"Do you think you could make a good spy for me?" Philip asked.
I had been summoned into his work room. The trestle table was bare, except for a pile of scrolls in one corner. There were no servants, no wine.
"A spy?" I blurted.
"Why not?" Philip mused aloud, leaning back in his leather sling-chair. "The best spies are men who seem to be part of the background, men who are not noticed by the people they're spying on. Or women, of course, but that's something else altogether."
I stood at attention before him, not knowing what to say.
"Don't look so miserable, Orion," the king said with a crooked grin. "I'm not asking you to sneak around and pry into locked rooms."
"I don't understand, sir."
He scratched at his beard. Then, "I am sending Aristotle to Athens as an informal diplomat, to make contact with the men there who are against Demosthenes and in favor of making peace with me. He will need an escort. I would like you to head his escort."
"Yes, sir," I replied. "But spying?"
He laughed. "Just keep your eyes and ears open. See everything. Listen to everyone. Remember it all and tell it to me when you return. That's what spying is."
I felt relieved. I could do that easily enough. And to leave Pella would mean leaving Olympias and her witch's spell over me. I felt far more than relieved over that. Philip dismissed me after telling me that Aristotle would depart the following morning. But as I started for the door I realized that this mission would take me away from Alexandros. What of the task Olympias gave me to protect her son?
"By the way," Philip called before I could reach the door latch. "My son will be going with you. He's never seen Athens. Neither have I, for that matter."
I turned back to the king.
"He'll have a few of his Companions with him. They'll be travelling incognito—if that young hothead can manage to keep his mouth shut, that is." He sighed like a worried father. "I want you to take special care of him, Orion. He is the future of this kingdom."
I must have smiled foolishly, for Philip looked surprised. Then he grinned back at me. As I left him I felt an immense sense of relief. Philip meant no harm to his son. He wanted me to protect Alexandros just as much as Olympias did. And Olympias must have known of this mission to Athens last night. Perhaps it was all her idea, to have her son see Athens, and Philip was just as much of a pawn in her hands as I was. Perhaps I would not be out of her grasp even in distant Athens.
Still, I felt a new sense of freedom once we had left Pella behind us. The crisp air of the open fields and wooded hills was like wine to me. The sky was bright and clean; the intrigues and intricacies of the capital faded away as we rode our mounts along the trail that wound through the rising, rocky countryside.
The trip turned into a travelling school. Aristotle had been Alexandros' tutor until just about a year ago, and now as we rode our horses across the hills and through the mountain passes heading southward, the gnomish old man became engrossed with every fold of the land, every bird and beast and insect, every blade of grass or burr of thistle.
He sent Alexandros and his Companions scurrying across the countryside collecting samples of everything from grass seeds to rocks. Hephaistion, who seemed especially close to Alexandros, got himself half-killed by wasp stings when he tried to collect a sample of the nest they had constructed in a dead tree. Aristotle tended the lad himself with mudpacks and soothing ointments, all the while telling us that his father had been a physician and had been bitterly disappointed when Aristotle did not follow in his footsteps.
I had expected the old man to travel in one of the wagons, but he rode horseback as the rest of us did. The servants, of course, rode mules. We had hired professional teamsters to handle the ever-increasing number of wagons in our train.
The high road south wound its way through the rocky Vale of Tempe, between Ossa and craggy Mount Olympos, its lofty peak already gleaming with snow.
"The abode of the gods," said Aristotle to me as we rode through the brisk autumn morning. Brittle dead leaves strewed the trail; our horses snorted steam in the early chill.
"Only in legend," I replied.
He looked up at me, his brow furrowed. "You don't believe in the gods?"
I must have made a bitter little smile. "I believe in them, but they don't live up there in the cold. They take better care of themselves than that."
Aristotle shook his head. "Remarkable. For a man who has no memory, Orion, you seem very certain of your knowledge about the gods' residence."
"We could climb the mountain," I said, "and see for ourselves if the gods are living up there."
He laughed. "See for ourselves! Very good, Orion. Very good. The essence of truth is knowledge gained by examination. I'll make a philosopher of you yet!"
"The essence of truth," I muttered.
"Truth is often difficult to determine, Orion. Sokrates gave his life seeking for it. My own teacher, Plato, tried to determine exactly what truth is, and he died brokenhearted."
I wondered silently what the essence of truth might be. Were my dreams truer than my waking reality? Were my hazy recollections of other lives true memories or merely desperate fantasies of my mind?
He misinterpreted my silence. "Yes, I differ from Plato's teachings. He believed that ideas are the essence of truth: pure ideas, with no physical substance whatsoever. I cannot accept that. To me, the only way to discover truth is by examining the world about us with our five senses."
"You say that Plato died of a broken heart?"
The gnomish old man's face grew somber. "Dionysios invited Plato to his city of Syracuse, in distant Sicily. There Plato instructed him on how to be a philosopher-king, a great leader among men. It isn't every day that a philosopher has a king for his student."
"What happened?"
"Dionysios listened very carefully to Plato's ideas about the ideal republic. And he used those ideas to make himself absolute tyrant of Syracuse. His son was even worse. He threw Plato out of Syracuse, sent him packing home to Athens."
"So much for the philosopher-king," I said.
Aristotle gave me a troubled look, then fell silent.
Our little band was growing larger every day with Aristotle's constantly-growing collections. We had to buy more mules and wagons and more men to tend them. The pack train would be twice the size of our original group by the time we reached Athens. There was already snow on the lower mountaintops, and the trees were turning gauntly bare. I urged our band southward through the narrow pass of Thermopylai, where Leonidas and his Spartans had stood against the invading Persians of Xerxes more than a century and a half earlier.
Alexandros insisted that we stop and do homage to the brave Spartans, who died to the last man rather than surrender to the Persians.
So there on the narrow rocky shelf between the grim mountains and the heaving sea, near the hot springs for which the pass was named, we paid honor to ancient heroes while the winds keening down from the north warned of impending winter. Alexandros spoke of the Persians with contempt, ending with, "Never will our people be free until the Persian Empire is shattered completely."
Aristotle nodded agreement. The men were impressed with his words. I was more impressed with the smell of snow in the graying sky. We moved on.
"One thing that Alexandros did not mention," said Aristotle from the back of the gentle chestnut mare he rode, "was that the Macedonians allowed Xerxes and his army to travel through their territory without raising a finger against them. They even sold the Persians grain and horses and timber for their ships, as a matter of fact."
He spoke with a forgiving smile, and in a low voice so that no one could hear but me. Even so, he added, "But that was a long time ago, of course. Things have changed."
I had expected Attica to be somewhat like Macedonia, a wide fertile plain ringed with wooded mountains. But instead the mountains marched right to the edge of the sea, and they were mostly starkly bare rock.
"The Athenians cut down their forests over the generations to make ships for their incessant wars," Aristotle told me. "Now the country is fit for nothing but bees."
Alexandros rode up between us. "You can see why the Athenians took to the sea," he said excitedly. "There isn't enough farmland here to feed a village, let alone a great city."
"That's why they depend on the grain from beyond the Bosporus," I guessed.
"That's why they want to hold onto the port towns. We can strangle them by taking all their ports away," said Alexandros. Suddenly his eyes lit up. "When I make war against the Persians, the first thing I will do is to take all their port cities. That will make their fleet useless!"
And he galloped off to tell his friends of his sudden strategic insight.
Philip's command was that Alexandros and his Companions—he had brought four of them—should remain incognito while in Athens. They were to be nothing more than part of the guard for the revered teacher and philosopher, Aristotle. I knew it would be difficult to keep these high-born Macedonians from shining through any disguise; especially Alexandros, who wanted to see everything and be everywhere. He would never follow my orders. Any Athenian with half an eye would see that this was the golden-haired son of Philip who was already becoming something of a legend throughout the land.
We entered Athens without fanfare, stopping at the city gates only long enough to tell the guards on duty that this was Aristotle of Stagyra come to visit his old friend Aeschines, the lawyer. As we rode through the narrow, winding, noisy streets I saw the great white cliff of the Acropolis rising before us and, gleaming atop it, splendid marble temples and an immense statue of Athena, the city's protectress.
My heart leaped in my chest: Of course! This is her city! This is the place where I will find her.
As if he could read my thoughts, Alexandros said to Hephaistion, riding beside him. "We must go up there and see the Parthenon."
His young friend, tall and lean and dark where Alexandros was short and solid and blond, shook his head. "I don't think they allow visitors up there. It's sacred ground."
"It's where they keep their treasury," Ptolemaios said, laughing. "That's why they don't allow visitors."
"But I'm not merely a visitor," Alexandros snapped. "I am the son of a king."
"Not on this trip," said Ptolemaios, like a big brother. "We're just escorts for the old man."
Alexandros tried to stare Ptolemaios down, found he could not, then turned to stare at me. I looked the other way. Yes, I said to myself, it's going to be very difficult to keep him under control.
The house of Aeschines, the lawyer, was more magnificent than Philip's palace. It was smaller, of course, but not by much. Its portico was all marble, its walls decorated with colorful friezes of nymphs and satyrs. Statues crowded the garden like a marble forest: grave men in solemn robes and nubile young women in various stages of undress.
Aeschines himself was not at home when we arrived, his major domo told Aristotle. He spoke Attic Greek, not the Macedonian dialect, but I could understand him just as well. The lawyer was pleading a case before the Assembly and would probably not return until nightfall. We had several hours to unpack and settle into the spacious guest wing of the house.
"Is it true?" I asked Aristotle as we watched the slaves unload his specimens and cart them off into the room that had been given him for his studies. "Are all Athenians lawyers?"
The old man laughed softly. "No, not all Athenians are lawyers. Some are women. Many are slaves."
I took an especially heavy crate from a staggering, frail older slave and started off toward the philosopher's work room with it on my shoulder. Aristotle walked beside me as we entered the house.
"They say this city is a democracy," I said, "where all the citizens are equal. Yet they have slaves."
"Slaves are not citizens, Orion. Nor are women."
"Then how can it be a democracy if only a portion of the population has political power?"
He countered with another question. "How can the city manage without slaves? Will the looms run by themselves? Will crates carry themselves from place to place? You might as well ask that we give up horses and mules and oxen as give up slaves. They are necessary."
I fell silent. But once I had gently deposited the crate on the floor of his workroom, Aristotle carried his lesson a step farther.
"You have hit upon a sensitive point, Orion. Democracy is to be preferred over tyranny—the rule of one man—but democracy itself is far from perfect."
Deciding to play the student, I asked, "In what way?"
There were no chairs in the workroom as yet. Nothing but the crates that the slaves were bringing in. Aristotle peered at one, decided it was not too fragile to sit upon, and planted himself on it. I remained standing.
"When all political decisions are to be made by a vote of the citizens, then the man who can sway the citizens most easily is the man who makes the real decisions. Do you see the sense of that?"
"Yes. A demagogue can control the citizenry."
"You say 'demagogue' with scorn in your voice. The word merely means 'leader of the people.' "
"The Athenians have turned the word into something else, haven't they?"
He blinked at me. "How do you know so much, when you have no memory?"
"I am learning quickly," I said.
He did not look entirely satisfied. Still, he went on. "Yes, it's quite true that orators like Demosthenes can sway the Assembly on tides of passion and rhetoric. It is Demosthenes who has goaded the Athenians into making war against Philip. It is his demagoguery that I must counter."
"Are you an orator, also?"
He shook his head wearily. "No. Orators can be hired, Orion. They are merely lawyers who work for a fee."
"Then who does Demosthenes work for?"
The old man gave me a puzzled look. "He has clients, of course. Civil suits, damage claims, inheritances. That is what buys his bread."
"But who pays him to speak against Philip?"
"No one. At least he claims to do it as a free Athenian citizen."
"Do you believe that?"
Aristotle stroked his beard. "Now that I think on it, no, I do not."
"Then who pays him?"
He thought a moment longer, then replied, "Logically, it must be the Persians."
Aeschines arrived home shortly after sunset, full of apologies for being late and warm greetings for his old friend. He was a smallish man with a pot belly, a red face and bulging frog's eyes. Apparently he had been a student of Aristotle's when the philosopher had taught at Plato's school in the Academy district of the city some years earlier.
"Demades speaks to the Assembly tomorrow," he told us, as his servants scurried to bring wine and goat cheese. His face went grim. "And then Demosthenes."
"I must hear them," said Aristotle.
Aeschines nodded.
Supper was served in a sumptuous room with an intricate tile mosaic for a floor and a meager fire crackling and spitting in the fireplace—just enough to ward off the autumnal night chill. Philip had ordered that Alexandros remain incognito, even to his host, so he and his beardless Companions were introduced merely as young noblemen. Alexandros was such a common name among the Macedonians that there was no need to give the Little King an alias. Most Macedonian nobles had at least a passing knowledge of Attic Greek, especially the younger ones. Philip had seen to that.
Aeschines gave Alexandros a crafty look when Aristotle introduced him, but said nothing more than he said to all the others, including me, when names were exchanged.
The talk around the supper table was all of Demosthenes.
"He is whipping up the people to a war frenzy," Aeschines told us unhappily. "They go to listen to him as if they were going to the theater, and he gives them a good performance. By the time he's finished speaking they're ready to arm themselves and march against Philip."
Aristotle shook his head, brow furrowed with worry.
"But Athens is already at war with us," Alexandros said.
Aeschines replied, "Technically, yes. But until now the Athenians have been content to let others do the fighting for them. They have sent silver against Philip, not Athenian troops."
I recalled that I was one of the mercenaries that Athenian silver had bought.
"And ships," added Ptolemaios. "Athens uses its navy against us."
"To little avail," Alexandros boasted. "Soon they won't have a port to put into north of Attica."
"There is talk," said Aeschines gloomily, "of making an alliance with Thebes."
"Thebes!" A stir went around the long table.
"They have the best army outside of Macedonia," Hephaistion blurted.
"Their Sacred Band has never been defeated," said dark-skinned Nearkos.
"Well, neither have we," Alexandros countered.
Harpalos, sitting on Alexandros' left, made a disappointed frown. "Maybe we haven't been defeated in battle, but the king has walked us away from victories. Perinthos isn't the first city that we've besieged without taking."
Alexandros' face started to turn red with anger. Aristotle spoke up. "Philip has gained more cities at the parley table than on the battlefield," he said mildly. "That is the art of a true king: to win without bloodshed."
"There will be blood between Athens and us," Alexandros predicted, his anger barely under control.
"I fear you're right," Aeschines agreed. "Demosthenes will not stop until he has them marching against the barbarians."
"Barbarians?"
"You," he said directly to Alexandros. "He calls you barbarians. And worse."
Again trying to ward off an explosion, Aristotle said, "To the Athenians, anyone not of their city is a barbarian. The word originally meant stranger, nothing more."
"But that's not how Demosthenes uses it now," Aeschines said.
I could see Alexandros was struggling to control his temper. "I saw him once, years ago," he muttered. "He came to Pella at the king's invitation. He was so flustered he became completely tongue-tied. He couldn't speak a complete sentence."
"He speaks whole sentences now," Aeschines said, somberly. "With devastating effect."
"I must hear him for myself," Alexandros said through tight lips.
But there was something else the prince wanted to see first. We were all quartered in one large room, all except Aristotle. After supper, as I was preparing for bed, I saw that Alexandros and his Companions were heading for the door, cloaks wrapped around their shoulders, swords at their sides.
"Where are you going?" I demanded.
"To the Acropolis," Alexandros replied, smiling like a boy setting off on an adventure.
"It's forbidden. The gates to the Sacred Street are locked."
"There's a trail up the cliff side. One of the servants told me of it."
"You're going to follow a servant?"
"Yes, why not? I want to see the temples up there."
"Maybe we'll raid their treasury." Ptolemaios laughed.
"Perhaps it's a trap," I said.
"We are armed."
"I'll go with you."
"That's not necessary, Orion."
"Your father commanded me to take good care of you. If you break your neck climbing the cliff in the moonlight, I'd better jump off and land beside you."
He laughed as I grabbed my sword and cloak and went with them, thinking that his mother had also ordered me to protect him.
The climb was much easier than I had feared. The moon was bright, although the night wind cut like a razor. The servant turned out to be a young girl, no more than twelve, I guessed. Harpalos had spotted her in Aeschines' household. I imagined that he intended to reward her by taking her virginity.
We reached the flat top of the cliff without trouble and stood gazing at the Parthenon and the other temples. The Parthenon was absolutely breathtaking: graceful fluted columns, perfect Pythagorean symmetry, wonderful friezes along the roof line so marvelously carved that the cold marble figures seemed almost to come alive. I had seen it before, I realized. It stood, in all its original harmonious balance, in the empty city of the Creators that I had visited in my dreams.
It was wondrously beautiful, especially in the soft silver radiance of the moonlight. And standing in front of it was the giant statue of Athena, warrior goddess and patroness of the city, goddess of wisdom whose sacred symbol is the owl.
We all stood gaping at the marble splendors of temples and statues. All of us except Alexandros. He took everything in with a single glance, then strode purposefully toward the statue of Athena.
I hurried after him.
"They say you can see the sunlight glinting off her spear tip from the harbor of Piraeus," he told me.
The gigantic statue was clad in ivory. Her upraised spear reached higher than the Parthenon's peaked roof. In the moonlight Athena towered above us. Her face was painted, her eyes as gray as my own. But empty, blank, cold ivory.
Alexandros started up the temple steps. "There's a smaller statue inside. They say it's clothed in gold."
It was. This statue was merely twice life-size, much more graceful, much more lifelike. In the shadows inside the temple it seemed to glow with an inner radiance. It's the gold leaf of her robe catching stray moonbeams, I told myself. And then I looked up into her face.
