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

17

MOST OF THAT YEAR, and the next, we were in Baktria and Sogdiana. It was a long, hard war. You never know where you are with Sogdians. They are mostly at blood-feud with the tribe in the next hill-fort, over the rights to water, or women carried off while gathering wood. They would swear loyalty to Alexander till he had reduced these people; then, if he took their surrender and did not cut all their throats, would turn on him themselves. Spitamenes, their best general, was killed by Sogdian enemies; they sent Alexander his head, for a reward, but were no more to be trusted after. Our men never left a dying man on the field, however hard pressed they were, to be found by Sogdians. He would thank them for the death-stroke.

Alexander would be gone for weeks on these local wars. I missed him, and was forever anxious; but had my consolation. On campaign he was always sober. He had good mountain water. Soon he had sweated and rinsed the strong wine out of his blood, and was much as he used to be; enjoying sometimes a long night of spun-out talk and drinking, a long sleep after; moderate in between. The dreadful lesson of Marakanda lasted him all his days. He was never again seen disordered in his wine, let alone violent. Even his slanderers don’t deny it.

A lesser man might have held it against me, that I’d seen him in despair and shame. But he only remembered I had brought him comfort.

Once he had to recross the Oxos; it was easy this time, everything ready and better weather. I might hardly remember it, except that a miracle happened there. They had pitched the King’s tent, and I was seeing his things set out, when I heard the squires exclaiming. Right by the tent, which was not far from the river, was a dark welling spring. They had skimmed the scum off, in case it might serve for horses; and found that it was oil!

Alexander was fetched to see the wonder. We all rubbed it upon our arms, and it spread smoothly. He sent for Aristander the seer, to read the omen. He sacrificed, and announced that as oil anoints the wrestler before the games, the portent stood for labors, but its generous flow for victory and wealth.

We tried some in the King’s lamp at night. It burned quite well, but made a foul smoke; the lamp had to be taken outside. He wanted to taste it, but I said it might be as bad as Oxos water, which changed his mind. Leonnatos was for throwing a lighted torch into the pool, to see what happened; but Alexander thought it would be impious, towards a gift of the gods.

He had the labors it foretold. He was forever off in the mountains, often with small forces, for he had to divide his troops; he was resolved to bring Sogdiana under law. He learned wonderful skill and cunning in taking hill-forts. Many tales came back, of his endurance in cold or heat (you get extremes of both in Sogdiana); of a frightful storm, thunder and lightning-bolts followed by hailstones, and bitter cold, when men were perishing of despair and terror, freezing in their tracks, till, seeking the stragglers out in the maze of a black forest, he shook them alive and got them making fires. He was at last sitting down to get warm himself, when a soldier came staggering up, half dead on his feet, hardly knowing where he was. Alexander took off with his own hands the icy armor whose straps made his fingers bleed, and sat the man in his own chair by the fire.

(King Ptolemy, who was there, is putting such things in his book, to be known by men to come. Sometimes about other matters he sends for me, and I tell him whatever I think my lord would like to be remembered for. Seeing I followed his golden bier all the way here to Egypt, King Ptolemy in kindness found room for me in his Household. He speaks louder than he knows, now he’s a little hard of hearing (he is my elder by twenty years), and sometimes I hear him say, quietly as he supposes, to a foreign guest, “Look there. Don’t you see there has been great beauty? That is Bagoas, who was Alexander’s boy.”)

In camp I read Herodotos with Philostratos. He begged my pardon for the choice of book; he had not many; but as I told him, it was no news to me that Xerxes had been beaten in Greece; my great-great-grandfather had served with him.

Philostratos and I had grown fond of one another; only as teacher and pupil, though I saw Kallisthenes sniffing. When the King was at war, and the chronicle was up to date, he had not much to do till the King got back with his squires, whom Kallisthenes had the teaching of. They being of noble birth, and likely to command men later, Alexander did not want them ignorant. He had never taken this work from the philosopher, even after they were estranged. I thought it overgenerous, myself; but then, he had Aristotle to consider.

Just now Kallisthenes was going over his library; we could see through his open tent-flap the racks of scrolls. Philostratos went in, and had another try at borrowing one, so that I could read Greek verse; he had only taught me what he knew by heart. I heard him get a dry No, and tell Kallisthenes he’d be lucky if one of his pupils showed half my promise. Kallisthenes said his pupils showed promise in the noble art of philosophy, not mere book-reading. Philostratos said, “Can they read?” and walked out. They did not speak for a month.

Next time Alexander came back, I asked him to give Philostratos a present. He loved being asked for things. I don’t think my story about Kallisthenes did the present any harm either. “But what for yourself?” he said. “Don’t you think I love you enough?”

“I had presents at Susa without love,” I said. “You give me all I need. And my best suit is still as good as new; or nearly.”

