribly over his killing of the foe on the high line. He experiences shame at his inability to finish the fellow off and feels blameworthy, at the same time, that he did not aid him to save his life. The Afghan's eyes haunt Lucas's sleep, reproving. Worse, he confesses, is the visceral memory, which will not leave him, of planting his spear in another man's guts. I try to make him feel less alone, reckoning his anguish from my own gloryless experience of murder: the sense of horrible pleasure in the instant, succeeded at once by an excruciating remorse, disgust, and chagrin, with yourself and the whole human race, and the sense that you are changed forever, and far, far for the worst. But nothing I can say helps; I'm his peer, as callow as he is. He needs to hear it from someone senior, someone who knows. It is Tollo, of all people, who eases Lucas's woe.

“Piercing the melon, that's the toughest.”

He means killing a man with a thrust through the belly, also known as “spilling the groceries.” We're at work one day on the new city, breaking midday for a feed. “Every buck trooper balks at it. They wave their pike in both hands, like housemaids batting at a rat with a broom. To bury your blade in a living man's guts—that takes courage. And the feeling never leaves you.”

This is helping Lucas. Tollo sees it.

“The disciplined trooper,” Tollo says, “strikes with both feet planted, eyes on the foe, shoulders square. Trust your weapon and stand fast. You did it right on the high line, Lucas. I saw you. I was proud of you.”

My friend flushes. Tollo grins.

“Think you're a soldier now?” And he cuffs Lucas affectionately. “But you're no longer a boy!”

We drill and continue construction of the garrison town. I have never been in training in a force commanded by Alexander. We get more days off than any corps I have heard of. No curfew, no bed check. The whole army knocks off every day from noon till two hours after. Wine is plentiful and cheap. Troopers are exempted from duty to take part in hunts (in fact, training is often replaced by hunting) and are given time off to train at the gymnasiums, which are the first structures the engineers erect, even before chapels and mess halls. Women are permitted throughout the camp, unlike the Old Corps under Philip and Alexander's original expeditionary force; they may sleep in cantonments with their officer lovers (and in the tents of us scuffs) and may accompany the column in the field. Such are the perquisites of serving in a corps commanded by Alexander. Now to the hard part.

All units in training are in formation under arms at two hours before dawn. No day's trek is shorter than thirty miles and many are above forty. The pace eats twenty miles before noon, nor are these one-day jaunts, but five and often ten. No mooch but what you carry; run out and you starve. God help the man who develops blisters or worms. In training at home, the sergeants drove you. Here it is the men themselves. Alexander issues no orders. He simply acts. He treks beside the men, on foot, with weapons and armor, and no buck in the army can keep up with him. He trains in all weathers, day and night. An officer who distinguishes himself shall dine in the king's tent, at the shoulders of great Craterus and Hephaestion. Corporal punishment does not exist in Alexander's army. Our lord brings us to heel by threat of exclusion from the corps and from his own favor, alongside which fate death itself has no meaning. One disapproving glance from Alexander will plummet the stock of the most decorated vet, while a smile or a word of praise elevates the meanest to renown.

The men are in love with Alexander. This is no overstatement. The troops are aware of his movements, moment by moment, as pack dogs are of the stud wolf. The corps gravitates to his apparition and feeds upon sight of him, as the lover on that of his darling. If any mishap should befall him, the army senses it, even at a remove of miles, and reacts with alarm and distress, which are not allayed until they see their lord again and satisfy themselves that he is whole.

The corps will endure anything for its commander. The most tedious drills are borne without an oath or a grumble. Exercises for which no purpose can be discerned are enacted with a will. At orders from headquarters, we strike camp, stripping the five-mile site to bare dirt. Fresh orders arrive: We unpack and set it up all over again. Building the city, the troops chop frozen sod all day, booze and fornicate all night. They are lean as leopards and as eager for action.

The king has half a hundred Forward Operations units at work in the mountains. My brother Elias and his comrades form one of them. These are elite outfits, composed entirely of Companions, the tallest and handsomest, mounted on the most spectacular stock. Their job is to negotiate with the tribes. They carry gifts of honor—golden cups, Damascene swords—and are authorized to speak and deal in Alexander's name. They have guides of the Panjshiri, Salangai, and Khawak Pactyans, the tribesmen who inhabit the high valleys and passes that the army must take in spring. Will the clans resist our passage? Their numbers are said to be between 125,000 and 175,000, including the
khels
and sub-
khels
of valleys and side-valleys. No invader, including Cyrus the Great, has ever made them yield.

