Steven Pressfield Read Online Free PDF

they flee before Alexander. In our column of replacements, we are cast down to hear this. The war will soon be over. We’ll pack home as broke as we started.
    Elias sounds in fine fettle.

    Matthias, you hound! How are you? Have you snagged your first Asiatic cooch? Welcome to the fighting army, you poor scuff!

    He is well, my brother says, except for a wound he downplays. He is in hospital now, as I said, at Phrada near the Great Salt Desert; that’s how he has time to write.

    The Persian war is drawing down, little brother. The enemy’s big augers all seek terms. It’s a capital show, these grandees coming in. They send their lieutenants first, under a flag, or their sons if they have them. Their mules are loaded with loot—“for Iskander.” That’s Persian for Alexander. We take them in like wayward kittens. Our orders are to treat them as if they were sugar and we must carry them home on our tongues.

    Great generals and governors of the Persians, nobles who have fought our fellows across all Asia—Artabazus, Phrataphernes, Nabarzanes, Autophradates, as well as the slayers of Darius: Satibarzanes and his cohort Barsaentes—have bent the knee and been received with clemency by Alexander. Who else can run the empire for him? Even the mercenaries Glaucus and Patron, commanders of Darius’s crack heavy infantry, have come in with their commands and made their peace. They now form a unit of Alexander’s army.
    Only one enemy remains wild. The Persian general Bessus, with 8,000 Afghan cavalry and access to 30,000 more—Scythian raiders from beyond the Jaxartes. He is calling himself Darius’s successor and raising an army to fight on.

    Don’t worry, little brother. His own generals can read the wind. They’ll bring in his hat—with his head in it—soon enough.

    In Areia, nearing the frontier of Afghanistan, we get our first chance outside of training to unsheathe our arms. Tollo and Flag are assigned, with half our company of mercenaries, to provide security for a train of supplies to be delivered to a village two days off the military highway. Lucas and I go along. Halfway out, in wild ravine country, a detachment of tribal riders shows itself on a ridge ahead. Tollo, Flag, and the mercs take off after them, leaving us rawbones with a few muleteers and natives to guard the train. Sure enough, as soon as our mates drop from sight, a party of thirty more bandits materializes. We are twelve, only four of us armed. The brigands are the most savage-looking villains we have ever seen. They have no fear of us whatever. They ride straight up to our goods and start helping themselves. We try to brass it out, shouting threats and brandishing our weapons. The foe brandishes back, with a good deal more credibility. Our natives have hotfooted it up the hill, clear of bowshot. Pretty soon we’re up there too. Lucas wants to attack; he says we’ll be court-martialed for cowardice if we don’t. “Are you crazy?” declares Rags. “These sand-trotters’ll murder us all.”

    The bandits take everything. We feel like fools. Tollo and Flag return; without a word they mount a pursuit. When the raiders see our mob coming, they dump the loot and flee. We recover it all. “Don’t lose a wink over this,” Tollo reassures us afterward. “You did right. It was my fault for leaving you.”
    But we are chastened. We have seen our wits go blank with terror and felt our limbs turn to stone from fear.
    On the march, the army lays over every five days to rest the stock. At home these would be off-days, spent in recreation or refurbishing of kit. Not in Alexander’s army. Out east, we train.
    We learn defense against cavalry. We learn hollow squares and moving screens; we learn how to feign a rush and how to recover. We even get to ride a little. For every primary mount, the grooms lead two remounts. These strings are the property of