The sun had swung behind us and was heading for the rugged bare hills at our backs when Philip gave the order to mount up. I was dressed and armored exactly like all the others of the king’s personal guard: a bronze cuirass molded to resemble a man’s well-muscled torso, leather windings to protect my lower legs, and a bronze Corinthian-type helmet with cheek flaps. I bore a lance in my right hand and a sword in its scabbard against my hip. I also had my ancient dagger strapped to my thigh beneath the skirt of my chiton.
We did not charge. The word came from the king that we were to ride slowly down from the ridge toward the beach, ready to break into a gallop if the trumpets so ordered. It was not necessary. The sailors froze where they stood at the sight of more than a thousand of Philip’s cavalry ambling out of the woods toward their beached boats. As I rode toward them, my lance upright in my hand, I saw the shock and terror on their faces. The peltasts came in at either end of the curving beach, javelins and bows ready. The sailors were trapped against the sea.
There was no fight in them. They surrendered meekly and the entire year’s grain harvest became Philip’s prize. There would be hunger in Athens this winter. Or so I thought.
CHAPTER 5
Philip was in high spirits as we rode toward Pella, his capital. He had failed to capture Perinthos, and had done little more to Byzantion than throw a scare into its citizens. But he had the grain harvest. An army of slaves had loaded it all onto creaking ox carts and then we had burned the Athenian ships, every last one of them. The black smoke rose like an offering to the gods and stained the crystal blue sky for days. The Athenian sailors he sent home on foot, despite the urgings of Alexandros and several others to enslave them.
None of us was disappointed that we had won the grain without a fight. Except for Alexandros.
“The young hothead thinks he’s a new Achilles,” grumbled Pausanias as we rode toward the capital. “He wants glory and the only way he can get it is by bloodshed.”
“How young is he?” I asked.
“Eighteen.”
I made myself chuckle. “It’s understandable, isn’t it? Didn’t you want to be a hero when you were eighteen?”
Pausanias did not reply to my question. Instead, he told me, “A few years ago, while we were campaigning in northern Thrace, Philip left Alexandros in Pella, to govern while he was in the field. Gave him the ring and the seal and everything. That’s when people started calling him the Little King. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen.”
“He was left in charge at sixteen?” I marvelled.
“Antipatros was left with him, of course, to steer him by the elbow, but Alexandros took himself very seriously, even then. One of the hill tribes, the Maeti, stirred up some trouble. They’re always raiding one another, those cattle herders, or trying to get away from paying the king’s taxes.”
“Alexandros went after them?”
Pausanias nodded. “Left the capital in Antipatros’ hands, and he and his boyfriends went galloping out to deal with this miserable handful of cattle thieves.”
He broke into a sour grin, the closest I had seen Pausanias come to laughter. “The Maeti ran off to the hills, of course, and left their pitiful little village empty. So Alexandros sent back to Pella for a dozen or so Macedonian families, resettled them in the village, and changed its name to Alexandropolis.”
I waited for the rest of the story. Pausanias gave me an exasperated look.
“No one is allowed to put his name to a city,” he explained impatiently. “Only the king.”
I said, “Oh.”
“Do you know what Philip said when he heard about it?”
“What?”
” ‘At least he might have waited until I’m dead.’ ”
I laughed. “He must be fond of the boy.”
“He was proud of him. Proud! The little snot slaps him in the face and he’s proud of it.”
I looked around us. We were riding at the head of the group but there were others of the guard close enough to overhear us. It was not wise to call Alexandros names.
“Don’t worry,” Pausanias said, seeing the concern on my face. “None of my men will inform on us. They all feel the same way.”
I wondered if that were true.
Pausanias went silent for a while and we rode with no sound but the soft padding of the horses’ hooves on the dusty ground and the occasional jingle of metal from their harnesses.
“It’s his mother, if you want to know where the fault lies,” Pausanias muttered, almost as if talking to himself. “Olympias has filled the boy’s head with crazy tales ever since he suckled at her breast. She’s the one who’s made him think he’s a godling. Made him believe that he’s too good for us, too good even for his own father.”
I said nothing. There was nothing that I could say.
“All those tales that Philip isn’t his true father, that he was sired by Herakles—that’s Olympias’ twaddle, for sure. Sired by Herakles! She would’ve loved to have Herakles plow her, all right. But she settled for Philip.”
I recalled that Nikkos had called Olympias a witch, and the other men had argued about her supernatural powers. And her reputation as a poisoner.
For my part, Alexandros seemed like a typical teen-age lad—albeit a teen-age boy whose father was king of Macedonia; a teenager who had already led cavalry in battle a half-dozen times. To me he seemed eager to show the men around him that he too was a man and no longer a boy. And even more desperate to prove himself in his father’s eyes, I thought. He was heir to the kingdom, but his accession to the throne was apparently not all that certain: the Macedonians elected their kings, and if anything happened to Philip, young Alexandros might have a difficult time convincing the elders that he was ready for the throne.
He had his Companions, though: the lads he had grown up with, mostly the sons of Macedonian noble families. He was their natural leader, and they seemed almost to worship him. Four of them seemed especially close to him: smiling Ptolemaios, gangling Harpalos, the Cretan Nearkos, and especially the handsome Hephaistion vied with one another to shine in Alexandros’ eyes. In battle they rode together, each trying to outdo the other. They even shaved their chins clean, as Alexandros did, although the word among the guards was that Alexandros hardly needed to shave at all.
“He’s effeminate that way,” Pausanias told me, more than once. He seemed to take pleasure in saying it. I wondered if he realized that my own beard grew so slowly that I shaved only rarely.
There was something in Alexandros’ eyes, though, that disturbed me. More than ambition, more than an avid quest for glory. His eyes seemed to me far older than eighteen. Something glittered in those golden eyes that seemed ageless, timeless. Something that seemed faintly mocking whenever the Little King looked my way.
As the days passed, my memory did not improve. It was as if I had been born, fully grown and dressed in a mercenary hoplite’s armor, just a few days earlier. The men around me took me for a Scythian, since I was tall and broad of shoulder, and had gray eyes. Yet I understood their language—the various dialects and even the outright foreign tongues that some of the men spoke.
I tried to remember who I was and why I was here. I could not avoid the feeling that I had been sent here purposely, dispatched to this time and place for a reason that I could not fathom.
The dagger strapped to my thigh was a clue. It had been there for so long that even when I removed it the straps and sheath left their imprint against my flesh. I had not shown it to anyone since the night the Argives had tried to assassinate Philip.
But on the trail back to Pella one night I removed it from beneath my skirt and one of the other guardsmen noticed its polished onyx hilt glint in the firelight.
“Where did you get that?” he asked, eyeing the beautifully crafted dagger appreciatively.
From Odysseus, I started to say. But I held my tongue. No one would believe that. I was not certain that I believed it myself.
“I don’t know,” I said, letting him take it from my hand and examine it closely. “I have no memory beyond a week or so ago.”
Soon the other members of the guard were admiring it. They began to argue over its origin.
“That’s a Cretan dagger,” said one of the men. “See the way the hilt is curved. Cretan.”