I recognized her. Athena, Anya, Ardra, I had known her under many names in many times and places. Known her and loved her. And she had loved me. But now I was alone in this timeplace, without her, without my love, lost and abandoned.
I felt a cold dark misery enveloping me. I could remember so little, yet I remembered her. The face of this statue was the face of the woman I had loved. No, not a mortal woman. A goddess.
I was a creature, a mortal fashioned by the Creators to do their bidding. I had dared to fall in love with a goddess who had dared to take human form and fall in love with me. And now I was without her.
I strained with every fiber of my being to make that statue stir, to bring it to life, to have her breathe and move and smile at me.
But it remained cold marble sheathed in gold. I could not reach beyond its form to find the goddess it represented.
"Come on," said Alexandros brusquely. "I'm getting cold. Let's go back to our beds."
Feeling as cold and dead as the stone all around us, I followed him back to the house of Aeschines.
The meeting of the Assembly was held in the open air, under the crisp clear blue sky, in the natural auditorium created by the hill slope facing the Acropolis. A huge crowd turned out. Although only free male citizens could vote in the Assembly, there was no law prohibiting the whole city from listening to the orators. I imagined that clever demagogues could work up the crowd to fever pitch and sway the voting citizens with mob passion.
The orators had to compete with the vendors from the market place hawking broiled lamb strips, wine, nuts, even honeyed fruits. And when the wind gusted from the direction of the Agora there were the smells of butchered meat and dried fish in the air. And flies.
The orators' stand was cut out of the natural rock of the hillside. Off to one side the fifty members of the city council sat on stone benches.
Demades was the first to speak. He was tall and slim, elegant-looking. His powerful deep voice carried well all the way to the rear of the crowd, where I stood with Alexandros and his Companions. I was tall enough to see over the heads of the throng, but Alexandros had to stand on tip-toe and try to see between those in front of us.
"Why should we tax ourselves to fight a man who harbors us no ill-will?" Demades asked. "What do we care of the petty squabbles in the northern lands? Philip has no intention of fighting us; why do we strive against him?"
A voice in the crowd shouted back, "He stole our grain!"
Seeming to ignore the heckler, Demades went on, "This pointless war increases our taxes, drains our treasury, and sends our navy out on foolhardy missions. Philip has no desire to harm us. Even when he seized the grain harvest from our ships he returned it to us in exchange for a city that we neither want nor need."
He went on for what seemed like hours, stressing the cost of the war against Philip and its pointlessness, pounding home again and again how high taxes had been raised to prosecute the fight against Philip.
"And what have we gained from our sacrifices? Nothing whatsoever. Philip remains in his own land, fighting against his fellow barbarians, not against us."
I saw Alexandros' face twitch in an angry tic at the word barbarian as he leaned on the shoulders of Ptolemaios and Hephaistion, both of them a good head taller than he.
At last Demades finished and Demosthenes took the platform. The crowd stirred. This was what they had come for.
He was a small man, with narrow shoulders and a slightly bent posture as he walked slowly to the center of the platform. His hairline was receding, although his hair was still quite dark and his beard thick and bushy. His eyes were deep-set beneath dark brows; I suspected that his beard hid a weak chin. His robe was plain, unadorned white wool. Clasping his hands in front of him, he stood with balding head slightly bowed until the vast throng stilled into absolute silence. I could hear the breeze sighing; a bird chirped in the trees behind us.
Demosthenes began slowly, dramatically, gestures measured to each phrase almost as if he were dancing in rhythm to his own words. His voice was higher than Demades', not as powerful, yet it carried back to us well enough. He did not try to counter Demades' arguments; indeed, he spoke as if he had not even heard them. And then I realized that Demosthenes had memorized his speech. He was not speaking extemporaneously; he was reciting a carefully-rehearsed performance, each gesture and stride across the platform perfectly timed to suit his lines. It was a long and intricate poem that he was delivering to the expectant audience, unrhymed but in careful cadence. The Athenians loved it, sighing with pleasure at his phrasing, his exact choice of words, his use of wit and even invective.
Alexandros' face reddened as Demosthenes spoke of "this barbarian king, this sly dog, this wine-besotted beast who wants to take our freedom from us." His attack on Philip was personal and highly emotional. Within a few minutes he had the crowd entirely in his hands.
"Athens is the light of the world, the best hope for freedom for every man. Our democracy shines like a beacon against the darkness of tyranny. Let Philip know that we are unwilling to permit the destruction of this democracy which our fathers and our fathers' fathers have bequeathed to us by their blood and sacrifice. Let Philip know, whether he wishes us well or ill, that we will pay any price, bear any burden, and oppose any foe to assure the survival of our democracy here in Athens and its spread across the world."
The crowd shook the city with its roar of approval. They applauded and cheered and whistled and stamped their feet on the bare ground for nearly a quarter of an hour. Demosthenes waited patiently for them to quiet down, hands folded and head bowed. Then he continued.
"There are those who claim that Philip bears us no ill will. How do they know this? Has Philip spoken to them of his ambitions toward us? Are they in Philip's employ, taking silver and gold from the tyrant to lull us into passivity and inaction? Nothing is so easy to deceive as one's self; for what we wish, we readily believe. Yet the facts speak for themselves.
"Philip continues to build his army. Why? Why does he march against democratic cities founded by Athenians and peopled by Athenian settlers? Does Philip have any enemy in the whole of Greece to justify the size of the mighty army he is building? No! He has none. His army is meant for us and it can be meant for no other. He intends to conquer our city, to enslave our people, to burn our buildings to the ground and put all of us in chains—your wives, your daughters, your sisters and mothers will be Philip's slaves. Your sons, too."
He castigated the very idea of kingship, insisting that a democracy and a tyrant can never be at peace.
"There is nothing, absolutely nothing, which needs to be more carefully guarded against than that one man should be allowed to become more powerful than the people. It would be better for us to be at war with all the states of Greece, provided they were democracies, than to be friends with them if they were ruled by kings. For with free states it would not be difficult to make peace when we wished, but with tyrants we could not even form an affiliation on which we could rely. Democracies and dictators cannot exist together! Every dictator is an enemy of freedom, and Philip means to end the freedom of Athens!"
Again the crowd roared with approval, stamping and clapping, cheering, whistling, waving scarves to show their enthusiasm.
And in the midst of the uproar the assassins struck.
I had been standing beside Alexandros and his four Companions, all of us dressed in plain homespun chitons and leather jerkins. None of us wore anything rich or conspicuous; Alexandros' fingers were bare, and the short swords we carried were plain and undecorated.
While Demosthenes spoke the crowd surged forward slightly, as if eager to be closer to their idol. A few men pushed between me and Hephaistion, who was standing directly beside Alexandros on one side. Alexandros had his arm upon the taller Hephaistion's shoulder, helping himself to stand tip-toe. Another man wedged himself between me and the young men. I turned and saw that three more were now standing just behind Ptolemaios and lanky Harpalos. Nearkos was too short for me to see in the crowd that was pressing around us.
But I could see Alexandros' golden mane easily enough, and realized that it stood as an easy identification for anyone who wanted to find him. As the crowd broke into its thunderous ovation one of the rough-clad men who had pushed up to us stepped sideways, behind Alexandros. I saw his hand go to his belt and I knew he was going to thrust a dagger into Alexandros' back.
"Behind you!" I shouted in the Macedonian dialect, bellowing as loud as I could over the roar of the crowd. I tried to plunge through the men separating us but suddenly my arms were pinned behind me and a swarthy short man with a scar halfway down his face was shoving a dagger at my belly.
My senses went into overdrive and the world around me slowed to a dreamlike lethargy. I kicked at the scar-faced man's leg as I twisted my body sideways, spoiling his aim enough so that I took his dagger in my side instead of straight-on. I felt it go in and slice through me as my body instantly dampened the pain messages along my nerves and clamped down on the severed blood vessels.
My kick knocked the scar-faced knife wielder backward a step. I stamped on the foot of the man pinning my right arm as hard as I could and yanked my arm free while I saw that Hephaistion had shoved the other assassin from Alexandros' back, but now the boys were surrounded by at least a dozen armed men.
I punched the man holding my left arm between the eyes. As he collapsed I swung my right arm back and smashed the other one with my elbow. With my freed left hand I hit scar-face, still trying to recover his balance, squarely in the jaw and he went down, blood spurting from his mouth. Then I leaped into the ring of knife-wielding men who had surrounded Alexandros.
The fight ended as quickly as it started. They broke and turned tail, disappearing into the crowd. By the time a local constable came up, frowning and officious, it was all over. Hephaistion had been nicked in the arm; I had been sliced in my side but I was consciously willing the muscles beneath my skin to hold the wound tightly together, and the blood was already coagulating.
The constable wanted to know our names and what the fight was about.
"They were cutpurses, obviously," I said. "And stupid ones at that, since there isn't one purse among the five of us."
He scowled at me, then glanced back and forth among the youths. "Names," he demanded. "I must have your names and places of residence."
Alexandros, red-faced with fury, blurted, "I am Alexandros, son of Philip of Macedon. And if this is the way your noble city treats its guests, then my father is far too lenient with you."
With that he strode off, his Companions around him. I followed them, leaving the constable standing there dumbfounded.
"It was a deliberate assassination attempt. Deliberate!" Alexandros raged all the way back to Aeschines' house. "They tried to kill me."
"But who sent them?" Hephaistion asked. Alexandros had torn a strip from his own chiton and tenderly wrapped the scratch on his friend's forearm.
"Demosthenes," answered Ptolemaios. "Who else?"
"That's not logical," Alexandros said.
No one had bothered to wrap my wound. I knew I healed quickly, and it did not appear that any vital organ had been cut. My body responded to my conscious control; although I had shut off the pain receptors in my brain, I could sense that the wound was neither deep nor serious. Infection was the only thing I worried about, yet I knew that I could manufacture antibodies at a prodigious rate, when necessary.
I seemed to recall Aten, the Golden One, smirking at me, telling me that he had built me to be a warrior and had included all the self-repair that I needed for my task.
"What do you mean, not logical?" Harpalos asked.
A little more calmly, Alexandros replied, "It would not be logical for Demosthenes to try to have me assassinated. Not here. Not now."
"Not in Athens?" Harpalos wondered aloud.
"Not while he's making his speech," Ptolemaios joked.
Nearkos said nothing. He simply walked along with us, his dark Cretan eyes always on Alexandros.
"If you were assassinated in Athens," Hephaistion argued, "your father would come down here and raze the city to the ground."
"Or try to," said Ptolemaios.
"That would force the Athenians to fight us, which is just what Demosthenes wants."
Alexandros shook his head. "But Demosthenes wants the Athenians to fight a just war. You heard him; he claims that democracies have a higher spiritual standing than kingdoms."
"Yes, and crows can sing."
"He would not want to fight a war brought on by a cowardly assassination. In his own city, yet."
"During his own speech."
"The Athenians might refuse to fight such a war," Alexandros insisted. "No, it was not Demosthenes."
"Who then?"
We were climbing the cobblestoned street as it rose toward the residential area where Aeschines' house stood.
Alexandros made a fluttering gesture with both his hands. "Aristotle taught me to look for the logical answer to every question."
"So what's the logical answer to this one?"
"Yes, who sent the assassins—logically?"
"The man who would gain the most from my assassination, of course."
"But who would gain?"
Alexandros walked on for several silent steps, head bent, hands slowly balling into fists. I thought he was mulling over the question, but once he spoke I realized that he had known his answer all along.
"The king," he said.
"What?"
"Your father?"
They all stopped walking, stunned by the enormity of the accusation.
"I don't know if he is my true father," Alexandros said. He spoke not with shame, not even indecision. "My true father might be Herakles. Or Zeus himself."
The other youths fell silent. There was no sense arguing that point, each of them knew.
"But even to imagine that the king might have tried to have you assassinated..." Hephaistion's voice was hollow with fear.
"Think of it logically," Alexandros said quietly. "What better pretext could he have for attacking Athens directly? You said so yourself, a moment ago."
"Yes, but—"
"Who would come to Athens' aid if Philip made war to avenge his son's murder?"
"No one."
"That's true enough."
"He'd have isolated Athens completely."
I spoke up. "Who would inherit the throne if Philip died in battle?"
"What difference does that make?"
"A great difference," I said. "Philip has spent his life molding Macedonia into a powerful and secure nation. Would he throw away all that by killing his son and heir? Would he knowingly throw the kingdom into such a turmoil that it might split apart once he dies?"
The youths were nodding among themselves.
I asked Alexandros, "Is that logical?"
He gave me a troubled gaze.
"Your father," I said, "sent me with you to protect you. Is that logical, if he wishes to have you assassinated?"
Very calmly, he looked up into my eyes and said, "You might be part of the plot, Orion. My father may have instructed you to let the assassins have me."
I could see cold fury in his golden eyes, and felt my own rage boil up within me at his accusation. But I held my emotions in check and replied, "I was the one who warned you, Alexandros. And took a knife in the ribs for it."
"Barely a scratch, from the look of it."
"Your father instructed me to protect you," I said firmly. "He is not your enemy."
Alexandros turned away from me and resumed his walk up the sloping street. "Perhaps you are right, Orion," he said, so low that I barely heard him. "I hope so."
We stayed in Athens only a few days longer. The news from the Assembly was not good. The Athenians had decided to send delegations to Thebes and several other cities to arrange an alliance against Philip. Aristotle was especially downcast.
"This will mean war," he told me as we packed his ever-growing collection. "Real war. Not the marching and petty skirmishes and sham sieges of the past few years."
I had taken part in one of those petty skirmishes. The men who had been killed were just as dead as heroes of a great battle.
The night before we were to leave I had another dream—if it was a dream.
I was at the Acropolis once more. This time by myself. It was the closest I could be to the goddess I loved, to my past lives, to the memories that had somehow been locked away from me. The night was black and windswept, the stars blotted out by roiling clouds that seemed so low they nearly touched the upraised spear of the giant statue of Athena.
I walked through the warm wind to the gigantic statue. Lightning flashed and briefly lit her face, but it remained coldly indifferent ivory, not flesh. Rain began to pelt down, stinging cold hard drops, almost sleet. I rushed up the steps and into the shelter of the magnificent Parthenon.
The gold-clad statue stared at me with painted eyes.
"I will find you," I said aloud, amidst peals of thunder. "Wherever you are, whenever you are, I will find you."
And the statue stirred. The stiff gold-leafed robe softened. The eyes warmed. Her face smiled sadly at me. Twice life-size, standing on a pedestal of marble, my goddess breathed into life.
"Orion? Orion, is it you?"
"Yes!" I shouted over the earthshaking thunder. "I am here!"
"Orion, I want to be with you. Always and forever. But it cannot be."
"Where are you? Why can't we be together?"
"They decided... the forces..."
Her voice grew faint. Lightning flickered through the sky, throwing blue-white strobes of light through the temple. Thunder roared and boomed like the voices of the gods railing against us.
Still I shouted, "Where are you? Tell me and I'll find you!"
"No," she said, her voice fading, fading, "Not yet. The time is not right."
"Why am I here?" I begged. "Why have they put me here?"
I thought she did not hear me. I thought she had left me. The lightning stopped and suddenly the temple was in utter darkness. I could not see her statue, could not sense her presence.
"Why am I here?" I repeated, almost sobbing.
No reply. Only black silence.
"What do they expect of me?" I shouted.
"Obedience," said another voice. A woman's voice. Hera's.
"I expect you to obey me, Orion," her voice slashed coldly through my mind. "And obey me you shall."
I returned to Pella unwillingly, filled with dread and the inner emptiness of a hopeless longing. The trip north was cold and miserable: rain in the hills, driving snow in the mountain passes. With each step along the way I felt the power of Olympias returning, settling over me like a sickness, sapping my strength and my will. In my dreams she was Hera, the haughty and demanding goddess. In my waking hours she was Philip's queen, the witch who had cast her spell upon me, the woman I was powerless to resist.
On the day we returned to Pella the king summoned me to his presence. I reported on the assassination attempt.
He scowled darkly. "What fool tried that?"
We were alone in his small work room. The afternoon sunlight slanted through the one window, but the air was cold. Philip sat next to the meager fire, a dark woolen cloak over his shoulders, his aching leg propped on a stool, his black beard bristling, his one good eye piercing like a hawk's.
I decided that he wanted the truth. And so did I.
"He thinks that perhaps you did," I blurted.
"Wha—" His face went white with sudden anger. He gripped the armrests of his chair as if he were going to leap to his feet.
But the fury drained out of him almost immediately. I watched him battle to control his emotions. I saw that he was shocked by the accusation, and not because his son had hit on the truth. Philip had not tried to kill his son. And now that his immediate wave of anger had passed he looked sorrowful to be falsely accused.
"That's his mother's doing," he grumbled. "She's always poisoning his mind against me."
I said nothing. But I realized that the assassination attempt might well have been Olympias' doing. The assassins had plenty of time to cut Alexandros down, and his Companions with him. Instead, all they did was to drive a wedge of suspicion between the prince and his father.
"She's a witch, Orion," he told me. "Entranced me when we first met. At the Dionysian rites on Samothrace. I was just about Alexandros' age and I fell completely mad for her. The most beautiful woman on earth, that was sure. And she seemed to love me just as wildly as I loved her. Once she had the boy, though, she wanted nothing more to do with me."
She is more than a witch, I thought. She is the avatar of a goddess, or perhaps the goddess herself in human guise, with powers that could destroy us all at a whim.
"She scorns me, Orion, and plots with her son to get him the throne."
"Alexandros wants to be a good son to you," I told him. "He wants to be worthy of your throne."
Philip smiled crookedly. "He wants to sit on my throne, and the only way he can do that is to kill me."
"No," I said. "I see nothing of that in him. He wants to show you that he's worthy. He wants your approval."
"Does he?"
