Harkan and Batu and the others came back toward us from the fountain. The sergeant stood up straighter and glanced at the spears resting by his side.
Demetrios said, “Those are my orders, Orion. From the king himself. You are charged with desertion.”
Before a fight broke out I said, “Very well. I’m willing to accept the king’s justice. But these men are volunteers for the army and they should be treated as such. They are professional soldiers, all of them.”
Demetrios looked at them. “I’ll see that they’re well taken care of, Orion. But you must come with me.”
“All right.”
“I have to take your sword.”
I unbuckled it and handed sword and belt to him.
Harkan asked, “What will they do to you?”
“It’s all right,” I told him. “Once I’ve had a chance to speak with the king this will all be cleared up.”
Demetrios looked utterly dubious, but he did not contradict me. To the sergeant he said, “Take these men to the army barracks and have the officer in charge look them over. If they meet his approval, see that they’re properly housed and equipped.”
“Yessir,” said the sergeant.
Then he turned back to me. “Come along, Orion.”
Escorted by Demetrios and his four fully-armed guards, I marched across the palace courtyard and into a prison cell.
The cell was underground, beneath the palace, dark and so small that I could touch the walls on both sides without even extending my arms to their full reach. No window, except a barred slot on the heavy locked door. No bed; just a straw pallet on the bare dirt floor. And an earthenware jug for a chamberpot.
“I really hate to do this to you, Orion,” Demetrios told me once we reached the cell. He came inside with me, while his men waited out in the dark corridor that was lit only by a weak shaft of dusty sunlight slanting in from an airshaft. “It’s the king’s standing order. The instant you showed up again in Pella you were to be arrested. For desertion.”
“The king himself gave you this order?” I asked.
“No!” Demetrios seemed shocked to think that the king would speak to him personally. “Pausanias gave me the order, months ago. But it’s from the king’s mouth; he told me so.”
“How many months ago?” I asked. “Was it when the Hindi ambassador from the Great King returned to Pella?”
“The Hindi…” Demetrios frowned with thought. “Oh, you mean the one with the name nobody can pronounce. No, I think it was before then. Yes, it had to be before then; I remember I was surprised that you’d be accused of desertion—of anything—because you were so far away in the Persian Empire. How’d the king know you’d deserted?”
Indeed, I said to myself. How could he know what I was doing in Parsa before Ketu or anyone else returned to tell him?
“I remember!” Demetrios said. “It was during all that hubbub when the king married Attalos’ niece and Olympias stormed off to Epeiros with Alexandros.”
“That’s when the order was given?”
He bobbed his head up and down. “Yes, I remember it clearly now.”
“And you received the order from Pausanias?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” I said, looking around at the stone walls of my cell, “please tell Pausanias I am back, and safely lodged in my new quarters.”
In the dim light of the cell I could not make out the expression on his face, but Demetrios’ voice sounded strained. “I will tell him, Orion. Believe me, I’m going to him right now.”
“Thank you.”
He left me alone in the cell. The thick wooden door, reinforced with iron strapping, swung shut. I heard the bolt shoot home. I was in almost total darkness, alone except for the dagger strapped to my thigh. Then I noticed a pair of red beady eyes glowering in the darkest corner of the cell. I would not be totally alone, I realized. There were the rats.
I had plenty of time to think. The hours dragged by slowly in that dark cell. I counted the days by the times that the jailor shuffled by and shoved a shallow metal bowl of thin gruel through the slot at the bottom of the door. It was decent enough. He took the chamberpot, too, when I left it by the slot. No one came in to change the straw, though.