Chapter III — the legend

Armies have fallen
to a spoonful.

401 BC. Xenophon writes of ten thousand soldiers who ate honey by the Black Sea and lay down for a day as if enchanted.

Centuries later it was sold in Turkish markets as deli bal — the maddening honey — and traded for the weight of silver.

In Nepal, the Gurung keep no ledgers. Only songs, and the names of the men who climbed.