Michael Wilson                                                      6000 words
Department of Mathematics
University of Vermont
Burlington, Vermont  05405
Phone: 802-656-4326
Fax: 802-656-2552
Email: wilson@math.uvm.edu


                      COMMAND PERFORMANCE

Callisthenes crossed the darkness that separated the 
main camp from the fires of the pickets. They were only a hundred yards
out, but they seemed further, and elevated---as if they were at
the top of an amphitheater and he were down near its stage.

He went in a straight line, which he knew to be safe. 
Alexander's men made their latrines out there. 
The breeze would shift---it was warm for late fall---and he
would smell them. The odor reminded Callisthenes of the soldiers' jokes.

One of the pickets saw him and alerted his companions. 
When they stood to attention, grounding their spears, they looked
like three surprised comedians. 
Callisthenes gave them a salute that was intentionally clumsy.
Being a civilian, he did not want to appear to mock them. 

Coming into the firelight was like entering a building.

"Where are they?" Callisthenes asked.

"This way," said the officer.

The two men walked toward the woods, stopping on the fringes 
of the firelight. The officer pointed.

"There. Near the trees."

Under the moonlight, the row of birches looked like an old man's teeth.
Callisthenes stared. The horsemen gradually appeared, like faces in a 
sorcerer's glass.

They were just out of bowshot. There were three mounted men, and there was 
a riderless horse. Callisthenes sensed that they had been there for some 
time. They were immobile.

"Not Scythians," he said, turning to the soldier. "In my uncle's library . . . "

The officer bowed his head at the mention of the great man. 

Irritated, Callisthenes asked, "Do they ever come closer?"

"Never!"

"They appeared as soon as we entered the mountains?"

"No, sir. After four days. Nine days ago."

"Did you see where the fourth man went?"

"Fourth man?"

"The empty horse."

The guard shook his head. "Every night, we see three men and four horses."

"Then it is a superstition," said Callisthenes. "A device to trick the gods. 
Our curses will fall on the man who `isn't there.'"

"`Man,' sir?" The soldier's voice expressed honest perplexity.

It was impossible to explain certain things to certain people. 
Callisthenes said, "Dra would know."

A thin cloud passed before the moon. The horsemen became indistinguishable 
from shadows.

Callisthenes said, "You would need a true seer to see them now."

They returned to the fire. Callisthenes questioned the pickets.
The horsemen would appear shortly after sundown. They had never attempted 
a parley or even a theft. A few days earlier, a patrol had gone out to catch 
them from behind. To ensure surprise, it had left from a distant
part of the perimeter. Unfortunately, and perhaps inevitably, 
the men had got lost in the dark, and had not returned until the next morning. 

"They show no signs of wanting anything from us," said Callisthenes.
He let the sentence hang there: half a question, half a theory.
"They are---curious?"

"Sir?"

"Or something else," Callisthenes said. He stood up. He thought of the 
latrines; he wondered if he should ask for an escort back to the camp. 
He turned to go. A thought stopped him. 

"The horse could be an offering," he said. "When they get what
they want, they will kill it. But this looks like Dra's
business. You should have sent for him."

                ********************************

"All men by nature desire to know."

"I know."

Callisthenes had frequently imagined, but never actually had, that 
exchange with his uncle. He had been living in the country with
his mother and her two brothers, running the estate, when the
summons came. It was a summons. Aristotle, his father's brother,
was officially a commoner, but the courier would not have come
without Philip of Macedon's knowledge and approval. 

The ride from Stagira to Pella should have taken thirteen days,
but the guides had refused to enter the city on an unlucky afternoon, 
and they had spent the thirteenth night in hills overlooking the town. 
The next day, they had found their path blocked by a landslide,
and the caravan had entered the royal city on the fifteenth day. 

To Callisthenes, who had spent three years in Athens, 
Pella had seemed to be the true philosopher's city. 
Its sights, like words in a foreign language, had
to be apprehended with the mind, not the eyes: this 
building was a palace, not a brothel; the barn beside it was 
a temple to Zeus. Stagira, never a wealthy city, had not been rebuilt 
after the Persian Wars, but it did not look more bleak than Pella.
On market days, Stagira's streets were almost impassable with
hawkers, top-heavy oxcarts, beggars, and herds of startlingly aggressive
sheep; the air was full of bargaining and cursing, serenades, and drums. 
But Pella seemed to exist in a perpetual mourning, like a field of execution,
except on festival days, when gangs of drunken soldiers made the poorer 
sections as dangerous as a city being sacked.

