Shakily I made my way out and stood blinking in the bright sunlight, still unable to see clearly through my sun-damaged eyes. Nasiq led me slowly to a small, thorny tree a few steps away, propping me against it as the world spun dizzily around me. This was the first time I had been out of the tent, and as I sluggishly examined my surroundings, I was surprised to see that Nasiq's tent was not the only such shelter, but rather formed part of a small nomadic village of perhaps twenty such structures, all of the same greasy hide, with small fires smoking in front of each. There were no signs of any other inhabitants, however, pig-people or otherwise.
Suddenly a man emerged into view from my side, a man familiar to me, yet oddly timorous and cringing. I recognized him as one of Cyrus' native interpreters, on whom we had relied heavily in recent days, since he was from this desert area and spoke the languages of several of its tribes. He stood apart from me and in rapid babbling sharply ordered Nasiq back from me as well, which she obeyed, reluctantly it seemed. He then addressed me, in broken Greek.
"Theo, Proxenus is here, we have found you. You come now?"
My jaw dropped. So that
was
Proxenus' voice I had heard a few minutes before, calling me. I looked at the interpreter in confusion.
"Where is he? I don't know if I can walk," I said with effort. "Ask Proxenus to come, or have the girl's father help me to go to him."
The interpreter looked at me wide-eyed, and began wringing his hands as he struggled for words. "Proxenus say you come, he not come, must not touch these people, these... sick people."
I painfully pushed myself to my feet, scraping my back up the rough bark of the tree, and staggered after the man. I glanced at the other tents, wondering vaguely why I saw no people, recalling the sounds of children's laughter and household chores outside Nasiq's tent during my days of convalescence. Rounding the last of the tents in the small compound, however, I stopped dead, swaying in my exhaustion. Every person in the village had been rounded up into a small, milling clump. Men, women and sobbing children stood in a tight circle, their faces contorted and their limbs in various stages of wrap. They were guarded by three Greek archers with their bows drawn and arrows aimed straight into the terrified group. Proxenus was overseeing the operation, while Nicarchus stood nervously nearby, holding the reins of several horses in his hand and impatiently glancing at the village from which I had made my painful shuffle.
"Theo, are you alive, or are you a shade?" Proxenus shouted, yet he did not run toward me in greeting as I would have expected, nor make any move to assist me in my progress. "Make your way around the lepers as quickly as you can, and go to that horse tied to the bush."
Lepers? I started in horror, wondering whom he could mean, and then with a growing sense of understanding, I looked more closely at the pig-people of the village, now clearly visible in the bright sunshine. Nasiq's grandmother stood in the front of the wretched knot of wailing women, she alone silent, almost defiant. As before, she refused to cover her face, challenging me to stare at her absent nose, the cracked and sloughing lips that refused to cover her teeth, the thin hair, missing in entire clumps from her scaling scalp. Looking straight at me, she raised her arm in a blessing or a curse, and I recoiled at the rounded stump of her forelimb, bereft of all fingers, the skin raw and bleeding.
"Move, Theo!" Proxenus shouted at me, startling me from where I had been rooted in my repulsion. I staggered to the horse Proxenus indicated, and one of the archers quickly ran over to me, ordered me out of my ragged blanket, and tossed me a clean loincloth from his own kit. I stepped out of the blanket and put on the new garment, as the entire population of the village, now silent, watched me. The soldier laboriously helped me climb onto the horse's back, to which he tied me in a prone position, my face resting against the back of the animal's neck to prevent me from slipping off in my weakness. He then walked back to the rest of the horses.
Proxenus gave an order, and the archers relaxed their guard, gesturing to the village people to return to their tents. I heard him gruffly tell the interpreter to thank Nasiq's father for his trouble and saw him flip the man a gold daric, which landed in the dust at his feet. Nasiq's father looked up at Proxenus on his horse, and then down at the coin in confusion, and I realized that he was unable to pick it up with his rag-wrapped stumps. He called to one of the boys who, like Nasiq, appeared not to be affected by the blight. The child came running over, and at the man's instructions solemnly picked up the coin and pocketed it. Both then turned without a further word or glance, and walked slowly, and with great dignity, back into the compound.
Only Nasiq remained standing, seemingly transfixed at the sight of the Greek soldiers, their horses, and my sudden departure. After warily appraising the archers while they packed their weapons and remounted, she walked calmly over to the horse on which I lay miserably blinking in the blinding sunlight, and took my large hand in her tiny one. She patted my limp paw as would a little girl comforting a doll, smiling gently and chatting to me in her language, confident that I understood her or that I someday would. As Nicarchus walked over to tether my horse to his own animal to lead me, Nasiq reached up to stroke my forehead once more. As she did so, however, I noticed for the first time the small white blotch on the otherwise flawless skin of her hand. I involuntarily shuddered and jerked my head away. Nasiq, following my gaze, instantly dropped her hand and thrust it into her robe, her eyes welling with tears. She stood watching motionless as my horse set off at a painful, bumpy trot. It took no more than two hours to ride back to the Greek camp, where my arrival in this degrading position was obscured by nightfall.
