The mounds and boulders scattered about the riverbed shivered and quaked, cracks appearing in the layer of snow covering them, and then they slowly rose as if being pushed out of the earth from the depths of hell, emerging unsteadily like enormous mushrooms, the snow sliding off into crumpled mounds on the side. Sharp, piercing eyes appeared from beneath, beastlike men with bushy, unkempt beards stood straight up out of the snow, raising their cloaks over their heads and shoulders and shaking the powder off, stamping their feet to bring feeling back to their frozen members, blowing puffs of vapor on their hands and rubbing their dry, cracked palms together. Xenophon stepped up the pace of his harangue, calling upon the men to seek out their brothers who might be too weak or demoralized to emerge from the snow, pleading with them to build their fires high and warm themselves. He denied the bitter cold and threw off his cloak, stripping himself naked in the biting air as if for his morning exercises, insisting that he felt no discomfort. He seized an axe that had been stuck into a tree for safekeeping and began to noisily hack at a rotten stump, until before my very eyes hundreds, thousands of men and surviving animals emerged from their frozen hell and began reentering the land of the living. Someone took Xenophon's axe from his hands and started to split the wood, someone else kindled a fire, and soon the air was redolent again of the fragrance of smoke and oil and roasted mule, the sounds of men groaning and complaining, belching and bitching and farting and scratching, the sounds of ten thousand men, starving and frozen and aching for women, the sounds of an army that has survived its most difficult battle yet, the sweetest sounds on earth.

Taking a head count, we discovered we had lost dozens of men that night to death and frostbite, and uncounted head of pack animals and other livestock. The short journey into the mountains had been disastrous. Conferring with each other, Xenophon and Chirisophus decided that despite the approach of Tiribazus' hordes at the rear, it would be foolhardy to continue on into the mountains under these conditions. The decision was made to billet again under shelter, in the same villages we had departed, if the enemy had not already taken over the hearths we had vacated. The men cheered when it was announced we would be returning-and in their enthusiasm to be again under a warm roof, they made the return trip in half the time as the outgoing one, sliding down the hills on frozen hides or their own backs, whooping like small boys and ignoring the freezing of their outer extremities, which was taking a terrible toll. We arrived at the villages before the enemy had taken them over, though our vanguard had not a little trouble ousting the enemy scouts who had arrived just a few hours before and were beginning to settle in. Those of the Hellenes who had burnt their quarters upon their departure now had their come-uppance, and were forced to beg or bribe sleeping space from their comrades, or make do in chicken coops and livestock pens. This, of course, was Asteria's lot in any case.

That night, Xenophon sent out a squad of scouts to reconnoiter the enemy's position. After searching all night for the fires we had seen earlier, they returned exhausted and empty-handed except for one surprising bit of plunder they had captured: a Persian light-armored regular, the likes of whom we had not seen since leaving Tissaphernes behind weeks before. This sent the captains into a great deal of consternation at first, wondering whether the wily satrap had somehow outwitted us and marched a course parallel to ours this whole time in an effort to entrap us in the wilderness.

It took us several hours of searching before we were able to find an interpreter, as the few Persian speakers that had previously marched among the Hellenes had been killed or lost in earlier engagements. We finally came across an old man of the village, one who had served in the Persian army decades before in Ionia and spoke broken, rusty versions of the two languages, besides a half dozen others. The old lout was rousted from bed, half drunk or dotty and swearing up such a storm in every language he knew, plus several he was most likely inventing on the spot, as to make our own Spartans blush like virgins. When Chirisophus saw him, he was much put off with the man's spouting and refused to have anything to do with him, accusing him of being mad. Xenophon, however, prevailed on him to use the old fellow, pointing out that there might be some residual wisdom in his madness, and claiming that we are all mad to a greater or lesser extent. Chirisophus stared at him a long time, and then walked away in disgust.

The prisoner was not difficult to interrogate. He was simply told that if he did not cooperate he would be stripped and left to die in the nearest snow drift, and this was enough to make the loose-lipped Persian sing like a nightingale. As it turned out, our fears regarding Tissaphernes were unfounded. Our prisoner was a mercenary working for Tiribazus, and had been foraging for provisions when surprised by our scouts. Tiribazus, apparently, had a large force of mercenaries, Chalybians and Taochians, so large, in fact, that he could prevent our passage without technically breaking his truce-which was that the Armenian army would not impede us. The mercenaries, said the prisoner, had skirted our position along the back trails of the mountains, picking up local irregulars along the way, and were planning to fall upon us in ambush in the narrow places and canyons along the route, blocking our retreat and annihilating us in the snow.

Upon hearing this the officers were outraged. "Do we need a fucking lawyer to negotiate a simple truce with these barbarians?" Chirisophus asked in disgust. "Do we need to insert clauses to cover main troops, Chalybian mercenaries, farmers with pitchforks, and housewives throwing dirty dishwater at us?"

Furiously, Xenophon ordered the army into battle formation, amid much protest, but the measure was nevertheless necessary. Sitting there immobile, we would soon exhaust all our provisions, and would be allowing Tiribazus and his mercenaries time to collect additional forces and fortify their positions. The grumbling main body of the army marched at once with the prisoner as guide, leaving guards at the villages under the command of Sophainetos the Stymphalian.

The men, in an evil mood, were ready for murder, if not of the enemy then of Xenophon and Chirisophus, but they soon gained satisfaction. The light-armed troops, including Nicolaus' Rhodians, who were plowing through the snow in the lead, surprised a large body of the enemy in their own camp, with their shields down. The Greeks pelted the mercenaries with a withering fire of arrows and sling-stones without even bothering to wait for the heavy troops to arrive, killing dozens at the first volley, then rushing upon them with shouts and further shooting. Asteria, who did her best to make herself useful by distributing spare bullets and offering water, told me that the whole skirmish was like a dream: The attackers ran and floundered through the deep drifts as if flailing through clouds, while the terrified enemy attempted a retreat equally slowly, falling down in the soft snow, slowly rising and again attempting to run through the waist-deep powder. The scene was unreal and nightmarish, with even the combatants' shouts muffled in the silence of the snowy woods. Life only returned to concrete, material reality when the Hellenic troops physically caught up to those of the mercenaries who dared to stay and defend themselves, and the contact of the ghostlike figures suddenly resulted in screams of agony and the spray of blood and limbs across the fluffy, virginal whiteness.

The enemy fled with many killed, and the Rhodians even captured Tiribazus' tent, filled with slaves and gold and silver utensils, proving that the treacherous satrap was directly involved in the proceeding. To us, however, the gold was worthless. More valuable were the twenty purebred cavalry horses left behind, not sufficient to make up for those lost on our previous foray into the mountains, but welcome nonetheless, for the troops were hungry.