The king rode up just behind his phalanxes and went straight to Alexandros. Looking him over with his one good eye, Philip broke into a tired smile.
“Not a scratch on you!” He seemed pleased. “Not even on Ox-Head. The gods must work overtime protecting you.”
Alexandros smiled back as if he had received nothing more than his due. If he realized that I had saved his life he made no mention of it.
I stood, panting and suddenly very weary, on grassy ground made slippery with blood and entrails. All around me the field was littered with corpses and the writhing, moaning bodies of the wounded. The battle was over. Now some of the troops were moving among the wounded, giving them the final merciful dagger in the throat. Others were stripping the dead of their arms and armor.
Ignoring the men, I staggered across the battlefield looking for Thunderbolt. Philip’s strategy had worked almost perfectly. The enemy commanders had known that cavalry could not attack a well-formed line of spears. So Philip had induced the Athenian citizen-soldiers to break ranks and ruin the solidarity of their line. Then our cavalry could destroy their foot soldiers, and we did. But it had cost me a valiant steed.
Thunderbolt was already dead when I found him, the spear still sticking in his flank. I hoped that he had not suffered too much, then found it ludicrous that I cared more for this horse than for all the men who had fallen.
I began to laugh, at myself, at the folly of men who slaughter one another, at the so-called gods to whom men pray. If they knew that the gods were nothing more than selfish humans like themselves, what would they do? How would they re-order their lives if they rejected the gods they worshiped?
I had to get off by myself. Slowly, painfully I climbed the steep hill of Chaeroneia’s acropolis. The sun was going down behind the distant mountains, and from the steps of the temple atop the hill I could see the entire battlefield in the long shadows of the setting sun. Thousands of bodies lay strewn like broken toys the breadth of the field.
“Are you pleased?” I muttered. “Is this the kind of human sacrifice that you enjoy watching?”
Turning to the temple, I climbed its steps and entered its shadowed interior. Statues of gods loomed around me: Zeus, Ares, Apollo, Poseidon.
“You made me part of this,” I said to them. “You created me to kill my fellow men. I hate you! I hate all of you! For making me in the first place, for using me as a puppet, a tool, a toy. All I want is to get out, to get off this wheel of life, to find the final peace of oblivion.”
And I knew that I had to learn from Ketu how to seek that ultimate death.
The statues remained silent and cold. The sun dipped behind the mountains and the temple became utterly dark. Yet my eyes adjusted to the darkness; I could still make out the statues, their aloof faces, their blankly staring eyes. Yes, there was Hera, proud and cruel. And Aphrodite, sensuousness personified.
And Athena, with a warrior’s helmet and a spear in her hand. She too was lifeless, inanimate marble. As distant from me as the pale cold moon.
Yet I thought I heard her voice within my mind, saying, “Be brave, Orion. Bear the pain.”
No, I thought. Not even for you. I can’t bear this pain any longer. If there is a way out of life, I want to find it.