Orion and the Conqueror Page 26

  "The One-Eyed Fox has outsmarted her," I muttered.

  "Has he?" Pausanias made a bitter smile. "We'll see."

  "And what of our Alexandros, the Little King? How is he reacting to all this?"

  "He ran off to Epeiros with his mother when Philip married Eurydice. But the king called him back to Pella and he came, obedient to Philip's command."

  "He's chosen his father over his mother's wishes," I said.

  "Don't jump to conclusions, Orion," said Pausanias. "Alexandros will be king one day. That's why he returned to Pella, to reinforce his claim to the throne. You know that Eurydice has borne Philip a son."

  "I heard."

  "The babe will never become king of Macedonia. Alexandros is determined to succeed his father, no matter what."

  I nodded my agreement. Then I asked again, "But what has this to do with me? Why am I being kept locked in this cell?"

  "You deserted your duty," Pausanias answered crisply. "You ran away from the Persian capital and disappeared into the desert. Do you deny that?"

  "No," I admitted.

  "Deserters are usually hanged, Orion. I'm allowing you to live. You'll even have your freedom, once the wedding is over."

  "What's the wedding got to do with it?"

  He looked away from me again, as if there was something in his eyes that he did not want me to see.

  "What's the wedding got to do with it?" I repeated.

  "You're loyal to Philip," he muttered. "It's best that you're kept out of the way until it's finished."

  I stared at him for a long, wordless moment. Kept out of the way, my mind echoed. Until it's finished.

  I grabbed Pausanias by the shoulders and stared into his eyes. "You're going to assassinate the king!"

  He did not deny it.

  "Olympias has swayed you. The witch has you in her spell."

  Pausanias laughed bitterly. "Jealous, Orion? She's thrown you aside for me. Does that bother you?"

  "It frightens me. I'm frightened for your sake. And for Philip's."

  "Philip." He spat the word. "That man deserves to die a dozen times over."

  "You loved him once."

  "Yes, and look what he did to me! He knew what Attalos had done to me and he did nothing about it. Nothing! I went to him for justice and he ignored me."

  "He made you captain of his personal guard," I said. "That is high honor."

  "Honor my ass! He didn't punish Attalos. After what that stinking hyena did to me he didn't lift a finger to punish him. Not even a harsh word."

  "The king must avoid blood feuds."

  But Pausanias did not want to hear reasonable words. "He threw a sop at me and let Attalos get away without a word. Then he marries the bastard's niece and makes a new princeling with her. And all the while he's laughing at me; him and Attalos, laughing at me every night, every time they see each other—"

  His chest was heaving, his eyes wild with rage. His hands shook so badly that I feared he would drop the torch he was carrying and set my pallet afire. I knew he was speaking Olympias' words now. She was filling his ears with poison even deadlier than the venom her snakes carried.

  Pausanias slowly pulled himself together. "None of this is your affair, Orion. You're not a Macedonian; perhaps you should be glad that you're not. You are an honest man and you feel loyal to the king, so I'm keeping you locked safely here until it's all over. Then you will be freed and you can go your own way."

  "Don't do it," I urged. "Don't let her destroy you."

  His twisted, bitter smile returned. "I was destroyed a long time ago, Orion. I have nothing to lose."

  Weakened though I was by long days of imprisonment, I knew that I could overpower Pausanias. Perhaps I could force him to call for the guard to open my cell door. Perhaps I could overcome the other guards loitering in their chamber down the corridor. Perhaps I could reach the king and warn him.

  Too many perhapses. There was no way I could protect Philip if I were cut down by the palace guard before I could reach his side.

  Pausanias called for the jailer to open the door. I was tempted to try to force my way to freedom, but then I heard the tramp of a half-dozen men accompanying the old man. They were taking no chances.

