Ben Bova - Orion and the Conqueror

The local hill folk held scant allegiance to Thebes or anyone else except their own villages. To them, the world was bounded by their mountains and valleys. They knew nothing of the impending war. So when they saw a half-dozen young dandies riding through one of their passes, they thought they had received a windfall from the gods.

They chose their spot well, where the rocky mountain walls nearly touched one another and a rider had to nose his horse carefully around the boulders strewn along the trail.

Alexandros was in the lead, as he usually insisted on, with Hephaistion close behind him. Strung out further behind were Ptolemaios, Nearkos and Harpalos. Ptolemaios was singing a bawdy song, enjoying the echo of his own voice against the mountain walls. I brought up the rear, constantly searching the rugged crests of the mountains and looking behind us for any signs of peril.

I heard the danger, rather than saw it. A rumbling, crunching sound. Looking up, I saw a boulder bouncing down the steep mountainside, kicking up more rocks as it fell.

“Look out!” I bellowed, pulling up on Thunderbolt’s reins.

Alexandros heard it too. With a single glance upward he kicked Ox-Head forward, Hephaistion right beside him. The rest of us turned our horses around, away from the rock slide.

The boulders thundered down and crashed to the floor of the pass in a shower of gritty dust and flying pebbles. Our mounts shied and whinnied. Thunderbolt would have taken off altogether; it took all my strength to hold him where he was.

Eerie war cries echoed through the canyon and I saw men racing along the top of the cliffs. A spear came flying toward me. I saw it in slow-motion, flexing as it glided through the air. Men were scrambling down the rocky face of the cliffs on both sides of us.

And Alexandros was on the other side of the boulders that they had rolled down.

I ducked under the spear and let it fall clattering to the bare ground. Ptolemaios, Harpalos, and Nearkos were being swarmed under by more than a dozen half-naked men armed with spears and staves, but they had their swords out and were slashing at their attackers from horseback. I urged Thunderbolt through the melee, bashing a few heads with my own sword as I approached the rock slide.

The boulders formed a barrier that I could not ride past. I could hear shouting and swearing from the other side, and the scream of a man in death-agony. Swiftly I climbed onto Thunderbolt’s back and leaped atop the nearest boulder, then jumped to the next one.

Alexandros and Hephaistion were on their feet, back to back, surrounded by hill tribesmen with murder in their eyes. Two half-grown boys were leading Hephaistion’s horse down the canyon. Ox-Head was nowhere in sight.

With the greatest roar my lungs could give I leaped from the boulder onto the mass of men attacking Alexandros. Spears snapped and bones crunched. I rolled to my feet and slashed the nearest man almost in two. They were all moving with languid dreamy slowness. I ducked a spear and thrust my sword into the man’s belly, dodged sideways as I yanked the sword out and grabbed the next man’s spear with my left hand. I cracked the spearman’s skull apart with an overhand swing of my sword just as another spear pierced my leather corselet and sliced into my ribs.

I hit the spear with a backhand sword thrust and it pulled free of my flesh. I felt no pain, only the exultation of battle fever. Alexandros killed the man who had speared me and suddenly the attackers broke and ran.

“The others!” I yelled and started scrabbling up the boulders that separated us from Ptolemaios, Harpalos, and Nearkos.

They were still on their horses, although Nearkos’ mount was bleeding in half a dozen places. We roared down on the hill men, slashing and killing until they tried to escape our fearful swords, but Harpalos rode down two of them as they ran in blind panic along the canyon trail. Alexandros pulled down another who was scrambling up the rocks and took his head off with a single blow. I saw one climbing madly up the cliff face. I took half an instant to calculate the throw, then flung my sword at him. It struck him squarely between the shoulder blades. He screamed and fell face-first at my feet with a wet thump, the sword sticking out of his back.

Turning, I saw that Hephaistion held the last of the hill men by the hair. He could not have been more than thirteen: dirty, clothed in rags, on his knees, eyes bulging at the bloody sword Hephaistion held in his other hand. His mouth was wide open but no sound came from it. He was petrified with fear, looking at his death inches away.

“Wait,” Alexandros commanded. “These dogs have taken Ox-Head. I want him to lead us to their village.”

The boy did as he was told. We wound through the narrow pass, out onto a wider trail, and then up a rocky hillside where sheep had cropped the grass almost to its roots. Beyond the second row of hills, nested in the cup of a wooded valley, was the boy’s village.

All the way there, Alexandros raged and fumed about Ox-Head. “Steal him from me, will they? I’ll roast them alive, each and every one of them. They’ll curse the day they were born. If they don’t return Ox-Head to me I’ll kill them all with my own hands!”

I saw that his hands were shaking: the aftermath of battle. He had nearly been killed, although he actually suffered nothing more serious than a few nicks and bruises and a bad fright.

We must have made a grim sight, six bloodied warriors, three of us on foot. I had given Alexandros my mount to ride. Nearkos walked beside me, slim and small, silent and dark as a shadow, leading his bleeding horse with one hand, his sword in the other.

The village elders came out to meet us, trembling visibly. A pair of half-naked boys, silent and round-eyed, led Ox-Head and Hephaistion’s mount toward us.

The elders stopped a few paces before us, dithering and jittering, glancing uneasily at us and each other.

Before they worked up the courage to say anything, Alexandros spoke. “Where are your young men?”

The elders looked back and forth among themselves.

“Well?” Alexandros demanded.

One of the elders was completely bald, but had a white beard that ran halfway down his chest. His fellows nudged him forward.

“Our young men, lord, are dead. You have killed them all.”

Alexandros snorted. “Don’t lie to me, grandfather! We allowed ten or more of them to escape. I want to see them. Now! Else I will burn your miserable village to the ground and sell your women and children into slavery.”

“But, brave sir—”

“Now!”

“Sir, they have run away. They fear your wrath and they have hidden themselves in the hills.”

“Send your boys to find them. Have your women prepare a meal for us. See to it!”

They jumped to his command. It struck me that half a dozen men could be swarmed under if the whole village attacked us at once. But they were cowed, terrified. The boys scampered out toward the hills. The women bustled around their cook fires. The elders led us to their village’s central green, where a feast was prepared for us.

By nightfall, seventeen young men stood sullenly before Alexandros, firelight flickering on their grimy, frightened faces. Several of them wore blood-soaked bandages on their arms or legs.

We had eaten a decent meal of roast lamb. The local wine was thin and bitter; Alexandros had made certain that we drank no more than one cup apiece.

Now he strutted up and down before the failed ambushers, fists on his hips, firelight glinting off the jeweled pommel of his sheathed sword. The meal seemed to have taken the edge off his rage. That, and the fact that Ox-Head had been returned unharmed.

Turning on the white-bearded village leader, Alexandros demanded, “What retribution should I exact on men who tried to kill me?”