Stealing Fire (12 page)

And then the wave broke.

Far ahead, on the other side of the hearse, the first ranks turned back to face us just as the other half of our men burst from cover of the trees, bearing down on the flank of the column in the front.

I was wind, I was flame, I was fire on the mountain. A fighting rush lifted me and held me, guard and thrust, guard and thrust and thrust again.

Someone grabbed at my left leg, but my mare went up again, tossing him off as the thresher tosses barley.

Ahead of me, the golden hearse shimmered like a mirage, Victory leaning down with her golden wreath.

“To the King! To Alexander!” I yelled, the old rallying cry of the Companions, heard on many a field from one end of the world to the other. This was the last time. Never again would he be in the midst of the battle. Never again.

We swept toward the hearse. Now the resistance was light. My mare stepped nimbly over fallen sarissas. The veterans, wise in the ways of this, had dropped them as useless. Those who resisted had drawn sword instead.

“To the King!” I turned about when I gained it, my back to the golden lions that guarded Alexander's body, sword raised high. “To the King!” Once again I stood before his body, as I had on his deathbed. I wondered where Bagoas was. I hoped he'd kept clear.

“Throw down your weapons and we'll give quarter!” I yelled. “Throw them down!” A cluster of cavalry was around me, fifteen or twenty who had charged straight through. We had the hearse.

In ones and twos, and then in larger groups, they began to surrender.

An infantryman with a bloody nose and beard whom I vaguely recognized elbowed his way to me. I thought he was probably the officer in charge. “What are the terms? And who do you serve?”

“We serve Ptolemy of Egypt,” I said. “And the terms are this. Lay down your weapons and you are free to go with your baggage and your provisions. We keep the King.”

He shook his head, sweat running down his face, and looked back toward the head of the pass where the baggage train had stopped just short of the slope. I could see the lead wagons, the white flash of a woman's veil. They were returning to Macedon. Of course they had brought their families with them.

I dropped my voice. “Come on, man,” I said. “Be reasonable. You keep your women and your earnings, your wagons and your food for the road. All we want is the hearse. Which you can't stop us from taking.” I saw him hesitate. “Is it worth dying for at the end like this?”

He looked back at me again, and his eyes were very blue. “For the King.”

“The King will lie in honor in Alexandria, the city of his founding,” I said. “I give you my word on that. You know General Ptolemy. You know he's a man of honor and means no desecration.”

“And your name, Companion?” he asked. “Are you a man of honor?”

“I am,” I said. “I am Lydias of Miletus, Hipparch of Ptolemy's Ile, and you may count my deeds to my name.”

He looked at the glittering hearse again, as though to fix it in his memory, and sighed. “I accept your terms.”

A
FTER THAT IT
was simple. We had lost only three men, so thoroughly had the rush succeeded, and forty-five wounded. Most of the wounds were slight, and I thought that only six of them were truly serious, enough to lay a man up for weeks at a time. Their losses were heavier, and they camped to make a pyre for the dead near the field of Issos where so many had been slain before.

The sun was falling into the sea as we saw the last of them, kindling flame while the women and the servants put up camp, the bright fires licking at the cedar gathered from the wood.

We did not stop. We turned south, the hearse rolling along in the midst of our column. We would not stop, now. It was a long, long way to Egypt.

Victory glittered gold in the last rays of the sun.

Issos, I thought. My King, here is your great field. And here we are on the march again, as you would not have minded. What tomb could ever hold you, who spread your wings above all the world?

I
HAD STILL
been General Hephaistion's horseboy when the Battle of Issos was fought, and I had no part in it. Better men than I have told that story, including Ptolemy, who served upon the field. For my part, there was little to the battle itself except the long, tedious wait, and then the mad rush at the end when the wounded started coming in, after the Persian lines had collapsed.