  I had learned to mark the passage of time through the rats. They were mostly nocturnal animals, although how they told the difference between night and day in the windowless cellar of the castle was beyond me. Still, when I peeked in at the guard chamber through their eyes, I could tell it was nighttime when the men there crawled into their bunks and slept. There were always at least six guards on duty, although they had little to do, even during the day.

  I had no idea of when the royal wedding was to take place; only that it would happen soon. By listening to the guards' conversations I learned that it would not be at Pella, but at the ancient capita up in the mountains, Aigai. Apparently Philip was to depart for the old citadel within a day or so.

  I needed more information. And help. Tentatively, I tried to control a few of my rat pack. Not merely use their senses as extensions of my own, but actively control them, make them do my bidding. I needed to find Harkan. Of all the soldiers and guards in Pella, only Harkan and Batu could I trust to help me.

  I sent my rats ranging through the palace and barracks. It was dangerous for them; other packs attacked strangers in their territory. But I sent one "scout" after another scurrying along the warren of tunnels and hollows that honeycombed the palace. At last I found Harkan and Batu, still quartered together in the main barracks that adjoined the palace proper.

  Now that I knew where they were, I had to reach them. That meant breaking out of my cell. But stealthily, without rousing the palace against me. Somehow I had to release the iron bolt that held my cell door locked. But how?

  I knew that I could probably release myself from this placetime and travel across the continuum to the realm of the Creators, but then I would undoubtedly return to the same point in time and space that I had left; I would return to my cell. It was bitingly ironic: I could travel through uncounted ages and even span the distances between stars, but that ability was useless to me now. All I wanted to do was to get past my cell door. My barely understood powers of moving through the continuum could not help me. I had to rely on my own strength and wits.

  I still had my dagger strapped to my thigh, so much a part of me that I took it for granted. One small dagger was not much of a weapon against all the guards of the palace. But it might make an effective tool.

  Using the point of the iron blade I chiseled away at the wooden door at the point where the bolt slid into its iron groove on its other side. The wood was tough and old. I wondered how long my iron blade would hold an effective edge. All through the night I worked, forcing the blade's point into the iron-hard wood and working it back and forth until another splinter fell loose. From time to time I used the rats' eyes to check on the guards. They were snoring away in their bunks; even the jailor sat with his head down on the table, his evening's flagon of wine drained and empty.

  After hours of unceasing effort, my blade scraped the hard iron of the door's bolt. I jerked back, shocked by the noise. It sounded loud enough to wake the sleeping guards, to me. But that was only my own fear and surprise; the guards snored on, undisturbed. Now the trick was to worm the blade into the bolt's slot and slide it open without snapping the dagger itself. My hands grew sweaty with the effort. Four or five times I felt the blade bending dangerously and withdrew it. The bolt remained stubbornly in place.

  I stopped a while and tried to think of another way to get the stubborn door open. I tried using the edge of the blade to catch some surface roughness on the bolt and slide it out of its slot that way. But the blade merely scratched along the bolt without finding any real purchase, nothing but iron sliding across iron.

  Finally I hacked at the wood to make a wider opening and then wormed my index finger into the rough opening. I felt the cool round iron of the bolt, pressed my finger against it and then slid
my finger back a fraction of an inch.

  The bolt moved. I pulled my finger out, moistened it slightly on my tongue, and tried again. Again the bolt slid back a bit. Slowly, slowly, I pulled it out until I felt the door give slightly under my pressing weight. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open. The hinges groaned and I froze. But none of the guards stirred, down the corridor. I placed my chamberpot in its usual spot, then opened the door only enough to squeeze through. I shut it and slid the bolt home again. From out here in the corridor it was impossible to tell that the door had been damaged. They would not know I had escaped until the jailor realized that I had not touched the next bowl of gruel he brought.

  I was free! Almost.

  Holding my dagger before me I tiptoed past the slumbering guards and up the stairway that led to the ground floor of the palace. Keeping to the shadows, I managed to avoid the few guards who stood sleepily on duty. I made my way to one of the courtyards and quickly decided that the safest and swiftest way to travel was across the rooftops.

