The Novels of Alexander the Great: Fire From Heaven, the Persian Boy, and Funeral Games

6

THE PLUM-BLOSSOM HAD fallen, and lay beaten with spring rain; the time of violets was done, and the vines were budding.

The philosopher had found some of his students a little scatterbrained after the Dionysia, a thing not unknown even in Athens; but the Prince was studious and quiet, doing well at ethics and logic. He remained sometimes unaccountable; when found sacrificing a black goat to Dionysos, he evaded questions; it was to be feared philosophy had not yet rid him of superstition; yet this reticence showed, perhaps, a proper self-questioning.

Alexander and Hephaistion stood leaning on one of the small rustic bridges which spanned the stream of the Nymphs.

“Now,” Alexander said, “I think I have made my peace with the god. That’s why I’ve been able to tell you everything.”

“Isn’t it better?”

“Yes, but I had to master it first in my own mind. It was the anger of Dionysos pursuing me, till I made my peace with him. When I think about it logically, I see it would be unjust to be shocked at what my mother did, only because she’s a woman, when my father has killed men by thousands. You and I have killed men who never injured us except for the chance of war. Women can’t issue challenges to their enemies, as we can; they can only be avenged like women. Rather than blame them, we ought to be thankful to the gods for making us men.”

“Yes,” said Hephaistion. “Yes, we should.”

“So then I saw it was the anger of Dionysos, because I profaned his mystery. I’ve been under his protection, you know, ever since I was a child; but lately I’ve sacrificed more to Herakles than to him. When I presumed, he showed his anger. He didn’t kill me, like Pentheus in the play, because I was under his protection; but he punished me. It would have been worse, but for you. You were like Pylades, who stayed with Orestes even when the Furies came for him.”

“Of course I stayed with you.”

“I’ll tell you something else. This girl, I’d thought, perhaps, at the Dionysia…But some god protected me.”

“He could protect you because you’d a hold over yourself.”

“Yes. All this happened because my father couldn’t be continent, even for decency in his own house. He’s always been the same. It’s known everywhere. People who should be respecting him, because he can beat them in battle, mock him behind his back. I couldn’t bear my life, to know they talked like that of me. To know one’s not master of oneself.”

“People will never talk like that about you.”

“I’ll never love anyone I’m ashamed of, that I know.” He pointed to the clear brown water. “Look at all those fish.” They leaned together over the wooden rail, their heads touching; the shoal shot like a flight of arrows into the shadow of the bank. Presently straightening up Alexander said, “Kyros the Great was never enslaved by women.”

“No,” said Hephaistion. “Not by the most beautiful woman of mortal birth in Asia. It’s in the book.”

Alexander had letters from both his parents. Neither had been much disturbed by his unwonted quiet after the Dionysia, though each, at parting, had been aware of a certain scrutiny, as if from a window in a doorless wall. But the Dionysia left many young lads changed; there would be more cause for concern if it passed them by.

His father wrote that the Athenians were pouring colonists into the Greek coastal lands of Thrace, such as the Chersonesos; but, faced with a cut in the public dole, had refused to maintain the supporting fleet, which kept going perforce on piracy and inshore raids, like the reivers of Homer’s day. Macedonian ships and steadings had been looted; they had even seized a Macedonian envoy sent to ransom prisoners, tortured him, and extracted nine talents’ ransom for his life.

Olympias, for once almost at one with Philip, had a similar tale to tell. A Euboian dealer, Anaxinos, who imported southern goods for her, had been seized in Athens on the orders of Demosthenes, because the house of his host had been visited by Aischines. He was tortured till he confessed to being a spy of Philip, on which he was put to death.

“I wonder how long,” Philotas said, “before it comes to war.”

“We are at war,” said Alexander. “It’s only a matter of where we shall fight the battle. It would be impious to lay Athens waste; like sacking a temple. But sooner or later, we shall have to deal with the Athenians.”

“Will you?” asked crippled Harpalos, who saw in the fighters round him a friendly but alien race. “The louder they bark, the more you can see their rotten teeth.”

“Not so rotten that we can do with them in our backsides when we cross to Asia.”

The war for the Greek cities of Asia was no longer a vision; its essential strategy had begun. Each year saw the causeway of conquered lands pushed nearer to the Hellespont. The strongpoints of the narrow seas, Perinthos and Byzantion, were the last great obstacles. If they could be taken, Philip would need only to secure his rear.

This fact being plain, the Athenian orators were touring Greece again in search of allies whom Philip had not yet persuaded, scared or bought. The fleet off Thrace was sent a little money; an island base was garrisoned in Thasos, close at hand. In the garden of Mieza, the young men debated together how soon they would get another taste of fighting, or, under the eye of the philosopher, discussed the nature and attributes of the soul.

Hephaistion, who had never imported anything in his life before, had gone through the complex business of ordering from Athens a copy of The Myrmidons, which he gave to Alexander. Under a flower-bowed lilac beside the pool of the Nymphs, they discussed the nature and attributes of love.

It was the time when the wild beasts mated in the woods. Aristotle was preparing a thesis on their coupling and the generation of their young. His pupils, instead of hunting, hid in the coverts and made notes. Harpalos and a friend of his amused themselves by inventing far-fetched procedures, carefully doctored with enough science to secure belief. The philosopher, who thought himself too useful to mankind to risk a chill crouching for hours on wet ground, thanked them warmly and wrote all of it down.

One beautiful day, Hephaistion told Alexander he had found a vixen’s earth, and thought she was mating. An old tree near by had been uprooted in the storms, leaving a deep hollow; one could watch from there. In the late sunlight, they went into the forest, not crossing the paths of their friends. Neither remarked on this, or offered the other any reason.

The dead roots of the fallen tree sheltered the hollow; its bottom was soft with last year’s deep-drifted leaves. After some time the vixen, heavy with young, came slipping through the shadows with a partridge chick in her mouth. Hephaistion half-raised his head; Alexander, who had closed his eyes, heard the rustle of her passage but did not open them. She took fright at their breathing, and ran like a red streak into her lair.

Soon after, Aristotle expressed the wish to dissect a pregnant fox bitch; but they spared the guardian of their mystery. She grew used to them, after a while, would bring out her cubs without fear, feed them and let them play.

Hephaistion liked the cubs, because they made Alexander smile. After love he would grow silent, drifting into some private darkness; if recalled he was not impatient, but too gentle, as if with something to hide.

Both agreed that all this had been ordained by their destinies before their birth. Hephaistion still felt an incredulous sense of miracle; his days and nights were lived in a glittering cloud. It was only at these times that a shadow pierced it; he would point to the fox cubs playing, the deep brooding eyes would move and lighten, and all was well again. The pools and streams were fringed with forget-me-not and iris; in sunny copses the famous dog-roses of Mieza, blessed by the Nymphs, opened their great bland faces and spread their scent.

The young men read the signs with which their youth made them familiar, and paid up their bets. The philosopher, less expert and not so good a loser, while they all walked or sat in the rose-starred gardens looked doubtfully at the two handsome boys unfailingly side by side. He risked no questions; there was no place in his thesis for the answers.

The olives were powdered with fine pale-green flowers, whose faint sweet waxy scent blew everywhere. The apple trees let fall their false fruit; small and green the true apples began to set. The vixen led her cubs into the forest; it was time they learned the craft by which they would live.

Hephaistion, too, became a patient and skillful hunter. Till his prey first came to his lure, he had not doubted that the passionate affection bestowed on him so freely held the germ of passion itself. He found matters less simple.

Once more he told himself that when the gods are bountiful, man must not cry for more. He thought how, like the heir of great wealth who is happy at first only to know his fortune, he had gazed at the face before him; the wind-tossed hair springing loosely from its peak, the forehead already traced with faint creases by the eyes’ intensity; the eyes in their beautiful hollows, the firm yet feeling mouth, the aspiring arch of the golden eyebrows. It had seemed he could sit forever, content simply with this. So it had seemed at first.

“Oxhead wants exercise, let’s go riding.”

“Has he thrown the groom again?”

“No, that was just to teach him. I’d warned him, too.” The horse had consented, by degrees, to be mounted for the routine of the stables. But once his headstall was on with its buckles and plaques of silver, his collar worked with filigree, and his fringed saddlecloth, then he knew himself the seat of godhead, and avenged impiety. The groom was still laid up.

They rode through red new-leaved beech woods to the grassy uplands, at an easy pace set by Hephaistion, who knew Alexander would not let Oxhead stand in a sweat. At a coppice edge they dismounted, and stood looking out to the Chalkidian mountains beyond the plain and the sea.

“I found a book at Pella,” Alexander said, “last time we were there. It’s one by Plato, that Aristotle never showed us. I think he must have been envious.”

“What book?” Hephaistion smiling tested the hitch of his horse’s bridle.

“I learned some, listen. Love makes one ashamed of disgrace, and hungry for what is glorious; without which neither a people nor a man can do anything great or fine. If a lover were to be found doing something unworthy of himself, or basely failing to resent dishonor, he would rather be exposed before family or friends or anyone, than before the one he loves. And somewhere it says, Suppose a state or an army could be made up only of lovers and beloved. How could any company hope for greater things than these, despising infamy and rivaling each other in honor? Even a few of them, fighting side by side, might well conquer the world.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“He was a soldier when he was young, like Sokrates. I expect Aristotle was envious. The Athenians never founded a lovers’ regiment, they left it to the Thebans. No one’s yet beaten the Sacred Band, did you know that?”

“Let’s go in the wood.”

“That’s not the end, Sokrates ends it. He says the best, the greatest love can only be made by the soul.”

“Well,” said Hephaistion quickly, “but everyone knows he was the ugliest man in Athens.”

“The beautiful Alkibiades threw himself at his head. But he said that to make love with the soul was the greatest victory, like the triple crown at the games.”

Hephaistion stared out in pain to the mountains of Chalkidike. “It would be the greatest victory,” he said slowly, “to the one who minded most.”

Knowing that in the service of a ruthless god he had baited his trap with knowledge gained in love, he turned to Alexander. He stood staring out at the clouds, in solitude, conferring with his daimon.

Guilt-troubled, Hephaistion reached out and grasped his arm. “If you mean that, if it’s what you really want…”

He raised his brows, smiled, and tossed back his hair. “I’ll tell you something.”

“Yes?”

“If you can catch me.”

He was always the quickest off the mark. While his voice still hung in the air he was gone. Hephaistion threaded light birches and shadowy larches to a rocky scarp. At its foot Alexander lay motionless with closed eyes. Distraught and breathless Hephaistion clambered down, knelt by him, felt him for injuries. Nothing whatever was wrong. He eyed Hephaistion smiling. “Hush! You’ll scare the foxes.”

“I could kill you,” said Hephaistion with rapture.

The sunlight, sifting through the larch boughs, had moved westward a little, striking glints like topaz from the wall of their rocky lair. Alexander lay watching the weaving tassels with his arm behind his head.

“What are you thinking of?” Hephaistion asked him.

“Of death.”

“It does leave people sad sometimes. It’s the vital spirits that have gone out of one. I’d not have it undone; would you?”

“No; true friends should be everything to one another.”

“It is what you really want?”

“You should know that.”

“I can’t bear you to be sad.”

“It soon goes by. It’s the envy of some god perhaps.” He reached up to Hephaistion’s head, bent anxiously above him, and settled it on his shoulder. “One or two of them were shamed by unworthy choices. Don’t name them, they might be angry; still, we know. Even the gods can be envious.”

Hephaistion, his mind freed from the clouds of longing, saw in a divining moment the succession of King Philip’s young men: their coarse good looks, their raw sexuality like a smell of sweat, their jealousies, their intrigues, their insolence. Out of all the world, he had been chosen to be everything which those were not; between his hands had been laid, in trust, Alexander’s pride. As long as he should live, nothing greater could ever happen to him than this; to have more, one would need to be made immortal. Tears burst from his eyes, and trickled down on the throat of Alexander, who, believing he too felt the after-sadness, smilingly stroked his hair.

In the next year’s spring, Demosthenes sailed north to Perinthos and Byzantion, the fortified cities on the narrow seas. Philip had negotiated a peace treaty with each: if let alone, they would not impede his march. Demosthenes persuaded both cities to denounce the treaties. The Athenian forces based on Thasos were conducting an undeclared war with Macedon.

On the drill-field of the Pella plain, a sea-flat left bare in old men’s living memory, the phalanxes wheeled and countermarched with their long sarissas, graded so that the points of three ranks, in open order, should strike the enemy front in a single line. The cavalry did their combat exercises, gripping with the thighs, the knees, and by the mane, to help them keep their seats through the shock of impact.

At Mieza, Alexander and Hephaistion were packing their kit to start at dawn next day, and searching each other’s hair.

“None this time,” said Hephaistion, laying down the comb. “It’s in winter, with people huddling together, that one picks them up.”

Alexander, sitting at his knees, shoved off a dog of his that was trying to lick his face, and changed places. “Fleas one can drown,” he said as he worked, “but lice are like Illyrians creeping about in the woods. We’ll have plenty on campaign, one can at least start clean. I don’t think you’ve…no, wait…Well, that’s all.” He got up to reach a stoppered flask from a shelf. “We’ll use this again, it’s far the best. I must tell Aristotle.”

“It stinks.”

“No, I put in some aromatics. Smell.” During this last year, he had been taken up with the healing art. Among much theory, little of which he thought could issue well in action, this was a useful thing, which warrior princes had not disdained on the field of Troy; the painters showed Achilles binding Patroklos’ wounds. His keenness had somewhat disconcerted Aristotle, whose own interest now was academic; but the science had been his paternal heritage, and he found after all a pleasure in teaching it. Alexander now kept a notebook of salves and draughts, with hints on the treatment of fevers, wounds and broken limbs.

