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.
CHAPTER 15
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.