King Philip had met them outside the palace. The king's accent matched
that of Callisthenes' mother's cook.

"The household of Aristotle is the household of the king." Philip had 
half turned, stretching his right arm toward a young man who stood one
pace behind him. "Cousins!"

That man was Alexander. He was bandy-legged, and half a head shorter 
than his father. He had raised his face toward Philip and the new
arrival. His eyes had met Callisthenes' precisely on the utterance of 
the king's final word. It was as if he had caught the word as it fell,
knowing it would be there. 

Aristotle's villa lay on the right bank of a calm river, 
under hills on the western side of town. The villa had
reminded Callisthenes of an old friend, whom he had not seen 
since he was nine: Callisthenes had been in love with his friend's 
sister, and as a child he had dreamed of living with her in a house 
like this, near a river.

He had not seen his uncle for five years, since when the king 
had made Aristotle his son's tutor. Callisthenes' first impression was that 
his uncle had become somewhat like Pella, needing translation:
Not an old man who has acquired cunning to compensate for the loss of
his teeth, but Aristotle, the first student of Plato, and a 
great philosopher. He had vaguely noticed
that neither description fit the title, "uncle." 

Moved by his memory of the sister, Callisthenes had praised 
the beauty of his uncle's house. Aristotle had responded by calling 
it "an object unworthy of a philosopher's consideration," 
accepted reluctantly, and only out of deference to the king. 
He had said the same of the other gifts: the land, herds, slaves, and gold. 

A long, shaded terrace overlooked the water. Callisthenes had arrived 
in summer, and for three months they had taken their meals there. 
He had been able to hear the river. Lying out of sight, over the terrace wall, 
it had made him think of a creature that was continually drawing breath. 

The summons had said that he would become his uncle's apprentice, but
it had not named the trade. Through summer and fall,
Aristotle had sent Callisthenes into the mountains with attendants, 
and told him to bring back stones, small trees, antlers, beehives, soils, 
herbs, and bottles full of brackish waters. Knowing his nephew to be a 
skillful artist, Aristotle had urged Callisthenes to make sketches of 
anything noteworthy that was too large to bring home; he had given
"an amber mountain" as a helpful example. 

In winter, he had sent Callisthenes to search through his 
twenty thousand books for: descriptions of rare diseases; verses of
eccentric but exemplary style; true prophecies of earthquakes, plagues,
and eclipses; epitaphs erotic and polemical; hymns to vanquished gods; biased
accounts of inconclusive military campaigns; lives of merciful judges. 

In the spring, Callisthenes had attended the births of cattle, horses, 
pigs, sheep, and goats. He had analyzed each birthing process, and
classified its stages according to cause, effect, essence, accident, 
and function.

It was during the birth of a calf that he learned of Philip's 
assassination. A messenger had run from the city to the house, 
and then from there to the stable, breathless in his uncertainty,
not knowing whether to appear overjoyed or terrified. 
Callisthenes had stood up suddenly, with the newborn animal still
cradled in his arms. He had seen neither the king nor his son since the 
feast of the winter solstice, and very few times before then. 
He had almost come to think of the royal family as Greeks. 
Learning of the murder had been like coming into Pella for the first 
time---a second time.

The too-prompt executions of the conspirators had seemed to confirm that 
Alexander, if he had not initiated it, had at least known of the plot and 
not stopped it. But his complicity, universally suspected, was never 
spoken of. It had puzzled Callisthenes how anything could be known like that,
through silence. He had read of the night panics that appeared and
spread through defeated armies; it was like that.

Six months later, Alexander had marched east, and Callisthenes had 
accompanied him. In a personal audience, the young king had told Callisthenes 
how Aristotle had recommended him very highly. On behalf of the king's 
ex-tutor, Callisthenes would have every opportunity to collect, record, 
and investigate; he would have beasts and bearers, scribes and sheepskin, 
and leisure. Callisthenes had understood, with fearful immediacy, that this 
boon was too gracious to refuse. 

On the last night in the villa, Callisthenes had dreamed of his friend's 
sister. In the dream, the two of them were grown and married, and 
they lived by a river. Sea-pirates sailed upstream and captured 
them---having a dream-reason to keep them alive. Callisthenes and his wife 
planned how they would kill the pirates and gain their freedom. When he had 
woken, Callisthenes had been filled with a blank horror at the thought that 
their plot might be discovered, and that he might be killed (in the dream, 
to cause another's death was nothing). He did not even think of her.