Among my people I recovered quickly. Cyrus sent a message congratulating me on my survival, and good-naturedly threatening to return me to my mule as this was the second of his horses I had lost. He also arranged for my recovery to be monitored by his personal physician, a Persian well versed in the ways of treating desert sicknesses. The physician once came to visit me accompanied by Asteria, who behind his back shook her head in silent contradiction of the learned doctor's diagnosis. As he was leaving my tent, she lingered and stealthily slipped me a small earthen jar of a bitter herbal substance with her own wax seal upon the cap, pouring me the first dosage administered in a large goblet of water, and indicating that I should ignore the physician's suggested remedy of daily bloodletting. In return, I presented her with a small ostrich plume I had come across in the desert on an earlier outing, which I had been saving for the appropriate occasion.
Since that time, not a day has gone by that I have not taken a quiet moment to ask the gods' blessing on gentle Nasiq, forever virgin Nasiq, and to request forgiveness for my treatment of her. As a libation, I offer a cup of pure, cleansing water, the most sacred substance known, savoring the sensation of its flavorless coolness, marveling at the notion of its somehow containing, in reduced or distilled form, the ancient elements from which the earth was formed, the holy rain from the heavens, perhaps even some vague essence of immortality.
THE MEN'S NERVES were already on edge when the riot broke out. For days our scouts had been reporting signs that the king's forces had recently passed along the road before us. The forward troops were soon tramping through the droppings of several thousand horses, which were so fresh they had not yet even been coated by the layer of fine dust that settled on everything from food to a sleeping man's face if left exposed for more than a few hours. Villages and orchards we encountered were still smoldering from having been recently torched to prevent our procuring supplies. Deserters from the king's forces began appearing in increasing numbers, but interrogating them yielded contradictory accounts. Clearchus was of the opinion that they had even been sent purposely by the king with orders to exaggerate the numbers of his forces to create alarm among our troops. The men maintained a state of heightened alert, which combined with their growing anxiety at being hundreds of miles from the sea, and their physical exhaustion, greatly raised the level of tension in the army.
When a fistfight broke out between several of Menon's and Clearchus' soldiers, Clearchus broke it up; after hearing their dispute, he decided that Menon's men had started it and had one of them severely flogged. This did not sit well with them and later that day, when Clearchus was trotting his horse through the camp, one of Menon's men threw a hatchet at him. The blade buried itself to the haft in the horse's flank, causing the lamed horse to rear in pain and spill Clearchus to the ground. Uninjured but furious, he stood up stiffly, and was astounded to see that several other men from Menon's troops had gathered, not to assist him, but rather to stone him while he was down. Clearchus bellowed like a bull, seized an enormous stick lying nearby and swinging it like a cudgel, nearly killed one of his tormentors with a tremendous blow to the neck, even further infuriating Menon's men.
Fortunately for Clearchus, who though unrivaled as a fighter was no match for the number of gathering Thessalians, one of his captains nearby heard the tumult. Thinking that a skirmish had broken out with a squad of the king's soldiers, he summoned some Thracian infantry, who rushed over in battle formation. They linked their enormous oak shields in a phalanx behind Clearchus, while a detachment of Spartan cavalry stormed into Menon's camp just behind, cornering the now-terrified Thessalians against a rock wall with their skittish mounts, lances poised to kill.
Proxenus, Xenophon, and I, who were nearby, came running up unarmed and surprised, as did Menon, who flushed pale in his fury at seeing forty of his troops on their knees begging the Spartans for their lives. Clearchus was in a rage.
"Did you see these madmen?!" he roared, stalking back and forth before Proxenus and me, spittle flecking his beard and an enormous swollen blue vein throbbing visibly on his forehead. "These fucking traitors?! By the holy gods, I'll dice their balls like apples and send them home in a dung-cart before they betray the entire army in its sleep some night!" He raised his cudgel as if to strike and all forty of Menon's disarmed Thessalians simultaneously winced and cowered in terror.
Proxenus, though subordinate to Clearchus, assumed a commanding air. "Let go the club, Clearchus, and call off your men. Let's settle this privately between officers, not here in the presence of camp followers and knot-headed Persians." He glanced over at the growing number of native troops gathering on the side, watching expectantly, attracted by the prospect of seeing the Hellenic troops beat each other into the dust.
Clearchus was in no mood for discussion. "I was practically stoned to death by these stinking, camel-lipped bastards!" he sputtered. "They lamed my horse! They were still in diapers when I was killing their goat-fucking fathers in Thessaly, and I'll be damned if I'll allow the entire god-damned army to have its throat slit in the night by these cowering dogs who attack unarmed officers..."
Just then Cyrus and eight of his bodyguard came thundering up, roughly pushing the onlooking men to the side with their horses and forcibly shouldering past Clearchus' steady-eyed troops, still with lances poised to slaughter Menon's entire company the second their general gave the word. Cyrus' face was flushed with anger as he surveyed the scene in silence. Clearchus slowly lowered his club, but retained his defiant expression.