“It does smell better,” Hephaistion conceded. “And it seems to keep them off.”

“My mother had a charm against them. But she always ended in picking them out by hand.”

The dog sat grieving by the baggage, whose smell it recognized. Alexander had been in action not many months before, commanding his own company as the King had promised. All of today the house had sounded with shrill susurrations, like crickets’ chirping; the scrape of whetstones on javelins, daggers and swords, as the young men made ready.

Hephaistion thought of the coming war without fear, erasing from his mind, or smothering in its depths, even the fear that Alexander would be killed. Only so was life possible at his side. Hephaistion would avoid dying if he could, because he was needed. One must study how to make the enemy die instead, and beyond that trust in the gods.

“One thing I’m scared of,” said Alexander; working his sword about in its sheath till the blade glided like silk through the well-waxed leather. “That the south will come in before I’m ready.” He reached for the brush of chewed stick with which he cleaned the goldwork.

“Give me that, I’ll do it along with mine.” Hephaistion bent over the elaborate finial of the sheath, and the latticed strap-work. Alexander always rid himself of his javelins quickly, the sword was already his weapon, face to face, hand to hand. Hephaistion muttered a luck-charm over it as he worked.

“Before we march into Greece, I hope to be a general.”

Hephaistion looked up from rubbing the hilt of polished sharkskin. “Don’t set your heart on it; time’s looking short.”

“They’d follow me already, in the field, if it came to a push in action. That I know. They’d not think it proper to appoint me yet, though. A year, two years…But they’d follow me, now.”

Hephaistion gave it thought; he never told Alexander what he wished to hear, if it could cause him trouble later. “Yes, they would. I saw that last time. Once they thought you were just a luck-bringer. But now they can tell you know what you’re about.”

“They’ve known me a long time.” Alexander took down his helmet from the wall-peg, and shook out its white horsehair crest.

“To hear some of them talk, one would think they’d reared you.” Hephaistion dug too hard with the brush, broke it, and had to chew a new end.

“Some of them have.” Alexander, having combed the crest, went over to the wall-mirror. “I think it will do. It’s good metal, it fits, and the men can see me.” Pella had no lack of first-class armorers. They came north from Corinth, knowing where good custom was. “When I’m a general, I can have one to show up.”

Hephaistion, looking over his shoulder at his mirrored face, said, “I’ll bet on that. You’re like a gamecock for finery.”

Alexander hung back the helmet. “You’re angry, why?”

“Get made a general, then you’ll have a tent of your own. We’ll never be out of a crowd from tomorrow till we get back.”

“Oh…Yes, I know. But that’s war.”

“One has to get used to it. Like the fleas.”

Alexander came swiftly over, struck with remorse at having forgotten. “In our souls,” he said, “we’ll be more than ever united, winning eternal fame. Son of Menoitios, great one, you who delight my heart.” He smiled deeply into Hephaistion’s eyes, which faithfully smiled back. “Love is the true food of the soul. But the soul eats to live, like the body, it mustn’t live to eat.”

“No,” said Hephaistion. What he lived for was his own business, part of which was that Alexander should not be burdened with it.

“The soul must live to do.”

Hephaistion put aside the sword, took up the dagger with its dolphin hilts and agate pommel, and agreed that this was so.

Pella rang and rattled with sounds of war. The breeze brought Oxhead the noise and smell of war-chargers; he flared his nostrils and whinnied.

King Philip was on the parade ground. He had had scaling-ladders rigged up against tall scaffolding, and was making the men climb up in proper order, without crowding, jostling, pinking each other with their weapons, or undue delay. He sent his son a message that he would see him after maneuvers. The Queen would see him at once.

When she embraced him, she found he was the taller. He stood five foot seven; before his bones set, he might make another inch or so, not more. But he could break a cornel spear-shaft between his hands, walk thirty miles in a day over rough country without food (for a test, he had done it once without drink either). By gradual unnoticed stages, he had ceased to grieve that he was not tall. The tall men of the phalanx, who could wield a twenty-foot sarissa, liked him very well as he was.

His mother, though there was only an inch between them, laid her head on his shoulder, making herself soft and tender like a roosting dove. “You are a man, really a man now.” She told him all his father’s wickedness; there was nothing new. He stroked her hair and echoed her indignation, his mind upon the war. She asked him what kind of youth was this Hephaistion; was he ambitious, what did he ask for, had he exacted any promises? Yes. That they should be together in battle. Ah! Was that to be trusted? He laughed, patted her cheek, and saw the real question in her eyes, which sought, like wrestlers, for a moment’s failure of nerve which would let her ask it. He faced her out, and she did not ask. It made him fond of her and forgiving; he leaned to her hair to smell its scent.

Philip was in the painted study at a littered desk. He had come straight from the drill-field, the room smelled acridly of his horse’s sweat and his own. At the kiss of greeting, he noticed that his son, after a ride of less than forty miles, had already bathed to wash off the dust. But the real shock was to perceive on his jaw a fine golden stubble. With astonishment and dismay, Philip perceived that the boy was not, after all, behindhand with his beard. He had been shaving.

A Macedonian, a king’s son, what could have possessed him to make him ape the effete ways of the south? Smooth as a girl. For whom was he doing this? Philip was well informed about Mieza; Parmenion had arranged this secretly with Philotas, who made regular reports. It was one thing to take up with Amyntor’s son, a harmless and comely youth whom Philip, indeed, could himself have fancied; it was another to go about looking like someone’s minion. He cast his mind back to the troop of young men he had seen arriving; it now occurred to him that there had been older chins there, beardless too. It must be a fashion among them. A vague feeling of subversion stirred under his skin; but he pushed it out of the way. In spite of the boy’s oddities, he was trusted by the men; and, since business stood where it did, this was no time to cross him.

Philip waved his son to the seat beside him. “Well,” he said, “as you see, we’re well forward here.” He described his preparations; Alexander listened, elbows on knees, hands clasped before him; one could see his mind running a step ahead. “Perinthos will be tough to crack, but we shall have Byzantion on our hands as well; openly or not they’ll support Perinthos. So will the Great King. I doubt he’s in a state to make war, from what I hear; but he’ll send supplies. He has a treaty for that with Athens.”

For a moment, their faces shared a single thought. It was as if they spoke of some great lady, the strict mentor of their childhood, now found to be plying the streets in a seaport town. Alexander glanced at the beautiful old bronze by Polykleitos, of Hermes inventing the lyre. He had known it all his life; the too-slender youth with his fine bones and runner’s muscles had always seemed, under the divine calm imposed by the sculptor, to conceal a deep inward sadness, as if he knew it would come to this.

“Well, then, Father; when do we march?”

“Parmenion and I, seven days from now. Not you, my son. You will be at Pella.”

Alexander sat bolt upright staring; he seemed to stiffen all over. “At Pella? What do you mean?”

Philip grinned. “You look for all the world like that horse of yours, shying at his shadow. Don’t be so quick off the mark. You won’t be sitting idle.”

From his scarred and knotted hand he drew a massive ring of antique goldwork. Its signet of sardonyx was carved with a Zeus enthroned, eagle on fist; it was the Royal Seal of Macedon.

“You will look after this.” He flipped it up and caught it. “Do you think you can?”

The fierceness left Alexander’s face; for a moment it looked almost stupid. In the King’s absence, the Seal was held by his Regent.

“You’ve had a good grounding in war,” his father said. “When you’re old enough to be upgraded without a fuss, you can have a cavalry brigade. Let’s say two years. Meantime, you must learn administration. It’s worse than useless to push out frontiers, if the realm’s in chaos behind you. Remember, I had to deal with that before I could move anywhere, even against the Illyrians who were inside our borders. Don’t think it can’t come back again. Moreover, you’ll have to protect my lines of communication. This is serious work I’m giving you.”

Watching the eyes before him, he saw a look in them he had not met since the day of the horse fair, at the end of the ride. “Yes, Father. I know it. Thank you; I’ll see that you don’t repent of it.”

“Antipatros will stay too; if you’ve sense you’ll consult him. But that’s your own choice; the Seal’s the Seal.”

Each day till the army marched, Philip held councils: with the officers of the home garrisons, the tax-collectors, the officers of justice, the men whom the tribal chiefs, enrolled with the Companions, had left to rule their tribes; the chiefs and princes who for reasons historic, traditional or legal remained at home. Amyntas was one, the son of Perdikkas, Philip’s elder brother. When his father fell he had been a child. Philip had been elected Regent; before Amyntas came of age, the Macedonians had decided they liked Philip’s work and wanted to keep him on. Within the royal kin, the throne was elective by ancient right. He had dealt graciously with Amyntas, giving him the status of a royal nephew, and one of his own half-legal daughters for a wife. He had been conditioned to his lot from infancy; he came now to the councils, a thickset, dark-bearded young man of five-and-twenty, whom any stranger might have picked out of a crowd as Philip’s son. Alexander, sitting on his father’s right at the conference, would steal a look sometimes, wondering if such inertia could be real.

When the army marched, Alexander escorted his father to the coast road, embraced him, and turned for Pella. Oxhead, as the cavalry went off without him, blew restively down his nose. Philip was pleased he had told the boy he would be in charge of the communication lines. A happy thought; it had delighted him; and in fact the route was very well secured.

The first act of Alexander’s regency was a private one; he bought a thin slip of gold, which he wound round the hoop of the royal signet to make it fit his finger. He knew that symbols are magical, in perfection and in defect.

Antipatros proved most helpful. He was a man for acting on facts, not wishes. He knew his son had fallen foul of Alexander, disbelieved Kassandros’ version of it, and had been keeping him well out of the Prince’s way; for here, if Antipatros had ever seen one, was a boy needing only a clumsy push at a crucial moment to discover in himself a very dangerous man. He must be served and served well, or else destroyed. In Antipatros’ youth, before Philip secured the kingdom, a man might find himself any day standing siege in his own home against a vengeful neighbor prince, a horde of Illyrian raiders, or a brigand band. His choice had long since been made.

Philip had sacrificed his useful Chief Secretary, to take care of the young Regent. Alexander thanked him politely for the digests he had prepared, then asked for the original correspondence; he wished, he explained, to get the feel of the men who wrote. When he met anything unfamiliar, he asked questions. After everything was clear in his mind, he consulted with Antipatros.

They had no differences, till one day when a certain soldier was accused of rape, but swore to the woman’s willingness. Antipatros was inclined to accept his well-argued case; but since a blood-feud threatened, he felt obliged to consult the Regent. With some diffidence he laid the unsavory tale before the fresh-faced youth in Archelaos’ study, who answered without a pause that Sotion, as all his phalanx knew, when sober could talk his way out of a wolf-trap, but in drink he’d not know a farrow sow from his sister, and either would do as well.

A few days after the King marched east, the whole garrison force around Pella was called out on maneuver. Alexander had had some thoughts about the use of light cavalry against flanking infantry. Besides, he said, they must not be allowed to gather moss.

Relieved or frustrated at being left behind, in either case the men were inclined to take things easy. Before the trim well-burnished youth on his sleek black horse had ridden half down the line, they were dressing ranks with nervous care and trying, with scant success, to conceal defects. One or two were sent in disgrace straight back to barracks. The rest spent a strenuous morning. Afterwards, the veterans who beforehand had grumbled loudest jeered at raw men’s complaints; the youngster might have sweated them, but he knew how many beans make five.

“They shaped quite well,” said Alexander to Hephaistion. “The chief thing is, they know now who’s in command.”

It was not, however, the troops who first tested this.

“My darling,” said Olympias, “there is a little thing you must do for me before your father comes back; you know how he crosses me in everything. Deinias has done me so many kindnesses, looked after my friends, kept me warned of enemies. Your father has held back his son’s promotion, just out of spite. Deinias would like him to have a squadron. He is a most useful man.”

Alexander, half whose mind had been on mountain maneuvers, said, “Is he? Where is he serving?”

“Serving? It is Deinias, of course, I meant is useful.”

“Oh. What’s the son’s name, who’s his squadron commander?”

Olympias looked reproach, but referred to her notes and told him.

“Oh, Heirax. He wants Heirax to have a squadron?”

“It’s a slight to a distinguished man like Deinias; he feels it is.”

“He feels this is the time to say so. I expect Heirax asked him.”

“Why not, when your father has taken against him for my sake?”

“No, Mother. For mine.”

She swept round to face him. Her eyes seemed to explore some dangerous stranger.

“I’ve been in action,” he said, “with Heirax, and I told Father what I saw of him. That’s the reason he’s here instead of in Thrace. He’s obstinate, he resents men who are quicker-thinking than he is; and then when things go wrong he tries to shift the blame. Father transferred him to garrison duty, rather than demote him. I’d have demoted him, myself.”

“Oh! Since when is it Father this and Father that? Am I no one to you now, because he gives you the Seal to wear? Do you take his part against me?”

“I take the men’s part. They may have to be killed by the enemy; that’s no reason to have them killed by a fool like Heirax. If I gave him a squadron, they’d never trust me again.”

She struck back at the man in him, with love and hatred. Once long ago, in the torchlit cave of Samothrace, when she was fifteen, she had met the eyes of a man before she knew what men were. “You are growing absurd. What do you think it means, that thing stuck on your finger? You are only Antipatros’ pupil; it was to watch him govern, that Philip left you here. What do you know of men?”

She was ready for the battle, the tears and the bloodstained peace. For a moment he said nothing. Suddenly he grinned at her. “Very well, then, Mother. Little boys should leave affairs to the men, and not interfere.”