"Despite all that his mother has poured into his ears, he admires you."
"Does he acknowledge that I'm his father?"
So he knows about Alexandros' personal mythology, I realized.
Aloud, I replied, "Boyish ego. He doesn't believe it himself."
Philip cast his good eye on me. "I wonder." He pulled the cloak tighter around him. "I wonder if maybe it's all true. Maybe Herakles or some god did beget him. Maybe he's not my true son, after all."
"No god begat him, sir," I said. "There are no gods. Only men and women."
"Sokrates was given hemlock on the accusation of not believing in the gods." He smiled again as he said it.
I smiled back. "If you poisoned everyone who did not believe in the gods, you would run out of hemlock long before the job was half finished."
He chuckled. "You jest, Orion. Yet it seems to me that you are serious, at the same time."
How could I tell him that the so-called gods and goddesses were as human as he was? The faint memory of them seethed in my mind: the deities were men and women from that city of my dreams, the city that existed in another time from this.
He mistook my silence. "You needn't fear, Orion. Your beliefs are safe with me."
"May I make a suggestion, sir?"
"What is it?"
"Keep the boy close to you. Don't allow him to see his mother—"
"That's easier said than done, unless I chain him up like a dog."
"The more he is with you the less his mother can influence him. Take him with you on campaign. Let him show his mettle before your eyes."
Philip cocked his head, as if giving my suggestion some thought. Then he tapped a forefinger against the cheekbone below his empty eye socket.
"I only have one eye, Orion. But perhaps you're right. I'll bring the lad come on campaign with me."
"Another campaign?"
His expression went grim. "The damned Athenians are negotiating with Thebes and several other cities to form a league against me. I've never wanted to fight Athens directly, and I certainly don't want to tangle with Thebes. But now it looks as if I'll have to face them both together."
"Your army has never lost a major battle," I encouraged him.
He shook his head. "Do you know why, Orion?" Before I could reply he answered his own question. "Because if I had lost a major battle, just one, my whole kingdom would collapse like a house of cards."
"No, that could not be."
"It would, Orion, and I know it. It gnaws at me every minute of the day. It keeps me awake when I try to sleep. Macedonia is strong and free only so long as we keep winning. If my army is ever defeated, all the tribes that owe me allegiance will go back to their rebel ways. Thrace and Illyria and even the goddamned Molossians will rise against me—or Alexandros, assuming he survives. I'll be dead on the battlefield, you can rest assured."
That was the vision that haunted Philip. He feared his kingdom would be torn apart if he lost a major battle. He had to keep on winning, always fighting, always victorious, or lose everything. That is why he avoided battle with Athens. One throw of the dice could destroy everything that he had worked his entire life to create.
That night I decided to see the queen on my own terms. But my duty as a guardsman came first. I was serving once again as one of the formal guards at Philip's royal dinner, posted this time behind the king's couch, to stand there like a statue in armor and spear while Philip and his guests ate and drank and caroused. His guests were mostly Macedonian, including the oily Attalos, who fawned on the king and praised even his belches. There were a few foreigners reclining on dinner couches near the king: I thought one a Persian and recognized another as the Athenian merchant whom I had seen in Pella before. They were spies, I knew. But for which side? Did they spy on Athens and the Great King in Persia for Philip? Or did they spy on Philip for the Great King and Athens?
Probably both, I concluded. They would take gold from either side and praise the winner.
Parmenio and Philip's other generals were present, of course, but there was no talk over dinner of matters military. Only politics. Would Demosthenes' representatives be able to talk Thebes into an alliance with Athens?
"After all the patience you've shown with both cities," said Antipatros, "this is the thanks they give you."
"I never expected their thanks," Philip said, holding his wine goblet out for the serving boy to fill it.
From my post at the king's couch I saw with satisfaction that Alexandros had been placed next to his father.
"We should march on them now," he said, almost shouting to make his light tenor voice heard over the buzz of background talk. "First Thebes and then Athens."
"If we march now," Philip replied, "it will give them the excuse they need to cement their alliance."
Alexandros looked at his father. "You will let them prepare for war against us while we sit here drinking?"
His own wine cup had not been refilled since the eating had ended. He drank little; he ate little, as well. His old teacher Leonidas, I had been told, raised the boy with Spartan values and discipline.
Philip grinned at his son. "I will give them plenty of time to argue over the terms of their alliance. With a bit of luck they'll fall out between themselves and there will be no alliance for us to worry about."
"But if the luck goes against us?" Alexandros asked. "What then?"
Philip took a long draft of his wine. "We'll just have to wait and see. Patience, my son. Patience. It's a virtue, I'm told."
"So is courage," Alexandros snapped.
The dining hall fell absolutely silent.
But Philip laughed. "I don't need to prove my courage, son. You can count my scars."
And Alexandros smiled back at his father. "Yes, that's true enough."
The tension eased. Men went back to talking with one another. Goblets were refilled. Philip fondled the thigh of the boy who was serving him. Alexandros bristled at that, but then looked across the room at the place where his Companions were reclining. Ptolemaios and the others were nuzzling the serving girls there. Except for Hephaistion. He stared back at Alexandros across the wide, noisy hall as if there were no one else in the room.
Then I noticed Pausanias, captain of the guard, standing at the doorway of the dining hall. His fists were planted on his hips, as if he were about to deliver one of his withering verbal blasts at the two guards posted there, his mouth set in its usual sour grimace. But his eyes were on Philip, and even from across the breadth of the dining hall I could see that Pausanias was burning with anger.
The hours toiled on, the wine goblets were refilled over and again, and the dinner guests became rowdier and bawdier. No one left until finally Philip pushed himself up from his couch, draped one arm heavily around the shoulders of the boy who had been serving him, and lurched off toward his bedchamber. Slowly the other guests struggled to their feet and staggered off, many of them with either girls or boys in their grip. Alexandros rose from his couch coldly sober. Hephaistion, equally restrained, crossed the hall to be with him.
As the kitchen slaves came in to clean the hall, Pausanias finally gave us leave to return to barracks. Clearly something had enraged him, but he gave no hint of what it was.
I pretended to go to sleep, but as soon as I heard the snores of my fellow guardsmen in the darkness, I got up and headed for the queen's rooms. I knew the layout of the palace well enough to get to her rooms on my own. But I did not want the guards or her serving women to get in my way.
So I went out onto the parade ground in the cold night, barefoot and wearing only my thin chiton. It was dark, moonless. Clouds were scudding low across the stars. The air felt damp, the wind cutting. Staying in the shadows of the barracks wall so that the sentries would not see me, I hurried the length of the parade ground and clambered softly up onto the roof of the stables. I had brought no weapon with me, nothing to clink in the night and alert a drowsy sentry. Nothing but the dagger that I always kept strapped to my thigh.
It was a good leap from the stable roof to the slightly higher roof next to it, but I made it almost silently and then climbed the rough stones of the wall to the still-higher roof of the palace proper. Then I made my way along the sloping timber beams of the roof until I figured I was above the queen's quarters. I lowered myself from the eave and swung my legs through the curtained window, landing with a soft thud.
"I have been waiting for you, Orion," said Olympias in the darkness.
I was in her bed chamber, crouched on the balls of my feet, my fingertips touching the polished wood of the floor, ready to fight if I had to.
"Don't be afraid," she said, reading my thoughts. "I want you here with me this night."
"You knew I was coming?" In the shadows I could make out her form reclining on the bed.
"I commanded you to come to me," she said, her voice taunting. "You don't think you did this of your own volition, do you?"
I did not want to believe her. "Then why didn't you send a servant, as before?"
I could sense her smiling in the darkness. "Why encourage palace gossip? The king likes you. He trusts you. Even Alexandros admires your fighting prowess. Why spoil all that by letting the servants know you are my lover?"
"I'm not—"
"But you are, Orion," she snapped. Her body seemed to glow faintly in the darkness, stretched out languidly on the bed, naked and warm and inviting.
"I don't want to be your lover," I said, although it cost me pain to force the words through my gritted teeth.
"What you want is of no consequence," Olympias replied. "You will do what I command. You will be what I desire you to be. Don't force me to be cruel to you, Orion. I can make you grovel in slime if I wish it. I can make you do things that would destroy your spirit utterly."
"Why are you doing this?" I demanded. But even as I asked it, I shuffled closer to her bed. "What are you trying to accomplish?"
"No questions, Orion," she said. "Tonight is for pleasure. Tomorrow you will learn what your new duties are to be. Perhaps."
I was helpless. I could not resist her. Even when I saw that the bed she lay upon was writhing with snakes I was unable to turn away, unable even to turn my eyes from her. She laughed as I slowly stripped off my chiton.
"Take off the dagger, too," she commanded me. "You won't need it. Your natural equipment will be quite enough."
I did as she instructed me. The snakes were dry and cold against my bare skin. I felt them biting me, sinking their fangs into my flesh and filling my bloodstream with strange venoms that melted my willpower and heightened my senses to an excruciating pitch. Then it was Olympias' teeth and nails penetrating me, tearing me apart, giving me pain while she took pleasure from me. She laughed while I wept. She exulted while I abased myself for her.
For weeks, for months, my life was bound to her whims. She would ignore me for long stretches of time and I would begin to think that she had tired of me, but then she would summon me again, and again I knew the tearing passions of physical pleasure and mental anguish. By day I served Philip and watched the love-hate relationship between the king and his son. By night I lay in my barracks bed fighting with every gram of strength in me against her domination. There were times when I almost thought I had thrown off her control.
But then she would call me again, in my mind, silent and invisible and completely irresistible. I would come to her and the snakes that she allowed to coil around her naked body. She would laugh and rend my flesh and rack me until I was utterly exhausted. Yet at dawn I always found myself in my barracks bed, refreshed and unhurt despite what Olympias and her witchcraft had done to me during the hours of darkness and passion.
By day, the news from the south grew steadily worse. Athens and Thebes had indeed concluded their treaty of alliance, backed by Persian gold. The bit of luck that Philip had waited upon turned out to be all bad: now he had to face the two most powerful cities of the south, knowing that if he lost to them he would lose his crown, his life, and all that he had struggled for since coming to the throne of Macedonia.
I wanted to ask Aristotle for his estimation of the situation. He was the wisest man I knew, except perhaps for Philip himself. But Philip's wisdom was of the kingly sort, centered on what he needed to accomplish to enlarge his kingdom and make it safer and stronger. Aristotle was wise in the ways of human behavior. He cared about understanding the world rather than ruling it.
During one of my off-duty hours I tracked the philosopher down; he was in a shed standing by itself out beyond the stables. In it, on a rough trestle table, he had placed a large box of dirt. He was sitting on a teetering off-balance stool, staring at the dirt intently.
"May I enter?" I called from the doorway of the shed. There was no door, merely a rough blanket hung over the opening, which was so low that I had to duck through. The morning was warm and sunny; spring was in the air.
Aristotle jerked with surprise so hard that his rickety stool nearly toppled over. He peered across the shed at me, blinking painfully.
"Oh! It's you, Orion. Yes, come in, come in."
I saw that the box of dirt held a colony of ants.
"We can learn much from the ants," said Aristotle. "They make kingdoms and even fight wars, much as men do."
"Why do men fight wars?" I asked.
Aristotle wrinkled his high-domed forehead at me. "You might as well ask why men breathe. It is in their nature."
I vaguely remembered one of the Creators, the Golden One, telling me arrogantly that he had designed me to be a warrior; me, and the other creatures he had sent into the time of the Neanderthals.
Aristotle mistook my silence for puzzlement. He took my arm in one of his thin-fingered hands and pulled me to the ant colony.
"Do you see them, Orion? I put two queen ants in there, one in this corner and the other on the farther side. They had plenty of room and I saw to it that they had plenty of food."
The ants all looked exactly alike to me: tiny and black and terribly busy, scampering every which way across the sandy soil that filled the box.
"Yet look there," Aristotle pointed. Battalions of ants were fighting each other, rending one another apart with fierce mandibles.
"They could live in peace, yet they fight. Each group wants to be master of the other. It is in their nature."
"But men are not ants," I said.
"No, they are like ravening dogs." With real anger in his voice, Aristotle told me, "They see a neighbor who has something they do not, or a neighbor who appears too weak to defend himself, and they want to steal what that neighbor has. War is theft, Orion, thievery on a grand scale. Murder and rape and plunder, that is why men fight wars."
"Does Philip intend to rape and plunder Athens and Thebes?"
"No, but they would do it to us."
"Really?"
"That is what we fear."
"But those cities lie far to the south. Why are we preparing to make war on them? Why do they want to make war against us?"
"Ah, your questions grow more specific. Good."
"Well?"
Aristotle got down off his stool and clasped his hands behind his back. He had to look up to see into my face.
"Are you prepared to listen to a lecture on history, Orion?"
I knew from his tone that this would be a long lecture. I nodded. He began to pace. And speak.
The Greeks have never been able to unite themselves, Aristotle said. That is their glory and their weakness. Not since Agamemnon led the Achaians against Troy, countless ages ago, have the Greek cities been able to stand together for more than a few years at a time.
They united briefly, a century and a half ago, when the Persians under the old Dareios invaded Greece as punishment for Athenian support of a rebellion against Persia by the Greek cities on the Ionian coast, across the Aegean from Athens. The Persians were driven off after the Athenians stopped them at Marathon. Ten years later, Dareios' son Xerxes invaded Greece again with an army that blackened the land with their numbers. Again the Persians were beaten off, even though they sacked Athens itself, because the cities of the south—principally Athens and Sparta—fought side by side against the invaders.
"Both times the Macedonians allowed the Persians to pass through their territory without a fight. They even sold the Persians horses for their cavalry and timber for their ships. Athens has never forgotten that."
"But that was more than a century ago," I said.
"Yes, and the Macedonians were little more than a bundle of cattlemen," said Aristotle. "No match for the power of the Persian Empire. They did not even consider themselves to be Greeks, in the sense that the Athenians did."
"The Athenians still call the Macedonians barbarians," I recalled.
Aristotle nodded. "To this day."
After their second defeat in Greece the Persians decided that these rugged fighters living at the edge of their empire were not worth the trouble to conquer them. But the Great King wanted to keep the rich Ionian cities on the Aegean coast, despite the fact that those cities were as Greek as Athens or Sparta or Thebes.
"Ever since then," Aristotle continued, "the Persians have meddled in Greek politics. At one time they supported Sparta against Athens. At another, Athens against Corinth. Persian gold has been spent to keep the cities from uniting. Thus the Great King keeps us weak and no danger to his empire."
"And Philip wants to change that?"
Aristotle smiled, a bit ruefully, I thought. "No man is completely master of his own actions, Orion, not even a king."
Certainly not me, I knew.
"Philip came to the throne with Macedonia in chaos. The ravening dogs around us were tearing the country to pieces. Our neighbors to the north and the west and the east all invaded Macedonia, seizing whatever they could. No one was safe. Fire and savagery were everywhere. Every man's hand was raised against us.
"Philip was not the chosen king then. He had to push his own brother off the throne in order to save the country. He united the Macedonians and threw back the invaders. He enlarged the kingdom by conquering those who had invaded us. He has made the Thracians and Illyrians and Molossians and many other warring tribes into allies or outright colonies of Macedonia. He has stretched his power to the edge of the Adriatic Sea, where those primitive tribesmen kill one another for sport. He has expanded his influence into central Greece, where Thebes and Corinth oppose him. For the past several years he has fought a war—sometimes undeclared, but a war nonetheless—against Athens."
"But why?"
Aristotle's smile turned knowing. "The Athenians still believe that they are the greatest power among the Greeks. They are loath to allow any other power to become strong enough to challenge them. Encouraged by Persian gold, Athens strives to limit Philip's power."
"So that Athens can remain supreme among the Greek cities?"
He nodded. "For his part, Philip believes that he must bend Athens to his will or Athens will destroy Macedonia."
"Is that the truth?"
"Close enough for Philip. And for Demosthenes."
"But for you?"
"I see the hand of the Great King behind it all. Like his forebears, this new Dareios fears the power of a united Greece. Philip is the only man who can unite all the Greeks, so young Dareios encourages Athens and the other cities to work against Macedonia."
"He sees Philip as a threat to the Persian Empire?" I knew that there had been talk from time to time about wresting the Ionian cities from the Persians, but I had taken it to be little more than talk.
Now Aristotle became very serious, even grave. "Orion, it is our destiny to unite the Greeks and conquer the Persians. Unless we do, the Greeks will always be as disunited and quarrelsome as those barbarous Balkan tribes."
I must have gaped at him. This gnomish philosopher with the weak eyes, this studier of ants and espouser of moral codes, he wanted Philip to make war against the greatest empire in the world.
"And that, in the end, is why men make war upon one another," said Aristotle. "It is just as natural as a lion chasing down a deer. Kill or be killed. The world must be either one thing or the other. If we do not destroy the Persians they will destroy us."
I was almost dumbfounded. "But you say that the Persians have tried to destroy Greece for more than a century and a half. They have not been able to do so."
"Not as yet," he said calmly. "But what is a century and a half in the affairs of mankind? What is a thousand years? I speak of the long term, Orion, of the ebb and flow of human affairs that takes a thousand generations or more. The Persians can afford to be patient. They have an immense empire and wealth beyond compare. Slowly, slowly they are grinding us down. They paid Sparta to conquer Athens, and when the Spartans became too powerful they paid Thebes to beat down Sparta."
"And now they play Athens and Thebes against us," I said.
"Exactly. And every year, every generation, we grow weaker and more tired. Eventually all the Greeks will fall prey to the Persians and we will be swallowed up entirely."
"Unless we swallow them."
"Precisely," he said. "The Greeks and the Persians cannot exist peacefully together. Either we conquer them or they conquer us. There is no other alternative."
"You are certain of this?"