  It was difficult to recognize which part of the palace I was crossing, and where the troop barracks was, especially in the dark of night. But I saw that the sky to the east was turning milky gray; soon it would be too light for me to go scampering across the roof tiles without being seen. So I found a spot where a fig tree's branches shaded the roof. I gobbled a dozen of the ripe green figs, then settled in the tree's shade there on the hard tiles of the roof and had my first restful sleep in weeks.

  Chapter 31

  I slept without dreams, although when I awoke, late in the afternoon, I had the disturbing feeling that I had been discovered in my hiding place.

  Peering over the roofs eave I saw slaves and servants bustling in the courtyard below: nothing unusual. A squad of soldiers marched past the gate, heading away from me. The sun was almost touching the mountains in the west. I smelled cooking odors, and wondered if there would be enough scraps from the evening's meals to keep the rats fed.

  If my escape had been noticed I saw no evidence of it in the courtyard below. Probably my jailor had left my daily bowl of gruel at the locked cell door and taken my pot away with him. He would not suspect anything was amiss until he brought the next meal and saw that I had not touched the previous one.

  Good. That gave me roughly twelve hours, more or less, to get to Philip. Then I smiled. If the rats in my cell ate the gruel I might have even more time. But I could not depend on that.

  I needed help, and for that I had to reach Harkan. I spent the last few hours of daylight studying the layout of the palace from my rooftop hiding place. I located the troop barracks and plotted out a path across the roofs to get there. Then I waited until purple dusk had faded into the full darkness of night. The moon was rising as I scampered across the roof tiles toward the barracks, silent as a wraith. I hoped.

  I waited several hours more, with growing impatience, to make certain that all the soldiers were asleep before I dared to enter the barracks. At last, with a nearly full moon lighting the parade ground almost brightly as day, I swung down from the eaves and through the blanket that hung across one of the barracks windows.

  They were asleep, all right. Their snores and grunts and mumbles made the darkened barracks sound almost like a barnyard. I waited several moments while my eyes adjusted to the darkness, then began a tiptoe search for Harkan.

  He found me.

  As I tiptoed down the aisle between the rows of bunks, I sensed a presence behind me. I whirled and reached for the man's throat, determined to cut off his air and prevent him from awakening the others, only to see that he had a sword pointed at me. It was Harkan, naked except for his unsheathed sword.

  "Orion!" he said, surprised.

  "Shh!"

  One of the men nearest us stirred in his sleep, but did not wake.

  "I thought you were a thief," Harkan whispered.

  "I was," I joked softly, "when I rode with you."

  "Have they released you from prison?"

  "I released myself."

  In the shadows of the darkened barracks I could not see the expression on his bearded face, but his silence told me that he did not know what to say. I gripped his shoulder and together we walked quietly to the end of the long room.

  "I must get to the king," I said as we stepped outside onto the landing of the stairs that ran down to the parade ground.

  "He left for Aigai this morning."

  "Then I must go to Aigai."

  Now, in the moonlight, I could see Harkan's face. He looked perplexed. "You're a fugitive."

  "That was the queen's doing. The king will pardon me when he hears what I have to tell him."

  "You think so?" another voice asked. A deep voice: Batu's. He stepped out of the inky shadow cast by the overhanging roof. Like Harkan he was naked, and armed with a sword.

  I clasped his outstretched hand as I asked, "What are you doing out here?"

  With a broad smile Batu replied, "I heard you scrabbling across the roof tiles. Harkan went to one end of the barracks, I went to this end."

  "You two sleep very lightly."

  "It comes from the life we've led," said Batu lightly. "Those others in there, they've been paid soldiers all their lives. Bandits don't sleep as well as they do."

  I grinned back at him.

  "But what makes you think the king will pardon you?" Batu asked again.

  "Even if he doesn't, I have to warn him. Pausanias plans to kill him at the wedding."

