“Your army has never lost a major battle,” I encouraged him.
He shook his head. “Do you know why, Orion?” Before I could reply he answered his own question. “Because if I had lost a major battle, just one, my whole kingdom would collapse like a house of cards.”
“No, that could not be.”
“It would, Orion, and I know it. It gnaws at me every minute of the day. It keeps me awake when I try to sleep. Macedonia is strong and free only so long as we keep winning. If my army is ever defeated, all the tribes that owe me allegiance will go back to their rebel ways. Thrace and Illyria and even the goddamned Molossians will rise against me—or Alexandros, assuming he survives. I’ll be dead on the battlefield, you can rest assured.”
That was the vision that haunted Philip. He feared his kingdom would be torn apart if he lost a major battle. He had to keep on winning, always fighting, always victorious, or lose everything. That is why he avoided battle with Athens. One throw of the dice could destroy everything that he had worked his entire life to create.
That night I decided to see the queen on my own terms. But my duty as a guardsman came first. I was serving once again as one of the formal guards at Philip’s royal dinner, posted this time behind the king’s couch, to stand there like a statue in armor and spear while Philip and his guests ate and drank and caroused. His guests were mostly Macedonian, including the oily Attalos, who fawned on the king and praised even his belches. There were a few foreigners reclining on dinner couches near the king: I thought one a Persian and recognized another as the Athenian merchant whom I had seen in Pella before. They were spies, I knew. But for which side? Did they spy on Athens and the Great King in Persia for Philip? Or did they spy on Philip for the Great King and Athens?
Probably both, I concluded. They would take gold from either side and praise the winner.
Parmenio and Philip’s other generals were present, of course, but there was no talk over dinner of matters military. Only politics. Would Demosthenes’ representatives be able to talk Thebes into an alliance with Athens?
“After all the patience you’ve shown with both cities,” said Antipatros, “this is the thanks they give you.”
“I never expected their thanks,” Philip said, holding his wine goblet out for the serving boy to fill it.
From my post at the king’s couch I saw with satisfaction that Alexandros had been placed next to his father.
“We should march on them now,” he said, almost shouting to make his light tenor voice heard over the buzz of background talk. “First Thebes and then Athens.”
“If we march now,” Philip replied, “it will give them the excuse they need to cement their alliance.”
Alexandros looked at his father. “You will let them prepare for war against us while we sit here drinking?”
His own wine cup had not been refilled since the eating had ended. He drank little; he ate little, as well. His old teacher Leonidas, I had been told, raised the boy with Spartan values and discipline.
Philip grinned at his son. “I will give them plenty of time to argue over the terms of their alliance. With a bit of luck they’ll fall out between themselves and there will be no alliance for us to worry about.”
“But if the luck goes against us?” Alexandros asked. “What then?”
Philip took a long draft of his wine. “We’ll just have to wait and see. Patience, my son. Patience. It’s a virtue, I’m told.”
“So is courage,” Alexandros snapped.
The dining hall fell absolutely silent.
But Philip laughed. “I don’t need to prove my courage, son. You can count my scars.”
And Alexandros smiled back at his father. “Yes, that’s true enough.”
The tension eased. Men went back to talking with one another. Goblets were refilled. Philip fondled the thigh of the boy who was serving him. Alexandros bristled at that, but then looked across the room at the place where his Companions were reclining. Ptolemaios and the others were nuzzling the serving girls there. Except for Hephaistion. He stared back at Alexandros across the wide, noisy hall as if there were no one else in the room.