While she still stared, he took three quick strides across and put his arm round her waist. “Dearest Mother! You know I love you. Now leave all these things and let me deal with them. I can see to them. You’re not to be troubled with them any more.”

For a moment she stood rigid. Presently she told him he was a wicked cruel boy, and she could not think what she would say to Deinias. But she had softened in his arm; and he knew she had been glad to feel its strength.

He gave up his hunting-trips to stay near Pella. In his absence, Antipatros would feel justified in taking decisions without him. Feeling short of exercise, and rambling through the stables, he found a chariot fitted up for the dismounters’ race. Years ago he had meant to learn the trick, but then had come Mieza. The chariot was a synoris, a two-horse racer of walnut and pearwood; the bronze handgrip for the dismounter was about the right height; it was not a race for big men. He had two Venetian ponies yoked to it, called for the royal charioteer, and began to practice jumping down in mid-course, running with the car and leaping up again. Besides being good exercise, it was Homeric; the dismounter was the last heir of the chariot-borne hero, who drove to the fray in order to fight on foot. His spare hours were given to acquiring this archaic skill; he became very fast at it. Old chariot sheds were rummaged, so that friends could give him a race; this he enjoyed, but never arranged a formal one. He had disliked set contests, from as soon as he had been old enough to perceive that there were people who would let him win.

Dispatches came from Propontis, where Philip, as he had foretold, was finding Perinthos hard to crack. It stood on a headland impregnable from the sea, and strongly walled inland. The Perinthians, prospering and increasing on their steep rocks, had for years been building upward; four and five-story houses, rising in tiers like theater benches, overlooked the ramparts, and now harbored slingers and javelineers to repel assaults. Philip, to give his men covering fire, had built hundred-foot siege towers, and mounted a platform of catapults; his sappers had brought down part of the wall, only to find an inner one, made from the first row of houses packed solid with rock, rubble and earth. As he had expected, too, the Byzantines were supplying the enemy; their fast triremes, with pilots expert in local waters (Macedon had never been a strong naval power), brought in crack troops, and kept open the way for the Great King’s store-ships. He was fulfilling his pact with Athens.

King Philip, who dictated these reports, was a crisp and clear expositor. After reading one, Alexander would pace about, aware of the great campaign he was missing. Even the Seal was scant amends.

He was on the race-track one morning, when he saw Harpalos waving. A Palace messenger had passed the word to someone who could stop him without disrespect; it must be urgent. He jumped down from the car, ran with it a few steps to keep his balance, and came over, plastered with track-dust which coated his legs to the knee as thick as buskins. Through the mask of sweat-striped dirt shone his eyes, looking by contrast turquoise-blue. His friends stood well away, not from good manners but to keep him off their clothes. Harpalos murmured behind him, “It’s an odd thing; have you noticed he never stinks, when anyone else would be rank as a dog-fox?” “Ask Aristotle,” said someone. “No, I think he must burn it up.”

The messenger reported that a courier was in from the northeast border, awaiting the Prince’s leisure.

He sent a servant running to fetch him a fresh chiton; stripped and scraped down under the horse-yard fountain; and appeared in the audience room just before Antipatros, the scroll still correctly sealed, had finished questioning the courier, who had more to tell. He had barely got back with his life from the highlands up the Strymon River, where Macedon knit with Thrace in a mesh of disputed gorges, mountains, forests and grazing-grounds.

Antipatros blinked with surprise at Alexander’s uncanny promptness; the messenger blinked with exhaustion, his eyes gummed by lack of sleep. Having asked his name, Alexander said, “You look dead tired; sit down.” Clapping his hands he ordered wine for the man; while it came, he read the dispatch to Antipatros. When the man had drunk, he asked him what he knew.

The Maidoi were hillmen of a strain so ancient that Achaians, Dorians, Macedonians and Celts had all, in their southward drift, passed by the tribe’s savage homeland in hope of better things. They had survived in the mountains and the Thracian weather, tough as wild goats, keeping up customs older than the age of bronze, and, when in spite of human sacrifice their food-gods were still unkind, raiding the settled lands. Philip had conquered them long ago, and taken their oaths of fealty; but with time he had grown dim to them and faded into legend. Their numbers had increased; boys come to manhood needed to blood their spears; they had broken south like a flash flood in a river bed. Farms had been stripped and burned; Macedonian settlers and loyal Thracians had been cut up alive, their heads taken for trophies, their women carried away.

Antipatros, for whom this was a second hearing, watched the youth in the chair of state, waiting kindly to meet his need with reassurance. He remained, however, with his eyes fixed on the messenger, sitting forward eagerly.

“Rest awhile,” he said presently. “I want a few things in writing.” When the scribe appeared, he dictated, checking them with the messenger, the Maidoi’s movements and the main features of the country; adding, himself, a sketch-map worked up in the wax. Having checked this too, he ordered that the man be bathed, fed and put to bed, and sent out the clerk.

“I thought,” he said scanning the tablets, “we should get all this from him now. A night’s sleep should set him up, but one never knows, he might die. I want him well rested till I start out, so that I can take him as a guide.”

Antipatros’ brows with their foxy grizzle met over his fierce nose. He had felt this coming, but decided not to believe in it.

“Alexander, you know how gladly I would have you with me. But you know too it is impossible we should both be out of Macedon, with the King at war.”

Alexander sat back in his chair. His hair, streaked with dust and damp from his makeshift bath, hung limply on his brow; his nails and his toes were grimy. His eyes were cool, and made no pretense at naivety. “But of course, Antipatros. I should never think of such a thing. I shall leave you the Seal, while I am gone.”

Antipatros opened his mouth, breathed deep and paused. Alexander cut in ahead, with inflexible courtesy. “I haven’t it on me, I’ve been at exercise. You shall have it when I leave Pella.”

“Alexander! Only consider…”

Alexander, who had been watching him like a duelist, made a small gesture to say he had not done speaking. After a crucial instant, Antipatros’ voice tailed off. With stately formality, Alexander said, “Both my father and I know our great good fortune, in having such a man to entrust the realm to.” He stood up, feet apart, hands on his belt, and tossed back his tousled hair. “I’m going, Antipatros. Settle your mind to it, because we’re short of time. I shall start at dawn tomorrow.”

Antipatros, who perforce had risen too, tried to use his height but found it ineffectual. “If you will, you will. But just think first. You’re a good field officer, that’s common knowledge. The men like you, agreed. But you’ve never mounted a campaign, or kept it in supplies, or planned its strategy. Do you know what that country’s like?”

“By this time they’ll be down in the Strymon valley; that’s what they came for. We’ll discuss supplies at the war council. I’m calling one in an hour.”

“Do you realize, Alexander, that if you lose, half Thrace will blaze up like a fire of myrtle-brush? Your father’s lines will be cut; and once the news is out, I’ll be holding the northwest against the Illyrians.”

“What troops would you need for that?”

“If you lose, there wouldn’t be enough in Macedon.”

Alexander tilted his head a little to the left; his gaze, floating beyond Antipatros’ head, went slightly out of focus. “Also, if I lose, the men won’t trust me again and I shall never be a general. Also, my father may well say I’m no son of his, and I shall never be a king. Well, I shall have to win, it seems.”

Antipatros thought, Kassandros should never have crossed him…The eggshell was cracking indeed. One must already be very careful. “What about me? What will he say to me for letting you go?”

“If I lose, you mean? That I should have taken your advice. Write it down, and I’ll sign to say you gave it me; win or lose, it goes to my father. How’s that for a fair bet?”

Antipatros looked sharply from under his shaggy brows. “Ah. But you’d hold it against me after.”

“Oh yes,” said Alexander blandly. “Of course I should; what do you suppose? You make your bet, Antipatros. You can’t expect to hedge it. I can’t hedge mine.”

“I think the stakes as they stand are high enough.” Antipatros smiled, remembering that already one must be careful. “Let me know what you want, then. I’ve bet on worse horses in my time.”

Alexander was on his feet all day, except during the war council. He could have sat while he was sending out orders, but he could think more quickly pacing to and fro; perhaps it came from the walking discussions at Mieza. He had meant to see his mother earlier, but there had been no time. He went when he had settled everything, but did not stay very long; she was inclined to make a fuss, though surely this was what she had been wanting. She would see that later. Meantime he had Phoinix to say goodbye to; and it was important to get some sleep.

It was a quiet morning in the camp before Perinthos; there had been an engagement on the wall the night before, and the men were being rested. The noises were those of lull: mules whinnied, men serviced the engines with shouts and clanks, a man with a head wound shouted insanely from the hospital shed; a captain of artillery, detailed to see the besieged did not take a holiday, shouted to his crew to lift her up a chock, and grease the bolt-track; there was a clang from the pile of massive boltheads, each stamped with the laconic message, FROM PHILIP.

Philip had had a large timbered hut put up for him; when not on the move, there was no sense in using the royal tent, to sweat under stinking leather. He had made himself snug like an old campaigner; local straw matting covered the floor, his baggage train had carried chairs, lampstands, a bath, and a bed broad enough for company. At a pinewood table, made by the camp carpenters, he sat with Parmenion, reading a dispatch.

“Having summoned also the troops from Pydna and Amphipolis, I marched north to Therma. I had planned to go by the Great East Road to Amphipolis, to learn the enemy’s movements, and to make whatever dispositions seemed best, before going north up river.

“But at Therma, a rider met me, from the country of the Agrianoi. He had been sent by Lambaros, my guest-friend, in fulfillment of a vow.

“Guest-friend?” said Philip. “Guest-friend? What does he mean? The boy was a hostage. You remember, Parmenion. I’d have bet a talent the Agrianoi would have joined the Maidoi.”

“What was it you told me,” said Parmenion, “about the Prince slipping off for a jaunt among the tribesmen, after you’d sent him back to school? I well remember you swearing when you heard.”

“That’s so, that’s so. It slipped my memory. A crazy escapade, he was lucky not to have had his throat cut. I don’t take hostages from tribes I think are safe. Guest-friend! Well, let’s see.

“Having heard you were in the east, he sent me word that the Maidoi were in the upper Strymon valley, laying everything waste. They had invited his people to join them in the war; but King Teres respected the oaths exchanged when you returned his son to him.

“Wouldn’t burn his fingers. But it was the boy who sent the message. How old will he be now? About seventeen.

“He advised me to march quickly up river to Rushing Gate, as they call the steep throat of the gorge, and reinforce the old fort there, before they came down into the plain. I therefore decided not to lose time myself by going to Amphipolis, but to send Koinos with my orders to bring on the troops from there; I would lead the men I had straight up over the Krousia range by the trackways, and ford the Strymon at Siris, where Koinos would meet me with men, fresh horses and supplies, we ourselves traveling light. When I told the men what kind of dangers threatened our colonists in the plain, they made good going; the tracks being difficult, I went on foot with them, encouraging them to hurry.”

Philip looked up. “Some secretary polished this. But touches of nature show.

“We crossed over Krousia and forded Strymon by noon on the third day.”

“What?” said Parmenion staring. “Over Krousia? It’s sixty miles.”

“He moved light, and encouraged them to hurry.

“Koinos met me promptly with all orders carried out. This officer acted with speed and address, and I commend him highly. Also he talked sense to Stasandros commanding at Amphipolis, who thought I should have wasted three days marching out that way and asking him what to do.

“Added,” said Philip with a grin, “in his own hand.

“Through Koinos’ good management of his mission, I got the forces I had asked for, one thousand men…”

Parmenion’s jaw dropped. He did not attempt comment.

“…which, though it left Amphipolis undermanned, still seemed to me most prudent, since for every day the Maidoi went undefeated, the chance grew greater of their being joined by other tribes. I had lookouts and beacons between me and the coast, to warn me if the Athenians should attack by sea.”

“Ah,” mused Parmenion. “Still, I wonder he got a steady man like Koinos to take it on.”

“But before we reached the Strymon, the Maidoi had already overrun the fort at Rushing Gate, had reached the plain and begun to ravage the farms. Some had crossed the Strymon westward to the silver mine, killed the guards and slaves, and carried home the bar silver through the river-pass. This decided me that it would not be enough to beat them off the farmlands; their own settlement ought to be reduced by war.”

“Did he know,” asked Parmenion incredulously, “where it is?”

“When I had looked over the troops, I sacrificed to the appropriate gods, and to Herakles, and was given good auguries by the diviners. Also, one of the loyal Paionians told me that while hunting early, he had seen a wolf, as it fed upon a carcass, taken by a young lion. The soldiers were pleased with the omen, and I rewarded the man with gold.

“He deserved it,” said Philip. “The shrewdest of the diviners.

“Before starting my advance, I sent five hundred chosen hillmen to go under cover of the woods and surprise the fort at the Gate. Lambaros, my guest-friend, had advised me that it would be held by the worst of the enemy, since none of their foremost warriors would forgo his share of the loot to secure their rear. My men found this to be true. They found also the bodies of our garrison, and saw that our wounded had been maltreated. As I had ordered should this be so, they threw the Maidoi down the cliffs into the rapids. They then manned the fort and both flanks of the gorge. Kephalon led; an energetic officer.

“In the valley, some of our colonists had sent off their families to safety, and stayed themselves to fight off the enemy. I commended them for their courage, issued them with arms, and promised them a year’s tax remission.

“Young men never know where money comes from,” said the King. “You can be sure he never thought to ask what their tax was worth.