  Harkan scowled at me. "That's a serious charge, Orion."

  "He told me himself."

  "And the queen is behind it?"

  "Yes."

  "That means Alexandros is in it, too."

  "Perhaps," I said. "He will certainly benefit from it—if we allow it to happen."

  "We?" Batu asked.

  "I need your help," I said. "I can't get into Aigai by myself."

  They both fell silent for many moments. I could understand what was going through their minds. They had found employment, a roof over their heads, a place in the world here in Philip's kingdom. They were no longer outlaws, hunted, living in the wild little better than the beasts. And I was asking them to throw all that away, to desert their positions and fling themselves into the midst of the machinations being hatched by the witch-queen Olympias.

  They would be fools to agree. Yet they owed their comfortable positions to me and they knew it. I had brought them to Pella and Philip's employ. If anyone had a right to ask them to give it up, it was I.

  Before either of them could speak, my own mind hatched a plot of its own.

  "Has Pausanias left for Aigai yet?"

  "He departs tomorrow at first light," said Harkan.

  "Then listen to me," I said, "Pausanias will send you scouring the countryside when he finds that I have broken out of confinement. He knows I will head for Aigai and he'll send you and most of the guard searching for me. All I ask is that when you find me you bring me to the king, not to Pausanias or the queen."

  "How do you know Pausanias will send us?" Harkan asked.

  "And even if he does, he will not send only the two of us," added Batu. "How can you be certain that we will be the ones who will find you?"

  I gave them a grim smile. "Pausanias will send almost the entire royal guard, never fear. And I will find you, my friends. In the hills outside Aigai."

  Harkan looked doubtful, Batu amused at my certainty.

  "When does the wedding take place?" I asked.

  "The night of the full moon."

  I looked up at the fat waxing moon. "Three nights from now, I judge."

  They agreed.

  "Search the hills to the right side of the road before Aigai," I said. "I'll be waiting for you there."

  Before they could argue I reached up to the edge of the eave and, after lifting myself onto the roof, ran toward the section of the barracks where Pausanias and the other officers slept in individual rooms.

  I had no way of knowing which window was his. I
simply swung myself through the first one I came to. It was not Pausanias, but the man stirred in his sleep as I leaned over him close enough to see his face in the darkness. Four sleeping rooms I went through before I found Pausanias. There were no guards in the corridor that linked the rooms, although I knew there was a perfunctory pair of men drowsing on guard duty down in the yard, before the door to the barracks.

  At last I found Pausanias' room. He was tossing unhappily in his sleep, moaning slightly. The thin chiton he wore was soaked with perspiration.

  I clamped my left hand over his mouth and pointed my dagger at his suddenly wide-open eyes.

  "Dreaming of the queen?" I asked. "Waiting for her to invite you into her bed once again?"

  His right hand moved slightly, but I touched the point of my dagger to the artery pulsing in his throat. He froze into immobility.

  "Has she promised to make you regent here in Pella while her son goes off to conquer the Persians?"

  I could see by his eyes that this idea was a surprise to him.

  "Not even that?" I asked. "All she's offered you is her body? She certainly has you entranced, then."

  He tried to say something but my hand muffled his words.

  "Your cell wasn't strong enough to hold me, Pausanias. Now I'm going to the king and tell him what you told me. The next time you see me, you'll have a noose around your neck."

  I sheathed my dagger. He shoved my hand away from his mouth and reached for the sword hanging beside the bed. I punched him solidly on his temple and he went limp, unconscious.

  Then I ducked through his window and back up onto the roof, heading for the stables and a fast horse and the hills before Aigai.

  Pausanias reacted almost exactly as I had expected. By the time I had swung off the road to Aigai and nosed my horse up into the brown hills, couriers on lathered horses raced to the old city's gates. Before the sun went down that day a troop of royal guards came up the road, riding almost as hard as the couriers, with Pausanias at their head. They made camp in front of the city wall, obviously to block my entry into Aigai.