Finally the prince spoke, in a voice that was steely, yet so soft the men went silent and instinctively leaned forward to hear what he said. "Clearchus and Proxenus, and all the rest of you—you have no idea what you are doing. I have over a hundred thousand men under my command, but if I lose my ten thousand Greeks I have nothing. If there is any dissension among your ranks, the unity of my entire army is threatened. You'll see then that the wrath of the king will be nothing compared to that of the men surrounding you now." We looked up to see that thousands of Persian troops had gathered, and were continuing to flock to the site of the dispute in expectation of some dreadful event.
At this Clearchus' eyes lost their fanatic gleam, and he came to himself. He sullenly ordered his men to dress arms and return to camp. The terrified Thessalians stood up and shamefacedly made their way back to their individual tasks, and the crowd began to disperse. Cyrus looked at Xenophon and me, and shook his head warily, as if clearing his mind of a dreadful dream. "I'm glad the Greeks are ready to fight," he muttered as he climbed back on his horse. "I think we'll be able to make use of some of that excess energy in a day or two."
SHE WAS SOMETHING more than a slave but less than a peer, more than a consort but less than a sister, educated as a man yet wise in the ways of the harem. Her role in Cyrus' lodgings and heart was vague and undefined, a source of intrigue and curiosity to those living without, yet as accepted and comfortable as that between cousins for those inside. The time has long passed for me to define Asteria's place, to formally introduce her into the narrative, yet I have resisted until now, whether for lack of skill and objectivity or from pure ignorance—may the reader be the judge.
I came to know her over the course of several months, yet racking my brain as I have, I am utterly unable to define precisely when, or on which occasion, that defining moment of familiarity occurred. I have related already my first sight of her in Cyrus' tent in Sardis, yet when talking with her much later she swore she could not recall that portentous meeting, much to my disappointment. The vision I had created and developed in my own mind, through hours and days of refining that single memory until it glittered like a gemstone fresh from the polishing of the sand wash, had for her been nothing more than a chance encounter, a brief glance at one of the dozens of visitors her master received in his quarters every day. A shining recollection was shot out of the sky like a grouse by a slinger, leaving a small residue of surprised feathers drifting lazily down, briefly marking both the height the bird had attained in the air, and its final point of impact with dusty reality.
Yet by the time of my disastrous, and somewhat humiliating near-encounter with death in the desert, we had somehow come to know each other. Of this I am certain, because during my two or three days of recovery she was sufficiently confident to actually visit me in my tent, arrayed like all harem dwellers in gauze and veils from head to toe, and to leave me mementos of her affection—or at least that is how I perceived those stray touches, the unnecessary but welcome hint of jasmine scent in the medicinal water she gave me, the longer-than-required glances through the anonymity of the facial screens. When, then, did this familiarity develop? As for me, my own recollections have already been fatally discredited by her utter failure to remember my first sight of her. In fact, she herself suffered from the same inability to remember the precise instant when her attitude toward me changed from one of indifference or, at best, mild curiosity, to something more. What I can say is that during the course of those months of the desert march, I became a zealous student of the hunt, not so much of ostriches and asses, but of pinfeathers woven intricately into dark strands of hair, of kohl-lined eyes with lightly hooded lids, of a slight, girlish form tripping gracefully over the matted grass or scrub of the campsite, unable to be disguised by the voluminous folds of the robes and veils. Like a trapper, I sought my quarry where it would be most likely to be foraging away from the secure enclosure of her tent, surrounded by the glaring Ethiopians: among the physicians' quarters on the edge of the army's encampment, where she spent hours discussing the medical arts with the learned doctors; at the deserted edge of the camp, where she would stroll quietly with the other denizens of her harem colony; at bookstalls in the markets of the cities through which we passed, lingering in conversation with the scribes, while being tugged impatiently at the sleeve by her uncomprehending attendants. My hunt, however, was clandestine, and went unperceived, I believe, by observers. I had taken Proxenus' original warning about her to heart, and was determined to keep intact every valuable cell of my nether anatomy.
Given my secretiveness, did she notice me as I pursued her? I personally have no doubt that she did, and in fact once, in a moment of weakness on her part, I even gained her grudging admission to this effect, though she gave no indication of it at the time. A hulking, brooding foreigner, standing a full head above the surrounding crowds, and seeming to be present whenever she emerged into view from her lodgings, would be a hard sight for her to miss. Here the hunter and hunted metaphor breaks down, for if she had indeed been some sort of human prey and I the pursuer, it would not have taken her long to learn to avoid me, to post watchful and giggling sentries, to keep a sharp eye out for my stalking approach and thereby to passively dishearten me in my unwanted attentions. As it happened, she did not do so, and so by default gave impetus to my chase, even casting a smiling eye of encouragement to me now and then when my patience seemed to flag.
Who, then, was the hunter, and who the hunted?
Even today it is a question I cannot answer.