It was difficult to recognize which part of the palace I was crossing, and where the troop barracks was, especially in the dark of night. But I saw that the sky to the east was turning milky gray; soon it would be too light for me to go scampering across the roof tiles without being seen. So I found a spot where a fig tree’s branches shaded the roof. I gobbled a dozen of the ripe green figs, then settled in the tree’s shade there on the hard tiles of the roof and had my first restful sleep in weeks.
CHAPTER 31
I slept without dreams, although when I awoke, late in the afternoon, I had the disturbing feeling that I had been discovered in my hiding place.
Peering over the roof’s eave I saw slaves and servants bustling in the courtyard below: nothing unusual. A squad of soldiers marched past the gate, heading away from me. The sun was almost touching the mountains in the west. I smelled cooking odors, and wondered if there would be enough scraps from the evening’s meals to keep the rats fed.
If my escape had been noticed I saw no evidence of it in the courtyard below. Probably my jailor had left my daily bowl of gruel at the locked cell door and taken my pot away with him. He would not suspect anything was amiss until he brought the next meal and saw that I had not touched the previous one.
Good. That gave me roughly twelve hours, more or less, to get to Philip. Then I smiled. If the rats in my cell ate the gruel I might have even more time. But I could not depend on that.
I needed help, and for that I had to reach Harkan. I spent the last few hours of daylight studying the layout of the palace from my rooftop hiding place. I located the troop barracks and plotted out a path across the roofs to get there. Then I waited until purple dusk had faded into the full darkness of night. The moon was rising as I scampered across the roof tiles toward the barracks, silent as a wraith. I hoped.
I waited several hours more, with growing impatience, to make certain that all the soldiers were asleep before I dared to enter the barracks. At last, with a nearly full moon lighting the parade ground almost brightly as day, I swung down from the eaves and through the blanket that hung across one of the barracks windows.
They were asleep, all right. Their snores and grunts and mumbles made the darkened barracks sound almost like a barnyard. I waited several moments while my eyes adjusted to the darkness, then began a tiptoe search for Harkan.
He found me.
As I tiptoed down the aisle between the rows of bunks, I sensed a presence behind me. I whirled and reached for the man’s throat, determined to cut off his air and prevent him from awakening the others, only to see that he had a sword pointed at me. It was Harkan, naked except for his unsheathed sword.
“Orion!” he said, surprised.
“Shh!”
One of the men nearest us stirred in his sleep, but did not wake.
“I thought you were a thief,” Harkan whispered.
“I was,” I joked softly, “when I rode with you.”
“Have they released you from prison?”
“I released myself.”
In the shadows of the darkened barracks I could not see the expression on his bearded face, but his silence told me that he did not know what to say. I gripped his shoulder and together we walked quietly to the end of the long room.
“I must get to the king,” I said as we stepped outside onto the landing of the stairs that ran down to the parade ground.
“He left for Aigai this morning.”
“Then I must go to Aigai.”
Now, in the moonlight, I could see Harkan’s face. He looked perplexed. “You’re a fugitive.”
“That was the queen’s doing. The king will pardon me when he hears what I have to tell him.”
“You think so?” another voice asked. A deep voice: Batu’s. He stepped out of the inky shadow cast by the overhanging roof. Like Harkan he was naked, and armed with a sword.
I clasped his outstretched hand as I asked, “What are you doing out here?”
With a broad smile Batu replied, “I heard you scrabbling across the roof tiles. Harkan went to one end of the barracks, I went to this end.”
“You two sleep very lightly.”
“It comes from the life we’ve led,” said Batu lightly. “Those others in there, they’ve been paid soldiers all their lives. Bandits don’t sleep as well as they do.”
I grinned back at him.
“But what makes you think the king will pardon you?” Batu asked again.
“Even if he doesn’t, I have to warn him. Pausanias plans to kill him at the wedding.”
Harkan scowled at me. “That’s a serious charge, Orion.”
“He told me himself.”
“And the queen is behind it?”
“Yes.”
“That means Alexandros is in it, too.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “He will certainly benefit from it—if we allow it to happen.”
“We?” Batu asked.
“I need your help,” I said. “I can’t get into Aigai by myself.”
They both fell silent for many moments. I could understand what was going through their minds. They had found employment, a roof over their heads, a place in the world here in Philip’s kingdom. They were no longer outlaws, hunted, living in the wild little better than the beasts. And I was asking them to throw all that away, to desert their positions and fling themselves into the midst of the machinations being hatched by the witch-queen Olympias.
They would be fools to agree. Yet they owed their comfortable positions to me and they knew it. I had brought them to Pella and Philip’s employ. If anyone had a right to ask them to give it up, it was I.
Before either of them could speak, my own mind hatched a plot of its own.
“Has Pausanias left for Aigai yet?”
“He departs tomorrow at first light,” said Harkan.
“Then listen to me,” I said, “Pausanias will send you scouring the countryside when he finds that I have broken out of confinement. He knows I will head for Aigai and he’ll send you and most of the guard searching for me. All I ask is that when you find me you bring me to the king, not to Pausanias or the queen.”
“How do you know Pausanias will send us?” Harkan asked.
“And even if he does, he will not send only the two of us,” added Batu. “How can you be certain that we will be the ones who will find you?”
I gave them a grim smile. “Pausanias will send almost the entire royal guard, never fear. And I will find you, my friends. In the hills outside Aigai.”
Harkan looked doubtful, Batu amused at my certainty.
“When does the wedding take place?” I asked.
“The night of the full moon.”
I looked up at the fat waxing moon. “Three nights from now, I judge.”
They agreed.
“Search the hills to the right side of the road before Aigai,” I said. “I’ll be waiting for you there.”
Before they could argue I reached up to the edge of the eave and, after lifting myself onto the roof, ran toward the section of the barracks where Pausanias and the other officers slept in individual rooms.
I had no way of knowing which window was his. I simply swung myself through the first one I came to. It was not Pausanias, but the man stirred in his sleep as I leaned over him close enough to see his face in the darkness. Four sleeping rooms I went through before I found Pausanias. There were no guards in the corridor that linked the rooms, although I knew there was a perfunctory pair of men drowsing on guard duty down in the yard, before the door to the barracks.
At last I found Pausanias’ room. He was tossing unhappily in his sleep, moaning slightly. The thin chiton he wore was soaked with perspiration.
I clamped my left hand over his mouth and pointed my dagger at his suddenly wide-open eyes.
“Dreaming of the queen?” I asked. “Waiting for her to invite you into her bed once again?”
His right hand moved slightly, but I touched the point of my dagger to the artery pulsing in his throat. He froze into immobility.
“Has she promised to make you regent here in Pella while her son goes off to conquer the Persians?”
I could see by his eyes that this idea was a surprise to him.
“Not even that?” I asked. “All she’s offered you is her body? She certainly has you entranced, then.”
He tried to say something but my hand muffled his words.
“Your cell wasn’t strong enough to hold me, Pausanias. Now I’m going to the king and tell him what you told me. The next time you see me, you’ll have a noose around your neck.”