Aristotle nodded solemnly. "That is what I have trained young Alexandros for. To conquer the world."
To conquer the world.
Aristotle may have trained young Alexandros to conquer the Persian Empire—which was all the world worth conquering, in his eyes—but to accomplish that, Alexandros needed a united Greece behind him, and only his father Philip could bring all the Greek cities together under Macedonian hegemony. And Olympias, I knew, was scheming to set Alexandros against his father.
"Why?" I asked her, the next time she summoned me to her bed. "Why do you try to make Alexandros hate Philip?"
"You ask too many questions, Orion," she said, lazily twining her bare arms around my neck.
I put one thumb on her lovely throat. "I want to know."
Her eyes widened. "You dare to threaten me?"
"I want to know," I repeated in a whisper, applying a bit of pressure to her windpipe.
One of the pythons slithered up onto my back. I pressed my body close to Hera's. "Your snake will have to crush us both."
A viper slid past her face, hissing at me. "The poison will not work fast enough to stop me from snapping your lovely neck," I said.
Olympias' eyes glittered like the snake's. But then I saw something different in them, as if another person were looking out at me through her jade-green eyes. "I have never died before. What is it like, Orion?"
I must have looked surprised. She said, "Oh, you have died countless times. Don't you remember? No, of course not."
A word drifted into my mind. A name. "Osiris."
Her smile widened. "Yes, Osiris. The god who dies each winter and is reborn in the spring. That was you, Orion, in another life. And Prometheus. Do you remember the band of warriors?"
"In the Ice Age." Vaguely I recalled a battle in the snowy wastes of a distant time. "Anya was there."
"Is it exciting to die?" she asked me. I could feel the pulse in her throat quickening. "Is it arousing?"
Try as I might, I could remember nothing definite of those earlier incarnations. And then I realized what was happening.
"You're playing with me," I said. "Toying with my mind."
But Hera's thoughts were on death. "Tell me, Orion. What is it like to die? What does the ultimate adventure feel like?"
I remembered falling down the endless pit into the molten core of the Earth. I remembered the cave bear that ripped my body apart.
"Pain," I said. "The deaths I have suffered have been painful ones."
"And afterward?"
I rolled off her naked body. I could feel the snakes slithering out from under me.
"Afterward it begins all over again. Another life, another death. What does it matter?"
She was Hera. No more pretense of being Olympias, no need for witchcraft. Undisguised now, she revealed herself as the goddess, one of the Creators. Propping herself up on one elbow she traced a red fingernail across my chest. "What's the matter, creature? Don't tell me you're bored with life."
"What reason do I have for living?"
"What reason?" She laughed. "Why, to serve your creators. That is your reason for living. To do whatever I want you to."
I stared up at the shadowy ceiling, avoiding her eyes, and asked, "And what might that be?"
"To see how far this hotheaded princeling called Alexandros can reach."
"Your son."
"Olympias' son," she acknowledged.
"What was it like to give birth?" I asked her.
She replied haughtily, "I wouldn't know. That is a human ordeal that I want no part of."
"Then you—" I hesitated, groping for words. "You inhabit Olympias' body only when you choose to?"
Again her disdainful laughter. "Don't torture yourself trying to understand us, Orion."
"Us?"
"We Creators. Your mind can't comprehend our powers, don't even bother to try." Then she leaned against me and ran her hand down my abdomen to my crotch. "Your task is to satisfy my desires, creature."
"That's easy enough to do in bed," I countered, still avoiding her eyes, trying to maintain control of myself long enough to learn more. "But what am I to do about Alexandros and Philip?"
"Serve Philip well," she said. "Protect Alexandros, as you did in Athens. And wait."
"Wait? For what?"
"No more questions," she murmured.
"One more. Why did you send those assassins against Alexandros?"
I felt her body twitch with shocked surprise. "How did you—" Then she caught herself. For a startled moment she stared down at me, speechless. At last she broke into a bitter laughter. "My creature exhibits some powers of intelligence, after all."
"No one could profit by having Alexandros assassinated," I reasoned. "But someone might profit by having me save Alexandros from assassination."
"I wanted Alexandros to accept you. To trust you. When you started out for Athens he regarded you as one of his father's men. Now he owes his life to you."
"He hardly thinks so."
"I know what he thinks better than you do, Orion," she said. "Alexandros trusts you now."
Again I asked, "But why did you—"
"I said no more questions." And she slid her body over mine, supple as one of her snakes, eyes burning with human passion and something beyond.
The army was on the move again, this time heading south, toward Attica. Long columns of troops winding along the roads, stirring up clouds of dust that could be seen for miles. Cavalry flanking the roads, moving up along the hillsides where there was grass enough for the horses. Threading through the narrow mountain passes, the cavalry went first and the foot soldiers ate dust. In the rear was the long train of mules and ox-carts, laden with armor and weapons and supplies.
It felt good to be out of the palace, away from Olympias' grasp. Once again I breathed the crisp clear air of the mountains. Even with the dust and smell of the horses and mules it tasted like nectar to me.
I was assigned to Alexandros' guard and rode along with his Companions. They bantered good-naturedly about Thunderbolt and even compared my mount favorably to Alexandros' own Ox-head—but never when he was within hearing.
Alexandros was a young man of moods. I could see that he was being torn up within himself. He admired his father and hated him at the same time. Olympias had filled his mind with the central idea that Philip did not love him and did not truly accept him as his son and heir. Still, Alexandros wanted his father to admire him; yet he feared that such a desire was treason to his mother.
Young, ambitious, uncertain of his abilities or his acceptance by his own father, Alexandros did what so many frightened, self-conscious teenagers do: he went to extremes. He boasted that his true father was Zeus himself, or at least Herakles. He claimed that he wanted to be like Achilles, who chose glory over a long life. He had to be braver and more daring than anyone else. He took risks that others would blanch at.
My job was to keep him alive.
"He's a young hothead," Philip told me the day we began our march southward. "And his Companions are completely in awe of him. They even shave their faces clean, just as he does. It's up to you to see that he doesn't break his foolish neck."
No easy task.
When the cavalry had to forage in the hills of Pieria, Alexandros took it upon himself to raise fresh recruits for the army by galloping his Companions into each miserable little village along the way and giving a speech from Ox-Head's back.
"We march to glory!" he shouted in his thin tenor voice. "Who will come with me?"
Inevitably some of the village youths would step forward, faces burning with visions of fame and honor—and loot. Just as inevitably the village elders would tug them back into the crowd. Or worse, their mothers would while the rest of the villagers laughed. Still, Alexandros got a handful of newcomers along the way.
As we approached Thessaly, though, the responses became decidedly more hostile. At one of the mountain passes the local sheep herders even tried to ambush us.
All they saw, I'm sure, was a gaggle of beardless lads on horseback, all of them richly adorned. The horses alone would be worth a fortune to a man who spent his life scrabbling out a living on those rocky hillsides.
Our job was to scout the pass, make certain it was safe for the main body of the army to come through. We knew full well that a handful of determined men could hold up an army for days or even weeks, as Leonidas had at Thermopylae long ago. Philip wanted to get to Thebes before the Athenians could bring their army up to unite with the Thebans. To be held up in these mountain passes could be disastrous.
The local hill folk held scant allegiance to Thebes or anyone else except their own villages. To them, the world was bounded by their mountains and valleys. They knew nothing of the impending war. So when they saw a half-dozen young dandies riding through one of their passes, they thought they had received a windfall from the gods.
They chose their spot well, where the rocky mountain walls nearly touched one another and a rider had to nose his horse carefully around the boulders strewn along the trail.
Alexandros was in the lead, as he usually insisted on, with Hephaistion close behind him. Strung out further behind were Ptolemaios, Nearkos and Harpalos. Ptolemaios was singing a bawdy song, enjoying the echo of his own voice against the mountain walls. I brought up the rear, constantly searching the rugged crests of the mountains and looking behind us for any signs of peril.
I heard the danger, rather than saw it. A rumbling, crunching sound. Looking up, I saw a boulder bouncing down the steep mountainside, kicking up more rocks as it fell.
"Look out!" I bellowed, pulling up on Thunderbolt's reins.
Alexandros heard it too. With a single glance upward he kicked Ox-Head forward, Hephaistion right beside him. The rest of us turned our horses around, away from the rock slide.
The boulders thundered down and crashed to the floor of the pass in a shower of gritty dust and flying pebbles. Our mounts shied and whinnied. Thunderbolt would have taken off altogether; it took all my strength to hold him where he was.
Eerie war cries echoed through the canyon and I saw men racing along the top of the cliffs. A spear came flying toward me. I saw it in slow-motion, flexing as it glided through the air. Men were scrambling down the rocky face of the cliffs on both sides of us.
And Alexandros was on the other side of the boulders that they had rolled down.
I ducked under the spear and let it fall clattering to the bare ground. Ptolemaios, Harpalos, and Nearkos were being swarmed under by more than a dozen half-naked men armed with spears and staves, but they had their swords out and were slashing at their attackers from horseback. I urged Thunderbolt through the melee, bashing a few heads with my own sword as I approached the rock slide.
The boulders formed a barrier that I could not ride past. I could hear shouting and swearing from the other side, and the scream of a man in death-agony. Swiftly I climbed onto Thunderbolt's back and leaped atop the nearest boulder, then jumped to the next one.
Alexandros and Hephaistion were on their feet, back to back, surrounded by hill tribesmen with murder in their eyes. Two half-grown boys were leading Hephaistion's horse down the canyon. Ox-Head was nowhere in sight.
With the greatest roar my lungs could give I leaped from the boulder onto the mass of men attacking Alexandros. Spears snapped and bones crunched. I rolled to my feet and slashed the nearest man almost in two. They were all moving with languid dreamy slowness. I ducked a spear and thrust my sword into the man's belly, dodged sideways as I yanked the sword out and grabbed the next man's spear with my left hand. I cracked the spearman's skull apart with an overhand swing of my sword just as another spear pierced my leather corselet and sliced into my ribs.
I hit the spear with a backhand sword thrust and it pulled free of my flesh. I felt no pain, only the exultation of battle fever. Alexandros killed the man who had speared me and suddenly the attackers broke and ran.
"The others!" I yelled and started scrabbling up the boulders that separated us from Ptolemaios, Harpalos, and Nearkos.
They were still on their horses, although Nearkos' mount was bleeding in half a dozen places. We roared down on the hill men, slashing and killing until they tried to escape our fearful swords, but Harpalos rode down two of them as they ran in blind panic along the canyon trail. Alexandros pulled down another who was scrambling up the rocks and took his head off with a single blow. I saw one climbing madly up the cliff face. I took half an instant to calculate the throw, then flung my sword at him. It struck him squarely between the shoulder blades. He screamed and fell face-first at my feet with a wet thump, the sword sticking out of his back.
Turning, I saw that Hephaistion held the last of the hill men by the hair. He could not have been more than thirteen: dirty, clothed in rags, on his knees, eyes bulging at the bloody sword Hephaistion held in his other hand. His mouth was wide open but no sound came from it. He was petrified with fear, looking at his death inches away.
"Wait," Alexandros commanded. "These dogs have taken Ox-Head. I want him to lead us to their village."
The boy did as he was told. We wound through the narrow pass, out onto a wider trail, and then up a rocky hillside where sheep had cropped the grass almost to its roots. Beyond the second row of hills, nested in the cup of a wooded valley, was the boy's village.
All the way there, Alexandros raged and fumed about Ox-Head. "Steal him from me, will they? I'll roast them alive, each and every one of them. They'll curse the day they were born. If they don't return Ox-Head to me I'll kill them all with my own hands!"
I saw that his hands were shaking: the aftermath of battle. He had nearly been killed, although he actually suffered nothing more serious than a few nicks and bruises and a bad fright.
We must have made a grim sight, six bloodied warriors, three of us on foot. I had given Alexandros my mount to ride. Nearkos walked beside me, slim and small, silent and dark as a shadow, leading his bleeding horse with one hand, his sword in the other.
The village elders came out to meet us, trembling visibly. A pair of half-naked boys, silent and round-eyed, led Ox-Head and Hephaistion's mount toward us.
The elders stopped a few paces before us, dithering and jittering, glancing uneasily at us and each other.
Before they worked up the courage to say anything, Alexandros spoke. "Where are your young men?"
The elders looked back and forth among themselves.
"Well?" Alexandros demanded.
One of the elders was completely bald, but had a white beard that ran halfway down his chest. His fellows nudged him forward.
"Our young men, lord, are dead. You have killed them all."
Alexandros snorted. "Don't lie to me, grandfather! We allowed ten or more of them to escape. I want to see them. Now! Else I will burn your miserable village to the ground and sell your women and children into slavery."
"But, brave sir—"
"Now!"
"Sir, they have run away. They fear your wrath and they have hidden themselves in the hills."
"Send your boys to find them. Have your women prepare a meal for us. See to it!"
They jumped to his command. It struck me that half a dozen men could be swarmed under if the whole village attacked us at once. But they were cowed, terrified. The boys scampered out toward the hills. The women bustled around their cook fires. The elders led us to their village's central green, where a feast was prepared for us.
By nightfall, seventeen young men stood sullenly before Alexandros, firelight flickering on their grimy, frightened faces. Several of them wore blood-soaked bandages on their arms or legs.
We had eaten a decent meal of roast lamb. The local wine was thin and bitter; Alexandros had made certain that we drank no more than one cup apiece.
Now he strutted up and down before the failed ambushers, fists on his hips, firelight glinting off the jeweled pommel of his sheathed sword. The meal seemed to have taken the edge off his rage. That, and the fact that Ox-Head had been returned unharmed.
Turning on the white-bearded village leader, Alexandros demanded, "What retribution should I exact on men who tried to kill me?"
The old man had recovered some of his courage, too. "You have already slain enough men to keep our village in mourning for the rest of the year, young lord."
"Is that your answer?"
He bowed his head. "You may take whatever vengeance you desire, my master."
"I will take, then, these young men."
"You would slay them all?" Beyond the fire's dancing shadows I sensed a stir among the villagers.
"I will not slay any of them. They will join my army and fight against my enemies."
His army! I wondered what Philip would say to that.
"But, sir," said the old man, "if you take all of them we will have no one to tend the sheep, no one to defend our village from the marauders of the next valley."
"You would prefer that I hang them, here and now?"
"Hang me," said the old man, trying to draw himself up straight. "I am the leader of these people. I am responsible for their crime."
Alexandros stared at the white-beard. Then he broke into a wide grin. "You're right, old man. Your village has been punished enough." He turned to the waiting younger men. "Go back to your homes. And thank the gods that you have a man of courage leading your village."
The old man sank to his knees. "Thank you, brave lord! Thank you for your mercy."
Alexandros pulled him up to his feet. "There is one thing that I want you to do, however."
"What is it, lord?"
"Raise a statue to me and place it here, on this spot, as a reminder to your people to cease their thieving ways."
"I will have it done, lord. But I don't know your name."
"Alexandros of Macedon."
"The son of Philip?" The whole village gasped.
Alexandros' smile vanished. "The son of Zeus," he answered.
When we returned to the main body of the army we received more bad news. The Athenians had already marched their army to Thebes and now the two armies, together with other allies from among the smaller cities nearby, stood ready to block our path to Thebes and Attica.
"Can we maneuver around them?" Alexandros suggested. "Take Thebes while they stand in the field waiting for us to appear from the north?"
Philip's one good eye widened. "Clever thinking, son."
We were huddled in Philip's tent, bent over a folding table that bore a map of the area. Alexandros stood across the table from Philip, who was flanked by Parmenio and Antipatros. Antigonos the One-Eyed stood beside Alexandros; Ptolemaios and the other Companions crowded behind them. I was at the tent's entrance flap.
"Can you find a route that the whole army could pass over without being detected by the enemy?" Philip asked Alexandros.
Barely glancing at the map, Alexandros replied, "No, not the whole army. We would be seen and reported on, no matter which route we took."
Philip nodded.
"But," Alexandros went on, "a smaller group of men, a striking force of cavalry with a phalanx or two of hoplites, could swing around the enemy army and take Thebes while they're still in the field awaiting your advance."
Parmenio blurted, "That's foolhardy! A small force could never take the city by storm and wouldn't be able to lay siege to it."
"We would have the advantage of surprise," Alexandros shot back.
"D'you expect the Theban garrison to drop dead of shock at the sight of you?" Parmenio quipped.
No one laughed. The tent fell deathly silent.
Philip broke the silence. "If you could take the city it would be a great advantage to us. But it would not eliminate the army that faces us. They'd still be there, and we'd still have to deal with them."
"And we'd be weaker," said Antipatros, "because your striking force would no longer be with the main body of our army."
Alexandros said nothing. He simply stared down at the map, his face red with suppressed anger.
"Do you understand the situation?" Philip asked gently. "We must defeat their army in the field. Seizing Thebes won't accomplish that."
"I understand," Alexandros said tightly, without looking up.
"The question, then," said Antigonos, "is where do we fight them?"
"And how many of them are there? What's their order of battle? Who's leading them?" Parmenio was full of questions.
"We'll get some information along those lines shortly," said Philip.
"From spies?" Antipatros asked.
Philip nodded.
"I don't trust spies," grumbled Antigonos. "They can lie to you as often as not. I prefer to see the enemy's dispositions with my own eye." And he put a forefinger below his one good eye.
"Perhaps you and I should scout out the enemy together," suggested Philip, pointing to his own single eye. "Between us we equal one whole scout."
Everyone broke into laughter, the king loudest of all.
"We need to scout them out," agreed Parmenio. "Even the best of spies doesn't have a military head. We need to find out exactly what we're facing."
"You won't like what you see," Philip warned. "They'll outnumber us by quite a bit."
"And the Theban Sacred Band is worth two or three times its numbers," said Antigonos.