He laughed and said, “Buy another. I like to see you come out in something new; like a pheasant in spring feathers.” He added gravely, “My love you will always have. That is a sacred bond to me.”

Soon he was off again. I had my new suit made in deep red, embroidered with gold-spangled flowers. The buttons were jeweled roses. I put it away to wear when he came back.

I should soon be twenty. Alone in my tent, I often looked in the mirror. For people like me, it is a dangerous age.

Though my looks had changed, it seemed I had beauty still. I was slim as ever; my face had not coarsened but fined. There is no salve like love.

It did not matter that I was a boy no longer. I had hardly been that when he saw me first. He was not a boy-lover; it was the comely young men around him that pleased his eye. One of them, a squire called Philippos, had lately died for it. I could see Alexander was fond of him; maybe there had been some night upon campaign—I can think of it gently now. At all events, the youth felt a burning loyalty, which he longed to prove. They made a long pursuit after the Sogdians, in summer heat; his horse gave out, one of many; so he ran on foot by the King’s horse, fully armed, and refused a mount he was offered, to show what he was made of. At the end of the chase, they found and fought the enemy. He stood by the King in the van; then, when it was over, suddenly the life went out in him, like the flame of an emptied lamp. He lasted just long enough to die in Alexander’s arms. Even I could not grudge him that.

Yes, I thought at the mirror, he will always love me. He never takes love without return. But when desire begins to fail, it will be a day of grief. Holy Eros! (for I knew the god well by this time) let it not be yet.

As the country was subdued, he was founding cities. Hephaistion founded some of them. He had learned Alexander’s eye for a good site, and though rough-tongued among Macedonians, had good manners and good sense with foreigners. Gladly I gave him credit for all his virtues, once he was out of sight.

What use to scourge oneself with jealousy of the past? He’d not had ten years of it before me, my first guess; he had had fifteen. They had been together since I was a baby learning to walk. The future no man knows; the past has been, now and forever.

We wintered in a rocky sheltered place called Nautika, with a waterfall and a cave. Alexander was up in the citadel tower again; reaching his bedchamber through a trapdoor in the floor. I was scared to death he would stumble on the ladder, some night after supper, though he’d never been known to fall however drunk he was. The room had a big hearth under a hole in the roof; snow would come through it and hiss upon the fire. He and Hephaistion would sit by it talking, with Peritas stretched out like a great rug. But the nights were mine. Sometimes he’d say, “You can’t go out there, it’s freezing,” and take me in just to keep me warm. He was always a giver.

In the room below, heated by fire-baskets and full of drafts, he would do business most of the day. At one end was his chair of state and place of audience; at the other, behind a curtain, his working-table, full of tablets and records, and letters from half the world. The more lands he conquered, the more work he had.

There were the soldiers to look after, and keep in shape through the idle time till the passes opened. He held games, for which everyone had to be ready on the first fine day. Once we even had a play, with a proper stage and good actors out from Greece. Actors would go through water, fire and ice, to go home and say they had played before Alexander. Philostratos sat by me, and explained in whispers the finer points. Kallisthenes, sitting among some of the squires he favored, sniffed at us, and said something that made Hermolaos smirk.

Spring broke at last; huge snowslides thundered down the mountains; streams turned to brown cataracts, hurling along the wreckage caught in their rush. The best passes opened. Sogdian robbers came out from their dens, awaiting the first caravans, but met with troops instead.

The land seemed quiet under Alexander’s garrisons; till news came in that a powerful chief, who the year before had submitted and pledged fealty, was up in arms raising his tribesmen. An old story, except that he owned the Sogdian Rock.

It had the name of the strongest place in Asia; a huge sheer crag, its upper part full of caves. Generations of chiefs had burrowed there; it would hold a small army, with stores for years. They had tanks to catch the snow and rain, and store it against summer. It was reported snow still lay thick there; but the chief had already sent up his warriors, wealth and women, while he himself went rousing the countryside.

Alexander sent to him, offering a parley to his envoys. It was now known that envoys’ heads returned from Alexander still on their shoulders; so two swaggering tribesmen came. When he offered free pardon for free surrender, the envoys laughed, and said he could go or stay; he would take the Sogdian Rock on the day his men grew wings.

Calmly he ordered them to be fed, and they took their heads safely home. A Sogdian chief, getting that message, would have left their heads till the last, when they’d have been glad to part with them. Alexander merely decided to have the Rock, if it took a year.

The whole camp marched there. One could see it for miles. Closer up, it really seemed a task for eagles. There was no easy side; it was precipice all round, plunging down to ragged rocks. One could just trace the goat-track the people had gone up by, because it had caught the snow; every yard was commanded by the mouths of the caves above.