“I now led all my forces north up the valley, with my right flank advanced to deny the high ground to the enemy. Where we came on dispersed bands looting, these we destroyed; the rest we worked northeast, worrying them like herd-dogs getting the flock together, lest they should scatter off into the hills without giving us battle. Thracians trust everything to their first headlong rush, and do not like to stand.

“They collected where I had hoped, in a tongue of land where the river makes an elbow with the lake. They reckoned, as I thought they would, on the river securing their backs; I reckoned to push them into it. There was a ford at their rear, known for being deep and treacherous. By the time they had wet their bowstrings and lost their heavy arms, they should be ready to make for home through the pass, not knowing that my men held it.

“This, then was the order of battle…”

A workmanlike summary followed. Philip muttered through it, forgetting to recite aloud to Parmenion, who craned forward to hear. Lured out, rolled up, and thrown into confusion, the Maidoi had duly struggled off through the river, into the iron trap of the gorge. Alexander had returned to Amphipolis most of its borrowed garrison, in charge of his many prisoners.

“Next day I pressed on up river beyond the pass; a number of the Maidoi had crossed the mountains by other ways, and I did not want to give them leisure to re-form. So I came to the country of the Agrianoi. Here Lambaros, my guest-friend, met me with a troop of horse, his friends and kinsmen. He had asked leave of his father to ride to war with us, in fulfillment of a vow. They showed us the easiest passes; later they did very well in battle.

“Teres saw which way the cat was jumping,” said Philip. “Yet the boy didn’t wait. Why? A child when he was at Pella, I can’t even remember what he looked like.”

He muttered his way through the breakneck mountain campaign that followed. Guided by his allies to the enemy’s craggy nest, Alexander had attacked its main approach, while his mountaineers crept up the sheer side left unguarded.

“The men of the valley, wanting to revenge their wrongs, were about to kill everyone they found; but I ordered them to spare the women and the children, who had injured no one. These I sent to Amphipolis; do with them as you think best.”

“Sensible lad,” said Parmenion. “Those strong hill-women always fetch good prices; work better than the men.”

Philip skimmed on, through rounding-up operations and commendations (Hephaistion son of Amyntor, of Pella, fought with great distinction), his voice fading to the murmur of routine business. Suddenly, making Parmenion jump, he shouted, “What?”

“Well, what, then?” asked Parmenion presently.

Philip, looking up from the roll, said in a measured voice, “He has stayed on there to found a city.”

“It must be the clerk’s writing.”

“The clerk writes like a book. The Maidoi had some good grazing-lands, and the footslopes will grow vines. So he is refounding their city, in counsel with Lambaros, his guest-friend. I reckon they can notch up thirty-three years between them.”

“If as much,” Parmenion grunted.

“He has considered suitable colonists. Agrianoi of course; loyal Paionians; some landless Macedonians he knows of, and…Yes, wait. An afterthought, this. Have I any good men I would like to reward with a gift of land? He thinks he could take twenty.”

Parmenion, deciding that only a fool would open his mouth, cleared the back of his throat to fill the pause.

“Of course he has named the city. Alexandropolis.”

He stared down at the parchment. Parmenion looked at the shrewd, scarred, ageing face, the grizzled black brows and beard; the old bull snuffing the new spring air, tilting his battle-frayed old horns. I’m getting on too, Parmenion thought. They had shared the Thracian winters, stood together through the Illyrian battle-rush; they had shared muddy water in drought, wine after the battle; they had shared a woman, when they were young; she had never known for sure which had fathered her child; they had shared the joke. Parmenion cleared the back of his throat again.

“The boy’s forever saying,” he brought out brusquely, “that you’ll leave him nothing to do, to make his name on. He’s taking what chance he can.”

Philip brought down his fist on the table. “I’m proud of him,” he said decisively. “Proud of him.” He pulled a blank tablet towards him, and with deep quick strokes sketched the battle. “That’s a pretty plan, nice dispositions. But let them get out of touch; let a gap open, now, say, here; and where would he have been then, eh? Or if the cavalry pressed on out of hand? But no, he kept his hand on everything, there in the front line. And when they broke the wrong way, he changed his movement like that.” He snapped his fingers. “We shall see things, Parmenion, with this boy of mine. I’ll find him those twenty settlers for his Alexandropolis, by God I will.”

“I’ll ask about, then. Why don’t we drink to it?”

“Why not?” He called for wine, and began rolling up the letter. “What’s this, wait, what’s this? I never finished it.

“Since I have been in the north, I hear everywhere of the Triballoi who live on the heights of Haimon, how they are unruly and warlike and a threat to the settled lands. It seems to me that while I am at Alexandropolis, I could carry the war up there, and bring them into order. I would like to ask your leave before drawing the troops I would need from Macedon. I propose…”

The wine came and was poured. Parmenion took a great gulp, forgetting to wait for the King, who forgot to notice it. “The Triballoi! What does the boy want, does he want to push on up to the Ister?”

Philip, skipping the requisitions, read, “These barbarians might annoy us, if they came on our rear when we cross to Asia; and if they were subdued, we could push our frontiers as far north as the Ister, which is a natural defense wall; being, as men say, the greatest river on earth after the Nile and the Encircling Ocean.”

The two weathered men searched one another’s faces, as if consulting omens. Philip broke the pause, throwing back his head in a great laugh full of broken teeth, and slapping his knee. Parmenion joined in with the loudness of relief.

“Simmias!” called the King at length. “Look after the Prince’s courier. A fresh horse tomorrow.” He threw back his wine. “I must get off his recall at once, before he starts to mobilize; I don’t want to disappoint the lad. Ah, I know. I’ll propose he consults with Aristotle over the constitution of his city. What a boy, eh? What a boy!”

“What a boy!” echoed Parmenion. He gazed into his cup, seeing his own image in the dark face of the wine.

The long train of men marched south, by phalanxes and squadrons, along the Strymon plain. Alexander led, at the head of his personal squadron. Hephaistion rode beside him.

The air was loud with sound; thin harsh crying and keening, deep creaks as of strained wood. It was the call of kites, hovering and stooping and fighting for choice shreds, mixed with the croak of ravens.

The settlers had buried their dead, the soldiers burned theirs on ceremonial pyres. At the rear of the column, behind the straw-bedded hospital wagons, a cart trundled along with straw-packed urns of local pottery, each painted with a name.

Losses had been light, for victory had come quickly. The soldiers talked of it as they marched, gazing at the enemy’s scattered thousands, lying where they had fallen to receive the rites of nature. By night the wolves and jackals had gorged on them; with daylight the village pi-dogs, and the birds which clustered in a moving pall. When the column passed near, they rose in a screaming cloud and hovered angrily over their meal; only then could one see the raw bones, and the rags torn by wolves in haste to reach the entrails. The stench, like the noise, shifted with the breeze.

In a few days they would be picked clean. Whoever owned the land, the worst of the work done for him, would burn the bones in a heap, or shovel them into a pit.

Over a dead horse danced vultures, bouncing up and down with half-opened wings, scrawking at one another. Oxhead gave a smothered squeal, and shied away. Alexander signed to the column to proceed, dismounted, and led the horse gently towards the mound of reeking flesh; stroking his muzzle, going ahead to scare off the vultures, and, when they scolded and flapped, returning with soothing words. Oxhead stamped and blew, disgusted but reassured. When they had stood there a few moments, Alexander mounted and cantered back to his place. “Xenophon says,” he told Hephaistion, “one should always do that with whatever scares a horse.”

“I didn’t know there were so many kites in Thrace. What do they live on when there’s no war?” Hephaistion, who felt sick, was talking to keep his mind off it.

“There’s never no war in Thrace. But we’ll ask Aristotle.”

“Are you still sorry,” said Hephaistion dropping his voice, “that we didn’t fight the Triballoi?”

“Why, of course,” said Alexander, surprised. “We were halfway there. They’ll have to be dealt with in the end; and we’d have seen the Ister.”

A small cavalry detail on the flank cantered ahead at his signal; there were some bodies blocking the road. They were raked into a hunting net, and dragged out of the way.

“Ride on ahead,” Alexander ordered, “and see it’s clear…Yes, I’m sorry still, of course; but I’m not angry. It’s true, as he says, his forces are stretched just now. He sent me a very handsome letter; I read it too quickly, when I saw it was a recall.”

“Alexander,” said Hephaistion, “I think that man there’s alive.”

A council of vultures was considering something out of sight; bouncing forward, then recoiling as if offended or shocked. There came into view a feebly flailing arm.

“So long?” said Alexander wondering.

“It rained,” Hephaistion said.

Alexander turned and beckoned the first rider whose eye he met. The man cantered up smartly, and gazed at the wonderful boy with fervent affection.

“Polemon. If that man’s not past help, have him picked up. They fought well, hereabouts. Or else finish him quickly.”

“Yes, Alexander,” said the man adoringly. Alexander gave him a slight approving smile; he went radiant off on his mission. Presently he remounted; the vultures, with satisfied croaks, closed in together.

Far on ahead of them shone the blue sea; soon, thought Hephaistion with relief, they would be past the battlefield. Alexander’s eyes wandered over the bird-haunted plain, and beyond it skywards. He said,

“Many brave men’s souls it flung down to the house of Hades,

While their flesh made a feast for dogs, and all the birds of the air.

And the will of Zeus was fulfilled.”

The rhythm of the hexameters matched itself smoothly to Ox-head’s pacing. Hephaistion gazed at him silent. He rode on, at peace with his unseen companion.

The Seal of Macedon stayed some time with Antipatros. Alexander had been met by a second courier, bidding him come to his father’s siege-lines, to be commended. He turned east to Propontis, taking his companions with him.

In the King’s lodging before Perinthos, a well-lived-in home by now, father and son would sit at the pinewood trestle, over a tray of sea-sand and stones; heaping up mountains, digging out defiles with their fingers, drawing with writing-sticks the disposition of cavalry, skirmishers, phalanxes and archers. Here no one disturbed their game, except sometimes the enemy. Philip’s handsome young squires were decorous; bearded Pausanias with his ruined beauty, now promoted to Somatophylax, Commander of the Guard, watched impassively, never interrupting except for an alarm. Then they would buckle on their armor, Philip with veteran curses, Alexander eagerly. The troops whose section he joined would raise a cheer. Since his campaign he had a nickname: Basiliskos, the Little King.

His legend had run before him. Leading a scouting party against the Maidoi, he had walked round a crag straight into two of them, and dispatched them both while the men behind him were still catching their breath; neither had had time to shout a warning. He had kept a twelve-year-old Thracian girl in his tent all night, because she had run to him when the men were after her; had never laid a finger on her, and had given her a marriage dower. He had run between four big Macedonians brawling with their swords already out, and shoved them apart with his bare hands. In a mountain storm which had rained thunderbolts, so that it seemed the gods had resolved to destroy them all, he had read luck into it, kept them moving, made them laugh. Someone had had his wound stanched with the Basiliskos’ own cloak, and been told his blood was a dye more honorable than purple; someone had died in his arms. Someone else, who had thought him raw enough to try old soldiers’ tricks on, was sorry and sore. You would need to watch out, if he took against you. But put a fair case to him straight, he would see you right.

So, when in the light of the falling fires they saw him running towards the ladders, burnished like a dragonfly, greeting them as if they had all been bidden to a feast, they would call to him, and race for places near him. It was well to keep your eye on him; he would think quicker than you.

For all this, the siege went badly. Making an example of Olynthos had cut two ways; the Perinthians had decided that at the pinch they would rather die. And the pinch was still far off. The defenders, well supplied by sea, met assaults in strength and often went over to attack. They were setting their own example. From the Chersonesos, just south of the Great East Road, word came that the subject cities were taking heart. The Athenians had long urged revolt on them; but they would not take in Athenian troops, who were seldom paid and forced to live off the country. Now the cities had been emboldened. Macedonian outposts had been seized, and strongpoints threatened. War had begun.

“I swept one side of the road for you, Father,” Alexander said as soon as the news arrived. “Now let me sweep the other.”

“So I will, as soon as the new troops come. I’ll use them here; you’ll need men who know the country.”

He was planning a surprise assault upon Byzantion, to stop their aid to Perinthos; as well deal with them now as later. He was committed, more deeply than he liked, to this costly war, and had needed to hire more mercenaries. They were coming up from Argos and Arkadia, states friendly to his power because for generations they had lived under the threat of Sparta; they did not share the anger and dread of Athens. But they cost money; which had been swallowed by the siege like water poured in sand.

At length they came, square stocky men of Philip’s own build; his Argive descent still showed in him, bridging the generations. He reviewed them and conferred with their officers, from whom for better or worse hired troops would never be divided; it made a weak link in the chain of command. However, they were trained men who would earn their pay. Alexander and his troops marched west; already the men who had served with him in Thrace were patronizing the others.

His campaign was rapid. Revolt was still in the bud; several towns took fright, exiled their rash insurgents and pledged their loyalty. Those already committed, however, rejoiced to hear that Philip, the gods having sent him mad, had trusted his forces to a boy of sixteen years. They sent defiances. Alexander rode to their citadels, sat down before them one by one, looked for the flaws in their defenses, or, if there were none, created them with saps or ramps or breaches. He had learned his lessons at Perinthos, and improved on some of them. Resistance soon died out; the remaining towns opened their gates on his terms.

Riding out from Akanthos he viewed Xerxes’ Ditch, the ship canal through the isthmus neck of Athos, cut for the Persian fleet to bypass its mountain storms. Its great snowy peak reared up from its shaggy buttresses. The army turned north, along the curve of a pleasant bay. Perched on the footslopes below the wooded hills stood a long-ruined town. Brambles grew on its fallen walls; the terracing of its vineyards was collapsing from the winter rains; its weed-grown olive groves were forsaken, but for a herd of goats nibbling the bark, and some naked little boys tearing off low branches. Alexander asked, “What place was this?”