The escort from the army had arrived at noon. Callisthenes had anticipated 
without pleasure the sort of advice that Aristotle would give him at their 
parting. But there had been no parting. Callisthenes had mounted the horse, 
and the party had waited in the dusty courtyard while a slave
searched the house. The slave had returned only moments
later, with the report that Aristotle could not be found. 
The officer had shouted the order to go almost before the slave
had finished speaking.

The camp, on the other side of town, was two miles wide. 
It stretched from the riverside to the base of the foothills.
There were tents, fires, pack animals, prostitutes, musicians, wagons, 
and merchants. Callisthenes had felt his heart lift, for the sight had eased 
his homesickness. He had pushed himself up on his horse, to try to see 
the king's tent, not knowing what to look for, except that the tent would 
be large and close to the center.

The escort had taken him to his own tent and presented him
to his servants. Callisthenes had already learned their names, along with
their many skills, just as he had known the number and varieties of 
the horses, ropes, baskets, and rolls of parchment and papyrus detailed to him.
Nevertheless, he had spent the rest of that day taking inventory, wanting
to appear busy when the king called. 

                        *************************

The king never called. During the first two months of the expedition, 
Callisthenes came into Alexander's presence on four occasions,
and not once did Alexander address him. All of their
dealings went through intermediaries. Callisthenes wrote letters
to the king---requisitions and administrative inquiries---and received 
written replies that referred to Alexander in the third person. 
A soldier explained that that was how the king treated all the civilians,
except for the augur. 

The augur was a man named Dra. He was neither Greek nor Macedonian.
Alexander had captured him in Illyria, during his maiden expedition. 
Callisthenes had never seen him in Pella. He believed, but was not sure, 
that he might have heard his name once, and mistaken it for a concubine's. 
He had heard Dra described soon after he came into camp, making it easy 
to recognize the man when he finally did see him. This was at a court-martial,
after they had been marching for two weeks.

Dra was much taller than Alexander, and he was so dark that even
the sunburned Macedonians remarked on his color. He had high cheekbones and 
black, crows'-feeted eyes. He was as thin as a beggar and, although the king's
gifts had made him rich, he dressed in rags that looked like torn sheets 
of bark.

Dra had stood next to the king's chair, resting his hand on the bronze 
eagle's crest. The charge was petty sacrilege: a soldier had desecrated
a shrine while drunk. Alexander had listened attentively to the statements
and the evidence, but without giving any signs of emotion. Then he had 
turned, almost looking over his shoulder, toward the seer. Like an anxious 
gambler watching his dice, Dra had bent forward and furiously whispered. 
The king had shaken his head. The soldier had got off with a fine.

Before every battle, the augur read the intestines of sheep and fowl. 
He gave his pronouncements in a rough mixture of his own language
and Macedonian that was like a piece of badly woven, uncombed wool:
its unintelligible strands were connected to nothing and pointed in 
incomprehensible directions. Yet Alexander listened. Victory
followed invariably.

                    *********************************

Callisthenes sent the king copies from his journals and
reports on his collections. He had spent the first two months fearing
and hoping for Alexander's judgments on them. When these had failed
to come, he had searched for evidence of some change in the king's attitude.
He could divine nothing. His people's food, their
place in the ranks, and the quality of their animals had remained constant.

For a month he had played with the idea of submitting blank scrolls, 
or scrolls that were covered (on the inside) with obscene pictures of 
Alexander and Dra (or, sometimes, Bucephalus). On more than one
morning he had woken with the dreadful thought that he had done it,
and spent the day in painful anxiety. When, by nightfall, no soldiers
had come for him, he could not be sure whether he had not, after all, 
insulted the king, or that no one---not even the bored Athenians attached 
to Alexander's staff---ever bothered to open the scrolls. Sometimes, going 
to sleep, he imagined himself, defiant and contemptuous, being dragged 
before the king, and owning his treason at the moment of his execution. 

Whenever the army halted for more than two consecutive nights, it was 
to prepare for a fight or to recover from wounds, not all of which were 
inflicted in battle. Diseases followed them like thoughts of home. Animals 
went lame; and men broke limbs in mishaps they could not later recall. 