Our training is clearly to take on these trotters. Every battalion has its high-line artillery, to take possession of the commanding heights, and its companies of missile troops. We train in snow boots and fleece bundlers. Engineers and pioneers keep the track out of Kapisa clear, all the way to the head of the Panjshir.

We see the foe constantly. Hundreds winter here, with their families, in the Kabul Valley. Thousands more have descended to milder elevations roundabout. Their sword shops line the lanes in Bagram City. All are mounted and all are armed to the teeth.

Many find employment with the army. We have several in our unofficial mess. I come to know two, Kakuk and Hazar, brothers, about my age. The first word they teach me, indicating themselves, is
tashar,
meaning wild young bucks. Both are fine fellows, handsome as lions, the former with blond hair, the latter of black, both with great bushy beards of which they are vainer than gamecocks. They care nothing for pay and routinely spree a month's wages in an evening. They consort with us for the novelty and the adventure. Their kit is the felt Bactrian cap with earflaps, heavy woolen trousers bloused into lambskin boots, vest, waistcoat, and
pettu
. The sashes round their waists are tribal colors; in them they tuck their lunch, medicine, and their three iron-edged man-killers—short, medium, and long. They are curious as cats. They cannot hear enough about my home country. Each custom I relate sends them spooling into gales of hilarity. More genial companions could not be imagined, though it is plain they will carve our livers, or their fellow Afghans', over the most trivial matter of honor, and that, when the army marches out in spring, violating the integrity of their territory, they will hurl themselves upon us with all the violence they possess. The pride of the Panjshiris, I learn, is their great valley, which is to them home and heaven. Will Alexander serve up the toll to march through under
badraga,
official escort? Cyrus did. Or will our king attempt to force his passage? He has never bowed yet to extortion. As with Ash, the brothers, Kakuk and Hazar, see no contradiction between working for Alexander and looking forward to eviscerating him.

It is impossible to dislike these fellows. I find myself envying their proud, free life. Labor is unknown to them. Their ponies graze on sweet grass in summer, dry fodder when the passes close. Their wives and sisters weave their garments, prepare their
dal
and
ghee
. Families shelter in stone houses, ownership of which they recite back twenty generations, whose only removable parts are the wooden doors and roofs (in case of evacuation due to feuds). Every kin-group holds two residences, summer and winter. If a rival clan raids, the
khels
drive them out through superior local knowledge. Should an alien power enter in force, as Cyrus in the past or Alexander now, the tribes withdraw to loftier fastnesses, sending to wider spheres of kinsmen until they assemble the necessary numbers; then they strike.

Nangwali
is the Afghan warrior code. Its tenets are
nang,
honor;
badal,
revenge; and
melmastia
, hospitality.
Tor,
“black,” covers all matters concerning the virtue of women. An affront to a sister or wife's honor can be made
spin,
“white,” by no means short of death. Blood feuds, the brothers tell me, start over
zar, zan,
and
zamin:
money, women, and land.

In cases of
badal,
vengeance is taken by father or son. In
tor,
it's the husband, except in the case of unmarried women; then all males of the family may not rest until justice has been exacted. The code of
nangwali
forbids theft, rape, adultery, and false witness; it prosecutes cowardice, abandonment of parents or children, and usury. The code prescribes rites for births and death, armistices, reparations, prayer, almsgiving, and all other passages of life. Poverty is no crime. Reverence for elders is the cardinal virtue, succeeded by patience, humility, silence, and obedience. Statues for hygiene are strict, the brothers swear, though if any were adhered to within my vision, I must have missed it. The view of life is that of a noble resignation to fate. God determines all, the Afghan believes. One can do nothing except be a man and bear up.

As for my guardianship of the girl Biscuits, this will bring trouble, my friends declare. The maid has at least one living brother, a captain of horse serving now with Spitamenes. Kakuk and Hazar know the man, champion of a rival tribe. If I come upon him I must strike without hesitation. In matters of
tor,
blood is everything. A dead man can always be paid for.

One morning I wake to find Kakuk and Hazar gone. Every other Panjshiri in camp has skipped too. Spring approaches. The buds are on the mulberries. Scouts report tribesmen in the hundreds slipping back into the high valleys, by routes known only to themselves. I quiz Flag for the latest. “The passes,” he says, “are still under twenty feet of snow. Nothing without wings is getting over for at least another month.”

But Ash tells a different tale. The contractors of the pack train are balking, he reports. They won't take their stock up into the Panjshir, not if the clans are given time to get home and become organized into armies.

That night Alexander calls another pack-up. We strike tents and load up the train, as we have done in a dozen previous drills.

This time it's no exercise. Two hours before dawn, lead elements of the army are on the march, with the king at the fore, up the track into the Panjshir.