A trooper rode to ask, and, when all the boys fled yelling at the sight of him, grabbed up the slowest, who struggled like a netted lynx. Dragged before the general, and finding him no older than his own brother, he was struck dumb. When the portent let him know that all they wanted of him was the name of the spot they stood on, he answered, “Stagira.”

The column rode on. Alexander said to Hephaistion, “I must speak to Father. It’s time for the old man to have his fee.”

Hephaistion nodded. He had seen that schooldays were over.

When the treaties had been signed, the hostages delivered, the strongpoints manned, Alexander went back to Philip, still sitting before Perinthos.

The King had waited for him, before moving against Byzantion; he had needed to know that all was well. He was marching himself, leaving Parmenion here; for Byzantion would be tougher than Perinthos, three sides protected by Propontis and Golden Horn, the land side by massive walls. He set his hopes upon surprise.

They mulled over the campaign together, over the pinewood trestle. Often Philip would forget it was not a grown man he was talking to, till some careless bluntness would set up the boy’s back. It was rarer now; rough, wary, touchy, their contact was warmed by a secret, mutual pride in one another’s acceptance.

“How are the Argives shaping?” asked Alexander not long after, over a midday meal.

“I shall leave them here. Parmenion must cope with them. They came here I suppose to swagger about before half-trained citizen levies, as they can in the southern cities. Our men think them raw hands, and let them know it. But what are they, soldiers or bridesmaids? Fair pay, good rations, good quarters; yet nothing’s right for them. They sulk at drill; they don’t like the sarissa; all they mean is they’re clumsy still and our own men laugh. Well, they can stay here and use the short spear, for this work it’s well enough. When I’ve marched with my people, and they’re cocks of the walk, they’ll pick up, their officers tell me.”

Alexander, scooping up fish sauce with his bread, said, “Listen.” His first question had been prompted by half-heard sounds of discord. They were getting louder.

“Hades take them,” said the King. “What now?”

Shouted insults, in Greek and Macedonian, could now be heard.

“Anything looses it off, when they’re at odds like this.” Philip pushed back his chair, wiping off his fingers on his bare thigh. “A cockfight, a squabble over a boy…Parmenion’s on reconnaissance.” The noise was growing; each side was being reinforced. “Nothing for it, I shall have to sort them myself.” He walked with his stolid limp towards the doorway.

“Father. They sound ugly. Why not get armed?”

“What? No, that would make too much of it. They’ll give over when they see me. They won’t heed one another’s officers, there’s the mischief.”

“I’ll come too. If the officers can’t quiet them…”

“No, no; I don’t need you. Finish your food. Simmias, keep mine hot.”

He went out as he was, unarmed but for the sword he always wore. Alexander got up and looked after him from the door.

Between the town, and the straggling village of the siege-lines, was a wide space through which slit trenches ran out to the siege towers, and fortified guard-posts stood. Here between men on duty or changing guard the brawl must have begun, visible all along the lines, so that the factions had gathered quickly. There were already some hundreds; Greeks, who had been nearer, outnumbered Macedonians. Racial taunts were flying. Above the din, voices that sounded like officers’ were exchanging recriminations, and threatening each other with the King. Philip stumped forward a few paces, looked again; then shouted to a trooper who had been riding towards the crowd. The man dismounted and gave him a leg-up. Provided now with a living rostrum, he cantered purposefully forward, and shouted for silence.

He chose seldom to be formidable. Silence fell; the crowd divided to let him in. As it closed again, Alexander saw that the horse was restive.

The squires who had waited at table were talking in excited undertones. Alexander gave them a look; they should have been waiting for orders. The next hut was the lodging of all the body-squires; the doorway was full of heads. He called out, “Get armed. Be quick.”

Philip was wrestling with the horse. His voice, which had carried power, now sounded angry. The horse reared; there was a roar of abuse and cursing; it must have struck a man with its forefeet. Suddenly it gave a great scream, stood almost upright, and sank down, the King still doggedly clinging. Horse and man vanished into a threshing, shouting vortex.

Alexander ran to the armor-pegs on the wall, snatched his shield and helmet—the corselet would take too long—and called to the squires, “They’ve killed his horse under him. Come.” Soon outdistancing all the others, he ran without looking back. The Macedonians were pouring out of barracks. It was the next moments that counted.

At first he simply shoved at the mob, and it let him through. These were sightseers, or mere accretions, easily shifted by anyone who knew his own mind. “Let me pass. Let me through to the King.” He could hear the squeals of the dying horse, weakening to groans; no sound from his father. “Back, get back, let me pass. Make way, I want the King.”

“He wants his dad.” The first defiance; a square-shouldered, square-bearded Argive stood grinning in his way. “Look, here’s the cockalorum.” The last word choked off. His eyes and mouth gaped, a retch came up from his throat. Alexander with an expert jerk freed his sword.

A gap appeared; he could see the still twitching horse, on its side, his father lying with one leg under it, unmoving; over him stood an Argive with lifted spear, irresolute, waiting for encouragement. Alexander ran him through.

The crowd heaved and swayed, as the Macedonians flung themselves at its edges. Alexander bestrode his father’s body, one leg braced against the horse which had stiffened in death; he yelled, “The King!” to guide the rescuers. All round him, uncertain men were urging each other to strike. For anyone behind him, he was a gift.

“This is the King. I will kill the first man who touches him.” Some were scared; he fixed his eyes on the man they had been looking at for guidance; he stuck out his jaw and mumbled, but his eyes were flickering. “Get back all of you. Are you mad? Do you think if you kill him or me, you can get out of Thrace alive?” Someone said they had got out of worse places; but no one moved. “Our men are either side of you, and the enemy has the harbor. Are you tired of life?”

Some warning, a gift of Herakles, made him whip round. He hardly saw the face of the man whose spear was lifted, only the exposed throat. His stab severed the windpipe; the man reeled back, bloody fingers clawing at the hissing wound. He swung back to confront the others; in this instant the scene had changed, he saw instead the backs of the royal squires, shields locked, heaving off the Argives. Hephaistion came breasting through like a swimmer through surf, and stood to shield his back. It was over, in about as long as it would have taken him to finish his half-eaten fish.

He looked round. He had not a scratch; he had been a stroke ahead each time. Hephaistion spoke to him and he answered smiling. He was shining and calm at the center of his mystery, the godlike freedom of killing fear. Fear lay dead at his feet.

Loud voices, expert in command, cleft the confusion; the Argive general, and Parmenion’s deputy, roared at their troops in familiar tones. Hangers-on turned swiftly to spectators; the center fell apart, revealing a scatter of dead and wounded; all the men near the fallen King were arrested and led away. The horse was dragged aside. The riot was over. When shouts began again, they came from those on the outskirts who could not see, spreading rumors or asking news.

“Alexander! Where’s our boy? Have those whores’ sons killed him?” Then, running the other way in a deep bass counterpoint, “The King, they killed the King! The King is dead!” and higher, as if in answer, “Alexander!”

He stood, a point of stillness in all the clamor, looking beyond it into the blue dazzling sky.

There were other voices, down by his knees. “Sir, sir, how are you?” they were saying. “Sir?” He blinked a moment, as if awaking from sleep; then knelt down with the others and touched the body, saying, “Father? Father?”

He could feel at once that the King was breathing.

There was blood in his hair. His sword was half out; he must have felt for it as he was struck, perhaps with a pommel by someone whose nerve had failed him to use the edge. His eyes were closed, and he came limply with their lifting hands. Alexander, remembering a lesson of Aristotle’s, pulled back the lid of his good eye. It closed again with a twitch.

“A shield,” Alexander said. “Roll him gently. I’ll take his head.”

The Argives had been marched off; the Macedonians crowded round, asking if the King was alive or dead. “He is stunned,” said Alexander. “He will be better presently. He has no other wound. Moschion! The herald is to give that out. Sippas! Order the catapults to fire a volley. Look at the enemy gaping on the wall; I want the fun knocked out of them. Leonnatus, I’ll be with my father till he’s himself again. Bring anything to me.”

They laid the King on his bed. Alexander drew a bloodstained hand from holding his head, to settle it on the pillow. Philip groaned, and opened his eyes.

The senior officers, who had felt entitled to crowd in, assured him all was well, all the men in hand. Alexander standing by the bedhead said to one of the squires, “Bring me water, and a sponge.”

“It was your son, King,” said someone, “your son who saved you.” Philip turned his head and said weakly, “So? Good boy.”

“Father, did you see which of them struck you?”

“No,” said Philip, his voice strengthening. “He took me from behind.”

“Well, I hope I killed him. I killed one there.” His grey eyes dwelt deeply on his father’s face.

Philip blinked dimly, and sighed. “Good boy. I remember nothing; nothing till I woke up here.”

The squire came up with the water-bowl and held it out. Alexander took the sponge, and washed his hand clean of blood, going over it carefully, two or three times. He turned away; the squire paused with the bowl, at a loss, then went round to sponge the King’s hair and brow. He had supposed that this was what the Prince had meant it for.

By evening, though sick and giddy if he moved, Philip could give orders. The Argives were marched off on exchange to Kypsela. Alexander was cheered wherever he was seen; men touched him for luck, or for his virtue to rub off on them, or merely for the sake of touching him. The besieged, encouraged by these disorders, came out on the wall at dusk and attacked a siege tower. Alexander led out a party and beat them off. The doctor announced that the King was mending. One of the squires sat up with him. It was midnight before Alexander got to bed. Though he ate with his father, he had his own lodging. He was a general now.

There was a scratch on the door, in a familiar rhythm. He folded back the blanket, and moved over. Hephaistion had known, when this tryst was made, that what Alexander wanted was to talk. He could always tell.

They mulled over the fight, talking softly into the pillow. Presently they fell quiet; in the pause they could hear the sounds of the camp, and, from the distant ramparts of Perinthos, the night watch passing the bell along from man to man, the proof of wakefulness. “What is it?” Hephaistion whispered.

In the dim glimmer of the window, he saw the shine of Alexander’s eyes coming close to his. “He says he remembers nothing. He’d already come to himself when we picked him up.”

Hephaistion, who had once been hit by a stone from a Thracian wall, said, “He’ll have forgotten.”

“No. He was shamming dead.”

“Was he? Well, who can blame him? One can’t even sit up, everything spins round. He hoped they’d be scared at what they’d done, and go away.”

“I opened his eye, and I know he saw me. But he gave me no sign, though he knew it was over then.”

“Very likely he just went off again.”

“I watched him, he was awake. But he won’t say he remembers.”

“Well, he’s the King.” Hephaistion had a secret kindness for Philip, who had always treated him with, courtesy, even with tact; with whom, too, he shared an enemy. “People might misunderstand, you know how tales get twisted.”

“To me he could have said it.” Alexander’s eyes, glittering in the near-darkness, fastened upon his. “He won’t own that he was lying there, knowing he owed his life to me. He didn’t want to admit it, he doesn’t want to remember.”

Who knows? thought Hephaistion. Or ever will? But he knows, and nothing will ever shift it. His bare shoulder, crossed by Hephaistion’s arm, had a faint sheen like darkened bronze. “Supposing he has his pride? You ought to know what that is.”

“Yes, I do. But in his place I’d still have spoken.”

“What need?” He slid his hand up the bronze shoulder into the tousled hair; Alexander pushed against it, like a powerful animal consenting to be stroked. Hephaistion remembered his childishness in the beginning; sometimes it seemed like yesterday, sometimes half a lifetime. “Everyone knows. He does; so do you. Nothing can take it away.”

He felt Alexander draw a long deep breath. “No; nothing. You’re right, you always understand. He gave me life, or he claims so. Whether or not, now I’ve given it him.”

“Yes, now you’re quits.”

Alexander gazed into the black peak of the rafters. “No one can equal the gifts of the gods, one can only try to know them. But it’s good to be clear of debt to men.”

Tomorrow he would sacrifice to Herakles. Meantime, he felt a deep wish at once to make someone happy. Luckily he had not far to seek.

“I warned him,” said Alexander, “not to put off dealing with the Triballoi.” He sat with Antipatros at the great desk of Archelaos’ study, over a dispatch full of bad news.

“Is his wound thought dangerous?” Antipatros asked.

“He couldn’t sign this; just his seal, and Parmenion’s witness. I doubt he even finished dictating it. The last part reads more like Parmenion.”

“He has good-healing flesh, your father. It’s in the family.”

“What were his diviners doing? Nothing’s gone right with him since I left. Perhaps we should consult Delphi or Dodona, in case some god needs appeasing.”

“It would spread through Greece like wildfire that his luck was out. He’d not thank us for that.”

“That’s true, no, better not. But look at Byzantion. He did everything right; got there fast, while their best forces were at Perinthos; chose a cloudy night; got up to the very walls. But of a sudden the clouds part, out comes the moon; and all the town dogs start barking. Barking at the crossroads…they light the torches…”

“Crossroads?” said Antipatros into the pause.

“Or,” said Alexander briskly, “maybe he misread the weather, it’s changeable on Propontis. But once he’d decided to lift both sieges, why not have rested his men, and let me take on the Scythians?”

“They were there on his flank, and had just denounced their treaty; but for them he might have hung on at Byzantion. Your father’s always known when to write off his losses. But his troops had their tails down; they needed a solid victory, and loot; both of which he got.”

