Orion and the Conqueror Page 24

  The embers of a dying fire glowed in the bedroom fireplace. The slave merchant lay asleep. I saw that his chamber had only a single door. There must be an anteroom out there, probably with guards on duty in it.

  Looking around, I saw a massive cabinet standing in one corner of the bedchamber. Tall as the ceiling, deep enough for a man to walk into, two ornate doors locked tight. There was a writing desk next to it.

  There must be a key to those doors, I reasoned, and it must be near to the owner's hand. I tiptoed to the edge of his bed and saw that, sure enough, the key was on a chain around his neck. How to get it without waking him? Guile, a voice in my mind answered me. Guile, not force. Remember, you don't want him to know that you've been here.

  Then I smiled to myself. Properly used, force can be a form of guile.

  I went to the glowing embers of his fire, took the tongs from beside the fireplace, and lifted out a smoldering chunk of wood. I could hear the dog beginning to stir, whining. I blew hard on the half-burned ember and it glowed brighter. Then I swiftly crossed the room and touched it to the drapes of the windows, the clothing piled atop a chest, the bedclothes themselves. They began to smoke and smolder.

  I pegged the ember back into the fireplace in a red arc of sparks, then gave the sleeping old man a mighty shove that knocked him flat onto the floor on the other side of the bed. Before he could raise his head I dashed to the open window and ducked through it, hanging outside in the rain by my hands.

  "Fire!" I heard him screech. "Fire!"

  Lifting myself to eye level I saw him run through the smoke to his door and fling it open. I felt the draft that immediately blew through the room, setting the smoldering bedclothes into real flames.

  "Fire, you idiots!" he screamed to the startled guards in his anteroom. "Get water! Quickly!"

  He dashed to that big double-doored cabinet and fumbled the key from the chain around his neck. With shaking hands he unlocked the doors and pulled them open. I could see in the growing light of the flames that he had several chests in there, and dozens of smaller boxes sitting on shelves. There were also row upon row of scrolls: his business records, I guessed.

  The dog bolted past him and out the door as the window curtains burst into flame. The heat singed the hairs on the backs of my hands and made me duck my head below the window sill.

  When I looked up again the dealer had tucked several boxes under his scrawny arms and was trying to lock the doors once again. The flames were licking higher; the canopy over the bed came crashing down and he finally gave up and dashed from the room.

  I had only a few moments to act. I hauled myself through the window once again and went straight to the cabinet. Yanking its doors wide I pawed through several of the smaller boxes inside. They were all filled with coins. I took two of them to the window and tossed them on the ground, then raced back to the fireplace. Grabbing the largest half-burned log there, I blew it alight and then used it as a torch to set the scrolls afire inside the cabinet.

  Heavy steps were pounding up the stairway, running along the balcony. Voices were yelling, dogs barking, women shrieking. Over them all I heard the piercing high screech of the slave dealer cursing at his men and screaming that the whole house would be destroyed.

  Seeing the cabinet nicely ablaze I dashed back to the window and jumped to the ground below. I scooped up the two boxes of coins, ran through the night and the rain to the wall, stopping only to glance back over my shoulder at my handiwork. Smoke was pouring from the windows now, with flames flickering through. With a bit of luck the whole house would burn down.

  I unlatched the front gate and stepped out onto the street as if I were walking to meet some friends. Which I did—Harkan and Batu were still beneath the olive tree.

  "Time for us to leave," Harkan said. "The whole neighborhood is waking up."

  I agreed, but held him up long enough to show him the two boxes of coins.

  Batu's eyes went round. "I could return to Africa and live like a prince with that much money."

  Harkan merely grunted. "You make a fine burglar," he said, "for a pilgrim."

  Laughing, we left the slave merchant's house burning. He will never know he's been robbed, I thought. Even if he suspects it, he will have no way to know who did it. We could see the smoke even from the docks, once the sun came up.

  Chapter 28

  We found a ferry about to cast off from the dock and, after a quick haggle with its captain, all eleven of us trooped aboard. The captain was a good-sized man, his skin nut-brown from long years in the sun, his hair and beard just beginning to show flecks of gray. He eyed us suspiciously, but he hefted the bag of coins I gave him and gave the order to weigh anchor.

  It was a fat little tub with a single mast and an open deck. The captain barked orders from a raised poop at the stern. Pens of goats took up most of the forward deck space, their smell overpowering until we got the wind behind us. Our men sat on the deck planks, resting their backs against bales of cloth and coils of rope or the boat's gunwales.

  Slaves rowed us out into the channel, then the wind filled the boat's triangular sail and we cut through the harbor and out into the powerful current of the Bosporus. The boat began to bob up and down like a cork and most of Harkan's men began to turn various shades of green. The sailors laughed as their passengers moaned and staggered for the rail.

  "Not into the wind, you fool!" roared the captain as one man after another emptied his guts into the churning water.