"We need some scouts," Parmenio insisted.
"I'll take a look at them," Alexandros said.
"No. It's too risky. You stay in camp."
"But I can do it!"
"So could I," said the king. "But I'm too valuable to risk on a mission that others can do as well."
"All our necks will be beneath the blade once the battle begins," Antipatros said, trying to make peace. "There's no sense taking risks now that we can avoid."
Alexandros raised no further objections, and the meeting broke up with the agreement that Parmenio would pick the men who would cautiously scout the enemy encampments.
But as I followed Alexandros and his Companions back toward their tents, Alexandros pulled me aside. Waving the others to go on, he walked me toward a small clump of trees near one of the horse corrals. I had become accustomed to the smell of the horses and their nervous snuffling when they were penned into the makeshift corrals. It was almost sundown and the horses were anticipating the arrival of the slaves with their bundles of hay.
"Orion," said Alexandros, in a low, confidential tone, "it is clear to me that my father and his generals need information from inside the enemy's camp."
"I'm sure—"
He cut me off, impatient to have his say. "Parmenio's scouts won't be able to glean the kind of information we need."
"Your father has spies in the enemy camp, though. Surely they'll bring out—"
"No, no! We need someone from the army to go into the enemy camp and see for himself how they are arrayed, who their leaders are, what their plans are."
I thought I understood what he was driving at.
"You want me to do this?"
He had to crane his neck to look up into my face. "Not exactly, Orion. I am going to do it myself."
"You!" I was thunderstruck.
"But since my mother told me I must not go anywhere without you," he went on, unperturbed, "you will have to accompany me."
"But you can't—"
"I can't let Hephaistion and the others know; they'll want to come with me."
Appalled, I blurted, "You can't go into the enemy's camp!"
"And why not?"
"You'd be recognized! You'd be killed or captured and held for ransom. You could wreck your father's entire plan!"
Alexandros smiled at me, pityingly. "How little you understand, Orion. I cannot be killed. Not before my time. My mother is a priestess of the Old Gods and she has prophesied that I will not die until I have conquered all the world."
"Not all prophecies come true."
"You doubt my mother?" he asked coldly.
I knew where that would lead, so I evaded with, "Even if you are not killed, if the enemy captures you they will hold you a hostage until your father surrenders to them."
"In the first place, Orion, my father is more likely to be Zeus than mortal Philip. In the second place, if I am discovered I will fight to the death rather than allow myself to be captured."
"But—"
"And since I am not destined to die until I have conquered the world," he overrode me, "I obviously will not be killed now."
There was no way to penetrate such logic.
"You must accompany me; that is my mother's command."
"And the king's," I reminded him. "Your father commanded me to protect you at all times."
He laughed and headed for his tent.
We waited until the crescent moon was setting behind the jagged mountains to the west. All our camp was asleep, except for the sentries standing muffled in their cloaks against the night's chill.
I slipped out of my tent without waking the other men of the royal guard sleeping there, and wrapped the scabbard of my sword with a long strip of cloth as I made my way to Alexandros' tent. Silence would be our ally, and I wanted no clink of metal to reveal our presence—either to the enemy or to our own sentries. I wore a dark woolen vest over my chiton, leaving my arms and legs free. The cool night air was no discomfort to me; I simply adjusted my body's circulation to keep myself warm.
There were two guards on duty before Alexandros' tent, leaning sleepily on their spears at its entrance. They allowed me inside without challenge. Alexandros was awake and bristling with energy, pacing the length of his tent, which was larger than the one in which six of us guardsmen slept and furnished almost as handsomely as his quarters in the palace. As soon as he saw me he wordlessly took up a dark half-length cloak and fastened it across his shoulders.
"Do you have a hat or a hood?" I asked. "That golden hair of yours is a dead giveaway."
He nodded and went to a chest at the foot of his cot. From it he pulled out a dark woolen cap and tugged it over his hair.
As far as the guards were concerned, the prince was going for a late-night stroll through the camp with his personal bodyguard. The sentries were a different matter. We had to slip past them without being seen.
"Follow me," whispered Alexandros. "I scouted our own camp this afternoon."
He led me to the little stream that meandered through the camp. Tangled bushes grew at its banks, except for the places where the soldiers had cut them down to get at the water. We waded knee-deep into the icy water and made our way out of the camp. When we came to sentries posted on either bank, we ducked low and let the shrubbery screen us. When the stream turned at an angle that hid us from the sentries' sight, we clambered out, struggling through the thorny bushes onto bare dry ground.
Alexandros shivered, but I thought it was more excitement than the cold. He was happy as a little boy at play. We pressed on toward the enemy camp.
"We should tell Parmenio or one of the other generals that someone can sneak into our camp through that stream," I whispered.
He made a grunt that might have been an affirmative.
Up ahead I could see camp fires, thousands of them. It looked as if the dark countryside had been visited by a plague of fireflies. But these lights did not dart and flicker through the shadows; they remained fixed in place. I knew that each of them represented anywhere from six to a dozen or more soldiers. There must be fifty thousand troops facing us, I figured.
Far in the distance a few other lights gleamed wanly. I touched Alexandros' shoulder and pointed.
"That's the town," he whispered to me. "Chaeroneia."
We went down on our bellies and crawled like beetles to get past the enemy sentries. It took a long time; we would inch along, then stop, wait, glance around to see where the sentries were and if they were looking our way. Then we dragged ourselves across a few more feet of the dusty hard ground.
At last we were deep enough inside the camp to get to our hands and knees and scamper behind the shelter of a decent-sized rock.
Alexandros was grinning. "We used to play at this when we were boys, Ptolemaios and Harpalos and I."
He was little more than a boy now, I thought. But I said nothing.
Once inside the camp's guarded perimeter it was almost easy to walk around. There were men from many different cities and tribes, and even though they tended to camp amongst their own, we saw that many others were walking through the camp, talking with friends or strangers or drifting alone with their thoughts, unable to sleep on the night before battle.
Alexandros could distinguish among them by their accents. He spoke to several men, low and brief in his words. I noticed that he used the Attic accent rather well, disguising his native Macedonian tongue.
Finally we were among the Athenians. I saw a very large tent, bright with candles within and guarded by half a dozen men in armor.
"Their generals must be there," I said to Alexandros as we stood in the shadows between lesser tents. "Making their last-minute plans."
"I wish we could get close enough to listen." But even reckless Alexandros saw that it would be impossible. The area around the tent was cleared for a good fifty feet and lit at all four corners of the open space by watch fires. The guards could see anyone approaching the tent from any direction.
Then we saw a familiar figure leave the tent: thin, stoop-shouldered, balding, combing the fingers of one hand through his bushy beard.
"Demosthenes!" Alexandros hissed.
"Their generals don't need his oratory now," I said.
We watched Demosthenes make his way to his own tent, head bent, walking slowly, like a man deep in thought. The instant he stepped through the tent's entrance Alexandros started after him.
I tried to stop him. "Are you mad? One yell from him and you're a prisoner."
But he pulled away from me. "He won't yell with my sword's point at his throat."
I could either overpower the young hothead or go with him. I went with him.
There was no guard at Demosthenes' tent. We pushed right inside, drawing our swords.
He looked up, startled. The tent was no great affair, big enough for a cot and a table, little more. Demosthenes was at the table. A dark-skinned man in a colorful robe, his head wrapped in a white turban, stood next to him.
"A Persian!" Alexandros snapped.
"Who are you?" Demosthenes demanded.
"I am Alexandros, prince of Macedon."
I swiftly took in the tent's furnishings. The table was bare except for a pitcher of wine and two cups. A hoplite's panoply of armor stood arrayed on a wooden form in one corner. Next to it rested a large round shield painted blue, with the words "With Fortune" in white around its edge. Four spears stood behind the armor, poking up into the shadowed ceiling of the tent. A chest next to the cot, a sword in its scabbard atop the chest. Nothing else.
"I am not a Persian," said the dark-skinned man, in strangely accented Attic Greek. "I am from Hindustan."
"Hindustan?" Alexandros seemed almost to ignore Demosthenes. "Where is that?"
The turbanned man smiled condescendingly. "Far from this place. It lies on the other side of the Persian Empire." He had large dark liquid eyes. His skin seemed to shine in the lamplight, as if it were oiled.
"Young Alexandros," said Demosthenes, his voice trembling slightly.
Alexandros suddenly remembered why he was here. Pointing his sword at Demosthenes' throat, he advanced on the Athenian. "And you are the man who calls my father a sly dog and a vicious beast."
"One c-c-cry from m-me and you're a d-d-dead man," Demosthenes stuttered.
"It will be the last sound you ever make," Alexandros said.
"Wait," I snapped. Turning to the Hindi, I said, "Who are you? Why are you here?"
"I serve the Great King," he answered in singsong cadence. "I carry gold and instructions to this man here."
"Gold and instructions from the Great King," muttered Alexandros. "The man who preaches the glories of democracy over tyranny serves the Great King of the Persians, the tyrant who holds the Greek cities of Ionia in bondage."
Demosthenes pulled himself to his full height, little taller than Alexandros. "I serve no m-m-master except the de-democracy of Athens."
"This man says otherwise."
With a lopsided smile, Demosthenes answered, "The Great K-King serves me, Alexandros. His g-g-gold helps me to fight your f-father."
"Politics," Alexandros spat.
"What do you know of politics, princeling?" Demosthenes shot back. Suddenly his nervous stuttering was gone, vanished in the heat of anger. "You play at war and think that conquest is everything. What do you know about ruling people, about getting free men to follow where you lead?"
"I will rule when my father dies," said Alexandros. "And I will conquer all the world."
"Yes, I see. You were born to be a ruler of slaves, like your tyrant father before you. All you have known all your life has been luxury and pleasure—"
"Luxury and pleasure?" Alexandros' voice nearly broke. "I was raised like a Spartan helot. I can run twenty miles and live for weeks on roots and berries. My body is trained and hard, not a soft slug of a worm like you."
"But all your life you have known you would be king one day. You have never doubted it. You have never had to wonder where your next meal would come from, or if you would have a roof over your head."
"I've spent more nights in the open air than with a roof over my head."
"What of it?" Demosthenes challenged. "I was born in poverty. All my life the only safety I have had has been from my wits. I have worked all my life, since earliest childhood. No one gave me a place at the table; I had to struggle to get where I am. No one named me prince and assured my future. I had to earn my position as a leader of Athens. And even today, even at this moment, my position can be taken from me. I have no security, no father to protect me, no wealth to shelter me from hunger and cold."
"By the gods," Alexandros almost whispered. "You're jealous of me!"
"Jealous? Me? Never! Never!"
I kept one eye on the Hindi. He was not armed, and he made no move toward the sword on the chest behind him. He seemed to be following the argument with intense interest.
"You envy my position," Alexandros insisted. "You think that you should be a prince, instead of me."
"Never!" Demosthenes repeated, so vehemently that I thought Alexandros had touched the most sensitive nerve of all. "I want no princes, no kings, no tyrants to rule over men. I want democracy, where men rule themselves."
"Where men are swayed by demagogues such as yourself," Alexandros said. "You want a nation of obedient idiots swept by emotion and your rhetoric. You want followers, slaves to your words."
"And you want slaves outright!"
"Not so. The king of Macedonia is not a birthright, as you seem to believe, Athenian. The king must be elected—"
"By your army, yes, I know."
"And our army is all the able-bodied men of the kingdom. How does that differ from your democracy?"
"Because your army will elect the son of the old king, and well you know it!"
"They will elect the son of the old king if they deem him worthy. Soldiers do not willingly elect fools to lead them. But from what I've seen of your democracy, anyone can be a leader if he promises enough and has enough fancy words to stir the mob."
Demosthenes took in a deep, shuddering breath. Eyes squeezed shut, he said in a low voice, "You represent the power of the sword and the privilege of birth. I represent the will of the people. Tomorrow we will shall see which is stronger."
"If you live to see tomorrow," said Alexandros.
Demosthenes' eyes popped open. "I should h-have expected n-n-nothing less from the s-son of Philip. You would kill an unarmed m-man."
"I would decapitate a poisonous snake."
"That's not why we came here," I reminded Alexandros. "And making a martyr of this man will only make the Athenians fight harder."
Alexandros glanced at me, then returned his gaze to Demosthenes. "Where will the Athenians be placed in tomorrow's formation?"
"On the far left," said the Hindi, before Demosthenes could open his mouth. "The Thebans will be on the right, which will be the stronger side."
Alexandros blinked at him.
"I will tell you whatever you wish to know, so long as you do not kill this man."
"Why?"
The Hindi made a sad little smile. "It is my religion. No man should kill another, or allow one to be killed if he can help it."
"What kind of a religion is that?" Alexandros wondered.
"It is The Eightfold Path. The Way of the Buddha."
I asked, "Do you know all the dispositions of the troops for tomorrow's battle?"
"Oh yes."
"Can we believe that?" Alexandros demanded.
"I am the representative of the Great King," he replied easily. "My lord Dareios and his advisors will want to know every detail of tomorrow's battle. I am to carry that information back to them."
"You'll give it to Philip and his generals first," said Alexandros.
"Willingly, if you will spare this man."
Curious, I asked him, "You will help us to slay thousands tomorrow if we spare this one individual?"
"Tomorrow you will fight and thousands will be slain no matter what I do. I have no control over that. But if I can save the life of this one man, I must do it. That is the Way."
I turned to Demosthenes. "Can we trust you to remain silent while we take this man to our camp?"
He glanced at Alexandros, still brandishing his sword, then nodded.
"You may trust this demagogue, Orion," said Alexandros, "but I don't."
Sheathing his sword, Alexandros went to the armor standing in the corner of the tent. He pulled the straps from the cuirass and greaves and used them to bind Demosthenes hand and foot. Finally he stuffed a gag in the orator's mouth and tied it with a strip of cloth.
"Now we can trust him," Alexandros muttered, "for a little while."
Standing by the blue shield with its lettering, Alexandros looked back at Demosthenes, lying helpless on the bare ground.
"With Fortune," he read grimly. "I will look for you on the battlefield tomorrow."
Then we left with the Hindi and started back toward our own camp.
The Hindi's name was Svertaketu. "It is acceptable for you to call me Ketu," he said modestly as we made our way through the predawn shadows back to the Macedonian camp. "The words of my native language are difficult for your tongues to pronounce."
All the way back to the camp Alexandros pressed Ketu for information about his native land.
"Tell me of the lands beyond the Persian Empire," the young prince asked as we hurried across the grassy, rolling ground between the camps, where tomorrow's battle would be fought.
"It is so large that it has many names," replied Ketu. "Indra, Hind, Kush—many names and principalities. A far land, very large, very distant. A great, great empire with vast palaces and temples of gold. And lands beyond that, too. Cathay is an even larger empire, far to the east. It stretches as far as the great eastern ocean."
"The world is much larger than I knew. I must tell Aristotle of this."
I wondered what was going through his mind. Alexandros felt it was destiny to conquer the whole world. Was he dismayed that there was so much more to it than he had thought? Or was he excited at the prospect of new lands to see, new empires to conquer? He sounded more excited than dismayed to me.
We let the sentries of our camp see us, and when they challenged us Alexandros pulled off his dark cap and shouted his name to them. Swiftly we strode through the camp, while the sky began to turn milky with the first hint of dawn, and went straight to Philip's tent.
True to his word, Ketu told Philip and his generals everything he knew about the enemy's battle plans.
"How do we know this man is telling us the truth?" Parmenio grumbled. "And even if he is, won't Demosthenes and the Athenian generals change their plans?"
Philip made a wry grin. "Do you think they have enough time to bring the Thebans and all the others together and change their order of battle? From what my spies tell me, it took them more than a week to work out the plan they've agreed on."
Scratching at his beard, Parmenio admitted, "Yes, it would probably take them another week of arguing to get them to make any changes."
Philip nodded and dismissed Ketu, indicating with a gesture that I should go with him. I saw in his one good eye a conflict of anger and admiration for his son. For me he had nothing but anger, I thought. Yet he knew as well as I that no one could prevent Alexandros from doing whatever he wished to do. He could not blame me for the Little King's foolish risk-taking. Or could he?
Alexandros remained in the tent with Parmenio and the other generals, digesting the intelligence Ketu had provided and altering their plans for the imminent battle.
As Ketu and I stepped outside into the brightening morning, I could hear Parmenio asking bluntly, "How do we know he's telling us the truth? He could have been planted here to give us false information."
Alexandros immediately objected. I showed Ketu the direction to the tent I shared with some of the other guardsmen.
"They do not trust me," he said as we walked along.
"It does seem very fortunate," I said, "that you are so knowledgeable—and cooperative."
He shrugged his slim shoulders. "We are all directed by fate. What purpose would it serve for me to be obstinate?"
"What would your master, the Great King, say?"
Again he shrugged. "I served the Great King because I was commanded to by my king. He gave me to the Great King as a gift, to curry favor with the Persians. I am a professional diplomat, and I know I will never see my home again."
"Then you don't care who wins this battle?"
"It makes little difference. We are all bound up on the wheel of life. Those who die tomorrow will return to life again and again. The great goal is to get off the wheel, to achieve final nothingness."
I stopped him with a touch on his arm. "You believe that men live more than one life?"
"Oh yes. We are reborn into this world of pain and suffering until we can purify ourselves sufficiently to attain Nirvana."
"Nirvana?"
"Nothingness. The end of all sensation. The end of desire and pain."
"I have had other lives before this one."
"We all have."
"I can remember some of them."
His large liquid eyes went wide. "Remember? Your past lives?"
"Parts of them. Some of them."
"That is a sign of great holiness. You may be a Bodhisattva, a holy being."
I had to smile at that. "No, I was created to be a warrior. Even my name means 'hunter.' I am a slayer of men; that is my destiny."