Issos was the first time that Alexander faced Darius, the first time that Darius fled. He left behind his entire camp and all of his treasury that he had brought with him, talents and talents of coin and all the goods the Great King travels with. But far more importantly, in his fear at our victory he left behind his wife, his old mother, his two young daughters, and his son, a baby not yet walking. It may scarcely be credited that he did so, though it is true as I was there, that he was so poor a king and a man, as their fates were plainly written. His son should die on our swords, and his mother and wife should be playthings for our men. The fates of the two princesses, then aged ten and twelve, did not even bear contemplating. That any man should flee and leave his family thus, king or not, seemed incredible to me at the time.

When the word went round the baggage train that we had captured the camp of Darius and all his family, I could hardly believe it. And like any boy of sixteen I hurried to see.

We traveled light, and while the King had a tent and things of his own, it was nothing like the tent of Darius. The tent of Darius could have been a palace itself, with eight rooms hung with silks and floored with gorgeous patterned rugs that each must take two years on the loom. There was a bathing room with an enormous bronze bathtub chased with silver and tens of little glass bottles full of oils, hanging lamps with colored glass panes burning sweet-scented oil, and a massive bedchamber with furniture of ivory, including an ingenious folding toilet chair. I had never seen the like, and the other boys and I examined it with many crude jokes until the Royal Pages threw us out.

“Look here,” they said. “This all belongs to the King now, and he won't want your grubby hands all over it! This isn't an exhibit at the fair for a bunch of stable boys! This isn't Darius’ anymore. It's Alexander's.”

At that we all shuffled our way to the entrance, into the falling night outside. It was the prize of our betters, but we had at least gotten a good look at it.

“What do you suppose it's like,” one of the other boys asked, “to take a crap in an ivory pot?”

“About the same as anywhere else,” I said. I was distracted by the tent next door, almost as big and sumptuous, but heavily guarded. There were Silver Shields infantry cordoned around it, and the officer in charge was General Perdiccas. “What do you suppose…” I began.

From within rose the sounds of women's voices raised in lamentation, and I knew what it must be. Here was the family of Darius, a prize reserved for the King to dispose of, along with his scented oil and his toilet chair.

Several horsemen were approaching, and I immediately recognized Hephaistion's warhorse Zephyr, as I spent a great deal of time with him. I hurried forward to hold the reins as he dismounted. One of the Royal Pages took the King's reins.

Alexander got down awkwardly. While he had obviously washed since the battle, he was limping from a wound to the right leg. It had been stitched and bandaged neatly, but he stumbled when he tried to put all his weight on it.

“You need to go lie down,” Hephaistion said, catching his arm. “You've lost enough blood, and if you tear the stitches open you'll have to go back to the doctor again.”

“I'm fine,” the King said testily, shaking his hair back out of his face. It was damp and clung to his brow. “Don't hover.”

Hephaistion took a step back, though he seemed unbothered by the rebuke. “If you think it will look better for the King to fall over in front of Darius’ tent.”

Alexander raised his head, like a dog pricking its ears. “What is all that wailing?”

Perdiccas stepped forward from where he stood in front of the tent belonging to the royal ladies. “Darius’ women, Alexander. They're mourning him. They think he must be dead to have left them.”

Hephaistion snorted. “Darius is alive and well and riding for Babylon on the fastest horse he can find.” What he thought of that kind of cowardice was plain to see.

“Darius’ women?” the King asked. “Who, besides his wife?”

“His two daughters,” Perdiccas said. “Stateira, age twelve, and Drypetis, age ten. And his elderly mother, Sisygambis. They say his wife's a beauty. The most beautiful woman in Asia. I haven't seen her myself yet, so I don't know. Their eunuchs are around them and say that we'll have to kill them to get them to step aside, so we're guarding the outside of the tent and they're guarding the inside. I thought we'd wait until you came to clear out the eunuchs.”

And to give the royal ladies time for suicide, I thought. A ripple of approval ran through me for Perdiccas. That was well done, to give them time to die without rape. Though it would take a strong woman to kill her own daughters and infant son.

The same thought obviously occurred to Alexander, and he traded glances with Hephaistion. “I should tell them they have nothing to fear,” he said.

Hephaistion made a gesture of assent. “The sooner the better. And then you can go lie down.”

“I've been telling people she's yours,” Perdiccas said cheerfully. “It's a fine thing, isn't it? The Great King's wife for your concubine? And the daughters too of course. Only Alexander could do that!”