Callisthenes had seen one battle, from a hilltop, standing amidst
the wounded, the baggage train, and the whores. It had made as little
sense as Dra's divination that morning. He had written down what he saw,
but when he read his account later, it had seemed like a description that
a man who has never lived among people might give of a human face changing
from apathy to rage. The masses of men moved, but the secret that tied the 
motions together lay out of sight. Callisthenes imagined it hiding under 
the battlefield.

He found his best opportunities for collection and observation 
on foraging expeditions. These always had the same commander, an 
aging captain who was said to be the oldest man in the army. The young 
officers said that he should have been retired after the Illyrian campaigns. 
He had no need for more loot, and they felt that he had not come
for glory, notwithstanding that, in their first big battle, 
he had rolled up the enemy's left flank with a daring cavalry charge.

Following that battle, Alexander had restricted him to foraging. 
The captain had accepted his reassignment without complaint.
However, some said that it had made him quick-tempered and reckless. 
At least once on each excursion he would take his horse into a too-high jump 
that could have killed him. Men who had tried to keep up with him 
had been crippled or killed. 

Callisthenes had heard rumors that the captain's recklessness had another
cause. This old soldier had wanted to stay in Macedon. Unfortunately, he
had been a popular commander in Philip's army, and Alexander had
believed that he was too dangerous to leave behind. His case 
resembled that of other officers, but he had been unlucky in not having
a son, especially a firstborn son, whom he could send in his place.

The foragers looked for ripe fields behind the mountains, since
the farms in the army's path were quickly exhausted. The animals and 
plants that Callisthenes found up there were less Greek-looking than 
in the valleys, but the specimens were nevertheless disappointing. 
The trees grew somewhat stouter than in Attica; the animals---hawks, jays, 
snakes---had longer or shorter tails, or all of the expected colors, but 
in unexpected places (bearers came back with fungi as large as oxheads);
but it was not so different. It was hardly worth a philosopher's 
consideration; or, Callisthenes thought, a philosopher's presence. 
He gave his orders and noted the "discoveries" automatically. He barely 
thought of them. He thought of the captain, pitied him, and compared him 
to his uncle. The captain was ten years older than Aristotle. The army life 
that Callisthenes experienced was softened by his privileges, but it would 
have killed his uncle within months. Everybody rose at dawn; everybody caught
the fevers. Callisthenes remembered the gentle river and the cool
terrace.

The foragers always found the mountain villages empty. (In contrast,
those in the army's path sent emissaries to meet it.) The huts were
lopsided cones of converging straight poles that had been covered with hides, 
bark, and mud. From the heights of the entrances, Callisthenes guessed 
these people to be short. They left few traces of themselves: no tools,
no clothing, no gods. The villages stank of human and animal
feces, but the interiors of the huts smelled of cold smoke,
because the fires would have been put out only a day or two before. 
So, the people could not have been far away. Perhaps they watched
while the soldiers stripped their fields. If so, they made no outcry;
they stayed invisible.

Callisthenes would walk through the uneven rows of huts and try to imagine 
them being like Stagira, full of dogs and gossip and children's cries.
Even in his mind, they remained silent. On warm days, when the stink was 
especially sickening, he would take refuge in a hut. For a moment, as 
the door flap closed, he would feel the silence seem to enfold him like 
the hut's walls. The walls' jagged texture would become like far-off 
trees or standing spears, and the people's language, just then, became like 
a song he had heard once, while falling asleep: Let the universe stand still, 
and it would return to him.

                      ********************************

Only once had they come across an un-Greek thing while on
the march. The army had advanced northeast through an undefended pass, 
and the main body had reached the next valley at mid-morning. They had 
halted for an hour while scouts had gone ahead, and Alexander decided 
whether to continue or to make camp.

The order came to proceed. The news spread through the ranks in minutes.
The army hissed like a cauldron as thousands of men stood up with their 
armor and weapons, and prepared to march.

Callisthenes had re-mounted, when he saw the black stone.

It looked like a cowled figure buried up to its chest: an idol to
a forgotten god. But the light was good, and he saw the markings.
He leaped from his horse and nearly twisted his ankle.

"Get the ropes!" The pain made him frantic. "Pull it out! Pull it out!"