  I went to the rail also, but well away from the seasick, vomiting men. I stared out at Europe across the way, the brown mud-brick buildings of Byzantion basking in the morning sunlight. Somehow I knew that this undistinguished collection of drab buildings would one day become a mighty city, a center of empire where palaces and churches and mosques would dot the skyline with magnificent domes and graceful minarets.

  For now, though, Byzantion was little more than a strategically placed seaport, part of Philip's Macedonian hegemony.

  "We're not getting any closer," Harkan murmured in my ear. I turned to him, surprised. He looked grim.

  Batu came up beside me on the other side. "We seem to be turning around."

  It was true. We were heading back toward the harbor of Chalkedon. The rest of Harkan's troop was too sick to notice or to care, sprawled on the deck or draped over the rail. The sail flapped uselessly and the stench of the goats washed across the deck, making matters even worse. Harkan gripped the rail with both hands, knuckles white, face pale green.

  I looked up at the captain. There were signal flags flying from the stern. He was staring intently at the docks we had left barely half an hour earlier. Signal flags were fluttering from the pole back there. Then I saw that the sailors had all armed themselves with swords. Even the slaves had tucked clubs into their belts. Our weapons were stacked up forward, next to the goat pens, and none of our men was in condition to use them.

  I headed for the captain's perch on the poop deck but two armed sailors stopped me at the ladder.

  "Captain!" I called up to him. "What are you doing?"

  "Returning a pack of thieves to justice," he said, with a laugh.

  "What makes you think we're thieves?" I shouted.

  He pointed to the signal flags. "Someone burned the house of an important person during the night. And you paid too much too easily for your passage this morning."

  I thought over the situation for all of three seconds. Harkan's men were in no condition to fight; Harkan himself looked barely able to stand on his feet. The sailors were all armed and ready to start slitting throats. The captain was very pleased with himself; he would return a fraction of the coins I had given him to the dealer, and no doubt receive a reward for returning us to the city's authorities.

  The two men before me were grinning smugly. Perhaps that is what decided me.

  I grabbed each of them by the jaw before they could even flinch and banged their heads together so hard it sounded like an ax striking a sturdy old oak. As t
hey slid to the deck, unconscious or dead, I whisked the swords from their belts and tossed them to the startled Harkan and Batu. Harkan fumbled and dropped his sword. Batu caught his cleanly and thrust it through the belly of the first sailor who came charging toward them. As he screamed Harkan recovered his sword and the two of them advanced against a half-dozen sailors, toward the rest of our troop who were still sprawled miserably on the deck.

  I leaped up the ladder in two bounds, whipping out the dagger from its sheath on my thigh. A sailor in a ragged tunic was hanging onto the tiller with both hands. Next to him stood the captain, looking very surprised. The first mate stood between me and the captain, sword in hand. My senses went into overdrive. I saw the muscles in his arm flex, his legs tense as he prepared to move to my unguarded left. I feinted with my left forearm against his sword wrist and, stepping into him, drove my dagger under his chin and into the base of his skull. I stepped over his slumping body to face the captain.

  He too had a sword in hand but he seemed to have no inclination to use it. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Harkan and Batu standing back to back over the seasick men, a circle of sailors and slaves ringing them with swords and clubs. The boat, unattended except by the one man at the tiller, was still drifting toward Chalkedon's harbor.

  The captain said easily, "Put down your dagger or your friends will all be thrown to the fishes."

  "You'll feed the fishes first, I promise you."

  He smiled at me. "Kill me, and how will you sail this boat?"

  I smiled back. "I watched your men this morning. I can sail this tub to Egypt if I need to."

  His smile widened into a grin that revealed several missing teeth. "You don't lack confidence, thief."

  "You have our money," I said. "Take us across to Byzantion as you agreed to do."

  "Then when I return to Chalkedon they'll blame me for letting you escape."

  "You have a few dead men to show that you didn't let us go without a fight."

  He tugged at his beard, thinking, calculating. He knew that his crew could probably overpower Harkan and Batu, even though some of the other men were pushing themselves unsteadily to their feet, ready to fight despite their misery. But the battle would cost him more casualties and he had already lost his first mate and at least two other sailors. And he faced me alone—sword against dagger, true; but I could see that he did not like the odds.

  I decided to sweeten the deal. "Suppose I give you the rest of the money I have."

  His eyes lit up. "You would do that?"

  "It would be better than fighting—for all of us."

  He nodded quickly. "Done."

  Thus we sailed to Byzantion and left the ferry and its captain at the dock there. I felt happy to be back in Philip's domain. But Harkan had left the land in which he had been born and spent all his life. And he knew that he might never see Gordium again.

  I found the barracks where Philip's soldiers were housed and announced myself as one of the king's guard, returning from Asia with ten new recruits for the army. The officer in charge, a crusty old graybeard with a bad limp, put us up overnight and provided us the next morning with horses. I was anxious to reach Pella. Harkan was just as anxious to track down his children.

