Storm of arrows

17

‘ Your majesty?’ Eumenes the Cardian was careful entering the inner sanctum, where the Iliad sat in its golden casket and where the panoplies of Alexander’s foes decorated the walls. Alexander was becoming more withdrawn, more alien, with every campaign. Crossing the mountains, he had shown one of his bursts of superhuman activity, even of empathy, rescuing snow-blind soldiers and speaking extempore to every knot of pikemen coming down the pass. But now the godlike energy had passed and what was left was a sullen tyrant sitting amidst his favourite treasures.

He looked up, his mismatched eyes listless. ‘What, Eumenes?’

‘Spitamenes has delivered Amazons, your majesty.’ Eumenes kept his head slightly bowed. ‘And Barsine’s sister Banugul is here from Hyrkania.’

‘Hell to pay in the harem when her sister hears she’s with me.’ Alexander gave a smile. ‘I can’t say I’m altogether sorry she’s here, but you’ll have to hide her from Hephaestion,’ Alexander said. ‘Why is she here?’

‘Her tale is complex, lord. She blames her father, but also some Greek mercenary. Indeed, she hadn’t expected to find us here — she came over the mountains from Hyrkania, intending to find us at Kandahar.’

‘Greek mercenaries are never to be trusted. I thought she had more wisdom than that. Very well, make a note that I will see her. Keep her from Hephaestion. Anything else?’ Alexander was petulant.

‘As you say, Barsine will be angry when she hears.’ Barsine, like the rest of the women, had been left in Kandahar.

‘Barsine means less to me than the lowest whore carrying a bag of millet for the army. Banugul is at least intelligent.’ Alexander rubbed his head. ‘I’m distempered, Eumenes. Ignore the womanish spite.’

Eumenes shrugged. ‘She has a tale of an army, lord, coming from the Euxine.’

Alexander glared at him and the Cardian subsided. ‘The Euxine? Foolishness. The Scythians would eat their livers. Now — the Amazons. Let me see them. Are they handsome?’

‘Not really, lord.’

‘Ares, do they stink?’ Alexander rose to his feet, stripped off the Persian tunic he had on and summoned a slave with a better chiton, which he slipped over his head. Eumenes could see that he was thinner, the muscles corded like old rope. The mountains had stolen a little more of the king’s youth, just as they had killed the older veterans and aged the rest. The march over the mountains had taken the initiative from the rebels and brought Spitamenes, the most dangerous of the enemy leaders, to the table, but it had killed more Macedonians than any of the king’s victories.

Eumenes shrugged. ‘They smell like horses, majesty.’

Alexander laughed. ‘So do we,’ he said. He ran fingers through his hair and shrugged off his slaves. ‘Come,’ he said imperiously.

Eumenes followed him out of the inner tents to his receiving tent. As he entered, Hephaestion, sensing that something important might happen without him, came through the main door at a rush. To one side, a pair of messengers waited for the king’s attention, while to the other side of the main door, three barbarian women in tunics of silk and leather breeches looked about themselves curiously under the eyes of a pair of the king’s Companions.

‘What news, Achilles?’ asked Hephaestion.

Alexander, for once not in the mood to be flattered, shrugged. ‘Spitamenes’ Amazons,’ he said. ‘Send for Kleisthenes.’

Hephaestion sent a slave, and then grinned at the huddle of leather-clad women. ‘Stinking barbarian women? You plan to send them to brothels, I assume?’

Alexander looked at his friend with something akin to amazement. ‘These are free plains-women, Hephaestion. If I mistreat them, the Massagetae and the Sakje and the Dahae will come to know of it, and they will make trouble. What I desire is that they submit, as they did to the Persians. Do you understand?’

Hephaestion, unused to being corrected in public, flushed.

The eldest of the Amazons was heavily pregnant but quite beautiful. She had heavy black brows, the perfect skin of an ivory temple statue and a sense of humour. She gave Alexander half a smile.

‘The Massagetae never submitted to the Persae, and they will never submit to you.’ She bowed slightly. ‘Lord.’

Alexander seated himself on his ivory stool and shook his head. ‘You speak Greek!’ he said.

‘Indeed,’ she answered.

‘The Massagetae submitted to Cyrus and to Darius,’ Alexander said with royal finality.

‘You have been misinformed,’ the woman said. ‘The Massagetae killed Cyrus and avoided Darius.’

Alexander raised an eyebrow.

‘That does agree with what Herodotus says, sire,’ Kleisthenes, the Greek philosopher, cut in.