The army made camp just out of bowshot. Behind them, the swarm of followers, sutlers and grooms and slaves, merchants and clerks and horse-traders, singers and painters and sculptors, carpenters and tanners, dancers and ironsmiths, jewelers and whores and bawds, spread about the Rock.

People have written of this enterprise, as if the King had been a boy taking up a dare. Of course that was always in him; he would have kept it into old age. But the Rock commanded leagues of country; he could not leave it unconquered in his rear. Also the Sogdians, who understand little except strength, would have despised his power, and cut his cities to bits as soon as he had moved on.

The chief, Oxyartes, did not live in this eyrie in peacetime. His house and his tribal village were at the foot of the trackway. Alexander would not let the soldiers burn them, lest it be read as a sign that he meant to give no quarter. In the cave-mouth, little figures, as small as if carved on rings, stood looking down. On the steeps below, where in summer one would not have seen foothold for a rock-rabbit, winter had picked out in white the tiny ledges, or the cracks that gashed the cliffs. It was full moon. Even at night, one saw the gleam of the snow. Alexander rode all round it, looking.

Next morning, he called for a muster of mountaineers. A small crowd reported; mostly hillmen born, who had climbed for him in other sieges. From all who came forward he picked three hundred. To the first man on the summit, he would give twelve talents, riches for life; to the next eleven, and so on for the first twelve. They were to go up that night, by the steepest side, which could not be seen from the caves. Each would carry a wallet of iron tent-pegs, a mallet to drive them in, and a strong light rope, to hitch himself to one peg while he fixed the next.

It was a cold clear night. I had everything ready, but he would not come to bed. This was the first really dangerous action he had not led himself. There could be no leader; each took his own way to the top. He had not the skill. But he could scarcely bear it, not to be risking his neck with them. When they had climbed too high to be seen in the dim light, he came in, but still paced about. “I saw three fall,” he said. “We shall never find them for burial. They lodged up there in the snow.” He lay down in his clothes, with orders to be called at the first light.

He woke uncalled, while it was still too dark to see much. Some of the officers were waiting for him. The top of the Rock was a dark loom in the faint sky. As its edges sharpened, Alexander stared up devouringly. His eyes were good; but Leonnatos could see far things like a hawk, though when he wanted to read, he had to hold the writing out the length of his arm. He pointed up, and cried, “They’re there! They’re signaling!”

The rising light showed them clustered on the blunt summit, as thick as cormorants. They had unrolled the long strips of linen they had carried bound around them; the signals streamed in the breeze.

Alexander stepped out, lifted his shield and flashed it at them. The trumpet squealed under the crags; the big voice of the herald bawled to the defenders to look above them; Alexander had found winged men.

The chief’s son, who was in command, at once asked terms of surrender. He could not see how many were up there, or what arms they had, which were none; their pegs and mallets had been enough to carry. Thirty had died, one man in ten. Their graves were the maws of kites; but Alexander gave them a rite of honor, with an empty bier, after the custom of the Greeks.

It took two days, for all the people to come down from the Rock with their goods and gear. I wondered how the women could manage the giddy path, in the wide skirts of Sogdiana; but I suppose they had done it often, in the endless tribal wars.

The chief’s son, who never learned that the King’s eagles had had no claws, came and pledged himself, promising to send a message to his father. To seal their compact, he begged the honor of entertaining the King to a royal feast.

It was agreed, for two days later. I was only afraid they meant to knife him as he sat at meat. It would be nothing much, for Sogdians.

I dressed him for it, in the Mitra and his grandest robe. He was in good spirits. Though he grieved for his mountaineers, this stronghold might have cost many hundred lives. The enemy had shed no blood at all, and were grateful enough to promise anything.

“Take care, Al’skander,” I said as I combed his hair. “He may offer you his daughter, like that Scythian king.”

He laughed. His friends had been very pleasant about the matter, picturing the bride being cut out of the clothes she’d been sewn up in some winters back, having the rancid mares’-milk fat scraped from her hair, her vermin picked off, and so on, to make her lovely for the marriage bed.

“If that young man has a daughter, she’s under five. You must come to the feast, it should be worth seeing. Put on that new suit of yours.”

The chief’s son, Histanes, had certainly spared no pains. A lane of torches led from the camp to his hall. Music came out, quite good for Sogdiana. (I had once heard Alexander compare Persian singing to the yowl of mating cats; but he hadn’t known I was listening.) The King was embraced by his host upon the threshold. It was a big hall. Oxyartes must be rich as well as powerful. Hangings of scarlet, stitched with ramping lions and leopards, smoldered in the light of torches enough to warm the air. The high table was set with gold and silver; gums I had not smelled since I left Susa burned in the fretted censers. If some of the Macedonians thought the place would have been worth sacking, they had to keep it to themselves.

