Ben Bova - Orion and the Conqueror

But at the palace gate we were stopped. I did not recognize any of the guards on duty there, so I identified myself and told their sergeant that I had brought Harkan and his men to join the army. The sergeant looked us over with a professional eye, then sent one of the boys lounging nearby to run for the captain of the guard.

We dismounted and the sergeant offered us water for ourselves and our horses. Two of his men went with us to the fountain just inside the gate. They were treating us with civility, but with great care, as well.

“What’s the news?” I asked the sergeant after slaking my thirst.

He leaned casually against the doorjamb of the guard house, in the shade of the doorway—within arm’s reach of the clutch of spears standing there.

“There’s to be a royal wedding within the month,” he said, his eyes on Harkan and the men by the fountain.

“Philip’s marrying again?”

That brought a laugh out of him. “No, no—he’s still content with his Eurydice, for the while. She’s presented him with a son, you know.”

“A son?”

“A truly legitimate heir,” the sergeant said. “No question about this babe being sired by a god.” He glanced around, then added, “Or whomever the Molossian witch bedded down with.”

“And what of Alexandros?”

The sergeant shrugged his heavy shoulders. “He had gone off to Epeiros with his mother when Philip married Eurydice, but the king called him back here to Pella.”

“And he came back?”

“You bet he did. He obeyed the king’s order, all right. He’d better, after all the trouble he stirred up.”

I was about to ask what trouble Alexandros had stirred when the captain of the guard came tramping up to us, flanked by four fully-armed men. It was not Pausanias, but the officer of the day, a man named Demetrios. I recognized him; like me, he had been quartered in the barracks by the palace.

“Orion,” he said, pronouncing my name like a heavy sigh.

“I’ve returned, Demetrios, with seven new recruits for the army.”

He looked at me sadly. “Orion, you’ll have to come with me. You’re under arrest.”

I was stunned. “Under arrest? What for?”

Harkan and Batu and the others came back toward us from the fountain. The sergeant stood up straighter and glanced at the spears resting by his side.

Demetrios said, “Those are my orders, Orion. From the king himself. You are charged with desertion.”

Before a fight broke out I said, “Very well. I’m willing to accept the king’s justice. But these men are volunteers for the army and they should be treated as such. They are professional soldiers, all of them.”

Demetrios looked at them. “I’ll see that they’re well taken care of, Orion. But you must come with me.”

“All right.”

“I have to take your sword.”

I unbuckled it and handed sword and belt to him.

Harkan asked, “What will they do to you?”

“It’s all right,” I told him. “Once I’ve had a chance to speak with the king this will all be cleared up.”

Demetrios looked utterly dubious, but he did not contradict me. To the sergeant he said, “Take these men to the army barracks and have the officer in charge look them over. If they meet his approval, see that they’re properly housed and equipped.”

“Yessir,” said the sergeant.

Then he turned back to me. “Come along, Orion.”

Escorted by Demetrios and his four fully-armed guards, I marched across the palace courtyard and into a prison cell.

The cell was underground, beneath the palace, dark and so small that I could touch the walls on both sides without even extending my arms to their full reach. No window, except a barred slot on the heavy locked door. No bed; just a straw pallet on the bare dirt floor. And an earthenware jug for a chamberpot.

“I really hate to do this to you, