The Argive jumped back and pulled the sword at his belt. “Trying to knife me!”
“No, I—”
He lunged at me. I parried with the dagger and punched him in the jaw with my left hand. He went down like a slaughtered ox.
And the camp around me erupted into violence. Men were punching, kicking, biting, wrestling each other onto the ground. I stood in the midst of it, the dagger still in my hand, while the fight swirled around me.
Feeling dumbfounded, I backed away, out of the firelight. At least they weren’t using weapons, I thought. The one man who had drawn his sword lay unconscious by the fire.
Officers were bellowing in the night. I sheathed the dagger and stepped back into the fray, trying to separate the fighting men.
Philip himself rode up on a chestnut horse, bareheaded, without armor, his one good eye blazing with anger.
“Stop this at once!” he roared. And we stopped. The authority in his powerful voice was unmistakable.
For a moment everything was quite still. Men stood or knelt or lay stretched on the ground, all of us covered with dust, some of us bloody. Nikkos, his shirt torn and the welts on his back still livid, had one knee on the chest of an Argive and his teeth clamped on the man’s bloody ear.
Before Philip could say another word a stone came hurtling out of the darkness and struck him squarely on the back of his head. It sounded almost as loud as one of the catapult bolts landing. Philip’s head snapped forward, he slumped and fell off the horse. An Argive ran up with a spear in his hand and I saw that about a dozen of the Argives had formed a ring around Philip’s prostrate body. All of them had swords in their hands.
I charged forward, head down, and bulled through the ring of armored men, grabbed the spear and wrested it from the Argive’s hands before he could plunge it into the unconscious king.
Battle fury seized me again and the world slowed down around me. Holding the spear like a quarter-staff I smashed its weighted end into the face of the man I had taken it from. He fell like a stone. Then I stood over Philip’s body, my back to his nervously stamping horse, ready to protect the king. The circle of armed Argives looked stunned with surprise. Beyond them Nikkos and the others of my troop seemed just as shocked and frozen into immobility.
Then a fresh commotion erupted out in the darkness beyond the firelight. A man’s rough voice choked off in a bloody gargle, others shouted, and suddenly young Alexandros burst upon us, golden hair glowing, eyes wild, the sword in his hand bloodied.
“The king!” he shouted, pushing men out of his way and advancing upon me.
“I think he’s merely stunned, sir,” I said.
He stared hard at me, then turned to the ring of Argives who still held their swords. “Take them,” he snapped. “All of them.”
Nikkos and the others disarmed the Argives and led them off into the darkness.
“You saved my father’s life,” said Alexandros to me.
Parmenio and other officers came rushing up now and knelt beside Philip.
“I want those assassins hanged,” Alexandros said into the night air. “But not until they tell us who paid them.”
No one seemed to be listening to him. He fixed his blazing eyes on me. “Go with the king. I will join you presently.”
And he stalked off into the darkness. If ever a man had murder on his face, it was Alexandros at that moment. It was difficult to realize that he was scarcely eighteen years old.
CHAPTER 4
An hour later Philip was still woozy. I had followed the officers who carried him to his cabin, a rough log hut with horse blankets covering the dirt floor. I stood at the open doorway, the Argive spear still in my hands. The officers had carried Philip to his cot with a tenderness I had seldom seen. Several physicians and generals crowded around the king. A frightened-looking slave girl brought a flagon of wine to the cot.