Orion and the Conqueror o-4 Read online

  Perhaps I should have been annoyed or even angered at that. I could not work up any resentment; he was right. I was a servant, a bodyguard, a hired soldier. In thrall to his witch mother, as well. And a slave of the Creators who let their creatures worship themselves as gods. What right had I to be angry at the truth?

  I arranged an honor guard of six uniformed men to accompany us through the streets, three striding ahead of us, three behind. I did not entirely trust the Athenians’ seeming acceptance of us. It would take only one dagger in the dark to slay the son of their conqueror.

  As we walked through Athens’ streets in the gathering shadows of evening, he said to me, “You realize that by sending me here, my father is robbing me of the victory celebration home in Pella.”

  “You got a hero’s welcome here,” I said.

  “Smiling faces, Orion. But they smile out of fear. They are trying to deceive us.”

  “Perhaps so.”

  “Right now my father must be parading our troops through the streets of Pella. And then there will be the thanksgiving rites at the old capital in Aigai. And I won’t be there for either one.”

  “They’ll have celebrations when you return,” I said.

  He shook his head. “It won’t be the same. He is getting all the glory for himself, making certain that all I get is leftovers.”

  “What you are doing here is very important.”

  Alexandros glanced around at the houses and shops crowding the street. It was late in the day, almost sundown. No one else was stirring, as far as we could see. The Athenians had emptied the street once they knew that Alexandros would be using it. Up ahead I could see the massive bulk of the Acropolis with its marble temples and the tip of Athena’s spear catching the last glint of the setting sun.

  “Important? This? I’m a messenger boy, that’s all.”

  I said, “Ensuring the peace is king’s work. Victory on the battlefield means nothing if the enemy isn’t satisfied with the terms of the peace.”

  He did not reply.

  “Your task is to make the Athenians realize that they have more to gain from peace than war. Your father sent you because Demosthenes has painted him as such a monster that it would be impossible for the Athenians to deal with him.”

  “Demosthenes,” he whispered, as if he had just remembered where we were going, and why.

  “You are not only Philip’s representative,” I reminded him, “you are his heir. The peace you arrange here should last into your own reign.”

  This time he looked at me squarely. “My father is still a vigorous man. I may not ascend to the throne for many years.”

  “You are young. You can wait.”

  “I am not good at waiting, Orion. When you have chosen glory instead of long life, waiting is hard.”

  “You sound like Achilles,” I said.

  “I want to be like Achilles: strong and glorious and famed forever.”

  “He was short and ugly and he slit his own throat,” I blurted.

  Alexandros jolted to a stop so suddenly that the guards behind us had to whistle to the guards up front to let them know they should stop too.

  “How dare you defame the greatest hero of the Iliad?”

  “I was there,” I said. It was almost as if someone else were speaking. I heard my own words, and in a far corner of my mind I was astounded to be speaking them.

  “At Troy?”

  “At Troy. I was befriended by Odysseus and made a member of his house.”

  “That was a thousand years ago!”

  “It was in an earlier life.”

  He grinned nervously. “You’ve been talking to that Hindi, haven’t you? He believes in reincarnation.”

  “I have lived many lives. One of them was at Troy. I saw Achilles kill Hector. I saw Achilles take his own life when an arrow wound crippled him.”

  Alexandros shook his head like a man trying to rid himself of a bad dream. “Orion, I think you have taken too many blows on your head.”

  I knew he believed what I had told him but did not want to admit it, even to himself. So I said merely, “Perhaps so. Perhaps it was all a dream.”

  “Certainly it was.”

  We fell silent as we marched on to the house of Demosthenes. It was not as grand as Aeschines’ house, where once again we were staying, but it was a large and handsome house with a whole detachment of uniformed city constables standing guard before it. Like Aeschines, Demosthenes was a lawyer. It must have been a profession that paid very well, I thought, judging from their homes.