"But if you remember your former lives—that is something that only a Buddha can do truly."
"Do you believe in the gods?" I asked him.
"There are gods, yes. And demons, too."
I nodded, old memories stirring inside me. "I have fought demons. Devils. Long ago."
He stared hard at me. "We must speak further of this. It is of great importance, Orion."
"Yes, I agree."
Horses were stirring in the growing light of dawn. And men. The camp was bustling.
"But the battle comes first," said Ketu. "May the gods favor you, Orion."
I thanked him. The first trumpet blew. We would be forming up for battle within the hour.
Just as Ketu had told us, the Athenians were on the extreme left of their battle line, opposite our right. By long tradition, the right side of an army's line was the stronger. The Thebans with their invincible Sacred Band stood on their right. The middle of the enemy line was filled with allies from Corinth, Megara and other cities opposed to Philip.
Demosthenes must have talked their generals into letting the Athenians take the position most likely to be opposite Philip himself. Or perhaps they reasoned that the Thebans, led by their Sacred Band, would crush our weaker left flank and roll up our line like an unstoppable juggernaut.
They had no cavalry, but their line stretched from the steep hill of Chaeroneia's acropolis to the marshy ground by the river. There was no way for the Macedonian cavalry to round either of their flanks, one anchored on the temple-topped acropolis and other on the muddy flats. We would have to break their line, one way or the other.
I sat astride Thunderbolt, who was flicking his ears nervously and snuffling as we waited at the extreme left end of the Macedonian line. In front of us were only light troops, peltast. Beyond them, facing us, stood the Thebans in phalanxes twelve men deep. The Sacred Band stood on the extreme right of their formation, at the edge of the mud flats, their polished armor gleaming in the morning sun, their spears bristling like a forest of death.
Alexandros, sitting on black Ox-Head in front of me, was in command of the entire heavy cavalry. We had some lighter horsemen off to our left, by the river. As I waited for the trumpet to sound the advance, I remembered Philip's final word to us, less than an hour before, when the commanders had gathered for their final conference before the fighting began. From the back of his horse Philip looked up and down the two assembled armies with his good eye.
"Now we'll see how well this nation of lawyers can fight," Antigonos had joked.
"Well enough, I expect," said Philip. "They have a fair number of mercenaries among them."
"Yes," agreed Antipatros, "but most of the Athenians are citizen hoplites, not professional soldiers."
"The same kind of citizen hoplites that defeated the Persians more than once," said Parmenio, eyeing the Athenian phalanxes.
Philip had shaken his head. "That was a long time ago, my friend. They've spent the generations in between getting soft."
"Lawyers, all of them," Antigonos repeated.
"Well," said Parmenio, pointing to the other side of the line, "the Thebans aren't soft, and their Sacred Band aren't citizen-soldiers. They're as professional as they come."
"That's why I've put the cavalry against them," Philip had answered.
Alexandros, standing bareheaded beside his father, pulled himself up a little taller. He had never commanded the entire cavalry before, only smaller detachments. His father was showing enormous faith in him.
"You know what to do?" Philip asked him.
"Wait for your signal."
"No matter what happens, you wait for my signal."
"No matter what, I will wait."
"Whether my side of the line advances or retreats, you wait for my signal."
Alexandros nodded.
"If the earth should open up and swallow the whole army—"
"I will wait for your signal."
"Good." Philip laughed and reached out to tousle Alexandros' hair. "Better get your helmet on, son. You're going to need some protection for those pretty curls."
Alexandros flushed as the generals laughed. As we rode back to our position in the line he complained, "He always gives with one hand and takes away with the other."
"He's put you in the most important position," I said. "He's showing great faith in you."
"He's put me in the spot where I'm most likely to get killed," Alexandros grumbled.
I could not let that stand. "I thought your destiny was not to get killed until you've conquered the whole world."
His grin told me that he understood the irony of the situation. "Yes, and now I know that there's a lot more of it to conquer: Hindustan and Cathay and the gods know what else."
That was an hour ago. Now we sat waiting for the order to charge, grooms standing beside us to help keep the horses steady, squires holding the lances we would use when we went into action. Nerves were screwed up tight, palms sweating, the very air crackling with that special electricity that comes when nearly a hundred thousand men are ready to do their utmost to slaughter one another.
The enemy stood their ground, content to wait for Philip to make the first move. They were defending their homeland; to get to Thebes and Athens we would have to get past them. If we beat them, there was nothing between us and the cities of the south. If they beat us Philip's kingdom would collapse. This one battle would determine the outcome of the war.
The sun climbed higher. The two lines of armed men stood facing one another, sweating not entirely from the heat, waiting, waiting.
A single trumpet sounded. Like a single creature, Philip's phalanxes on his far right began to march forward toward the Athenians. Not a charge, just a slow methodical march of some twenty thousand hoplites, shaking the ground with each step they took.
The Athenian line seemed to shudder. Then their spears came down to point at the advancing Macedonians. A battle between phalanxes often turned into a pushing match. The two lines would meet with a clashing of spears and roar of fury and each would try to push down the other. That was why Philip ordered his phalanxes sixteen men deep; the extra weight was often the difference between victory and defeat.
The Athenians were twelve men deep. They began to move forward, toward the advancing Macedonians, with an equally slow, measured tread.
From our horses we saw it all unfolding. Thunderbolt was quivering with excitement, eager to go. I stroked his neck and glanced at Alexandros. Even with his helmet on and his cheek flaps strapped on I could see that he, too, was eager to charge. But true to his promise he kept his place, even though the rest of the enemy line was now moving toward us, keeping pace with the Athenians. The Thebans were marching straight toward us, as methodical and inexorable as death itself.
From out of the Macedonian phalanxes a flurry of peltasts scampered, showering the advancing Athenians with arrows and javelins and rocks. The second and more rearward ranks raised their shields over their heads, protecting themselves and their first rank, who kept their shields before them. I saw a few men fall, but by and large the peltasts did little more than irritate the Athenians.
I was more worried about the advancing Thebans. Horses will not charge spears, no matter how you urge them. And a forest of Theban spears was approaching us, with nothing between us and them except a scattering of our own peltasts. They annoyed the Thebans but could not stop them.
Philip's troops were advancing in oblique order, their farthest right phalanxes leading the others. It was a technique Philip had learned from the great Theban commander Epaminondas when, as a boy, he had lived in Thebes for several years, a royal hostage after Macedonia had been trounced by the Thebans.
I heard Alexandros gasp. The peltasts in front of Philip's line turned away from the advancing Athenians and fled from the field. And the phalanxes began to retreat, as well.
"They're running away!" Alexandros said. His voice was low, breathless.
Not running, I saw. They were retreating in good order. But retreating. Even before they had come to grips with the enemy line.
A great exultant shout went up from the Athenians and they broke into a headlong charge to close the distance with the retreating Macedonians.
"Should we send some of the cavalry to go help them?" I asked Alexandros.
"No," he said grimly. "We stand here until he gives us the signal."
The Thebans were moving toward us faster, now, but they were not charging wildly, as the Athenians were. The allied troops in the center of the enemy line were struggling to keep the line intact, with the Athenians rushing pell-mell on the left side of them and the Thebans advancing more slowly on the right.
Not a blow had yet been struck by the hoplites anywhere on either line, yet it looked to me as if the battle had already been lost.
And it had. But not by the wily One-Eyed Fox.
The allied hoplites could not keep up with the charging Athenians. Gaps opened up in their line. The Theban commander must have seen this, for now he began to move his phalanxes more toward the center of their formation, trying to close the gap—leaving some firm ground open between his own right flank and the marshland by the river.
Another trumpet sounded, blasting the air like the crack of doom. Alexandros grabbed the lance from the hands of his squire, raised it over his helmeted head and screamed, "Follow me!"
We charged headlong into the gap between the allies and the Thebans, thundering across the sloping ground like a torrent of death. The world around me slowed once again as my body went into overdrive. Right behind Alexandros I rode, gripping Thunderbolt with my thighs, levelling my lance as I leaned forward against the horse's flowing mane.
We poured into the gap between the Thebans and the allied phalanxes before they could close the ground between them. Wheeling around faster than the phalanxes could turn, we hit them from the rear and sides. The allied hoplites broke and ran. The Thebans held their ground and fought back. But our light cavalry swung around their other flank, skirting the marshy ground, and completed their encirclement. In front of the Theban phalanxes our light troops harried them with arrows and javelins. They could not turn their backs on the peltasts. They could not turn their backs to our cavalry. Their commanders bellowed orders but their voices were lost in the thunder of the battle. They tried to form a circle of shields, but we cut through them and sliced their formation into smaller and smaller bits. I left my lance buried in a man's chest and pulled out my sword, hacking and swinging madly at the milling, frightened, disorganized men all around me.
When an army loses discipline it loses the battle. The Thebans, good as they were, had lost the cohesion a phalanx needs to make it effective. They were not an army now, they had no phalanxes, only knots of shaken and confused men who were being cut to pieces by our cavalry.
On the other side of the battlefield, I learned later, the Macedonians stopped their planned retreat the instant the trumpet blast gave us the order to charge. Suddenly the Athenians were facing those sixteen-man-deep phalanxes. The two sides clashed briefly, then the Athenians broke and started to run away. Philip's men pursued them, slaughtering them as they ran, until he saw that the Thebans were still fighting for their lives against us. He ordered an end to the pursuit of the Athenians and brought his phalanxes over to our side of the field to finish off the Thebans.
For even though we had won our battle, the fighting was far from over. The Thebans refused to surrender. Hopeless, they fought on, especially their Sacred Band. Those men lived up to their reputation; even when we had cut them down to scattered pairs of men they fought on, back to back, on their knees when they were too badly wounded to stand. They refused to give up.
"You may kill us, but you will never see our backs," shouted one of them as he stood over the drooping body of his companion, dying from several spear thrusts.
It was grisly work, and costly. Thunderbolt took a spear thrust through his ribs and went down with a hideous shriek, almost pinning me beneath him. I leaped clear and skewered the Theban who had killed him. I saw Alexandros still on Ox-Head, his helmet gone, golden hair flowing in the breeze, hacking at the enemy with a fierce grin pulling his lips back from his teeth. His Companions were scattered through the melee, killing with equal ruthlessness, their swords and sword-arms dripping with hot blood.
A pair of Thebans must have recognized Alexandros' blond mane, for they pushed their way past the peltasts in front of them and headed for the prince. Coming up behind him they raised their spears simultaneously at his unprotected back.
Unprotected except for me. I had tried to stay as close to Alexandros as I could, but in this awful slaughter the excitement of battle, the passions of fear and blood-lust, and the sheer exhilaration of killing had almost made me lose my head. Almost. I knew somehow that this craving for violence had been built into me by the Creators; I was their instrument of destruction, their Hunter.
But despite the battle-fury that drove me on I saw the two Thebans ready to strike Alexandros from the rear. I was fighting a pair of them myself, both of them protecting themselves from my sword with their big shields, one of them still holding a spear, which he used to keep me at a distance from them.
The spear point seemed to waver in slow-motion before my eyes, almost hypnotically, while the other Theban tried to work himself over to my left side, where he could thrust at me with his bloodied sword.
I had no time to waste on them. I ducked beneath the spear point, rolled to the ground and kicked the spear-wielder in the groin. As he collapsed onto his own shield I jumped to my feet and slammed my shoulder into the shield of the other Theban. He jounced backward a step and I dashed off toward the men who were about to kill Alexandros.
I could not close the distance in time. So I threw my sword as hard as I could as I yelled, "Alexandros! Behind you!"
My sword point went completely through the nearer Theban's shoulder. He screamed and the spear dropped from his paralyzed fingers as his companion jabbed his own weapon at Alexandros. But the young prince had turned slightly at my shouted warning and the spear point slid across the belly of his bronze cuirass harmlessly as Alexandros raised his sword and brought it down on the Theban's neck hard enough to take his head almost completely off his shoulders. Blood geysered as the man gasped his death agony.
I had reached the other Theban by then. He had fallen almost beneath Ox-Head's shuffling hooves. Wrenching my sword from his shoulder, I plunged it into his throat. He died with a look of surprise on his face.
Philip's phalanxes reached us then, marching up in good order to dispatch the last of the Sacred Band.
The king rode up just behind his phalanxes and went straight to Alexandros. Looking him over with his one good eye, Philip broke into a tired smile.
"Not a scratch on you!" He seemed pleased. "Not even on Ox-Head. The gods must work overtime protecting you."
Alexandros smiled back as if he had received nothing more than his due. If he realized that I had saved his life he made no mention of it.
I stood, panting and suddenly very weary, on grassy ground made slippery with blood and entrails. All around me the field was littered with corpses and the writhing, moaning bodies of the wounded. The battle was over. Now some of the troops were moving among the wounded, giving them the final merciful dagger in the throat. Others were stripping the dead of their arms and armor.
Ignoring the men, I staggered across the battlefield looking for Thunderbolt. Philip's strategy had worked almost perfectly. The enemy commanders had known that cavalry could not attack a well-formed line of spears. So Philip had induced the Athenian citizen-soldiers to break ranks and ruin the solidarity of their line. Then our cavalry could destroy their foot soldiers, and we did. But it had cost me a valiant steed.
Thunderbolt was already dead when I found him, the spear still sticking in his flank. I hoped that he had not suffered too much, then found it ludicrous that I cared more for this horse than for all the men who had fallen.
I began to laugh, at myself, at the folly of men who slaughter one another, at the so-called gods to whom men pray. If they knew that the gods were nothing more than selfish humans like themselves, what would they do? How would they re-order their lives if they rejected the gods they worshiped?
I had to get off by myself. Slowly, painfully I climbed the steep hill of Chaeroneia's acropolis. The sun was going down behind the distant mountains, and from the steps of the temple atop the hill I could see the entire battlefield in the long shadows of the setting sun. Thousands of bodies lay strewn like broken toys the breadth of the field.
"Are you pleased?" I muttered. "Is this the kind of human sacrifice that you enjoy watching?"
Turning to the temple, I climbed its steps and entered its shadowed interior. Statues of gods loomed around me: Zeus, Ares, Apollo, Poseidon.
"You made me part of this," I said to them. "You created me to kill my fellow men. I hate you! I hate all of you! For making me in the first place, for using me as a puppet, a tool, a toy. All I want is to get out, to get off this wheel of life, to find the final peace of oblivion."
And I knew that I had to learn from Ketu how to seek that ultimate death.
The statues remained silent and cold. The sun dipped behind the mountains and the temple became utterly dark. Yet my eyes adjusted to the darkness; I could still make out the statues, their aloof faces, their blankly staring eyes. Yes, there was Hera, proud and cruel. And Aphrodite, sensuousness personified.
And Athena, with a warrior's helmet and a spear in her hand. She too was lifeless, inanimate marble. As distant from me as the pale cold moon.
Yet I thought I heard her voice within my mind, saying, "Be brave, Orion. Bear the pain."
No, I thought. Not even for you. I can't bear this pain any longer. If there is a way out of life, I want to find it.
It was full dark as I made my way back down to the camp that Philip had set up on the battlefield. Men were still carrying the bodies of the slain to the funeral pyres dotting the plain; others were stacking the armor and weapons they had collected.
Pausanias cast a baleful eye at me as I showed up before the cook fire in front of his tent.
"Where've you been, Orion? The king assigned you to young Alexandros; you don't have leave to wander wherever you choose."
"I was communing with the gods," I said drily.
"Never mind that," he snapped. "Your post is at Alexandros' side. Find him and stay with him."
"Yes, sir."
He softened somewhat. "I hear you did well in the battle. Have something to eat before you go on duty again."
I was not hungry, but I thanked him and sat by the fire. Women camp-followers had shown up, and one of them was cooking for us. She was middle-aged, missing several teeth, but some of the guardsmen were already ogling her. After a bit more wine she would look ravishing.
I gnawed on a leg of goat, took a cup of wine, and then went to the river to clean the blood and grime of battle off me. Within the hour I was presentable enough to report for duty. I went searching for Alexandros.
All of the generals, I was told, were at Philip's tent, enjoying the fruits of victory. Alexandros was considered a general now. He had commanded the cavalry that had struck the crushing blow of victory.
There was much wine at Philip's tent. And the women pouring it were young and slim and smiling. Alexandros sat in a corner of the tent, his wine cup untouched on the ground beside his chair. Parmenio was lurching after one of the young wine pourers. Antipatros snored loudly on his chair, head thrown back and arms hanging almost to the ground.
Philip was joking with Antigonos and a few of the younger officers. Alexandros' Companions were nowhere in sight.
I went to the prince. "I am reporting for duty, sir."
He gave me a wan smile. "I won't need a bodyguard this night, Orion. I'm more in danger from boredom than anything else."
"I will stand watch outside the tent, then."
He nodded.
"Do you want to leave and return to your own quarters?" I asked.
"The king has commanded me to stay with him. I am a general of the army now, he says, and I must be part of all the conferences that the generals attend."
I looked around the tent. Philip had clutched one of the serving girls around the waist. With his free hand he was beckoning to another of them.
"It doesn't appear that military strategy will be discussed this night," I said.
Before Alexandros could reply, Philip staggered toward us, half supported by the two serving girls.
"We've won!" he said drunkenly to his son. "Why aren't you celebrating?"
"I am celebrating, sir," replied Alexandros. "I am with you."
Philip grunted. "I suppose you'd rather be with your own Companions, eh? I'll bet Ptolemaios' got a girl or two with him."
"I wouldn't be surprised," Alexandros said.
"But Hephaistion won't. He'll be waiting for you, won't he?"
"Yes. Of course."
Taking a deep breath, Philip clutched the two young women closer to him. Then he asked, "D'you know what we've won today, my son?"