Alexander nodded. He could get along well with Antipatros, a Macedonian of ancient stock, bone-loyal to the King beside whom he had fought in youth, but to the King before the man. It was Parmenion who loved the man before the King. “He did indeed. So there he was, lumbered up with a thousand head of cattle, a slave train, wagons of loot, on the north border where they can smell plunder further than buzzards. Tails up or not, his men were tired…If only he’d let me go on north from Alexandropolis; he’d have had no raid from the Triballoi then.” The name was established now; the colonists had settled. “The Agrianoi would have come in with me, they’d already agreed…Well, done’s done. It’s lucky his doctor wasn’t killed.”

“I should like to wish him well when the courier leaves.”

“Of course. Let’s not trouble him with business.” (If orders came back, would they be Philip’s or Parmenion’s?) “We shall have to shift for ourselves awhile.” He smiled at Antipatros, whom he liked none the worse for being charmable, and amusingly unaware of it. “War we can deal with well enough. But the business of the south—that’s another thing. It means a great deal to him; he sees it differently; he knows more about it. I should be sorry to act without him there.”

“Well, they seem to be working for him there better than we could.”

“At Delphi? I was there when I was twelve, for the Games, and never since. Now, once again, to be sure I understand it: this new offering-house the Athenians put up; they put in their dedications before it had been consecrated?”

“Yes, a technical impiety. That was the formal charge.”

“But the real quarrel was the inscription: SHIELDS TAKEN FROM PERSIANS AND THEBANS FIGHTING AGAINST GREECE…Why did the Thebans Medize, instead of allying with the Athenians?”

“Because they hated them.”

“Even then? Well, this inscription enraged the Thebans. So when the Sacred League of Delphi met, being I suppose ashamed to come forward themselves, they got some client state to accuse the Athenians of impiety.”

“The Amphissians. They live below Delphi, up river.”

“And if this indictment had succeeded, the League would have had to make war on Athens. The Athenians had sent three delegates; two went down with fever, and the third of them was Aischines.”

“You may remember the man; he was one of the peace envoys, seven years ago.”

“Oh, I know Aischines, he’s an old friend of mine. Did you know he was an actor once? He must have been good at gagging; because when the Council was about to pass the motion, he suddenly recalled that the Amphissians had been raising crops on some river land which had once been forfeited to Apollo. So he went rushing in, somehow got a hearing, and counteraccused the Amphissians. Is that right? Then, after his great oration, the Delphians forgot Athens, and rushed down pell-mell to wreck the Amphissians’ farms. The Amphissians fought; and some of the Councilors had their sacred persons knocked about. This was last autumn after the harvest.”

It was now winter. The study was as drafty and cold as ever. The King’s son, thought Antipatros, seemed to notice it even less than the King.

“Now the League is meeting at Thermopylai to pass judgment on the Amphissians. It’s clear my father won’t be fit to go. I am sure what he would like would be for you to represent him. Will you?”

“By all means, yes,” said Antipatros, relieved. The boy knew his own limits, eager as he was to stretch them. “I shall try to influence whom I can, and, where I can, postpone decisions for the King.”

“Let’s hope they’ve found him a warm house; Thrace in winter is no place for healing wounds. Before long, we shall have to consult him about this. What do you expect will happen?”

“In Athens, nothing. Even if the League condemns Amphissa, Demosthenes will keep the Athenians out. The countercharge was a personal triumph for Aischines, whom he hates like poison, and indicted on a capital charge of treason after their embassy here, as I daresay you know.”

“No one better. Part of the charge was that he was too friendly with me.”

“These demagogues! Why, you were only ten years old. Well, the charge failed, and now Aischines comes back from Delphi a public hero. Demosthenes must be chewing wormwood. Also, a larger issue, the Amphissians support the Thebans, whom he won’t wish to antagonize.”

“But the Athenians hate the Thebans.”

“He would like them to hate us more. A war pact with Thebes is what any man of sense would work for, in his place. With the Thebans he may succeed; the Great King has sent him a fortune to buy support against us. It’s the Athenians will give him trouble; that feud’s too old.”

Alexander sat in thought. Presently he said, “It’s four generations now since they threw back the Persians; and we Medized, as the Thebans did. If the Great King crossed now from Asia, they’d be intriguing and impeaching one another, while we turned him back in Thrace.”

“Men change in less time than that. We have come up in one generation, thanks to your father.”

“And he’s still only forty-three. Well, I shall go out and take some exercise, in case he should leave me anything to do.”

On his way to change, he met his mother, who asked the news. He went with her to her room, and told her as much as he thought good. The room was warm, soft and full of color; bright firelight danced on the pictured flames of Troy. His eyes turned to the hearth, he stared unnoticed at the loose stone he had explored in childhood. She found him withdrawn, and accused him of weak compliance with Antipatros, who would stop at nothing to do her harm. This happened often, and he passed it off with the usual answers.

Leaving, he met Kleopatra on the stairs. Now at fourteen she was more like Philip than ever, square-faced, with strong curly hair; but her eyes were not his, they were sad as an unloved dog’s. His half-wives had borne him prettier girls; she was plain at the age when, for him, it mattered most; and for her mother she wore the mask of the enemy. Alexander said, “Come with me, I want to speak to you.”

In the nursery they had been struggling rivals. Now he was above the battle. She longed for, yet feared, his notice, feeling unequal to anything it could mean. It was unheard of for him to confer with her. “Come in the garden,” he said, and, when she shivered and crossed her arms, gave her his cloak. They stood in a leafless rose-plot by the Queen’s postern, close against the wall. Old snow lay in the hollows and between the clods. He had spoken to her quietly, he had not wished to frighten her, she saw that in herself she was unimportant; but she was afraid.

“Listen,” he said. “You know what happened to Father at Byzantion?” She nodded. “It was the dogs betrayed him. The dogs, and the sickle moon.”

He saw the dread in her sad eyes, but read no guilt in it. Neither of Olympias’ children looked for innocence in one another. “You understand me. You know the rites I mean. Did you…see anything done?”

She shook her head dumbly; if she told, it would come out in one of their dreadful love-quarrels. His eyes searched her like the winter wind; but her fear hid everything. Suddenly he became gentle and grave, and took her hand through the folds of cloak. “I won’t tell that you told me. By Herakles. I could never break that oath.” He looked round at the garden shrine. “Tell me, you must. I must know.”

Her hidden hand shifted in his. “Only the same as other times, when nothing came of it. If there was more, I didn’t see it. Truly, Alexander, that’s all I know.”

“Yes, yes, I believe you,” he said impatiently; then grasped at her hand again. “Don’t let her do it. She hasn’t the right, now. I saved him at Perinthos. He’d be dead now, but for me.”

“Why did you?” Much could be left unsaid between them. Her eyes dwelt on the face that was not Philip’s, the rough-cut, shining hair.

“It would have been disgraceful not to.” He paused, seeking, she thought, some words that would serve for her. “Don’t cry,” he said, and passed a fingertip gently under her eyes. “That’s all I wanted to know. You couldn’t help it.”

He began to lead her in; but paused at the doorway, and looked about them. “If she wants to send him a doctor, medicines, sweets, anything, you must let me know. I charge you with it. If you don’t, it will rest on you.”

He saw her face pale with shock. Her surprise, not her distress, arrested him. “Oh, Alexander! No! Those things you spoke of, they’ve never worked, she must know it. But they’re terrible, and when—when she can’t contain her soul, they purge it. That’s all they are.”

He looked at her almost with tenderness, and slowly shook his head. “She meant them.” He gave her one of his secret looks. “I remember,” he said softly.

He saw her sad dog’s eyes, flinching from this new burden. “But that’s long ago. I expect it’s as you say. You’re a good girl.” He kissed her cheek, and squeezed her shoulders as he took back his cloak. From the doorway she watched him go shining off through the dead garden.

Winter dragged on. In Thrace the King mended slowly, and could sign letters with the shake of an old man. He had understood the news from Delphi, and directed that Antipatros should support, discreetly, the Amphissian war. The Thebans, though pledged to Macedon, had been doubtful allies, intriguing with the Persians; they were expendable at need. He foresaw the League states voting for the war, each hoping that its burden would be borne by others; Macedon should stand by, without officiousness, in friendly willingness to assume the tiresome duty. It would put the key to the south into his hand.

Soon after midwinter, the Council voted for war. Each state offered only a token force; none would yield leadership to a rival city. Kottyphos, a Thessalian, being President of the Council, had flung in his lap command of this awkward army. Thessalians, whom Philip had rescued from tribal anarchy, remained mostly grateful. There was small doubt where Kottyphos would turn in his hour of need.

“It has begun,” said Alexander to his friends, as they sluiced down under the fountain by the stadium. “If one only knew how long.”

Ptolemy, pushing his head out of his towel, remarked, “Women say a watched pot never boils.” Alexander, dedicated to constant readiness, had been working them hard; Ptolemy had a new mistress, of whom he would have liked to be seeing more.

“They say too,” Hephaistion countered, “that when you take your eye off it, it boils over.” Ptolemy looked at him with irritation; it was well for him, he was getting enough of what he wanted.

He was getting, at least, what he would not have changed for any other human lot; and the world could know it. The rest was his secret; he came to what terms he could with it. Pride, chastity, restraint, devotion to higher things; with such words he made tolerable to himself his meetings with a soul-rooted reluctance, too deep to suffer questioning. Perhaps Olympias’ witchcraft had scarred her child; perhaps his father’s example. Or, thought Hephaistion, perhaps it was that in this one thing he did not want the mastery, and all the rest of his nature was at war with it; he had trusted his very life much sooner and more willingly. Once in the dark he had murmured in Macedonian, “You are the first and the last,” and his voice might have been charged with ecstasy or intolerable grief. Most of the time, however, he was candid, close, without evasions; he simply did not think it very important. One might have supposed that the true act of love was to lie together and talk.

He talked of man and fate; of words heard in dreams from speaking serpents; of the management of cavalry against infantry and archers; he quoted Homer on heroes, Aristotle on the Universal Mind, and Solon on love; he talked of Persian tactics and the Thracian battle-mind; about his dog that had died, about the beauty of friendship. He plotted the march of Xenophon’s Ten Thousand, stage by stage from Babylon to the sea. He retailed the backstairs gossip of the Palace, the staff room and the phalanx, and confided the most secret policies of both his parents. He considered the nature of the soul in life and death, and that of the gods; he talked of Herakles and Dionysos, and how Longing can achieve all things.

Listening in bed, in the lee of mountain crags, in a wood at daybreak; with an arm clasping his waist or a head thrown back on his shoulder, trying to silence his noisy heart, Hephaistion understood he was being told everything. With pride and awe, with tenderness, torment and guilt, he lost the thread, and fought with himself, and caught the drift again to find something gone past recall. Bewildering treasures were being poured into his hands and slipping through his fingers, while his mind wandered to the blinding trifle of his own desire. At any moment he would be asked what he thought; he was valued as more than a listener. Knowing this he would attend again, and be caught up even against his will; Alexander could transmit imagination as some other could transmit lust. Sometimes, when he was lit up and full of gratitude for being understood, Longing, who has the power to achieve all things, would prompt the right word or touch; he would fetch a profound sigh, dragged up it seemed from the depth of his being, and murmur something in the Macedonian of his childhood; and all would be well, or as well as it could ever be.

He loved giving, to gods or men; he loved achievement here as elsewhere; he loved Hephaistion, whom he forgave for having confronted him, irrevocably now, with his human needs. The profound melancholy after, he bore uncomplaining like a wound. Nothing could be had for nothing. But if later he threw a javelin wide, or won a race by two lengths instead of three, Hephaistion always suspected him, without a word or a look to show it, of thinking that virtue had gone out of him.

In his waking dreams, from which hard clear thought emerged like iron from fire, he would lie back in the grass with his arm behind his head, or sit with his hands loose on the boar-spear across his knees, or pace a room, or stare from a window, his head tilted up and a little leftward, his eyes seeing what his mind conceived. His forgotten face told truths no sculptor would ever catch; behind dropped curtains the secret lamp flared high, one saw the glow, or a dazzling glint through a chink. At times like these, when, Hephaistion thought, even a god could scarcely have kept his hands off him, then above all he must be let alone. But this, after all, one had known from the very beginning.

Once having understood it, Hephaistion could himself achieve, in some degree, Alexander’s power to drive the force of sexual energy into some other aim. His own ambitions were more limited; he had already attained the chief of them. He was entirely trusted, constantly and deeply loved.

True friends share everything. One thing, however, he thought well to keep to himself: that Olympias hated him, and her hatred was returned.

Alexander did not speak of it; she must have known that here she would meet with rock. Hephaistion, when she passed him without a greeting, put it down to simple jealousy. It is hard for a generous lover to pity a devouring one; he could not feel much for her, even while he believed that this was all.

It took him time to credit what he saw in front of him, that she was throwing women in Alexander’s way. Surely she would hate their rivalry even more? Yet waiting-maids, visiting singers and dancers, young wives not strictly kept, girls who dared not for their lives have risked her anger, now hung about and made eyes. Hephaistion waited for Alexander to talk about it first.

One evening just after lamp-lighting, in the Great Court, Hephaistion saw him waylaid by a young notorious beauty. He flashed his eyes at her languid ones, said something crisp, and walked on with a cool smile, which disappeared at sight of Hephaistion. They fell into step; Hephaistion seeing him on edge said lightly, “No luck for Doris.” Alexander looked ahead frowning. The newly lit cressets flung deep shadows and shifting gleams into the painted stoa.

Alexander said abruptly, “She wants me to marry young.”

“Marry?” said Hephaistion staring. “How could you marry Doris?”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Alexander irritably. “She’s married, she’s a whore, she had her last child by Harpalos.” They walked on in silence. He paused beside a column. “Mother wants to see me going with women, to know I’m ready.”

