Ben Bova - Orion and the Conqueror

A viper slid past her face, hissing at me. “The poison will not work fast enough to stop me from snapping your lovely neck,” I said.

Olympias’ eyes glittered like the snake’s. But then I saw something different in them, as if another person were looking out at me through her jade-green eyes. “I have never died before. What is it like, Orion?”

I must have looked surprised. She said, “Oh, you have died countless times. Don’t you remember? No, of course not.”

A word drifted into my mind. A name. “Osiris.”

Her smile widened. “Yes, Osiris. The god who dies each winter and is reborn in the spring. That was you, Orion, in another life. And Prometheus. Do you remember the band of warriors?”

“In the Ice Age.” Vaguely I recalled a battle in the snowy wastes of a distant time. “Anya was there.”

“Is it exciting to die?” she asked me. I could feel the pulse in her throat quickening. “Is it arousing?”

Try as I might, I could remember nothing definite of those earlier incarnations. And then I realized what was happening.

“You’re playing with me,” I said. “Toying with my mind.”

But Hera’s thoughts were on death. “Tell me, Orion. What is it like to die? What does the ultimate adventure feel like?”

I remembered falling down the endless pit into the molten core of the Earth. I remembered the cave bear that ripped my body apart.

“Pain,” I said. “The deaths I have suffered have been painful ones.”

“And afterward?”

I rolled off her naked body. I could feel the snakes slithering out from under me.

“Afterward it begins all over again. Another life, another death. What does it matter?”

She was Hera. No more pretense of being Olympias, no need for witchcraft. Undisguised now, she revealed herself as the goddess, one of the Creators. Propping herself up on one elbow she traced a red fingernail across my chest. “What’s the matter, creature? Don’t tell me you’re bored with life.”

“What reason do I have for living?”

“What reason?” She laughed. “Why, to serve your creators. That is your reason for living. To do whatever I want you to.”

I stared up at the shadowy ceiling, avoiding her eyes, and asked, “And what might that be?”

“To see how far this hotheaded princeling called Alexandros can reach.”

“Your son.”

“Olympias’ son,” she acknowledged.

“What was it like to give birth?” I asked her.

She replied haughtily, “I wouldn’t know. That is a human ordeal that I want no part of.”

“Then you—” I hesitated, groping for words. “You inhabit Olympias’ body only when you choose to?”

Again her disdainful laughter. “Don’t torture yourself trying to understand us, Orion.”

“Us?”

“We Creators. Your mind can’t comprehend our powers, don’t even bother to try.” Then she leaned against me and ran her hand down my abdomen to my crotch. “Your task is to satisfy my desires, creature.”

“That’s easy enough to do in bed,” I countered, still avoiding her eyes, trying to maintain control of myself long enough to learn more. “But what am I to do about Alexandros and Philip?”

“Serve Philip well,” she said. “Protect Alexandros, as you did in Athens. And wait.”

“Wait? For what?”

“No more questions,” she murmured.

“One more. Why did you send those assassins against Alexandros?”

I felt her body twitch with shocked surprise. “How did you—” Then she caught herself. For a startled moment she stared down at me, speechless. At last she broke into a bitter laughter. “My creature exhibits some powers of intelligence, after all.”

“No one could profit by having Alexandros assassinated,” I reasoned. “But someone might profit by having me save Alexandros from assassination.”

“I wanted Alexandros to accept you. To trust you. When you started out for Athens he regarded you as one of his father’s men. Now he owes his life to you.”

“He hardly thinks so.”

“I know what he thinks better than you do, Orion,” she said. “Alexandros trusts you now.”

Again I asked, “But why did you—”

“I said no more questions.” And she slid her body over mine, supple as one of her snakes, eyes burning with human passion and something beyond.

The army was on the move again, this time heading south, toward Attica. Long columns of troops winding along the roads, stirring up clouds of dust that could be seen for miles. Cavalry flanking the roads, moving up along the hillsides where there was grass enough for the horses. Threading through the narrow mountain passes, the cavalry went first and the foot soldiers ate dust. In the rear was the long train of mules and ox-carts, laden with armor and weapons and supplies.

It felt good to be out of the palace, away from Olympias’ grasp. Once again I breathed the crisp clear air of the mountains. Even with the dust and smell of the horses and mules it tasted like nectar to me.

I was assigned to Alexandros’ guard and rode along with his Companions. They bantered good-naturedly about Thunderbolt and even compared my mount favorably to Alexandros’ own Ox-head—but never when he was within hearing.

Alexandros was a young man of moods. I could see that he was being torn up within himself. He admired his father and hated him at the same time. Olympias had filled his mind with the central idea that Philip did not love him and did not truly accept him as his son and heir. Still, Alexandros wanted his father to admire him; yet he feared that such a desire was treason to his mother.

Young, ambitious, uncertain of his abilities or his acceptance by his own father, Alexandros did what so many frightened, self-conscious teenagers do: he went to extremes. He boasted that his true father was Zeus himself, or at least Herakles. He claimed that he wanted to be like Achilles, who chose glory over a long life. He had to be braver and more daring than anyone else. He took risks that others would blanch at.

My job was to keep him alive.

“He’s a young hothead,” Philip told me the day we began our march southward. “And his Companions are completely in awe of him. They even shave their faces clean, just as he does. It’s up to you to see that he doesn’t break his foolish neck.”

No easy task.

When the cavalry had to forage in the hills of Pieria, Alexandros took it upon himself to raise fresh recruits for the army by galloping his Companions into each miserable little village along the way and giving a speech from Ox-Head’s back.

“We march to glory!” he shouted in his thin tenor voice. “Who will come with me?”

Inevitably some of the village youths would step forward, faces burning with visions of fame and honor—and loot. Just as inevitably the village elders would tug them back into the crowd. Or worse, their mothers would while the rest of the villagers laughed. Still, Alexandros got a handful of newcomers along the way.

As we approached Thessaly, though, the responses became decidedly more hostile. At one of the mountain passes the local sheep herders even tried to ambush us.

All they saw, I’m sure, was a gaggle of beardless lads on horseback, all of them richly adorned. The horses alone would be worth a fortune to a man who spent his life scrabbling out a living on those rocky hillsides.

Our job was to scout the pass, make certain it was safe for the main body of the army to come through. We knew full well that a handful of determined men could hold up an army for days or even weeks, as Leonidas had at Thermopylae long ago. Philip wanted to get to Thebes before the Athenians could bring their army up to unite with the Thebans. To be held up in these mountain passes could be disastrous.