  We rode from one army station to the next, across Thrace and into Macedonia. Each night I could feel myself coming closer to Hera's power. I tried not to sleep. I went for almost a week without closing my eyes for more than a few moments at a time. But at last the night came when I could stay awake no longer, and as I sat on a cot in an army barracks, my back against the rough logs of its wall, I finally drifted into a deep slumber.

  She came to me in dream, as she had before, beautiful, haughty, demanding.

  "You are returning at an auspicious time, Orion," Olympias/Hera told me.

  I was standing before her in that magnificent chamber that did not exist in Pella yet was connected to the palace by a gateway that spanned the dimensions of spacetime. Olympias reclined on a throne that was almost a couch, carved from green bloodstone veined with dark streaks like rivulets of dried blood. Snakes slithered at her feet, twined across the back of the throne, coiled around her bare legs.

  I could not move, could not even speak. All I was able to do was to see her, decked in a gown of deepest black glittering with jeweled lights, like stars, her magnificent red hair tumbling past her shoulders, her yellow eyes fixed on mine. I could hear her words. I could breathe. My heart beat. But I know she could destroy me with a glance if she wished to.

  "Philip has taken a new wife," she said, with a smile that was pure malice. "He has put me aside. I no longer reside in Pella, but have returned to my kinfolk in Epeiros. What say you to that?"

  I found that I could open my mouth. My voice was scratchy, coughing, as if I had not spoken in weeks.

  "You are allowing him to do so?" I asked.

  "I am allowing him to write his own death warrant," Olympias answered. "And you, my obedient creature, will be the instrument of my vengeance."

  "I will not willingly harm Philip."

  She laughed. "Harm him unwillingly, then."

  And then the pain struck me, wave upon wave of agony pouring over me like breakers rolling up on a beach. Through teeth clenched with anguish I managed to utter, "No. I will not."

  The pain intensified as she watched, an amused smile flickering across her lips, her eyes smoldering with sadistic pleasure. I could not move, could not even cry out, but she seemed to sense every iota of the agony she was putting me through, and to relish each moment.

  Normally I can control pain, shut off my brain's pain receptors. But I was not in control of my own body, my own mind. After an interminable time, though, the pain began to ease. I could not tell if I was regaining control of my own senses or if my tortured nervous system was simply beginning to fail under the continued stress.

  Hera's face told me the answer. Her smile was fading, her pleasure waning. At length the pain ended altogether, although I still could neither speak nor move.

  "This grows tiresome," she said peevishly. "You are strong, Orion. Perhaps we built you too well."

  I wanted to answer her but could not.

  "No matter. What must be done will be done. And you will play your role in it."

  Suddenly I was awake in the barracks, still sitting against the rough log wall. Every part of my body ached. Even my insides felt raw, inflamed, as if I had been roasted alive.

  At dawn we resumed our trek toward Pella.

  "You are quiet this morning," said Batu as we rode along the inland road.

  "You look as if you spent the night drinking," Harkan said, peering at me with those flinty eyes.

  "Or wenching." Batu laughed.

  I said nothing. But all that morning I was thinking that Olympias was biding her time, waiting for the proper moment to strike Philip down so that Alexandros could take the throne. That time was drawing near.

  The stables were the best place to learn the latest gossip. Each village we came to was abuzz with the news from the capital. Philip had indeed married Kleopatra, niece of Attalos. Olympias, who had been his chief wife for twenty-five years, had truly been sent packing back to her brother in Epeiros.

  "And Alexandros?" I asked.

  The news was awful. At the wedding feast, oily Attalos had smugly proposed a toast that Philip and his niece produce "a legitimate heir to the throne."

  Alexandros leaped to his feet. "You call me bastard?" He threw his wine cup at Attalos, opening a gash on the older man's forehead.

  Philip, seemingly stupefied with wine, staggered up from his couch. Some said he pulled a sword from one of the guards in murderous rage and wanted to kill Alexandros. Others claimed he was merely trying to get between Alexandros and Attalos to prevent a bloody fight from breaking out. The entire hall was on its feet; mayhem was in the air. Whatever Philip's intention, his bad leg gave way and he sprawled clumsily to the wine-slicked floor.

  Shaking with fury, Alexandros stared down
at his father for a moment, then shouted, "This is the man who would take us across into Asia. He can't even get himself from one bench to the other."

  Then he swept out of the hall, his Companions close behind him. Before dawn he and his mother had left Pella for Epeiros.

  "He is still there?" I asked.

  "So I hear. With his mother. In Epeiros."

  "It's too bad about the Little King," said one of the stable men. "Bad business, his falling out with his father that way."

  "But good riddance to the witch," said another as we exchanged our horses.

  They were not going to get rid her that easily, I knew.

  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.