‘Well!’ Alexander looked about him. ‘I like that story much better. When I conquer them, I will be first!’

The woman laughed aloud and translated for her companions. They chattered in their barbaric tongue and then laughed with her.

Alexander got up and walked over to them. He put a finger under the pregnant woman’s face to lift it and she slapped it away with the swiftness of a lioness.

‘You have the face of a goddess. But you are gravid. Whose child is it?’ Alexander asked.

‘Mine,’ she answered. ‘And my husband’s.’

‘A Massagetae warrior?’ Alexander asked, examining the youngest of the Amazons — pretty, but muscled like a man.

‘Do I look like a Massagetae?’ she asked. She laughed again.

‘All barbarians look alike to me,’ Alexander said.

‘I am the Lady Srayanka of the Cruel Hand Sakje. We ride the grass where we please, but our farmers turn the dirt in the valleys north of Olbia.’

Alexander looked at Kleisthenes and then back at the woman. ‘Is this true? You have ridden all the way here from the Euxine?’ This recalled the Cardian’s gossip, but he didn’t want to speak of it in front of Hephaestion. ‘So the sea of grass does run all the way from the Jaxartes to the Tanais!’

She nodded.

Hephaestion came up next to him. ‘We have wasted too much time on these barbarians,’ he said. He turned his back on the Amazons. ‘Pregnant Amazons! Some horse trooper’s local trull, I’d say. She couldn’t fight a child.’

The pregnant woman narrowed her eyes. ‘Give me a sword and I’ll cut you, boy.’

Alexander waved at Kleisthenes. ‘Read me the bit in the little Iliad — about Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons,’ he said.

Kleisthenes shook his head, but went back into the main tent looking for the scroll.

Hephaestion, annoyed and used to getting his way, leaned past Alexander and shot a fist at the pregnant woman’s face. Heavy as she was, she moved with the blow, taking a piece of it on the crown of her head and then she was under his reach, inside his arms. He grunted and stepped back. She had his sword. He was purple with rage.

‘You will never conquer even the Massagetae with soldiers like this,’ she said. She held the sword in an easy stance despite her bulk. ‘Release us, O King. We have done you no harm, and the traitor Spitamenes kidnapped us from the sea of grass. He is your enemy as well as mine and if you release me, my clans will hunt him like a dog.’

Alexander glanced at his swordless companion with grave disappointment and then turned back to Srayanka. ‘When your children are born, they will make excellent hostages,’ he said. ‘You will live comfortably with my women and when I march into your land in a few years, you can help me.’ He turned to Kleisthenes, ignoring Hephaestion. ‘The sea of grass is real! We can march to Thrace!’

Kleisthenes was watching Hephaestion. ‘She does seem to be a real Amazon, majesty.’

Hephaestion calmed himself. ‘I want the young one for myself,’ he said.

Srayanka still held the sword. ‘She is the lady of the Grass Cats, a war leader and mistress of a thousand horses.’

Hephaestion’s humour was restored by Srayanka’s reaction. ‘She can spread her legs for me as well as any woman,’ he said, and a few of the soldiers in the tent laughed. ‘Give me back my sword before someone gets hurt,’ he said in the voice he used to reason with women and animals.

Srayanka nodded, as if thinking. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Alexander, and she cut Hephaestion across the unarmoured top of his thighs so that blood flowed like water — not a deep cut, but a painful one. Then she tossed the sword on the ground at Alexander’s feet as his guards grabbed her. ‘I don’t imagine you’ll spread a lot of legs anytime soon,’ she said into the pandemonium.

Alexander regarded her with a mixture of horror and pleasure. ‘I shall call you Medea!’ he said.

Srayanka shrugged. ‘Many men do,’ she said. ‘Release me, or you will suffer by it.’

Alexander grinned — his first spontaneous grin since his ragtag army had fought its way through the drifts of snow from Kandahar. ‘I will never release you, lady,’ he said. Behind him, guardsmen and slaves were seeing to Hephaestion.

Srayanka drew herself up, and her pregnancy only added to her dignity. ‘We will see,’ she said. She flicked a glance at Hephaestion, who was rising with the aid of two other men.

‘You will be raped by dogs and the corpses of your unborn children ripped from your womb and fed to them,’ Hephaestion shouted. ‘I will have you tortured until you have no skin, until-’

Alexander slapped him and he subsided, but his eyes watched Srayanka with feverish hate.

‘We will see,’ she said.