BOOK III — TRAITOR
Now o’er the one half-world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate’s offerings; and wither’d murder,
Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf…
Moves like a ghost
CHAPTER 29
At last we came to Pella, on a fine summer morning under an azure sky, with a cool breeze from the mountains moderating the heat of the sun. Harkan, riding beside me, murmured, “That’s a sizeable city.”
I nodded, and noted that Pella had grown noticeably, even in the two years I had been away. New houses reached up into the hills, new arcades and markets spread along the high road. A cloud of gritty gray-brown dust hung over the city, kicked up by the many corrals where horses and mules stirred and whinnied, by the building work going on everywhere, by the traffic streaming along the high road and into the city’s streets.
As we rode into the city itself Batu laughingly complained, “Such noise! How can a man think in all this bustle?”
I had paid scant attention to the city’s constant din before, but once Batu had said it I realized that the cities in Asia were much quieter and more orderly than Pella. Certainly the marketplaces were noisy with the cries of sellers and arguments of buyers, but the other sections of those ancient cities were sleepy in the hot sun, orderly and quiet. Pella was more like a madhouse, with the constant din of construction hammering everywhere, chariots and wagons and horsemen clattering through the cobblestoned streets, people laughing and talking at the top of their lungs on almost every corner.
No one stopped us or even paid us much attention as we rode up the main street toward Philip’s palace. The people were accustomed to seeing soldiers; the army was the backbone of Macedonian society and these people did not fear their army, as the peoples of the Persian Empire’s cities did.
But at the palace gate we were stopped. I did not recognize any of the guards on duty there, so I identified myself and told their sergeant that I had brought Harkan and his men to join the army. The sergeant looked us over with a professional eye, then sent one of the boys lounging nearby to run for the captain of the guard.
We dismounted and the sergeant offered us water for ourselves and our horses. Two of his men went with us to the fountain just inside the gate. They were treating us with civility, but with great care, as well.
“What’s the news?” I asked the sergeant after slaking my thirst.
He leaned casually against the doorjamb of the guard house, in the shade of the doorway—within arm’s reach of the clutch of spears standing there.
“There’s to be a royal wedding within the month,” he said, his eyes on Harkan and the men by the fountain.
“Philip’s marrying again?”
That brought a laugh out of him. “No, no—he’s still content with his Eurydice, for the while. She’s presented him with a son, you know.”
“A son?”
“A truly legitimate heir,” the sergeant said. “No question about this babe being sired by a god.” He glanced around, then added, “Or whomever the Molossian witch bedded down with.”
“And what of Alexandros?”
The sergeant shrugged his heavy shoulders. “He had gone off to Epeiros with his mother when Philip married Eurydice, but the king called him back here to Pella.”
“And he came back?”
“You bet he did. He obeyed the king’s order, all right. He’d better, after all the trouble he stirred up.”
I was about to ask what trouble Alexandros had stirred when the captain of the guard came tramping up to us, flanked by four fully-armed men. It was not Pausanias, but the officer of the day, a man named Demetrios. I recognized him; like me, he had been quartered in the barracks by the palace.
“Orion,” he said, pronouncing my name like a heavy sigh.
“I’ve returned, Demetrios, with seven new recruits for the army.”
He looked at me sadly. “Orion, you’ll have to come with me. You’re under arrest.”
I was stunned. “Under arrest? What for?”