Twelve of his beasts were unburdened of their loads. Orders were given 
and countermanded as the animals were pulled and shoved into a crooked 
double line. The servants tied ropes around the figure, close to the ground.
The train of animals lay acros the line of march, and the files 
had to part to get around them. Callisthenes tried to stay too busy to 
look at the soldiers, fearing their anger. 

However, he did not hear them complain. They treated the little group 
as they would any other obstacle: a copse of trees or a smoldering house. 
The only sound they made came from the rhythmic shaking of their gear.

And the stone did not move. 

"Spades!" The dust choked him and the word ended on a squeak. 

A narrow, deep trench was dug around the figure. The cords were re-attached. 
The animals' hooves dug into the dry earth. 

The stone did not move. 

A workman shouted, "Scholar!" The man straightened up, and he pointed 
with his spade toward the front of the army. A group was approaching.

It was Alexander. His staff followed a few yards behind. Dra was almost 
running to stay between them. 

"Kyrie." Callisthenes addressed the king in Greek. "I have found a most 
remarkable stone. For the delay, kyrie, I apologize. It has been more 
difficult than I expected." 

Callisthenes noticed that Alexander, who knew Greek, did not look at him; 
and that Dra, who understood no Greek, did.

Alexander said, "Where is it." The words came quickly and the voice was flat.

Callisthenes turned toward the stone. The king chopped the air with his 
right hand, and he and the augur advanced together. Callisthenes hurried 
after them. He shouted for his men to take off the ropes and move the 
animals out of the way.

The three men reached the stone simultaneously.

"Look at these." Callisthenes drew up his tunic and knelt on the ground. 
He wiped away dust with his hand. "Skeletons---in the stone. My uncle 
has seen them on mountaintops. They prove, they prove that the sea once 
covered the land."

A laugh exploded from Alexander's lips. It lasted precisely 
one second. The king slapped Dra on the chest with the back of
his hand.

The augur squatted on his flat feet and peered at the glyph-like
figures.

Aristotle claimed that he had seen an ape once. He had told Callisthenes 
how the animal had opened a nut---held it, tilted his head,
bit it, turned it over, bit again. Callisthenes had never seen an
ape. Until this moment he had forgotten the description. His uncle
had told him---it was unlike Aristotle to remember such a 
detail---about the striking innocence of the ape's eyes. It was the
eyes that spoiled the augur's face. Callisthenes searched for a 
comparison---wolf, snake, cat: none fit. It did not seem right to
call them human eyes.

The seer stood up. He pulled his torn cloak around him with a sudden,
jealous motion.  

"This rock," he said. "The king's good fortune. Large, like a man---leads 
many men. A part---the land that he will take. These---scarabs." He pointed 
to the glyphs. "Eternal life! The king!" 

Alexander beckoned to his staff. He spoke to the first man to reach him, 
too softly and quickly for Callisthenes to hear. The man vanished into 
the hosts. 

Callisthenes remained kneeling by the stone. The army had stopped. 
Hundreds of armed men were staring at them---at him. He realized, but 
without any feeling of comfort, that they did not look angry.

There was a commotion from where the man had gone. The ranks parted. 
The runner and two other men came through, leading a sheep by a rope halter. 
Callisthenes immediately stood up and stepped away. He knew what was going 
to happen.

Dra's hand, which had been empty, held a curved knife. He slashed the 
sheep's throat. The expert stroke cut the vein and the windpipe at the 
same time: Dra had not had to look. One man held an earthen bowl underneath 
the gushing wound, and in seconds the bowl overflowed with blood. Two men 
held the kicking, gasping animal. 

The blood spilled onto the priest's feet.

Dra placed his upturned hands under the bowl, raised it over the black 
figure, and emptied the blood onto the crown. He dropped the bowl. It broke 
on the ground. He placed his hands on the bloody head and, when they were
filthy, drew them onto his face. Then he shouted three words in his native 
tongue. 

A moment later, when Alexander nodded to his staff, everybody knew that 
the business was over.

The king, as he turned to go, glanced toward Callisthenes.
But he did not really look at him. It was the way that a pretty
girl looks at an ugly, unathletic man without a fortune. Callisthenes
remembered suddenly that he was Alexander's senior by six years. He did
not know why that fact seemed important. He watched the staff close around
its general, like a cloud sent by a protecting god.

             ******************************************

CALLISTHENES, FROM THE HIGHLANDS THAT SEPARATE THE REGIONS OF
THRACE AND SCYTHIA, TO ARISTOTLE AND HIS HOUSEHOLD: GREETINGS!

