Time’s Eye

Alexander’s army unit set up its camp half a kilometer from Jamrud. Soon the fires were lit, and the usual extraordinary mixture of military base and traveling circus established itself. That first evening there was a great deal of suspicion between the two camps, and British and Macedonian troops patrolled up and down an implicitly agreed border.

But the ice began to break on the second day. It was Casey who started it, in fact. After spending some time in the border zone, facing down a short, squat Macedonian veteran who looked about fifty, Casey, with gestures, challenged him to a milling. Bisesa knew what this was about: a tradition among some military units where you joined in a one-minute, no-rules, no-holds-barred boxing match and simply tried to beat the living shit out of your opponent.

Despite his aggression, it was obvious to everybody that one-legged Casey was in no shape for such a contest, and Corporal Batson stepped into the breach. Stripped to trousers and braces, the Geordie might have been a twin of the squat Macedonian. A crowd quickly gathered, and as the contest was joined the baying of each side for its champion rose up. “Get stuck in, Joe!” “Alalalalai!” Casey timed the contest, breaking it up after its regulation minute, by which time Batson had taken a lot of blows to his body, while the Macedonian’s nose looked broken. There was no clear winner, but Bisesa could see a grudging respect had been established, the crude regard of one fighting soldier for another, just as Casey had intended.

There was no shortage of volunteers for the next match. When one sepoy came away with a broken arm, the officers stepped in. But a new sporting contest began at the Macedonians’ suggestion, this time a game of sphaira. This Macedonian tradition turned out to be a game played with a leather ball, a pick-up-and-run affair a bit like British rugby, or American football—but a lot more violent. Again Casey got involved, marking out the pitch, agreeing to rules, and acting as referee.

Later, some of the Tommies tried to teach the Macedonians the rules of cricket. Bowlers hurled a hard cork ball, battered by overuse, down a strip of dirt marked by sets of improvised stumps, and batsmen swung homemade bats with abandon. Bisesa and Ruddy paused to watch. The game went well, even if the rule of leg-before-wicket was a challenge to the Tommies’ miming skills.

All this went on right beneath a floating Eye. Ruddy snorted. “The human mind has a remarkable capacity to swallow strangeness.”

One wild drive sent the ball flying into the air, where it collided with the hovering Eye. It sounded as if the ball had hit a wall of solid rock. The ball bounced back into the hands of a fielder, who raised his hands in triumph at his dismissal of the batsman. Bisesa saw that the Eye was quite unperturbed by this clout.

The cricketers gathered into an arguing knot. Ruddy pulled his nose. “As far as I can tell, they are arguing about whether a bounce off the Eye constitutes a valid catch!”

Bisesa shook her head. “I never understood cricket.”

Thanks to all these initiatives, by the end of that second day much of the tension and mute hostility had bled away, and Bisesa wasn’t surprised to see Tommies and sepoys slipping into the Macedonian camp. The Macedonians were happy enough to exchange food, wine and even souvenirs like boots, helmets and Iron Age weapons for glass beads, mouth organs, photographs and other trinkets. And, it seemed, some of the camp prostitutes were prepared to offer their services to these wide-eyed men from the future for no payment at all.

On the third day, Eumenes sent a chamberlain to the fort, who summoned Captain Grove and his advisors into the presence of the King.

22. The Map

It was the dirt that Kolya hated most. After a couple of days in the tent city he felt as filthy as a Mongol himself, and as lice-ridden—in fact he believed the parasites were homing in on him, a source of untapped, fresh meat. If the food poisoning didn’t kill him, he’d probably be bled to death.

But Sable said they had to fit in. “Look at Yeh-lü,” she said. “He’s a civilized man. You think he grew up covered in shit? Of course not. And if he can stand it, you can.”

She was right, of course. But it didn’t make life with the Mongols any easier.

Genghis Khan, it seemed, was a patient man.

***

Something incomprehensible had happened to the world. And whatever it was had fractured the Mongol empire, as was shown by the severing of the yam, the great empire-wide arteries of waystations and couriers. Well, Genghis Khan had built an empire once, and whatever the state of the world, he would do it again—he, or his able sons. Yeh-lü, however, was advising Genghis Khan to wait. It was always the Mongol way to allow information to be gathered before determining which way to strike, and Genghis Khan listened to his advisors.