Ben Bova – Orion and the Conqueror

“Speak the name of the woman you love, Orion,” she commanded me.

“You will not like what you hear,” I replied.

I had expected anger. Instead, she laughed. “Her hold on you is deeper than I had expected.”

“We love each other.”

“That was a dream, Orion. Nothing more than a dream of yours. Forget it. Accept this reality.”

“She loves me. Athena. Anya.”

For long moments she was silent in the darkness. Then, “A goddess may take on human form and make love to a mortal. That is not love, Orion.”

“Who am I?” I asked while her control over me was relaxed. “Why am I here?”

“Who are you? Why, Orion, you are nothing more than any other human creature—a plaything of the gods.” And her laughter turned cruel once more.

I closed my eyes and wondered how I could escape this evil woman’s grasp. She had to be the goddess Hera that I had seen in my dream. Or was she merely the witch Olympias, controlling me, bewitching me, with the power of her dark magic? Were my memories of Athena and the other gods and goddesses merely vivid dreams hatched by my own longing for a knowledge of my origins, my own yearning for someone to love, for someone who could love me? Was Olympias’ powerful magic truly witchcraft, or the superhuman abilities of an actual goddess? I fell asleep trying to fathom the mystery.

When I opened my eyes again early morning sunlight was filtering through the beaded curtain of a window. I was lying beside a naked woman in a rumpled bed. The makeup smeared across her face told me that she was one of the hetairai who had attended Philip’s dinner the night before.

I sat up slowly, not wanting to wake her. In the milky early light she looked older, tired.

Softly I rose from the bed and gathered my clothes, which had been neatly piled on a curved chair in the corner of the bedroom. Even my dagger was there, at the bottom of the pile. I dressed, ducked through the curtained doorway of the bedroom, and bumped right into Pausanias.

“You’ve had a busy night of it,” he growled.

I had no idea of how I had gotten here, so I said nothing.

“Damned Thais just picks out whoever she likes, like a man,” said Pausanias as he led me down the corridor toward a flight of stairs. We went down to the ground floor and out into the street. It was still early, quiet outside.

“How did you get there?” Pausanias asked grumpily, jerking a thumb back toward Thais’ house. It was a modest two-story building, but well kept, with flower boxes blooming brightly beneath every window.

With a shrug that I hoped was convincing, I replied, “I don’t really know.”

“If you can’t hold your wine you shouldn’t drink.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

We marched along the empty street, heading uphill toward the palace.

“Trouble is,” Pausanias said, “that young Ptolemaios has his eye on her. And she taps you on the shoulder instead.”

Ptolemaios was one of Alexandros’ Companions, I knew. Rumored to be a bastard son of Philip, as well.

“Perhaps she’s merely trying to make him jealous,” I half-joked, still wondering how I did get into Thais’ house. And bed.

“That kind of jealousy leads to murder, Orion. And blood feuds.”

I shrugged light-heartedly. “I have no family to carry on a blood feud after I’m gone.”

“Thank the gods for small favors,” he muttered.

As we neared the palace wall a question popped into my mind. “How did you know where I was?”

Pausanias fixed me with a surly glance. “One of the queen’s servants woke me before cock’s crow and warned me of it. Said I’d better get you out of there before Ptolemaios finds out about it.”

“And how did this servant know?”

“I told you she was one of the queen’s servants. The witch knows everything that happens in the palace—sometimes before it even happens.”

CHAPTER 8

The air of the palace seethed with intrigue. The king was conducting one military campaign after another along his borders while at the same time negotiating with delegations from regions as far-flung as the Peloponnesus and Syracuse in Sicily, as well as receiving ambassadors from the Great King of Persia.

No one seemed to know what Philip was aiming at, what his goals were. There was no dearth of opinions on the subject, however. I heard as many different guesses as there were men speaking on the subject. Philip wanted to rule all of the Greeks, said one. He wanted to conquer the Persian Empire, said another. No, he wanted to be dictator of Thebes, the city where he had spent several of his younger years as a royal hostage. No, he wanted to humiliate Athens and hang Demosthenes by his scrawny neck. Nonsense, said still another, his real intention is to expand Macedonian colonies northward into the backward, bickering tribes of the Balkans, but to do that he must safeguard the kingdom’s southern borders, where the great cities of Thebes and Athens and the others are waiting for him to turn his back.

I was one of the guards standing behind Philip’s throne the afternoon that the Persians were presented to the king. They were exotic in their long silk robes of many colors, bedecked with sparkling jewels. They brought magnificent gifts of spices and incense from their new king, Dareios III. Philip accepted them as if they were his due and gave in return a hundred cavalry horses: all geldings, I learned later. The other guardsmen laughed themselves sick over Philip’s trick.

The king himself was not even smiling after the Persians left his court.

“Spies,” he said grimly to Parmenio and Antipatros, after the Persians had left. “They’re here to see how strong we are, how well we’re getting along against Athens.”

“I’ll bet they’re heading straight for Athens now, to tell Demosthenes everything they learned here,” said Antipatros.

“And to pour more gold into his hands,” added Parmenio.

There were other intrigues, as well, much closer to the court. Attalos was pushing his young niece, Kleopatra, as a fitting bride for Philip. I knew that the king had taken several wives, mainly as diplomatic gestures, and he had a powerful sexual appetite: male or female did not much concern him as long as they were young and pretty.

Kleopatra was such a common name among the Macedonians that many of the nobles at court referred to the fourteen-year-old niece of Attalos by an honorary name that Philip had bestowed on her: Eurydice, the name of the supernally beautiful wife of legendary Orpheos. Orpheos had voluntarily descended into Hades to recover his dead love. I thought that Olympias would rather see Philip in hell before she would accept his marriage to Kleopatra/Eurydice.

Olympias was scheming constantly. She had driven all of Philip’s other wives out of the court, although she resolutely refused to sleep with him, according to the palace gossip. She wanted to make certain that her son, Alexandros, would be the only possible heir to Philip’s throne. That meant that there must be no new marriages and no new legitimate sons. I knew that all the tales about her powers of witchcraft were more than true, and that she could somehow command me at her whim. What she planned for me I did not know, and after that first wild night of lovemaking she did not so much as glance at me.

For his part, Philip was also scheming. A marriage into the house of Attalos would benefit the throne. So would an advantageous marriage of his daughter by Olympias, who was also named Kleopatra. Even younger than Attalos’ niece, and painfully shy, Philip’s daughter was a very valuable pawn in the game of nations.

And that game went on without cease. Ambassadors and couriers arrived at the court almost every day. From my post as one of the king’s guards I saw that Philip could be tactful, generous, flexible, patient, a good host, a firm friend, a reasonable enemy ready to make peace even when he had the upper hand. Especially when he had the upper hand.

But I began to see, also, that he was implacable in his pursuit of one goal. No matter how generous or flexible or reasonable he was, each agreement he made, each objective he sought, was aimed at making Macedonia supreme, not merely over the surrounding tribes and the port cities along the coast; Philip wanted supremacy over the major city-states to the south—Thebes, Corinth, Sparta, and especially Athens.

“Demosthenes rouses the rabble down there against us time and again,” Philip complained to a visiting Athenian merchant. “I have no reason to fight against Athens. I revere the city of Perikles and Sokrates; I honor its ancient traditions. But the Athenians think they are the lords of the earth; they are trying to strangle us by cutting us off from the sea.”

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