  Demosthenes knew we were coming, of course. His servants bowed us in through the front gate. He received us in the central courtyard, where gnarled fig trees provided shade by day. Now, with night’s shadows creeping across the city, the courtyard was lit by lanterns hung from the trees’ twisting limbs.

  He stood as Alexandros and I approached, his eyes going wide at the sight of his shield. Our six-man guard stood out by the house’s front gate, with the constables’ detachment, within shouting range.

  “I believe this is yours,” said Alexandros, gesturing me to lay it on the ground at Demosthenes’ feet. The man seemed to have aged ten years in the few days since Chaeroneia. His face was lined, a pallid gray, and his beard was ragged.

  He stared down at the shield. It was unscratched. He had never come close enough to the fighting to have it marred.

  “Wh-what do you w-w-want of me?” He could not look directly at Alexandros.

  “Only to tell you that you have nothing to fear from Philip, King of the Macedonians. Despite all that you have said, despite your personal insults, he has instructed me to tell you that he bears you no ill will and he will not harm you in any way.”

  Demosthenes looked up then, his eyes more puzzled than surprised.

  “But let me add this, Demosthenes,” said Alexandros. “I, Alexandros, will one day be king of the Macedonians. And on that day you can begin to number the hours left to your miserable, lying, traitorous heart.”

  “T-traitorous? Whom have I b-betrayed?”

  “The thousands of your fellow Athenians who died at Chaeroneia while you flung your shield and weapons away and ran to save your filthy neck. The brave Sacred Band of the Thebans, who fought to the last man because you, bought by Persian gold, talked them into making war against us. The people of your own city who trusted you to lead them to victory and now bless Philip’s name for his magnanimity.”

  Demosthenes was trembling, but he managed to choke out, “So y-you intend to k-k-kill me once you g-gain the throne.”

  “You can run to the Great King, your secret master, but it will do you no good. Hide at the ends of the earth and I will find you,” Alexandros snarled.

  “My secret master?” Some of the old fire seemed to rekindle in Demosthenes. “I have no m-master except the democracy of Athens!”

  “You deny you took money from the Persians?”

  “Of course not. I would have t-taken money from the dead souls in Hades if it would have helped to stop Philip.”

  “Little good it did you.”

  “Athens still stands,” he challenged.

  “Your people love Philip now. If you showed yourself on the streets they would no doubt tear you to pieces.”

  “Yes. Likely they would. Today. Tomorrow. But in time, perhaps a few weeks, perhaps a few months, they will come back to me.”

  Alexandros laughed.

  And Demosthenes scowled at him. “You have no idea of how the p-people actually behave, do you? This is a democracy, princeling. Loyalty is not forced. Obedience is not coerced. Where the people are free to make up their own minds, they change their minds often.” As before, the warmer his passion became the less he stuttered.

  “Where the people are dazzled by demagogues,” Alexandros countered, “they can be led by their noses by the man who tells the biggest lies.”

  “By the man who offers them the clearest vision of their own future,” Demosthenes corrected.

  �
�The same thing,” said Alexandros.

  “I will lead Athens again, sooner or later.”

  Nodding, Alexandros agreed. “Yes, I understand that a democracy will follow the smoothest talker. I hope they do make you their leader again. I hope it happens when I am king. Then I will smash you once and for all.”

  “You will try, I’m sure.”

  Alexandros took a step closer to Demosthenes. “I will crush you like a grape, demagogue.” He scuffed a boot against the blue shield. “You’ll need more than that to protect you, next time.”

  If Alexandros thought that Pella would ignore his return, he reckoned without his mother. We were only a small band: Alexandros and his Companions, and those of us of the royal guard who had been assigned to them. With the servants and horse handlers and mule drivers and all we came to fewer than a hundred and fifty men.

  Yet the streets of Pella were decked with flowers when we returned. Crowds lined the streets as we made our way to the palace, cheering us and throwing even more flowers. Young women ran to us as we rode through the streets to beam smiles up at us and touch us with their outstretched fingertips. Boys pranced along beside our horses, proud to pretend they were part of us.