"A great battle."
"No, more than that." Philip wagged his head from side to side. "We've won peace, my boy. Peace! There is no other power in all of the Greek states to oppose us. Macedonia is safe now. We can dictate terms to the Athenians and stop them from nibbling at our coastal cities. The tribes of the north and those savages in the Balkans will all calm down now, because they know we can turn our full power against them whenever we choose to. We'll have peace, Alexandros, for the first time since I took the throne."
Alexandros' brows knit. "But what about the Persians?"
"They'll accept us as supreme in Europe, we'll accept them as supreme in Asia. That will do it."
"But—"
"I know, I know. There's the Greek cities in Ionia. Dareios will tax them lightly, you'll see. He has enough troubles holding his empire together without stirring up the Ionian cities."
Alexandros rose to his feet. I realized that, short though he was, he was the same height as his father. Somehow Philip had always given the impression of being taller, even when his bad leg made him stoop.
"We are destined to conquer the Persian Empire. It's my fate," Alexandros said.
Philip grinned crookedly at him. "Perhaps it is your fate, young godling. But my fate is to rule a strong and secure Macedonia. When you're king—if you are accepted as king after me—you can go off and conquer the whole world. If the army will follow you."
I saw Alexandros' hands tightening into fists. His face went red. Not trusting himself to speak another word, he brushed past his father and the two young women supporting him and strode out of the tent. I followed him into the cool night air.
Behind us, Philip lurched and staggered through the tent's entrance, shouting, "We've won the peace, young fool! I've worked all my life for this and I'm not going to ruin it now. I'm not going to let anybody ruin it!"
Alexandros stalked off into the night, with me trailing dutifully behind him.
Among the spoils the soldiers collected from the battlefield was a large round shield, painted blue, with the word "With Fortune" lettered on it. When Alexandros heard of it, the morning after the battle, he ordered the shield brought to his tent—and the man who had found it, as well.
"Was the man whose shield this was also found on the battlefield?" he asked the young man. He was a Dardanian shepherd's son who had joined the army as a slinger.
"No, sire," said the youngster, clutching his felt cap in both hands, half bent over into a sort of bowing posture before the Little King. He might have been a year or so older than Alexandros, but he seemed much less sure of himself than the prince.
"The shield was found by itself?"
"Yes, sire. The man who owned it must have thrown it away as he fled from our phalanxes."
"I will keep it," said Alexandros. Turning to the servant at his left hand, he ordered, "Give this lad coins to make up for the value of the shield."
The young Dardanian bowed and thanked his way out of the tent, beaming. He had never seen so much money in his life.
Alexandros called me from my post at his tent's entrance and pointed to the shield, resting against his table.
"This is Demosthenes' shield."
"Yes," I agreed.
An icy smile flickered across his lips. "I would enjoy returning it to him."
"Assuming he survived the battle."
"Oh, he survived, all right. He threw down his shield and ran for his life. He probably ran all the way back to Athens."
Philip, merciless in battle, was generous in victory. He called Alexandros to his tent to discuss with his generals the peace terms he would exact.
"We will put a garrison of picked men into the acropolis of Thebes," he said flatly. "That will keep the city under control."
"That," added Parmenio, "and the fact that their army no longer exists."
"Their Sacred Band fought almost to the last men," Antigonos said, a bit of awe still in his voice.
Philip gave a snort. "Yes, they'll be celebrated in poems for all time to come. All we've got is the victory."
Everyone laughed. Except Alexandros. I could see that he was still smoldering over his father's pronouncement of the previous night.
"So what do you propose to do about Athens?" Parmenio asked.
"I want to send you, Alexandros," Philip replied, "into Athens to give them my terms."
"Which are?" asked Antigonos.
"They must sign a treaty that promises they will not make war against us again. They must recognize that we control the coastal cities up to and including Byzantion."
"And?"
"That's all."
"That's all?" Antigonos challenged. "Don't you want to install your own men in their government? Don't you want them to lay out their silver to pay for the cost of this war?"
Parmenio winked and said, "At least we can parade the army through their city."
"None of that," said Philip, quite seriously. "They're beaten and they know it. If we rub their noses in it they'll resent it and start a new war as soon as they're able to."
"They'll do that anyway," mumbled Parmenio.
Philip shook his head. "No, I don't think so. Demosthenes and his war party are discredited now. Their democracy will turn on them and toss them out of power, maybe exile them from the city."
"I'd rather see him hanging from his golden throat," Antipatros said.
"All I want from Athens is that they leave us in charge of the seaports and stop making war against us."
"And what about the Persians?" Alexandros asked, his voice as thin and hard as a knife blade.
"The Great King will make his settlement with us. If we offer no threat to him, he'll offer no threat to us."
"For how long?"
Philip fixed his son with his one good eye. "For as long as we control all of Greece. Which will be for as long as I sit on the throne of Macedonia."
I wondered. Philip had forged a powerful instrument in his army, and armies need enemies to fight. Otherwise they go to rot. Or worse, their officers begin to scheme against the king. Still, I could not see Parmenio or Antipatros or One-Eyed Antigonos plotting to overthrow Philip.
Alexandros, however, was a different matter. And there was his mother to consider.
This time Alexandros entered Athens openly. No disguises, no deception. He rode bareheaded in a gold-leafed chariot pulled by a brace of magnificent white stallions, followed by his Companions, all mounted on their war chargers, and then a squadron of the heavy cavalry that had crushed the Thebans.
The whole city turned out to see the boy-hero of Chaeroneia. If they resented the Macedonian conquest of their army they did not show it. The narrow winding streets of Athens were thronged with citizens shouting and waving to Alexandros, even throwing flowers. Many of these men must have been marching against us in the battle, I thought. Many of the women must be widows because of Chaeroneia. How can they cheer for their conqueror?
Perhaps because they were still alive, I reasoned, and not enslaved. Philip did not pursue the fleeing Athenian hoplites as ruthlessly as he might have. Instead of harrying them to their deaths he turned his phalanxes against the Thebans, coming to the aid of us in the cavalry.
Apparently the news of Philip's lenient terms had already been spread through the city. They thought he admired Athens, revered it so highly that he felt himself too humble to enter the city himself. Actually Philip was busy settling with Thebes and the other cities that had arrayed themselves against him. He was working at a king's tasks; he had no time for glory and adulation.
But Alexandros took the city's homage as his personal due.
The city's leaders were obsequious, hailing Alexandros before the crowd at the Agora as if he had won the victory for their side. In private they seemed unable to believe their good fortune.
"Philip will not send troops to occupy the city?"
"No," said Alexandros.
"He does not demand reparations or ransom for the prisoners he took?"
"No."
"All he wants is for us to confirm his control of the seaports along the Hellespont and Bosporus?"
"That, and a guarantee that you will no longer make war against us." Sullenly.
The Athenian leaders could hardly suppress their delight.
"After all, he controls the ports already."
"It was Demosthenes and his faction that wanted to war against Philip. I never believed in it."
"Nor I."
"Nor I!"
"Where is Demosthenes?" Alexandros asked. "I have something of his to return to him."
I accompanied Alexandros to Demosthenes' house, carrying his heavy blue shield with me, a combination bodyguard and porter. The other Companions had wanted to come and gloat, but Alexandros—in a very sober, serious mood—told them to stay behind.
Ptolemaios, who had brought his mistress Thais with him to see her native Athens once again, laughingly said to the others, "Let the Little King go see the golden-throated coward. We have better things to do!" And he shaped the curves of a woman in the air with his hands.
The other Companions agreed, laughing. Except for Hephaistion, who came to Alexandros and pleaded to come along with him.
"No, I want to see Demosthenes alone, eye to eye. If you or any of the others were there it would seem as if we're flaunting our victory over him."
"Well, aren't we?" Hephaistion asked. "Shouldn't we?"
Alexandros said merely, "That isn't what I want to do. I must see him alone."
"But you're taking Orion with you."
Without even glancing my way, Alexandros replied, "Orion is a servant, a bodyguard. He doesn't count."
Perhaps I should have been annoyed or even angered at that. I could not work up any resentment; he was right. I was a servant, a bodyguard, a hired soldier. In thrall to his witch mother, as well. And a slave of the Creators who let their creatures worship themselves as gods. What right had I to be angry at the truth?
I arranged an honor guard of six uniformed men to accompany us through the streets, three striding ahead of us, three behind. I did not entirely trust the Athenians' seeming acceptance of us. It would take only one dagger in the dark to slay the son of their conqueror.
As we walked through Athens' streets in the gathering shadows of evening, he said to me, "You realize that by sending me here, my father is robbing me of the victory celebration home in Pella."
"You got a hero's welcome here," I said.
"Smiling faces, Orion. But they smile out of fear. They are trying to deceive us."
"Perhaps so."
"Right now my father must be parading our troops through the streets of Pella. And then there will be the thanksgiving rites at the old capital in Aigai. And I won't be there for either one."
"They'll have celebrations when you return," I said.
He shook his head. "It won't be the same. He is getting all the glory for himself, making certain that all I get is leftovers."
"What you are doing here is very important."
Alexandros glanced around at the houses and shops crowding the street. It was late in the day, almost sundown. No one else was stirring, as far as we could see. The Athenians had emptied the street once they knew that Alexandros would be using it. Up ahead I could see the massive bulk of the Acropolis with its marble temples and the tip of Athena's spear catching the last glint of the setting sun.
"Important? This? I'm a messenger boy, that's all."
I said, "Ensuring the peace is king's work. Victory on the battlefield means nothing if the enemy isn't satisfied with the terms of the peace."
He did not reply.
"Your task is to make the Athenians realize that they have more to gain from peace than war. Your father sent you because Demosthenes has painted him as such a monster that it would be impossible for the Athenians to deal with him."
"Demosthenes," he whispered, as if he had just remembered where we were going, and why.
"You are not only Philip's representative," I reminded him, "you are his heir. The peace you arrange here should last into your own reign."
This time he looked at me squarely. "My father is still a vigorous man. I may not ascend to the throne for many years."
"You are young. You can wait."
"I am not good at waiting, Orion. When you have chosen glory instead of long life, waiting is hard."
"You sound like Achilles," I said.
"I want to be like Achilles: strong and glorious and famed forever."
"He was short and ugly and he slit his own throat," I blurted.
Alexandros jolted to a stop so suddenly that the guards behind us had to whistle to the guards up front to let them know they should stop too.
"How dare you defame the greatest hero of the Iliad?"
"I was there," I said. It was almost as if someone else were speaking. I heard my own words, and in a far corner of my mind I was astounded to be speaking them.
"At Troy?"
"At Troy. I was befriended by Odysseus and made a member of his house."
"That was a thousand years ago!"
"It was in an earlier life."
He grinned nervously. "You've been talking to that Hindi, haven't you? He believes in reincarnation."
"I have lived many lives. One of them was at Troy. I saw Achilles kill Hector. I saw Achilles take his own life when an arrow wound crippled him."
Alexandros shook his head like a man trying to rid himself of a bad dream. "Orion, I think you have taken too many blows on your head."
I knew he believed what I had told him but did not want to admit it, even to himself. So I said merely, "Perhaps so. Perhaps it was all a dream."
"Certainly it was."
We fell silent as we marched on to the house of Demosthenes. It was not as grand as Aeschines' house, where once again we were staying, but it was a large and handsome house with a whole detachment of uniformed city constables standing guard before it. Like Aeschines, Demosthenes was a lawyer. It must have been a profession that paid very well, I thought, judging from their homes.
Demosthenes knew we were coming, of course. His servants bowed us in through the front gate. He received us in the central courtyard, where gnarled fig trees provided shade by day. Now, with night's shadows creeping across the city, the courtyard was lit by lanterns hung from the trees' twisting limbs.
He stood as Alexandros and I approached, his eyes going wide at the sight of his shield. Our six-man guard stood out by the house's front gate, with the constables' detachment, within shouting range.
"I believe this is yours," said Alexandros, gesturing me to lay it on the ground at Demosthenes' feet. The man seemed to have aged ten years in the few days since Chaeroneia. His face was lined, a pallid gray, and his beard was ragged.
He stared down at the shield. It was unscratched. He had never come close enough to the fighting to have it marred.
"Wh-what do you w-w-want of me?" He could not look directly at Alexandros.
"Only to tell you that you have nothing to fear from Philip, King of the Macedonians. Despite all that you have said, despite your personal insults, he has instructed me to tell you that he bears you no ill will and he will not harm you in any way."
Demosthenes looked up then, his eyes more puzzled than surprised.
"But let me add this, Demosthenes," said Alexandros. "I, Alexandros, will one day be king of the Macedonians. And on that day you can begin to number the hours left to your miserable, lying, traitorous heart."
"T-traitorous? Whom have I b-betrayed?"
"The thousands of your fellow Athenians who died at Chaeroneia while you flung your shield and weapons away and ran to save your filthy neck. The brave Sacred Band of the Thebans, who fought to the last man because you, bought by Persian gold, talked them into making war against us. The people of your own city who trusted you to lead them to victory and now bless Philip's name for his magnanimity."
Demosthenes was trembling, but he managed to choke out, "So y-you intend to k-k-kill me once you g-gain the throne."
"You can run to the Great King, your secret master, but it will do you no good. Hide at the ends of the earth and I will find you," Alexandros snarled.
"My secret master?" Some of the old fire seemed to rekindle in Demosthenes. "I have no m-master except the democracy of Athens!"
"You deny you took money from the Persians?"
"Of course not. I would have t-taken money from the dead souls in Hades if it would have helped to stop Philip."
"Little good it did you."
"Athens still stands," he challenged.
"Your people love Philip now. If you showed yourself on the streets they would no doubt tear you to pieces."
"Yes. Likely they would. Today. Tomorrow. But in time, perhaps a few weeks, perhaps a few months, they will come back to me."
Alexandros laughed.
And Demosthenes scowled at him. "You have no idea of how the p-people actually behave, do you? This is a democracy, princeling. Loyalty is not forced. Obedience is not coerced. Where the people are free to make up their own minds, they change their minds often." As before, the warmer his passion became the less he stuttered.
"Where the people are dazzled by demagogues," Alexandros countered, "they can be led by their noses by the man who tells the biggest lies."
"By the man who offers them the clearest vision of their own future," Demosthenes corrected.
"The same thing," said Alexandros.
"I will lead Athens again, sooner or later."
Nodding, Alexandros agreed. "Yes, I understand that a democracy will follow the smoothest talker. I hope they do make you their leader again. I hope it happens when I am king. Then I will smash you once and for all."
"You will try, I'm sure."
Alexandros took a step closer to Demosthenes. "I will crush you like a grape, demagogue." He scuffed a boot against the blue shield. "You'll need more than that to protect you, next time."
If Alexandros thought that Pella would ignore his return, he reckoned without his mother. We were only a small band: Alexandros and his Companions, and those of us of the royal guard who had been assigned to them. With the servants and horse handlers and mule drivers and all we came to fewer than a hundred and fifty men.
Yet the streets of Pella were decked with flowers when we returned. Crowds lined the streets as we made our way to the palace, cheering us and throwing even more flowers. Young women ran to us as we rode through the streets to beam smiles up at us and touch us with their outstretched fingertips. Boys pranced along beside our horses, proud to pretend they were part of us.
At the head of the palace steps, at the end of our procession, stood Olympias, resplendent in a red gown that swirled to the ground, her hair decked with garlands, her eyes bright with victory.
The king was nowhere in sight.
We were feted at a royal banquet. Even those of us in the guard were invited to recline on couches in the main dining hall and be served by comely young women and smooth-cheeked young men. Alexandros was up at the head of the hall, his mother beside him. Much wine was poured and most of the men became quite drunk. But neither Alexandros nor his mother did more than sip at their goblets. I drank freely, knowing that I never got drunk. Something in my body burned away the alcohol almost as quickly as I consumed it.
"Where is the king?" I asked Ptolemaios, on the couch next to mine. He was fondling one of the serving girls. Thais had elected to remain in Athens a while; he had complained loudly on the trip back to Pella that the woman was trying to drive him mad. And succeeding.
"Who cares?" he said. Then he returned to nibbling at the serving girl. She could not have been more than fifteen, but that was well past marriageable age among the Macedonians.
The dinner became rowdier. The young men began tossing morsels of food at one another. The more the wine flowed the more uproariously they laughed and bellowed obscene jokes back and forth. Olympias, up on the dais at the head of the hall, seemed to ignore it all as if she saw and heard nothing. She was deep in conversation with Alexandros, whose head was bent toward her.
At last they got up together and left the hall. Then the party became really raucous. Whole platters of food were hurled back and forth, goblets of wine sloshed through the air. Harpalos, the dour giant of the Companions, jumped atop a table and announced that he could make a roasted chicken fly as if it were alive. He pegged the seared bird halfway across the hall, narrowly missing dark-skinned Nearkos, who was intently slicing the skin off a peach in a single spiralling cut.
One by one, the Companions and guards staggered out of the hall, most of them with a girl or boy on their arms. Except for Ptolemaios, who brought two young women with him. "I'll forget all about her," he muttered. "At least, for tonight."
I got up from my couch and pushed past the few couples still carousing, heading for the door. I still wondered where Philip was and why he had not deigned to greet his returning son. And I hoped that Ketu was still somewhere in the palace; there was much I wanted to learn from him.
As I neared the door, however, I noticed a messenger boy scanning the spattered, littered hall. His eyes stopped on me.
"Are you the one called Orion?" he asked me.
"Yes."
"The queen summons you."
Glad that I had stayed out of the food fights, I followed him toward the stairs that led to the queen's rooms.
"She said I would recognize you by your size," said the lad. While some of the mountain people were big-boned, most of the Macedonians were much smaller in stature than I.
