Free The Man Who Was Left Behind by Rachel Ingalls

noticed the leather bags tied around the horses’ hooves to prevent them from sinking into the snow. Someone passed on horseback and said an encouraging word to the man who was carrying him. The wet snow beat into Mr. Mackenzie’s face and he closed his eyes again. He felt himself being let down to the ground on to the snow, so cold that it burned and made him open his eyes. The man who had been carrying him was doing something. Digging a grave, Mr. Mackenzie realized. That’s what he’s doing, he’s digging my grave. Another man walked to where he was lying. He heard the steps vague and swallowed in the flying snow and hearda voice, saying, “What do you think you’re doing? That man’s not dead yet. Pick him up.”
    The one who had been carrying him said, “I don’t care if he’s dead or alive, I’m not dragging him one more step.”
    Then Mr. Mackenzie heard it: the slap. And he saw Xenophon bending over him. The other man said, “Well, he’s dead now,” and Mr. Mackenzie wanted to say he wasn’t, but he couldn’t speak or move. The soldier dropped him down into the grave and piled earth over him and then heaped snow on top of that. The earth was cold but the snow felt warm, like a blanket, and he thought, they’re going to leave me behind, I must get out. He tried to move, to scrape away the earth and snow, but his hands moved so slowly. One of those terrible feelings, his wish to get out moving quickly quickly through him and his hands going so slowly. The way it sometimes happens in dreams. But this couldn’t be a dream because he could feel everything. He could feel the snow and how cold the earth was, burrowing through it.
    And then he was out.
    He looked around and it was spring, the snow was melting, and down in the plain the brown was turning to green. They had left him behind, thinking that he was dead. He stood up. Away to the north stretched the great plain with its fields and villages, the hills beyond, and beyond that the sea and home. From somewhere in the sky at a great distance he thought he could distinguish a voice. Oh Mr. Mac kenzie, sir, what happened? Oh my Lord, Lord. Don’t move, don’t you move. I’m sending for the doctor.
    Let me see, he thought, this is sometime around the fourth century B.C. If I can make my way north I could be at the great Library before Alexander comes to burn it down.
    He began to walk down the slopes. No other person was in sight, and his own people must be miles away by now,marching over the hills and plains, green now and full of growing fields, impossible to catch up to. He imagined them as they must have looked disappearing over the farthest ridge at the horizon, the winter sunshine glinting on their helmets, their eyes tired, with the winter still in them. Again he thought he heard a sound that might be water or leaves rubbing against each other, seeming to be saying something like Charlie, Charlie, can you hear me? You hold this to his mouth, hold that there, we II need the ambulance.
    But to walk, alone, all the way to the coast—it might take him years. Even if he kept his strength up, there were other dangers to consider, such as the undoubted hatred of the people through whose lands they had been marching.
    The wind overhead made a wailing sound as he reached the plains, and a word came into his head: Oxygen, quick, the oxygen. A Greek word.
    And that was the trouble. The army had marched off and left him, one lone Greek in the middle of the great Persian plains. He did not look like the people who lived there, he did not speak their language, and there was nowhere for him to hide among that enemy country lovely now with spring, that stretched away for thousands of miles into the horizon where the management had locked the doors to make sure that nobody got out without paying.

Something To Write Home About
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