I send you my journals, with objects I have gathered since we entered 
these mountains five weeks ago. The manifests and catalogues must prove 
to you that they are worthy of a philosopher's consideration, and therefore 
I will not describe here even the most interesting of the finds.

I will, however, express a regret, that I could not send you an example of
a most remarkable species. 

It is, perhaps, a kind of man. 

It approaches our army in groups of three, every evening at sunset. 
They come mounted and---this is peculiar---there is always a fourth, 
riderless horse.

They do not attack our outposts. They do not approach us. By nature, 
you said, all men desire to know. What do these wish to know? Are they men? 
We have never heard them make any sound. They appear in a moment and, 
during the hours that they are visible, they hardly move. (The horses move.)

The soldiers believed them to be Scythians. However, they do not wear that 
people's peaked hat. Neither are they Thracians. Their horses are smaller 
than any others I have ever seen, not much bigger than ponies. Full-sized 
horses, I believe, would not be of much use in these woods. The men (not 
the horses!) wear leather helmets, trimmed with fur, which cover the tops of 
their skulls. They carry short spears; sometimes one of them will have
a sword, but, since we never see it drawn, we do not know whether it is
bronze or wood. They wear leather armor made of strips that have been woven 
like mats; or so they appear. Their beards and hair are short and black. 
They stay at such a distance that it is hard to say much about their faces. 
They seem somewhat rounder than ours---meaning yours and mine---but they are 
not so unlike the soldiers'.

I fear that they will try to send spies into our camp. I have attempted to 
discuss this danger with the sentries, but they do not take it seriously.
The horsemen may know our language (we do not know theirs: they have
been silent). Alexander's army is such a mongrel lot that the most 
barbarous accent can go unnoticed here.

I believe that a system of passwords, such as I am devising, will 
prevent this. I am confident of its merits, but I do not wish to present 
my project to the king until it is perfect. 

Let me know that you have received this letter. It is months since I have 
heard from you.

I go with the foragers tomorrow.

                  *************************************

The party assembled at the northwest corner of the camp just before
sunrise: drivers, bearers, a hundred mounted soldiers, a hundred foot 
soldiers, three hundred pack animals. The old commander watched them from 
the top of a fallen log. He stood with his legs apart and his arms folded 
over his chest. His facial features were hidden in the bad light, and his 
silver hair and beard surrounded the blank spaces like parts of a helmet. 

Faces were becoming visible. Callisthenes and his assistants took their 
place near the center of the forward cohort. The hundreds of bodies
moved into the woods.

At this hour the forest was not much darker than the land outside.
The air was humid. It felt warmer. Callisthenes welcomed
the wholesome odor of decay: it reminded him of farms. 

At first, they could barely see the forms that moved---men and horses---and
the forms that did not. A torch, far ahead, danced in and out of sight. 
The daylight strengthened, nearly three hours passed, and the sunbeams fell 
through the high branches like swords. The torch went out. The forest was 
as full of light as an ornamental pond. 

By the time the captain ordered a halt, Callisthenes had long
concluded that he would find nothing worthwhile on this trip. 
Callisthenes looked at his assistants, all of whom were dozing.
Would they have obeyed him if, back at the camp, he had ordered them
to go without him? Would Alexander have allowed it? He wished that
he, like Aristotle, had had a nephew to send in his place.

He realized then that he was a hostage: the guarantee of Aristotle's loyalty. 
He saw it at once. 

"Mother," he whispered.

He felt no surprise when, seconds later, the men around him started dying.

The arrows that flew through the clearing sounded like cautious breaths 
blown against a struggling fire. They became visible only when they hit 
their targets. Men screamed; horses reared. Macedonian curses
and the ring of falling armor filled the narrow clearing. The air became 
thick with dust.

Callisthenes was thrown from his horse. His elbow cracked against the ground. 
Through the legs of the maddened horses he saw faces appear between the trees. 

He shut his eyes and did not think of what he waited for.

There was a growling on all sides of them, coming closer. The voices were 
human, and terrifying, but guttural, and without exultation. It was like 
a dirge.

Callisthenes felt the shock as a spear struck the earth close to his face. 
His eyes sprang open. 

The barbarian wore a leather cap that made his skull look almost spherical. 
He had a black beard. A short bronze sword swung from his leather cuirass. 

