Women and boys throng about our hiding place, cursing and hurling stones. We are hauled forth by lancers of Spitamenes’ Sogdian brigades. The dames and youths pelt us with rocks and beat us with sticks. My good arm is nearly wrenched from its socket. We are stabbed with knives, our eyes and hair are clawed at by fingernails. Two words are shouted over and over, utan and qoonan, which later we learn mean shit-eaters and curs. We offer no resistance. If anything, we try to appear more feeble and beaten than we are. It doesn’t work. Abuse redoubles. In the end the extravagance of the villagers’ assault is what saves us, as the lancers, who are at least soldiers bound by discipline, shield us and spirit us apart, prisoners to be interrogated by their superiors.
Spitamenes has already ridden away with the lead elements. The rest of the column mounts up. No one knows what to do with us. A conference is held, of which Lucas and I can make out nothing except that no one wants the burden of our care and custody. It looks like they’re going to dump us with the crones and urchins. The warriors’ fever of trophy-taking has passed; they don’t want our hair, there’s no honor to it, and we have no weapons or armor to loot. “Ransom!” I call in as bold a voice as my bashed-in lungbox will offer, partly for the benefit of the Sogdians, hoping they’ll seize upon the idea, but mostly for Lucas, to rally him and give him hope. For my efforts I am hammered across the crown with a stone mace. When I shield my face, more blows beat upon my back and arms. My skull feels like a spike has been driven through it. To my astonishment, I discover that captivity has reanimated me. A bubble of hate ascends. I welcome it. Men are born liars and so am I. Already I have resolved to give these blackguards nothing, to learn all I can about them and to use every scrap of it to work them harm, as rapidly and pitilessly as I can. No one of the foe savvies “ransom,” of course. But the idea seems to have occurred to them on its own. At least that’s what we imagine the bucks are debating in such lively fashion. Meanwhile, the bitches and brats continue to spit on us through the cordon of our defenders; women even piss into their cupped hands and hurl this at us. The parley breaks up. We are handed over to two raw-looking braves, no older than sixteen, who bind our wrists in front of us and lash the rawhide thongs to the tails of two pack-ponies in the column. The animals are beaten into motion and so are we. Off we go at the hot trot. Stones and clods of dirt chase us half a mile down the road, with the pack of dames and striplings howling for our blood. Throughout all this Lucas and I offer not so much as a peep, nor even raise our eyes from the dirt. Things have gotten bad and they are going to get worse.
26
Spitamenes’ warriors derive from five nations. Bactrians and Sogdians make up his main force. These are legitimate Afghans, clansmen from the land between the Hindu Kush and the Jaxartes; they fight as traditional cavalry, under civilized Persian and Persian-trained officers. The Wolf also has as infantry tribesmen of the south, from the Panjshir, Kabul, and Ghorband Valleys, from Ghazni and Kandahar and from the flatlands as far east as Artacoana. These are his true Afghan units. The remainder of his fighting men are Scyths. These are out-and-out savages. The first nation, the Sacae, are a mountain and desert people who subsist off their flocks and herds and follow the seasonal grass. The second, the Daans (“robbers”) make their living as brigands. The Daans are not as numerous as the Sacae but are far more warlike. Both are nomads of the steppes north of the Jaxartes, the so-called Wild Lands, who for centuries have chased out every imperial monarch who tried to make them knuckle under. Third and most fearsome of the Scythian nations are the Massagetae. These are a true warrior race, who scorn physical labor and who live by raiding and looting alone. The braves of the Massagetae dismount only to sleep. They are the most spectacular riders in the world. To them goes the glory of having slain in battle Cyrus the Great, two hundred years ago, defending their native steppe.
It is to these devils that Lucas and I are handed over. They already hold half a dozen other Mack prisoners. The force splits up. Spitamenes and his Bactrians have spurred off toward Maracanda. The Sacae and Daans scatter for their villages, or more accurately to the migrant bivouacs where their women and children wait with the enclosed wagons that constitute their homes. The Massagetae, our captors, drive north for the Jaxartes. This movement comes by no means in one bunch. Rather the various clans and bands break up, each bolting in its own direction. Lucas and I have been hooded, with the other captives, but in such rags that we can steal a glance between the weave. Even blindfolded, one can estimate numbers of cavalry from their sound, and bearing can be guessed at by the sun. I gauge two thousand in this drove of Massagetae (the nation, we have been told, numbers well over 100,000), which breaks up now into no fewer than a hundred bands. Our group is about forty. A buck has been placed in charge of us, who speaks good Dari and a smattering of Greek. We can communicate. His method of interrogation is straightforward. He shouts questions through the sacks over our heads; if we answer unsatisfactorily or with insufficient promptitude, he bashes our ribs, knees, and kidneys with a cudgel that we haven’t seen but that feels like a field club.
I am suffering terribly with my skull and arm. It is worse for Lucas, whose wound of the face weeps blood and will not stop; with the heat and the infernal Afghan insects, the hood over his head becomes an oven in which he roasts. His ribs and hobbled knee torture him further. And, for both of us, the terror of death. “If I die,” he tells me when we stop the first night, “don’t let the army cook up some phony story. Tell my people what really happened.”
As for my own end, I make no such scruple. “Tell ’em the biggest-balled lie you can think of.”
On the move the Massagetae subsist on curds and blood. The latter they tap from the veins of their stock by means of a sharpened reed; they close the wound with spit and mud. No one makes a fuss over this, least of all the animals. The warriors supplement this dish with a species of rice or millet meal, not unlike our own “scratch,” which they eat cold with dried grapes, lentils, or walnuts. For spirits they pack khoumiss, fermented mare’s milk. Like us they hunt on the tramp, so that meat from the odd bustard or wild goat finds its way into the pot. The Massagetae kindle fires only in daytime, when they break on the march. They move again at night. Days are blistering in this season, nights bone-rattling cold. No halt lasts longer than a few hours, except at certain defensible eminences and cave complexes. There, the troop snoozes the day round-men and ponies.
On the trek the Massagetae sing. A chantey will drone for hours, led first by one brave, then another, till every desperado in the column has taken his turn. Excepting the most precipitous pitches, no man dismounts. The Massagetae do everything from horseback, including heed nature’s call. In their lexicon, to walk is the province of women and dogs. Lucas and I and the others are driven until we can no longer stagger; then we are dragged. Care is reserved only for the ponies that haul us. When our weight becomes too much to pull, we are lashed upright onto our yaboos’ backs, with staves wedged beneath our elbows and our wrists bound before us, ankles tied together beneath the animal’s bellies. When we lose our balance and topple, which we do again and again, we are left to hang upside down. Our skulls pound into rocks along the trail. We bleed from ankles, wrists, mouths, and ears. Crossing streams our heads plunge underwater, that is, when they’re not being bludgeoned by whatever logs and boulders our beasts hump us over. Amazingly we manage, inverted, to get enough of a slosh to keep from perishing of thirst. When the party makes camp, our hoods are removed; we are allowed a feed, then spread-eagled on our backs and staked to the ground. The first night, one not-unintelligent-looking fellow appears and stands over me, saying nothing. Clearly he is assessing me as an example of the European invader. He studies my face with grave concentration, then bends and picks up a weighty stone. I brace to have my brains bashed, but the buck only lifts my neck and slips the pillow gently beneath.