“But no one marries at our age. Only girls.”

“She has her mind on it, and she wishes I had mine.”

“But why?”

Alexander glanced at him, not in wonder at his slowness but envy of his innocence. “She wants to bring up my heir. I might fall in battle without one.”

Hephaistion understood. He was impeding more than love, more than possession. He was impeding power. The cressets flickered, the night breeze blew coldly down his neck. Presently he said, “And will you do it?”

“Marry? No, I shall suit myself, when I choose, when I’ve time to think of it.”

“You’d have to maintain a household, it’s a great deal of business.” He glanced at Alexander’s creased brows and added, “Girls, you can take or leave whenever you like.”

“That’s what I think.” He looked at Hephaistion with a gratitude not quite aware of itself. Drawing him by the arm into the thick column’s shadow, he said softly, “Don’t be troubled about it. She would never dare do anything to take you from me. She knows me better than that.”

Hephaistion nodded, not liking to admit that he understood what was meant. It was true that he had begun lately to notice how his wine was poured.

A little while later, Ptolemy said in private to Alexander, “I’ve been asked to give a party for you and invite some girls.”

Their eyes met. Alexander said, “I might be busy.”

“I’d be grateful if you’d come. I’ll see you’re not plagued, they can sing and amuse us. Will you? I don’t want to be in trouble.”

It was not a custom of the north to bring in hetairas at dinner; a man’s women were his own concern; Dionysos, not Aphrodite, closed the feast. But lately, among up-to-date young men at private parties, Greek ways were admired. Four guests came to the supper; the girls sat on the ends of their couches, talked prettily, sang to the lyre, filled up their wine cups and patted their wreaths in place; they might almost have been in Corinth. To Alexander his host had allotted the eldest, Kallixeina, an expert and cultured courtesan of some fame. While a girl acrobat was throwing somersaults naked, and on the other couches understandings were being reached with covert tickles and pinches, she talked in her mellow voice about the beauties of Miletos, where she had lately been, and the oppression of the Persians there; Ptolemy had briefed her well. Once, leaning gracefully, she let her dress dip to show him her much-praised breasts; but as he had been promised, her tact was faultless. He enjoyed her company, and at parting kissed the sweetly curving lips from which she took her trade name.

“I don’t know,” he confided to Hephaistion in bed, “why my mother should want to see me enslaved by women. You’d think with my father she’d have seen enough.”

“All mothers are mad for grandchildren,” said Hephaistion tolerantly. The party had left Alexander, vaguely restless, and receptive to love.

“Think of the great men it has ruined. Look at Persia.” His somber mood being on him, he retailed from Herodotos a hideous tale of jealousy and vengeance. Hephaistion expressed a proper horror. His sleep was sweet.

“The Queen was pleased,” said Ptolemy next day, “to hear you enjoyed the party.” He never said more than enough, a trait Alexander valued. He sent Kallixeina a necklace of gold flowers.

Winter began to break. Two couriers from Thrace, the first having been delayed by swollen streams, arrived together. The first dispatch said that the King could walk a little. He had had news from the south by sea. The League army, after troubles and delays, had won a partial victory; the Amphissians had accepted peace terms, to dismiss their leaders and put in their exiled opposition. This was always a hated condition, since exiles returned bent on settling their old scores. The Amphissians had not fulfilled their agreement yet.

From the second courier’s letter, it was clear that Philip was now dealing direct with his southern agents, who had reported the Amphissians still harbored their former government and ignored remonstrances; the opposition dared not return. Kottyphos, the League general, had written to the King in confidence: if the League were forced into action, would Philip be prepared to undertake the war?

With this came a second letter, bound up and double-sealed, addressed to Alexander as Regent. It commended his good government; and informed him that though Philip hoped soon to be fit for the journey home; affairs could not wait so long. He wanted the whole home army mobilized for action; but no one must suspect that his plans led southward; Antipatros alone could share the knowledge. Some other pretext must be sought. There had been tribal musterings in Illyria; it should be given out that the western border was threatened, and the troops were standing by for that. Terse notes on training and staffing were closed with fatherly blessings.

Like a caged bird set free, Alexander flew into action. As he ranged about in search of good country for maneuvers, he could be heard singing to the beat of Oxhead’s hooves. If some girl he had loved for years, Antipatros thought, had suddenly been promised him, he could not have glowed more brilliantly.

War councils were called; the professional soldiers conferred with the tribal lords who commanded their own levies. Olympias asked Alexander what kept him so often away, and why he looked so full of business. He answered that he hoped soon to see action against the Illyrians on the border.

“I have been waiting to speak to you, Alexander. I hear that after Kallixeina the Thessalian entertained you all one evening, you made her a present and never sent again for her. These women are artists, Alexander; a hetaira of that standing has her pride. What will she think of you?”

He turned round, for a moment quite bewildered. He had forgotten the existence of such a person. “Do you think,” he said staring, “that I’ve time now to be playing about with girls?”

She tapped with her fingers on her gilded chair-arm. “You will be eighteen this summer. People may be saying you do not care for them.”

He stared at the Sack of Troy, the flames and blood and the shrieking women flung back across warriors’ shoulders, waving their arms. After a moment he said, “I shall find them something else to talk about.”

“You have always time for Hephaistion,” she said.

“He thinks of my work, and helps.”

“What work? You tell me nothing. Philip sent you a secret letter; you did not even tell me. What did he say?”

With cool precision, without a pause, he gave her the tale about the Illyrian war. She saw, and was shaken by, the cold resentment in his eyes.

“You are lying to me,” she said.

“If you think so, why ask?”

“I am sure you told Hephaistion everything.”

Lest Hephaistion should suffer for the truth, he answered, “No.”

“People talk. Hear it now from me, if you do not know. Why do you shave, like a Greek?”

“Am I not Greek, then? This is news, you should have told me sooner.”

Like two wrestlers who in their grapple reel towards a cliff, and let go in a common fear, they paused and swerved.

“Your friends are known by it, the women point at them. Hephaistion, Ptolemy, Harpalos…”

He laughed. “Ask Harpalos why they point.”

She was angered by his endurance, when instinct told her she was drawing blood. “Soon your father will be making you a marriage. It is time you showed him it is a husband he has to offer, and not a wife.”

After a moment’s stillness he walked forward, very slowly, and lightly as a golden cat, till he stood straight before her looking down. She opened her mouth, then closed it; little by little she shrank back into her thronelike chair, till its high back held her and she could retreat no further. Judging this with his eyes, he then said softly, “You will never say that to me again.”

She was still there, and had not moved, when she heard Oxhead’s gallop thudding away.

For two days he did not come near her; her orders to deny him her door were wasted. Then came a feast; each found a gift from the other. The breach was healed; except that neither spoke of it, or asked forgiveness.

He forgot it, when the news came in from Illyria. Word having spread that King Philip was arming against them, the tribes, which had been settling, were in ferment from the border to the western sea.

“I expected no less,” said Antipatros in private to Alexander. “The price of a good lie is that it gets believed.”

“One thing’s certain, we can’t afford to undeceive them. So they’ll be over the border any day. Let me think about this; tomorrow I’ll tell you what troops I need to take.”

Antipatros saved his breath; he was learning when to do so.

Alexander knew what forces he wanted; what most concerned him was how to avoid, without suspicion, committing too many troops to the work they were supposed to be standing by for. Soon fact supplied a pretext. Since the Phokian war, the Thermopylai fort had been held by a Macedonian garrison. It had just been “relieved,” in strength and without agreement, by a force of Thebans. Thebes, they explained, had to protect herself from the Sacred League, which, by attacking her allies the Amphissians, was clearly threatening her. This seizure was as near a hostile act as a formal ally could compass. It would be natural, now, to leave a good holding force at home.

The Illyrians were lighting war-fires. Alexander got out his father’s old maps and records; questioned veterans about the terrain, which was mountainous and cleft with gorges, and tested his men in marches across country. From one such day he got back at fall of dusk, bathed, greeted friends, had dinner, and, ready for sleep, went straight up to his room. He threw off his clothes at once; with the cold draft from the window came a warm drift of scent. The tall standing lamp shone in his eyes. He stepped past it. On the bed a young girl was sitting.

He stared at her in silence; she gasped and looked down, as if the last thing she had looked for here was an unclothed man. Then slowly she got to her feet, unclasped her hands to let them fall at her sides, and raised her head.

“I am here,” she said like a child repeating lessons, “because I have fallen in love with you. Please don’t send me away.”

He walked steadily across to her. The first shock had passed; one must not be seen to hesitate. This one was not like the painted jeweled hetairas with their easy charm, the patina of much handling. She was about fifteen, a fair-skinned girl, with fine flaxen hair falling unbound over her shoulders. Her face was heart-shaped, her eyes dark blue, her small breasts firm and pointed; the dress of snow-white byssos showed the pink nipples through. Her mouth was unpainted, fresh as flowers. Before he reached her, he felt her steeped in fear.

“How did you get in?” he asked. “There’s a guard outside.”

She clasped her hands again. “I—I have been trying a long time to come to you. I took the first chance I saw.” Her fear shivered like a curtain round her, it almost stirred the air.

He had expected no answer to the purpose. He touched her hair, which felt like thin silk clothing her; she was shaking like the bass string of a kithara lately struck. Not passion, fear. He took her shoulders between his hands and felt her a little calmed, like a scared dog. It was because of him, not of him, she was afraid.

They were young; their innocence and their knowledge spoke together, without their will. He stood holding her between his hands, no longer heeding her, listening. He heard nothing; yet the whole room seemed to breathe.

He kissed her lips, she was just the right height for him. Then he said crisply, “The guard must have gone to sleep. If he let you in, let’s make sure there is no one else here.”

She grasped him with a clutch of terror. He kissed her again, and gave her a secret smile. Then he went to the far end of the room, shaking the window-curtains loudly on their rings, one after another, looking into the great chest and slamming its lid. He left to the last the curtain before the postern door. When at length he pulled it aside, no one was there. He shot the bronze bolt home.

Going back to the girl, he led her towards the bed. He was angry, but not with her; and he had been offered a challenge.

Her white gauze dress was pinned on the shoulders with golden bees. He loosened them, and the girdle; it all fell on the floor. She was milky as if her flesh never saw the sun, all but the rosy nipples, and the golden fuzz which painters never put in. Poor soft pale thing, for which the heroes had fought ten years at Troy.

He lay down beside her. She was young and scared, she would thank him for time and gentleness, there was no hurry. One of her hands, ice-cold with fright, started traveling down his body; hesitant and inexpert, remembering instruction. It was not enough that she had been sent to learn if he was a man, this child had been told to help him. He found himself handling her with the most delicate care, like a day-old pup, to protect her from his anger.

He glanced at the lamp; but it would be a kind of flight to quench it, shameful to fumble in the dark. His arm lay across her breast, firm, brown, scratched from the mountain brambles; how weak she looked, even a real kiss would bruise her. She had hidden her face against his shoulder. A conscript without doubt, not a volunteer. She was thinking what would become of her if she failed.

And at the best, he thought; at the best? The loom, the bed, the cradle; children, the decking of bride-beds, clacking talk at the hearth and the village well; bitter old age, and death. Never the beautiful ardors, the wedded bond of honor, the fire from heaven blazing on the altar where fear was killed. He turned up her face in his hand. For this lost life, the creature that looked at him with these flax-blue eyes, helpless and waiting, had been created a human soul. Why had it been ordered so? Compassion shocked him, and pierced him with darts of fire.

He thought of the fallen towns, the rafters burning, the women running from the smoke as rats and hares ran out when the last stand of wheat falls to the sickle and the boys wait stick in hand. He remembered the bodies, left behind by men for whom the victor’s right of mating, with which wild beasts were content, was not enough. They had something to revenge, some unsated hatred, of themselves perhaps, or of one they could not name. His hand traced softly on her smooth body the wounds he had seen; there was no harm, she did not understand it. He kissed her so that she should be reassured. She was trembling less, knowing now that her mission would not fail. He took her carefully, with the greatest gentleness, thinking of blood.

Later she sat up softly, thinking him asleep, and began to slip out of bed. He had only been thinking. “Don’t go,” he said. “Stay with me till morning.” He would have been glad to lie alone, not crowded by this alien soft flesh; but why should she face her questioning at such an hour? She had not cried, but only flinched a little, though she had been a virgin. Of course, how not? She was to furnish proof. He was angry on her behalf, no god having disclosed to him that she would outlive him by fifty years, boasting to the last of them that she had had the maidenhood of Alexander. The night grew cool, he pulled up the blanket over her shoulders. If anyone was sitting up for her, so much the better. Let them wait.

He got up and snuffed the lamp, and lay looking into the darkness, feeling the lethargy of soul which was the price of going hostage to mortality. To die, even a little, one should do it for something great. However, this might pass for a kind of victory.

He woke to birdsong and first light; he had overslept, some men he had meant to look at would be at drill already. The girl was fast sleeping still, her mouth a little open; it made her look foolish more than sad. He had never asked her her name. He shook her gently; her mouth closed, her deep-blue eyes opened; she looked tumbled, sleek and warm. “We had better get up, I have work to do.” Out of courtesy he added, “I wish we could stay longer.”

She rubbed her eyes, then smiled at him. His heart lifted; the ordeal was over, and well achieved. There on the sheet was the little red stain the old wives showed the guests on the wedding morrow. It would be practical, but unkind, to suggest she should take it with her. He had a better thought.