He pulled the spear out of the ground. Callisthenes' body jerked away, 
then stopped.

The man had spoken in Greek. 

"Stand!" he repeated.

Callisthenes got to his feet. On his left he heard another horrendous scream. 
His head jerked: he dared not look. 

With his spear, the man motioned toward what had been the rear of the party.  

They stepped over horses' limbs and men's bodies. Callisthenes recognized 
faces. This one, with the open, bloody mouth, had smiled like he knew 
something when Callisthenes had showed the stone-glyphs to the king. 
That man, whose neck was bent back almost double, had stood beside him at 
a latrine trench three days ago. Further over, an arrow-pierced back stirred 
a memory. The incident? He could not remember. He had never known the names.

They stopped. The barbarian said something. It did not sound Greek. 
They were out of the corpses. Callisthenes raised his eyes. 

A barbarian was on a horse, leaning forward and slightly away from them.
He was listening. Callisthenes understood that this man was the leader.

Something imperceptible happened beyond the dust. The man turned to them.

"Are you a wise man?" he asked in Greek. Callisthenes did not answer. 
"Are you a wise man?"

"I am Callisthenes!"

The man on the horse said something to the first man---the guard. 
The noise of fighting was becoming more distant and sporadic. It
was like being in the center of a stage, Callisthenes thought, but
the story was at the edge or the top of the amphitheater. The savages, 
riding their ponies skillfully through the forest paths, were executing 
the remnants of the party.

Callisthenes felt his wrists being pressed together. He looked down. 
The guard tied the thong in three quick strokes, as if he were striking 
a flint, and then stepped back, holding the free end. The leader said 
something to the guard and the man shouted. He shouted three times.

The horsemen returned to the clearing. The men barely 
spoke---candleflames of conversation---and the sound of the
horses' hooves was like flowing water or a sleeper's breathing, as
they moved through the leaves and fallen twigs. The sound became
continuous and then stopped.

Callisthenes guessed that there were between three and four hundred of them.
They stared at him with what looked like a mixture of wonder and skepticism. 
It was as if he were a gem which they had dug out of the earth after much 
danger and hard work, and they were trying to believe that he was worth it.

The leader addressed the men. In the middle of his harangue he abruptly 
stopped, pointed at Callisthenes, and pronounced, "Wise man!" Then he 
seemed to wait. Callisthenes looked up. Did they expect him to speak? 
Many seconds passed. Suddenly, Callisthenes understood. 

"I am not the wise man! I am the wrong wise man! You want another wise man!"

The savages cheered. 

The crowd stirred. In the back could be seen three men leading a horse. 
The ranks parted as they approached. Callisthenes did not recognize their 
faces. Perhaps it had not always been the same men. But he understood that 
this was the horse.

It was small, like the others, and somewhat darker, but 
Callisthenes knew somehow that the darkness was not important. 
It could have had a white foot or a dappled rump, and those
would not have mattered. What distinguished this horse
was nothing about itself, but that it had been chosen.

The guard thrust a club into his bound hands. Men stood behind the horse's 
head on either side and gripped its bridle tightly. Callisthenes saw somebody
out of the corner of his eye, nodding, as if to encourage him. He raised the 
club. The men's mouths opened in anticipation.

"When they get what they want, they will kill it."

The club struck the skull and the horse dropped. Callisthenes looked up: 
eager nods. He hammered until all the kicking stopped.

He was blindfolded; the club was taken from his hands. The second action 
surprised him by its gentleness. He felt himself lifted up and set on a 
living horse. He gripped the mane, thinking: They have a dream reason to 
keep me alive. The darkness rang with barbarous cheers. 

The leader's words came again, now without a trace of Greek. He was 
beside Callisthenes; his mouth was close to his ear. Perhaps the leader
spoke only to him.  The leader spoke rapidly. He seemed to stumble over 
his words like an impatient, fretful suitor. His breath smelled like the 
air in the empty, dark huts.

The band moved out of the sunlit battlefield. The cool forest obliterated
the odors of panic and death. The leader, a warrior who bore many scars,
rode beside the wise man, the treasure he had captured from another world. 
He told the treasure of his people's love for him and their reverence
for his alien wisdom. He described the village where he would spend the rest
of his life. He described the children, their games, the gossipping women, 
and the thieving dogs. He promised the wise man that he would see all
of these things soon---in a few days---when they removed the blindfold.