  At the head of the palace steps, at the end of our procession, stood Olympias, resplendent in a red gown that swirled to the ground, her hair decked with garlands, her eyes bright with victory.

  The king was nowhere in sight.

  We were feted at a royal banquet. Even those of us in the guard were invited to recline on couches in the main dining hall and be served by comely young women and smooth-cheeked young men. Alexandros was up at the head of the hall, his mother beside him. Much wine was poured and most of the men became quite drunk. But neither Alexandros nor his mother did more than sip at their goblets. I drank freely, knowing that I never got drunk. Something in my body burned away the alcohol almost as quickly as I consumed it.

  “Where is the king?” I asked Ptolemaios, on the couch next to mine. He was fondling one of the serving girls. Thais had elected to remain in Athens a while; he had complained loudly on the trip back to Pella that the woman was trying to drive him mad. And succeeding.

  “Who cares?” he said. Then he returned to nibbling at the serving girl. She could not have been more than fifteen, but that was well past marriageable age among the Macedonians.

  The dinner became rowdier. The young men began tossing morsels of food at one another. The more the wine flowed the more uproariously they laughed and bellowed obscene jokes back and forth. Olympias, up on the dais at the head of the hall, seemed to ignore it all as if she saw and heard nothing. She was deep in conversation with Alexandros, whose head was bent toward her.

  At last they got up together and left the hall. Then the party became really raucous. Whole platters of food were hurled back and forth, goblets of wine sloshed through the air. Harpalos, the dour giant of the Companions, jumped atop a table and announced that he could make a roasted chicken fly as if it were alive. He pegged the seared bird halfway across the hall, narrowly missing dark-skinned Nearkos, who was intently slicing the skin off a peach in a single spiralling cut.

  One by one, the Companions and guards staggered out of the hall, most of them with a girl or boy on their arms. Except for Ptolemaios, who brought two young women with him. “I’ll forget all about her,” he muttered. “At least, for tonight.”

  I got up from my couch and pushed past the few couples still carousing, heading for the door. I still wondered where Philip was and why he had not deigned to greet his returning son. And I hoped that Ketu was still somewhere in the palace; there was much I wanted to learn from him.

  As I neared the door, however, I noticed a messenger boy scanning the spattered, littered hall. His eyes stopped on me.

  “Are you the one called Orion?” he asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “The queen summons you.”

  Glad that I had stayed out of the food fights, I followed him toward the stairs that led to the queen’s rooms.

  “She said I would recognize you by your size,” said the lad. While some of the mountain people were big-boned, most of the Macedonians were much smaller in stature than I.

  The lad smiled up at me as we started up the stairs. He held his lamp up to my face. “And your beautiful gray eyes,” he added.

  I knew that boys his age often sought a mentor who would guide them into adult male society. Homosexual relationships were an accepted norm between noblemen and pubescent boys. Usually the boy grew up to marry and raise a family, and then take on a boy companion at a later stage in life. From what I saw, Macedonian wives had closer bonds with their husbands than those in the cities further south, where wives were left at home and men sported with hetairai, professional courtesans like Thais. Still, men could remain lovers throughout their lives if they wished; Alexandros and Hephaistion seemed to be, although neither of them spoke about it and the other Companions only mentioned it jokingly when neither of them was within earshot.

  “I am a stranger here,” I said, “and only a member of the royal guard by the king’s favor. I am not a nobleman.”

  “So I had heard,” the boy said, looking a bit disappointed. He was ambitious, I realized. He would find someone other than a hired soldier.

  The queen was in her small sitting room, where the window overlooked the palace courtyard. A stiletto-thin sliver of a moon had just cleared the dark bulk of the mountains. I could see stars glittering out in the night.

  The room was lit by a single lamp on the table beside the queen. Alexandros had apparently been sitting at his mother’s knee. He scrambled to his feet as the messenger boy opened the door.