He belted on his chiton, went to his casket where his dress jewels were kept, and took out a pouch of soft kidskin, old and worn, with gold embroidery. It was not long ago that, with much solemnity, it had been given him. He slipped it out, a big brooch of two gold swans, their necks entwined in the courtship dance. The work was ancient, the swans wore crowns. “It has come down from queen to queen for two hundred years. Look after it, Alexander; it is an heirloom for your bride.”

He tossed the stitched pouch away, his mouth hardening; but he walked over with a smile. The girl had just fastened her shoulder-pins and was tying her girdle. “Here’s something for remembrance.” She took it wide-eyed, staring and feeling its weight. “Tell the Queen that you pleased me very much, but in future I choose for myself. Then show her this; and remember to say I told you to.”

In fresh blowy spring weather they marched west from the coast and up to Aigai. Here on Zeus’ ancient altar Alexander offered an unblemished pure-white bull. The seers, poring over the steaming vitals, announced the good portents of the liver.

They passed Lake Kastoria flooded from the snow-streams, half-drowned willows shaking green locks over its wind-ruffled blue water; then wound up through winter-brown scrub, into the rocky heights of the Hills of Lynxes, the Lynkestid lands.

Here he thought well to put on his helmet, and the leather guard for his bridle-arm which he had had made to Xenophon’s design. Since old Airopos had died, and young Alexandros had been chief, he had given no trouble, and had aided Philip in the last Illyrian war; nonetheless this was perfect ambush country, and Lynkestids were Lynkestids, time out of mind.

However, they had done their vassal duty; here were all three brothers on strong hairy mountain ponies, armed for campaign with their highlanders behind them; tall brown bearded men, no longer the lads he had met at festivals. They exchanged greetings of scrupulous courtesy, the common heirs of an ancient patched-up feud. For generations their houses had been linked by kinship, war, rivalry and marriage. The Lynkestids had once been kings here; they had contended for the High Kingship more than once through the generations. But they had not been strong enough to hold back the Illyrians. Philip had; and that had settled the matter.

Alexander accepted their formal host-gifts of food and wine, and called them to conference with his chief officers, on a rocky outcrop patched with lichen and flowering moss.

Dressed, themselves, with the rough usefulness of the border, leather tunics stitched with plates of iron, cap-shaped Thracian helmets, they could not take their eyes off the smooth-shaved youth who had chosen, while he outdid men, to keep the face of a boy, and whose panoply glittered with all the refinements of the south. His corselet was shaped to measure over every muscle; elegantly inlaid, but finished so smoothly that no ornament would hold a point. His helmet had a tall white crest, not to give him height but to be seen by his men in battle; they must be ready for change of plan whenever the action called for it. He explained this to the Lynkestids, since they were new to his wars. They had not believed in him before he came; when they saw him, they believed still less; but when they watched the war-scarred faces of warriors forty years old, intent on his every word, they believed at last.

They pressed on, to command the heights above the passes before the enemy; and came to Herakleia, whose fertile valley had been fought for in many wars. The Lynkestids were as familiar here as the storks on the house-roofs; they heartened their people with gnarled country jokes, and saluted shrines of immemorial gods elsewhere unknown. At Alexander the folk gazed as at a fable, and placed his acquisition to the credit of their lords.

The army rode up between vine terraces, stone-edged in good red earth, to the next range; down past Lake Prespa cupped in its rocky hills, and on till Lychnidis smiled blue below them, sky-clear, fringed with its poplars and white acacias and groves of ash, shapely with bays and rocky headlands. From the near side, war-smoke was rising. Illyria had crossed over into Macedon.

At a small hill-fort on the pass, Lynkestid clansmen greeted their chief with loyal cries. To their own kinsmen in the force, they said out of his hearing, “A man only lives once; we’d not have waited so long with that horde so near, only that we heard the witch’s son was coming. Is it true that a snake-daimon got him on the Queen? That’s he’s weapon-proof? Is it true he was born in a caul?” Peasants to whom a visit to the nearest market ten miles off was a thing for the greater festivals, they had never seen a shaved man and asked the easterners if he was a eunuch. Those who had managed to press near reported it false that he was Weapon-proof; young as he was, he was already battle-scarred; but they could attest that he was magical, having seen his eyes. Also he had forbidden the soldiers, on the way, to kill a great viper which had slid along the pass in front of them, calling it a messenger of good fortune. They eyed him warily, but with hope.

The battle was fought by the lake, among the ash groves and orchards and glittering poplar trees, on slopes starred with yellow mallows or blue with irises, which the soldiers crushed under trampling feet or stained with blood. The lapis-blue waters were churned and fouled; the storks and the herons fled the reeds; the eaters of carrion watched each his neighbor drop from the sky, and swooped to the glut of corpses heaped on the grassy shores, or floating under the small-flowered rocks.

The Lynkestids obeyed orders, and fought to the honor of their house. They recognized, though they could not have planned, the neat tactics which had trapped the Illyrian raiders between the steeps and the shore. They joined in the pursuit, on into the snow-topped western mountains and down the gorges, where Illyrians who made a stand were dislodged from their fastnesses to die or yield.

The Lynkestids were surprised to see him taking prisoners, after his fierceness in the battle. They had been thinking that those who nicknamed him Basiliskos must have had in mind the crowned dragon whose stare is death. But now, when they themselves would not have spared one of the ancient foes, he was taking oaths of peace as though they were not barbarians.

The Illyrians were tall lean mountaineers, leathery, brown-haired, not unlike the Lynkestids whose forebears had often married with them. Kossos, the chief who had led the raid, had been trapped in a river gorge and taken alive. They brought him bound before Alexander by the rushing stream which foamed brown between the borders. He was a younger son of the great Bardelys, King Philip’s old enemy, the terror of the border till he fell spear in hand at ninety years old. Now, the greybeard of fifty, hard and straight as a spear, stared impassively, hiding his wonder, at the boy with a man’s eyes, sitting a horse which by itself would have been worth a border raid.

“You have wasted our lands,” said Alexander, “driven off the cattle, looted our towns and forced our women. What do you think you deserve?”

Kossos knew little Macedonian, but enough for this. He wanted no interpreter coming between them. He looked long into the young man’s face and answered, “What is due to me, we might not agree on. Do with me, son of Philip, what you think is due to yourself.”

Alexander nodded. “Unbind him, and give him back his sword.”

He had lost in the battle two of his twelve sons; five more had been taken captive. Alexander freed three to him without ransom, and took two as hostages.

He had come to settle the border, not to breed new feuds. Though he had gone deep into Illyria, he did not try to push the frontier beyond Lake Lychnidis, where Philip had won it long ago and where the earth-shaping gods had drawn it. One thing at a time.

This was his first real war in sole command. He had gone into unknown country, and dealt with what he found; everyone thought it a great victory. With him rested the secret that it was the mask for a greater war. Alone with Hephaistion, he said, “It would have been base to take revenge on Kossos.”

By the clear lake of Lychnidis, the mud of combat settled, pike and eels picked clean the drifting dead. The crushed lilies slept to sprout green another year; the white acacia flowers fell like snow in the next fresh wind, and hid the blood. Widows mourned, maimed men fumbled at former skills, orphans knew hunger who had never lacked before. The people bowed to fate, as to a murrain on the cattle, or untimely hail stripping the olive trees. They went, even the widows and orphans, to make thank-offerings at the shrines; the Illyrians, notorious pirates and slavers, might have won. Their gods, regarding their offerings kindly, kept from them the knowledge that they had been a means and not an end. In grief more than in joy, man longs to know that the universe turns around him.

A few weeks later, King Philip came back from Thrace. With the ships of Athens ranging the coasts, the comfort of a sea-trip had been denied him; he had come most of the way by litter, but, for the last lap to Pella, mounted a horse to show that he could do it. He had to be helped down; Alexander, seeing he still walked with pain, came up to offer his shoulder. They went in together to a muted hum of comment; a sick bent man who had put on ten years and lost ten pounds; and a glowing youth who wore victory like the spring velvet on young stags’ horns.

Olympias at her window exulted in the sight. She was less pleased when as soon as the King was rested, Alexander went to his room and stayed two hours.

Some days later the King managed to hobble down for supper in Hall. Alexander, helping him up on his couch, noticed that the smell of pus still clung to him. Himself fastidiously clean, he reminded himself it was the smell of an honorable wound, and, seeing everyone’s eyes on the ungainly scramble, said, “Never mind, Father, every step you take is the witness of your valor.” The company was much pleased. It was five years now since the evening of the kithara, and few of them remembered it.

With home comfort and good doctoring, Philip mended quickly. But his limp was much worse; the same leg had been pierced again, this time in the hamstring. In Thrace the wound had putrefied; he had lain days near to death in fever; when the rotten flesh sloughed off, Parmenion said, there had been a hole you could get your fist into. It would be long before he could mount a horse without a leg-up, if he ever did; but once up, he sat handsomely with the straight-leg grip of the riding schools. In a few weeks he took over the army’s training; praised the good discipline he found, and kept to himself the thought that there had been a spate of innovations. Some of them were even worth following up.

In Athens, the marble tablet which witnessed the peace with Macedon had been torn down, in formal declaration of war. Demosthenes had convinced nearly all the citizens that Philip was a power-drunk barbarian, who looked to them as a source of plunder and slaves. That they had lain an easy prey five years before, and he had not harmed them, was credited to anything but himself. He had offered, later, to treat Athenian troops as allies in the Phokian war; but Demosthenes had kept them at home by declaring they would be held as hostages; so many men going to see for themselves could only come back and confuse the issue. Phokion, the general who had done best in action against Macedon, declared Philip’s offer to be sincere, and narrowly escaped a treason charge; he was only saved by a known probity which rivaled that of Aristeides the Just.

Demosthenes found it a constant nuisance. He had no doubt that he was laying out in the City’s interests the gold that the Persians sent him; but a great deal passed through his hands, he was accountable to no one, and the agent’s cut was naturally allowed for. It freed him from daily cares, and his time for public service; what object could be worthier? But he had to take care with Phokion.

In the Great War with Sparta, the Athenians had fought for glory and for empire; they had ended beaten to the dust and stripped of everything. They had fought for freedom and democracy, and had finished under the most brutal tyranny of their recorded years. Old men still lived who had starved through the winter siege; the middle-aged had heard of it at first hand, mostly from people it had ruined. They had lost faith in war. If they turned to it again, it could only be in one cause, for mere survival. Step by step they had been brought to think that Philip meant to destroy them. Had he not destroyed Olynthos? So at last they gave up the public dole, to spend it on the fleet; the tax on the rich was raised above the old flat rate, in proportion to what they owned.

It was the Athenian navy which made her safer than Thebes. Few understood that its high command was not just then very talented; Demosthenes took for granted that mere numbers must be decisive. Sea-power had saved Perinthos and Byzantion and the corn route of the Hellespont. If Philip forced his way south it must be by land. Demosthenes was now the most powerful man in Athens, her symbol of salvation. Alliance with Thebes was in his grasp; he had replaced the ancient enmity by a greater.

Thebes paused in doubt. Philip had confirmed her rule over the Boeotian countryside around her, an age-long issue; where Athens, declaring it antidemocratic, had sought to weaken her by giving the Boeotians self-rule. But Thebes controlled the land route into Attica; this was her value to Philip; all her bargaining power with him would vanish, if he and Athens made a separate peace.

So they debated, willing things to be as they had always been, unwilling to know that events are made by men, and that men had changed.

In Macedon, Philip grew brown and weathered, he could endure first half a day on horseback, and then a day; on the great horse-field by Pella lake, the cavalry wheeled and charged in complex maneuvers. There were now two royal squadrons, Philip’s and Alexander’s. Father and son were seen riding together deep in counsel, the gold head bent towards the grizzled one. Queen Olympias’ maids looked pale and fretted; one had been beaten, and was two days laid up.

In midsummer, when the grain was tall and green, the Council of Delphi met again. Kottyphos reported the Amphissians still defaulting, the proscribed leaders unexpelled; it was beyond his makeshift army to force them to their knees. He proposed in Council that King Philip of Macedon, who had championed the god against the impious Phokians, be asked to undertake the holy war.

Antipatros, who was there as envoy, rose to say he was empowered to give the King’s consent. What was more, Philip, as a pious offering, would campaign at his own expense. Votes of thanks and an elaborate commission were drafted, and inscribed by the local writing-master; he finished his task about the time when Antipatros’ courier, for whom fresh horses had stood by all the way, arrived at Pella.

Alexander was in the ball-court, playing odd-man-out with his friends. It was his turn to stand in the center of the ring, and try to stop the ball on its way. He had just got it with a four-foot jump, when Harpalos, condemned as usual to watch others limbering up, caught a flying rumor from outside, and called that the courier was here from Delphi. Alexander, in his eagerness to see the letter opened, brought it in to the King while he was in his bath.

He stood in a broad basin of ornate bronze, steaming his wounded leg while one of the squires rubbed in a strong-smelling liniment. His flesh was still sunken, his scars were plowed and knotted all over him; one collarbone, broken long ago when his horse was killed in battle, had knit with a thick callus. He was like some old tree on which the cattle year after year have rubbed their horns. With unthinking instinct, Alexander saw what kind of weapon had made each wound. What scars shall I carry, when I am as old as he?

“Open it for me,” said Philip. “My hands are wet.” He drooped his eyelid as a sign to hide bad news. But there was no need.

When Alexander ran back to the ball-court, the clean-shaved young men were splashing in the fountain, throwing jars of water at each other to sluice off the dust and cool down. Seeing his face, they paused, arrested in action like a sculpture group by Skopas.

“It has come!” he said. “We are going south.”