Time’s Eye

These Mongols had been trained to withstand gunfire, he realized. Sable —it had to be, just as they had feared. His heart sank. He snapped in another magazine, and fired again.

But the Mongols were closing. Abdikadir and the other riflemen had been assigned a shield bearer each, but these were being brushed aside. One horseback rider almost got through to Abdi, and he had to swing the rifle, using the butt as a club. He got a lucky hit on the man’s temple, and the Mongol reeled back. Before he could recover Abdikadir had shot him dead, and was looking for the next target.

***

From his elevated position on the Ishtar Gate Josh could see the great sweep of the battle. Its bloody core was still the slab of struggling men and animals, directly before the gate, where the Mongol heavy cavalry had collided with Alexander’s Foot Companions. The Eyes were everywhere, like floating pearls above the heads of the struggling warriors.

The heavy cavalry was the Mongols’ most powerful instrument, designed to smash the enemy’s strongest forces in a single blow. It had been hoped that a sudden assault with gunfire would do enough damage to the heavy cavalry to blunt that blow. But for whatever reason the Mongols had not fallen back as had been hoped, and the armed troops were getting bogged down.

This was bad news. There had only been three hundred British troops in Jamrud, after all. Their numbers were no match for the Mongols, and even if every single bullet took a Mongol life, Genghis’s troops would surely overwhelm them at last, through sheer numbers.

And now the Mongols threw more cavalry around the wings of the battlefield to envelop the enemy. This was again expected—it was a classic Mongol maneuver called the tulughma— but its sheer ferocity, as the new units smashed into the Macedonians’ flanks, was staggering.

But Alexander wasn’t done yet. Trumpets pealed out again from the city walls. With a great clang, gates were thrown open, and the Macedonian cavalry at last rode out into the field. Even as they emerged they were in their tight wedge formation. At a glance Josh could see how much more skillful these horsemen of ancient times were than the Mongols. And, at the head of the Companions who rode out from the right-hand side, Josh recognized the bright purple cloak and white-plumed helmet of Alexander himself, a panther skin thrown over his saddle cloth, as ever leading his men to glory or death.

The Macedonians, fast, agile, and tightly disciplined, wheeled to cut into the Mongol flank like a scalpel. The Mongols tried to turn, but, compressed now between the stolid Macedonian infantry and the Companions, their movements were constricted, and the Macedonians began to jab at their unprotected faces with their long wooden spears. It was another classic tactic, Josh knew—a battle formation perfected by Alexander the Great, yet inherited from his father before him, with cavalry on the right delivering the killer blow, and the central infantry following up with its dogged pressure.

Josh was no advocate of war. But he saw a kind of elation in the eyes of warriors on both sides as they hurled themselves into the fray: a kind of release that the moment in which all inhibitions could be shed was here at last, and a sort of joy. Josh felt a deep visceral thrill as he watched this ancient, brilliant maneuver unfold before his eyes—even as men fought and died in the dirt below, each one a unique life snuffed out. This is why we fight wars, we humans, he thought; this is why we play this game with the highest of stakes: not for profit, or power, or territory, but for this intense pleasure. Kipling is right: war is fun. It is the dark secret of our kind.

Perhaps that was why the Eyes were here—to enjoy the unique spectacle of the universe’s most vicious creatures dying in the dirt. Josh felt resentment, and a certain squalid pride.

Save for some reserves, nearly all the forces were in the field now. Apart from a few cavalry skirmishes on the fringe, the battle was concentrating into that tight, bloody mass of carnage at the center of the field, where men lashed at each other relentlessly. Still the fire pits burned, throwing up smoke that obscured the action, and still arrows rained down from the walls of Babylon.

Josh could no longer tell which way the advantage of the battle went. It wasn’t a time for tactics now, and the opposing generals, perhaps the greatest of all time, could do no more—save, like Alexander, to swing swords themselves. It was a time to fight, or die.

***

Bisesa’s medical station was overwhelmed. There was no other word for it.