  “Come in, Orion,” said Olympias. To the boy she said, “You may go.”

  He closed the door behind me, although I did not hear his footsteps leaving. He had been barefoot, and he was slight of build. I gave the possibility of his eavesdropping no further thought.

  Alexandros eyed me uneasily. He always seemed on edge, upset, when he met with his mother this way. Who knew what poisons she was pouring into his ears?

  Olympias seemed content to have me stand at the doorway. She ignored me, reaching for her son’s bare arm.

  “Come, sit down again,” she urged. “We still have much to talk over.”

  Alexandros looked uncertain, but after a moment’s hesitation he sat on the floor again. For an instant I thought he would rest his head in his mother’s lap.

  “It is certain, then?” he asked, looking up into her coldly beautiful face.

  Olympias nodded once. “As certain as the man’s insatiable lust. He will marry her.”

  “But what will that mean to you, mother?”

  “Better to ask what it will mean to you, Alexandros.”

  “He can’t disown me. He can’t ignore that I exist.”

  “He is a very clever man.”

  “But all the army saw me at Chaeroneia. I am a general now, equal in rank to Parmenio and the others.”

  “Orion,” she called to me, “do you believe that if the army voted for a new king this night they would elect Alexandros?”

  So that’s why she wanted me. As a sounding board for her own opinions.

  “He is greatly admired,” I said.

  “But not yet nineteen years old,” the queen countered.

  “The men trust him. At Chaeroneia—”

  “Answer me truthfully. If the army voted this night, would they elect a nineteen-year-old over Parmenio? Or even Antipatros? Remember that their families are as old and noble as Philip’s. They were all horse thieves together only a generation ago.”

  “I believe they would vote Alexandros king,” I said truthfully. “Probably with Parmenio as regent for a year or so.”

  “You see?” she said to Alexandros. “You would get the title but not the authority. They will keep you from true power.”

  “But why this question?” I asked. “Has something happened to the king?”

  “He’s g
oing to marry Attalos’ niece, Kleopatra, the one he calls Eurydice.”

  “Marry?”

  “The king may have more than one wife,” Alexandros explained.

  “He already has had several political marriages,” said Olympias. “His marriage to me was to cement his alliance with the Molossians, originally.”

  “He fell in love with you,” I said.

  “He lusted after me, just as he’s lusted after every wench with hair between her legs. And quite a few boys, too.”

  “I don’t see it as a problem, Mother—as far as I’m concerned. I know it’s a slap in your face, of course.”

  “Do you think I care about that?”

  I thought she cared very much. But I kept my mouth shut.

  “I think he hurts you,” said Alexandros.

  “And he humiliates you,” she said, clutching at his shoulder. “He expects me to be so enraged at him that I will leave and return to my father in Epeiros. If I refuse to do that, he will divorce me. This little baggage he’s marrying wants to be his only legitimate wife; that’s Attalos’ plan.”

  Understanding seemed to dawn on Alexandros’ face. “Which means that if he has a son by her—”

  “You will have a rival for the throne. Attalos will push for his niece’s son because that will bring the throne to his house, his family.”

  “But not for many years,” I pointed out.

  She shot me a venomous glance. “He could have a new son a year from now. And my son will be pushed aside. He’ll claim that he never fathered you, Alexandros. I know he will!”

  “You told me that he didn’t,” Alexandros said, his voice hollow.

  “I told you that you were fathered by Zeus,” she said imperiously. “But Philip has always claimed you as his own.”

  “Until now.”

  “The clever dog will use your own godly heritage against you. He will call me an adulteress and you a bastard. Wait and see.”

  Again I broke in, “But all this is supposition. Philip hasn’t even announced his intention to marry again.”

  “He will.”

  “Even if he does, even if he marries, it could be years before he produces a son. Alexandros will be a fully grown man, perfectly able to be voted king when Philip dies.”