The lad smiled up at me as we started up the stairs. He held his lamp up to my face. "And your beautiful gray eyes," he added.
I knew that boys his age often sought a mentor who would guide them into adult male society. Homosexual relationships were an accepted norm between noblemen and pubescent boys. Usually the boy grew up to marry and raise a family, and then take on a boy companion at a later stage in life. From what I saw, Macedonian wives had closer bonds with their husbands than those in the cities further south, where wives were left at home and men sported with hetairai, professional courtesans like Thais. Still, men could remain lovers throughout their lives if they wished; Alexandros and Hephaistion seemed to be, although neither of them spoke about it and the other Companions only mentioned it jokingly when neither of them was within earshot.
"I am a stranger here," I said, "and only a member of the royal guard by the king's favor. I am not a nobleman."
"So I had heard," the boy said, looking a bit disappointed. He was ambitious, I realized. He would find someone other than a hired soldier.
The queen was in her small sitting room, where the window overlooked the palace courtyard. A stiletto-thin sliver of a moon had just cleared the dark bulk of the mountains. I could see stars glittering out in the night.
The room was lit by a single lamp on the table beside the queen. Alexandros had apparently been sitting at his mother's knee. He scrambled to his feet as the messenger boy opened the door.
"Come in, Orion," said Olympias. To the boy she said, "You may go."
He closed the door behind me, although I did not hear his footsteps leaving. He had been barefoot, and he was slight of build. I gave the possibility of his eavesdropping no further thought.
Alexandros eyed me uneasily. He always seemed on edge, upset, when he met with his mother this way. Who knew what poisons she was pouring into his ears?
Olympias seemed content to have me stand at the doorway. She ignored me, reaching for her son's bare arm.
"Come, sit down again," she urged. "We still have much to talk over."
Alexandros looked uncertain, but after a moment's hesitation he sat on the floor again. For an instant I thought he would rest his head in his mother's lap.
"It is certain, then?" he asked, looking up into her coldly beautiful face.
Olympias nodded once. "As certain as the man's insatiable lust. He will marry her."
"But what will that mean to you, mother?"
"Better to ask what it will mean to you, Alexandros."
"He can't disown me. He can't ignore that I exist."
"He is a very clever man."
"But all the army saw me at Chaeroneia. I am a general now, equal in rank to Parmenio and the others."
"Orion," she called to me, "do you believe that if the army voted for a new king this night they would elect Alexandros?"
So that's why she wanted me. As a sounding board for her own opinions.
"He is greatly admired," I said.
"But not yet nineteen years old," the queen countered.
"The men trust him. At Chaeroneia—"
"Answer me truthfully. If the army voted this night, would they elect a nineteen-year-old over Parmenio? Or even Antipatros? Remember that their families are as old and noble as Philip's. They were all horse thieves together only a generation ago."
"I believe they would vote Alexandros king," I said truthfully. "Probably with Parmenio as regent for a year or so."
"You see?" she said to Alexandros. "You would get the title but not the authority. They will keep you from true power."
"But why this question?" I asked. "Has something happened to the king?"
"He's going to marry Attalos' niece, Kleopatra, the one he calls Eurydice."
"Marry?"
"The king may have more than one wife," Alexandros explained.
"He already has had several political marriages," said Olympias. "His marriage to me was to cement his alliance with the Molossians, originally."
"He fell in love with you," I said.
"He lusted after me, just as he's lusted after every wench with hair between her legs. And quite a few boys, too."
"I don't see it as a problem, Mother—as far as I'm concerned. I know it's a slap in your face, of course."
"Do you think I care about that?"
I thought she cared very much. But I kept my mouth shut.
"I think he hurts you," said Alexandros.
"And he humiliates you," she said, clutching at his shoulder. "He expects me to be so enraged at him that I will leave and return to my father in Epeiros. If I refuse to do that, he will divorce me. This little baggage he's marrying wants to be his only legitimate wife; that's Attalos' plan."
Understanding seemed to dawn on Alexandros' face. "Which means that if he has a son by her—"
"You will have a rival for the throne. Attalos will push for his niece's son because that will bring the throne to his house, his family."
"But not for many years," I pointed out.
She shot me a venomous glance. "He could have a new son a year from now. And my son will be pushed aside. He'll claim that he never fathered you, Alexandros. I know he will!"
"You told me that he didn't," Alexandros said, his voice hollow.
"I told you that you were fathered by Zeus," she said imperiously. "But Philip has always claimed you as his own."
"Until now."
"The clever dog will use your own godly heritage against you. He will call me an adulteress and you a bastard. Wait and see."
Again I broke in, "But all this is supposition. Philip hasn't even announced his intention to marry again."
"He will."
"Even if he does, even if he marries, it could be years before he produces a son. Alexandros will be a fully grown man, perfectly able to be voted king when Philip dies."
"Or he may not produce a son at all," Alexandros said.
"Yes," said Olympias. "He may not live long enough to sire a new heir."
Olympias dismissed her son, but kept me with her. Like the slave that I was I followed her to her bed chamber where we made love until dawn amid her slithering, hissing snakes.
She did not need the special drugs that her vipers had injected into me other times. I was a cooperative slave that night, a willing lover. My body was unmarked by their fangs, although Olympias had sunk her own fingernails into my flesh more than once.
"You plan to assassinate Philip," I said to her as we lay together.
"Is that a question?" she asked lazily.
"No. An observation."
"And you will warn him of it, won't you?"
"I am loyal to Philip," I said.
"Not to me?"
"You can force me to do whatever you wish. That does not engender loyalty."
She laughed in the predawn darkness. "Come now, Orion, can you truthfully say that you don't enjoy what we do together?"
"My body certainly enjoys it."
"But your mind...?"
I hesitated, not wanting to stir her anger. But I heard my voice tell her, "I know what a trained bear must feel when he's made to dance."
She laughed again, genuinely amused. "A trained bear! Yes! That's what I want you to be: my trained bear."
I cursed myself for giving her a new source of amusement.
"Time for another performance, my great big bear," she said. "Must I find a whip to encourage you?"
I did not need a whip.
By the time the first pink flush of dawn was lighting the sky beyond her window, she returned to our earlier conversation.
"You will tell Philip that I plan to assassinate him, won't you?"
"If you don't prevent me, yes, I will."
"It's nothing that he doesn't know already."
I got out of the bed and went to the wash basin on the table across the room.
"Go ahead and tell him, Orion. Let him know what awaits him. There's nothing he can do to avoid it. Assassination is his fate. The gods have decreed it."
"The gods!" I spun around and faced her, still lying languidly in her bed. "There are no gods and you know it."
She laughed at me. "Careful, Orion. Men have been executed most painfully for blaspheming."
"For telling the truth," I muttered.
"Go," she said, her voice suddenly imperious. "Go to Philip and tell him the fate that awaits him. Tell him that it is ordained by the gods. There is nothing he can do to avoid it."
I left her chamber, Olympias' words and haughty laughter echoing in my mind. She said that Philip's assassination was ordained by the gods. As I strode along the empty corridors of Philip's palace in the dawn's gentle light, I clenched my fists and vowed to do everything I could to stop her.
"Nothing is preordained," I muttered to myself. "Time itself can be bent and changed, not only by the so-called gods but by their creatures, as well. We create the future by our own actions."
And I swore that I would protect Philip with every ounce of strength in me.
I went back to my usual palace duties. By day we of the royal guard exercised the horses, trained our squires, oversaw the slaves who maintained our weapons and armor, shopped in Pella's growing market place for clothes and trinkets. And we gossiped, chattering among ourselves about Ptolemaios' madness over Thais, about the queen's scheming, about whether or not Philip truly intended to invade the Persian Empire.
Pausanias kept us busy and kept us sharp. He took his duties as captain of the royal guard very seriously, despite the sniggering jokes that the men made about him behind his back. I began to understand that the sly laughter had something to do with Attalos. Whenever anyone mentioned Attalos' name, or spoke about the prospects of the king marrying Attalos' niece, Pausanias' normally dour face darkened like a thundercloud.
I had to tiptoe around the subject, since it was so obvious that Pausanias was sensitive to the point of homicide about it, but at last I got Ptolemaios to explain it to me.
"A lovers' quarrel, from years ago. It got very nasty." Ptolemaios' usual smiling good nature turned grim at the memory of it. "You wouldn't think it to see him now, but when Pausanias was a youth he was quite beautiful. So much so that he became one of the king's lovers."
"Philip?" I blinked with surprise. "And Pausanias?"
Ptolemaios nodded grimly. "But the king never keeps any lover for long. Soon he turned his eye to another lad who had been Attalos' lover."
I blinked again. This was starting to sound as complex as harem intrigues.
"Pausanias became very angry at losing the king's favor. He insulted the boy horribly, called him a womanly coward. A short time later the boy proved his manhood by saving Philip's life in battle. That was when Philip lost his eye."
"So the boy—"
"The boy died protecting Philip. Attalos was infuriated, but he kept his anger hidden. Attalos bided his time, that's his way. Months later he invited Pausanias to dinner, got him falling-down drunk, and then turned him over to his stable boys. They rammed him pretty well, from what I hear. Some say Attalos fucked him too."
"By the gods!"
"It could have started a blood feud between the two families; they're both high-born. So the king stepped in. Philip would not permit a blood feud; he absolutely forbade it. He smoothed things over by giving Pausanias the honor of becoming captain of the royal guard. But he didn't punish Attalos or even rebuke him."
Pausanias had grudgingly accepted the king's judgment in the matter. Philip had avoided a blood feud between two noble families that would have been costly and dangerous to his kingdom. But the affair still festered in Pausanias' mind; he still hated Attalos, that was painfully clear.
Each evening a handful of us were picked to stand guard during Philip's nightly banquet, which inevitably turned into a wine-soaked drunken circus. It was no surprise to me when Pausanias told me I would be on duty the night after my meeting with Olympias and Alexandros. What did surprise was that when Philip struggled up from his couch and lurched drunkenly toward his bed chamber, he crooked his finger at me to accompany him.
For the flash of an instant I felt a pang of fear, but then I told myself that I was not the kind of young boy that the king sometimes took to bed. And I certainly was not a shapely young wench. He wasn't that drunk.
As I followed him up the winding stone stairs to his bed chamber, I realized that he was not drunk at all. He limped on his bad leg and he leaned on the stone wall of the staircase for support, but he was able to climb the stairs unassisted otherwise.
Two young male servants were waiting in the bed chamber.
"Have you had any supper?" Philip asked me gruffly.
"Yes, sir," I replied. "Before coming on duty."
"Very well." He dismissed the servants with a wave of his hand, then sat wearily on the bed.
And he smiled at me, a wry, crooked smile. "That's the way I learn what my closest companions are thinking, Orion. I listen to what they say when they're drunk."
"I see."
"You've been with the queen." It was a statement, not a question. I realized that the entire palace was honeycombed with spies and counterspies and people who spied for both the king and the queen.
"It was not my choice," I said.
He grunted and leaned down to pull off his sandals. I went to help him but he waved me away. "I'm not as helpless as some people think," he muttered. Then he looked up at me. "She can entrance a man, I know. Her and those damned snakes of hers."
I said nothing.
"She's a witch, all right. I should have drowned her instead of marrying her."
"She bore you a fine son."
"That she did. And now she poisons his mind against me."
"She intends to assassinate you," I blurted.
Strangely, he laughed. "Does she now? Indeed!"
"Truly," I said.
"She's been intending that since Alexandros was born. Just waiting for the right moment."
"I think she will try soon."
He sat in silence for a few moments, the bedside lamp flickering shadows across his face. Then Philip shook his head. "Not yet. The boy's still too young. Never be elected king in his own right. Not yet."
"Are you certain?"
He wiped his beard with the back of his hand. Hunching closer to me, he said, "Orion, I have lived with the threat of assassination all my life. I surround myself with loyal men, and work hard to make certain they remain loyal. I change my royal guard often enough to make sure that no man stays so long as to be bewitched by her."
I leaned back slightly, away from him. "As I have been," I said.
He nodded. "Yes. I'm afraid you can no longer be a member of my guard. Or of Alexandros'. I'm going to have to send you out of the palace altogether."
"But I want to protect you."
Philip cocked a skeptical brow at me. "Yes, I believe you do. But she will get you to do her bidding, sooner or later, one way or the other."
I had no answer to that. He was probably right. "I still value your service, Orion. I have an important task for you to do."
"What is it?"
"I'm sending this ambassador from the Persians, the one with the unpronounceable name—"
"Svertaketu," I said.
"Yes, the one you found with Demosthenes. I'm sending him back to the Great King with a message from me. I want you to head the escort I send with him."
"I would rather stay here to protect you," I said.
"That cannot be."
I bowed my head slightly to show I understood.
"In case you're curious, my message to the Great King is a peaceful one."
"I thought it would be."
"I want to assure him that I have no desire to make war on his empire. I will offer one of my family women in marriage to one of his male relatives. I want peace."
Before I could say anything he went on, "But—a king can't always get what he wants. I've created an army and I don't intend to see it rust away, or turn into an instrument for my generals to use against one another."
"Then what do you intend?"
"I want the Great King to understand that the islands in the Aegean are Greek, not Persian. Lesbos, Samos and the others were settled by Greeks centuries ago, they must be free of Persian overlords. And the cities on the Ionian coast, too: Miletos, Ephesos—those are Greek cities and should be as independent as Athens or Corinth or any other Greek city."
"Will the Great King agree to that?"
Philip smiled grimly. "Not without a fight, I'm certain. But I want him to be the one who starts the war. Then we'll have all the cities of the Greeks with us, instead of them taking Persian gold to work against us."
"But you said you wanted peace."
"And so I do!"
"Yet you make conditions that will lead to war."
He scratched at his beard briefly. "Does it seem strange to you that war can lead to peace?"
"No stranger than the fact that a rainstorm leads to sunshine."
His black eyebrows rose. "Aristotle's turned you into a philosopher, eh?"
"Hardly."
"Well, listen to a king's reasoning. We've beaten Athens and her allies. For the time being they're lying low, worrying about what I plan for them, surprised that I didn't occupy the city with my troops."
"Yes, that's true."
"Now then, if the Great King refuses to let the Greek cities and islands have their freedom, if he sends his army into Ionia or his fleet to Lesbos, don't you think the Athenians and all the others will rally to me, as the protector of those Greeks on the other side of the Aegean?"
I began to see what he was driving at.
He chuckled at me. "Ah, you do understand, don't you? By maneuvering the Great King to make war, I cement the loyalties of Athens and Thebes and all the rest."
"For a while."
"For long enough, perhaps."
"And what of Alexandros?" I asked. "He doesn't want merely to free a few cities. He wants to conquer the whole Persian Empire. And then go on from there."
Philip's grin dissolved. "My hotheaded son must learn that one doesn't always get what one wants."
I looked at that fiercely bearded face. "And what do you want?" I asked. "Truly, what is it that you desire? Not the king, but you, Philip, son of Amyntas. What is your heart's dearest wish?"
Philip did not respond for long moments. He seemed to be almost startled by the question. I guessed that he had been thinking as a king and a military commander for so many years that his own individual desires had long been hidden, even from himself.
At last he replied, "I want them to respect me. Those sophisticated men of good manners and high talk in Athens and Thebes and the other ancient cities. Those self-righteous demagogues who could never bring all the Greeks together in peace. I know what they call me: barbarian, savage, bloodthirsty dog. I want them to respect me; my power, my leadership, my restraint and mercy in dealing with them."
He took a deep breath, then went on, "I want her to respect me. I know that she only pretended to love me so she could get a son who would one day be king. All right, he will be king! But only because I have paved his way. Yet she calls me horse breeder, cattle thief, she says I stink of the stables and I think like a primitive tribesman from the hills."
Stretching out a battle-scarred arm, Philip said, "I built this city for her, Orion. I welded this nation together and made it powerful for her. And she sees it only as a chariot for her son to ride in. But that's why I did it. That's what I want: respect. I don't expect love from any of them, not even her, but I want their respect."
"You certainly deserve it."
Pushing himself up from the bed, Philip raised his hands over his head and cried out, "Look at me! I'm not even fifty years old and I'm half-crippled, half-blind, waiting for an assassin's knife or my own wife's poison. I've given my life to make something new and enduring, a nation of many tribes, many cities. No one has done that, Orion! No one in all of Greece. But I have, and I'll keep working at it because the instant I stop it will all fall apart. There's no end to my labors, no end except death."
I stood there, almost stunned by the passions my question had unleashed. Philip seemed to realize how much of his soul he had revealed. He let his hands drop to his side and shuffled off toward the window, pretending to look down into the darkened courtyard below.
"I did it all for her," he murmured, so low I could barely hear him. "I was a lad of eighteen, just about Alexandros' age, when I met her. I wasn't king; I had no prospect of being king. My two older brothers stood ahead of me."
He turned back toward me, his face a mask of memories and regrets. "She truly bewitched me, Orion. I wanted to conquer the world for her! I pushed both my brothers aside and seized the throne. I smashed the tribes who were carving up Macedonia. I made our army invincible. I worked for years to bring all of Greece together under my leadership. All for her. All for her."
I thought his voice was going to break into sobs.
"And she spurns me. Calls me foul names and refuses to lie with me. I put the world at her feet and all she can think about is how to put her son on the throne—my throne! She doesn't love me. She never did."
"She doesn't love anyone," I said. "She uses us the way a drover uses his oxen."
He cast his good eye on me. For long moments he was silent while a parade of emotions played across his scarred, bearded face.
At last he said gruffly, "You'd better go now. Prepare for your journey to Susa with that unpronounceable one."
I left him alone, staring into the past and his memories. Dawn was brightening the sky outside. Birds were stirring and singing cheerily out among the trees. But I felt far from cheerful. I wondered if I would ever see Philip again, alive.