The food was good and spicy; the caravans from India pass that way. Alexander and the host had an interpreter standing by them; the other Macedonian guests got along as best they could, letting their dishes be heaped up twice for good manners. Alexander, light eater as he was, performed this duty. He is wishing, I thought, they’d bring on the wine instead.

The sweets came in, and the wine. Histanes and Alexander pledged each other, exchanging compliments; then the interpreter stood forth and addressed us all in Greek. To honor the King, the ladies of the household would appear and dance. This was something indeed, in Sogdiana, where to look at their women is a matter for long knives.

I was at the foot of the table, near the royal squires. Ismenios had moved over to sit by me. His friendliness had increased; if he wished, as I thought, for more, he kept it to himself from loyalty to Alexander. I was his debtor for much kindness, and for smoothing my way with the others when he could.

The Sogdian youth on my other side now addressed me in their uncouth Persian, which I could barely understand. With both hands he drew female curves in the air, smiling and rolling his eyes. I said to Ismenios, “It seems there’s beauty in store.”

“They’ll perform up at the top,” he said, “for the King and generals. Only their backs for us. We must make do with one another.”

The musicians struck up a stately measure; the women entered, stepping to the beat, not dancing yet. Their heavy clothes were crusted with embroidery; gold chains, hung with gold pendants, circled their brows; massive rings on their arms and ankles clashed as they moved, or tinkled with little bells. We had hardly glimpsed them before they turned away from us to bow, with arms crossed on their breasts, before the King.

Histanes pointed, no doubt at the chief’s close kin, for some of them bowed again. Alexander inclined his head with a glance for each. I thought he paused, once, before his eye moved on. Ismenios said, “Yes, one of them must be beautiful, to make the King look twice.”

The music quickened; they began to dance.

In Persia, only such women dance as are trained in it to rouse men. This dance was decent and seemly; they hardly showed more than their hennaed feet, as they twirled their heavy skirts and clashed their anklets. Their bending had grace, without invitation; their swaying arms were like rippling barley. But you would be foolish, to call this modest dancing. These ladies were above modesty. Its place was taken by pride.

Ismenios said, “All very proper. One’s own sister could do all that. Maybe we’ll have real dancing later. Now you could have showed them something.”

I hardly heard him. The women wheeled in slow circles, or joined in a winding chain. Alexander’s eyes, as they turned with the wheel or followed the chain along, were always fixed on one link.

He liked all things good of their kind. I had heard him praise a fine woman, often enough. Yet my belly shrank on itself, and my hands grew cold.

He spoke to the interpreter, who pointed questioning. Alexander nodded; he was asking who that one was. Histanes replied, with some increase of dignity. She must be someone of rank; no doubt his sister.

The music grew louder; the line of women turned, and came down the hall. All of us guests must have our share of honor.

I knew at once which she was. Yes, a sister; I saw the likeness; he was a handsome man. She was about sixteen, full womanhood in Sogdiana. Pure ivory, faintly tinted, and not by art; soft hair, blue-black, small fronds brushing her cheeks; a clear forehead under the gold pendants; brows with a perfect arch, over large brilliant eyes. She had the kind of beauty that is famed for leagues around, and made no pretense of not knowing it. Her one defect was that her fingers were not quite long enough, and the ends too pointed. I had learned to look for such things in Darius’ harem.

Alexander’s eyes were following her still, waiting for her to turn his way again. She passed by me, sitting there in the new suit he had liked so much; and he never saw me.

The Sogdian youth pulled at my sleeve, and said, “Roxane.”

They danced back to the high table and made sweeping bows. Once more the interpreter hovered. As they turned to go, Histanes beckoned his sister. She came up; Alexander rose to his feet, and took her hands. He spoke and she replied. Her profile, now turned my way, was carved without flaw. When she went out, he stood till she had gone.

Ismenios said, “Well, one knows one’s in Sogdiana. No Persian girl would have done that, would she?”

I answered, “No.”

“Still, Alexander asked to speak to her. I thought so, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I thought so.”

“And sober as a judge. I expect he was just honoring the host. It’s true, she’s beautiful. Of course she’s darker; but she has somehow a look of you.”

“You flatter me.” He had always been kind. He sat there smiling over his wine with his clear blue eyes, his flaxen hair a little damp from the heat, turning the knife in my heart.

Up at the high table, Histanes and the King were busy with the interpreter. Alexander had barely touched his wine. The room grew hot; I loosed the neck of my coat, with its ruby-clustered buttons. The last hand to open it had been his.

I had found him Hephaistion’s boy, and with me he had wished for manhood. It had been my pride. So now I had given him to a woman. I sat in the hot torchlight, tasting death, and being pleasant to those around me, as I had been taught when I was twelve years old.