“Could he?” he said dryly.

“She'd probably come around to it if she's a sensible woman,” Perdiccas said. “In exchange for her daughters’ lives. Persia at your feet, the Great King's wife on her knees, begging for mercy! Your father would be proud of you.”

Alexander put his head to the side, and I thought there was a current there that Perdiccas was missing. “He would be, wouldn't he?” he said, and went to the entrance of the tent.

Hephaistion brushed in front of him. “Let me,” he said. “Those guards are sure to be nervous, and the last thing we need is you stabbed by a eunuch.” He swept aside the tent door, followed by the King, Perdiccas, three guards, and me. Why not follow? No one had specifically told me not to, and I wanted to know what would happen.

“King Alexander is here to see the royal ladies,” Perdiccas announced loudly.

The tent was much the same as Darius’, with silk hangings and thick carpets. Four eunuchs armed with knives stood just inside, the older man nearest the door with his mouth set in firm determination. A cluster of women stood at the opposite end, the royal ladies and their attendants presumably, their faces decently veiled.

Only one was not. She must have been sixty-five, with keen sharp features unblurred by time, her dark blue gown embroidered with silver thread in endless stars and whorls. She stood between Alexander and the rest.

The eunuchs looked to her, and at her nod stepped back from the door, their knives at their side.

The queen mother, I thought. There was something in her face that reminded me of some other, or perhaps it was simply that she was impressive in her grief and pride.

Hephaistion looked at the eunuchs. “Do any of you speak Greek?”

“I do,” the older one said. “It is my privilege to translate for my queen.”

Her chin rose and she took four steps. The Great King's mother sank to her knees in front of Hephaistion, her hands upraised in pleading like a carving on a temple wall, the translator's words an echo behind her. “Hear, Alexander of Macedon, the pleas of an old woman! Hear the words of one who is lost!”

Hephaistion looked confused. “What? I'm not…”

The eunuch blanched, and spoke to the woman in swift Persian.

Her shoulders tightened, and her eyes flared, and she turned on her knees to begin again.

Alexander stepped forward and took her upraised hand. “Never mind, mother,” he said. “He is Alexander too.” He raised her to her feet, smiling. “I came to tell you that you and the other women are under the guard of my Silver Shields, and it is death for any man who molests you. You have nothing to fear. I will not even see the queen until Darius presents himself to me and I may return his family to him. Then I will receive him as a subject, and you will be united unharmed with him.”

Her eyes roved over his face, and she asked one word in Persian. The translator rendered it as, “Why?”

“Because I'm Alexander,” he said, and turned to leave.

We all scrambled out before him, me fastest of all, so that I would not look like a gawker who had not been about his work. I wasn't fast enough. His eye fell on me. “You, boy,” he said. “Lydias, is it?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, gulping.

“Do you know why?”

I pulled myself up, conscious of Hephaistion's curious expression. If I were going to make a fool of myself to the King, I should not do it by half. “Yes,” I said. “Anyone can kill.”

He smiled, a quicksilver expression that laid me open to the bone, and clapped me on the shoulder. “Good lad,” he said, and, leaning a little on Hephaistion's arm, went into the tent of the Great King.

N
OW HE LAY
in a golden hearse, a prize himself for which men died.

A thought struck me and I rode alongside the hearse, slipping my leg over my mare and transferring to the back stoop without a stride lost. No one had yet been inside.

A net of gold screened the door, and I lifted it with a hand still stained with blood from the fight.

A gilded lantern hung from the ceiling, throwing patterns of light and shadow over the walls. The paintings seemed to move in the dim light, galleys sailing on an endless sea, pennants bravely waving.

“Bagoas?” I said.

He rose up in one smooth motion from where he had been sitting on the floor at the sarcophagus’ head. “Here,” he said.

“I see that you are well,” I said. The lantern light made planes of his face, casting a shadow like a flower on his cheek.

“I kept down, as you said,” he replied. “It was neatly done.”

“Thank you,” I said. I looked down at the golden lid of the sarcophagus. “I must look,” I said quietly. “To be sure.”