Men of Winter

Chapter XVI

'Thrice you circled it, touching it everywhere, tempting the fighters to foil their own design.' — Odyssey 4

When everyone had gone I noticed the wind, which had picked up and was vibrating the sides of the tent. The fuel in Zlavik's stove had been depleted and the tent was growing cold.

"There is no reason to shout to each other, eh?" The commander moved to my end of the table and sat where Helena had. He refilled our glasses, emptying the vodka bottle. He undid the collar button of his uniform jacket. We sipped the vodka, then Zlavik spoke. "Hektr, do you believe in fate? In destiny?"

"I ... I am not sure." At the moment I was only sure of the vodka, the spice of which was heavy on my tongue.

"Well, I do, Hektr, I believe in fate. Twenty-five years I have been in the military. When you have been around death and disease that long, you begin to believe in destiny. Why does one man survive the field of battle and another lose his life? Training plays its part of course – I must believe in that too – but it does not explain why the most skilled warrior falls while the greenest novice lives to fight another day." Zlavik stopped to sip his drink.

I filled the silence with "I suppose," an incongruent response to Zlavik but the best I could do.

"I believe your coming here today, this day of all days, was destiny, Hektr. I did not know it until Miss Helena spoke of your abilities as a poet."

"Why today? What is special about today?"

"You have arrived on the eve of the greatest battle our country has known."

I did not know what to say.

Zlavik went to his bureau and came back with a map-sized piece of paper tied with black ribbon. He cleared space on the table, unrolled the paper, which was a map, and used objects at hand to hold down its uncooperative corners. "Do you recognize this place?"

My eyes had trouble focusing; I sipped the vodka to clear them.

Zlavik laughed. "You should know it – you are here." Zlavik's finger came to rest on a series of Xes drawn in pencil. "Here then is the GreatNorthernForest – with which you have some familiarity – then this is an open expanse, approximately three miles, then here is the opposing army, where they have been camped throughout most of the winter."

I stared hard at the map and tried to see them there – the barbarians, the seal-fuckers – but all I saw was faded white paper, just like where our army camped, amid their penciled in Xes.

"And here is the key, Hektr, the key to our great victory: Lake Aurora. Mark that name – it will go down in history. School children will sing songs about the Battle of Lake Aurora. They will draw pictures of its blue waters to keep by their beds at night – to keep away the bogeymen, just as Commander Anton Zlavik had kept them away, had defeated them for good."

I stared at the uneven line that ran perpendicular to the great forest. Its waters ran beyond the borders of the map.

"Do you know the story of Genghis Khan and his defeat of the Shah of Khwarizm?"

I knew of Khan of course but not the battle; I shook my head, gently.

"The Shah took refuge in the high-walled city of Otrar, on the edge of a desert so hostile not even the stalwart bedouin traversed it. Khan divided his army, which was already outmanned two to one, in half. One part he left under the direction of his second in command, who arranged his forces before the walls of Otrar as if to lay siege. Meanwhile, Khan himself led the other half of his army into the desert, intending to loop around and attack Otrar from the desert, from its unprotected side. Weeks passed and the Shah gained in confidence; he expected the remainder of Khan's army to pack up and go home any day. Then one morning Khan's second began what appeared to be a futile assault. The Shah planned to crush his enemies. Then, out of the desert, swept Genghis Khan – every man and horse alive, every weapon of war in working order. Bewildered and believing Khan to be a phantom, the Shah of Khwarizm surrendered his city and his kingdom."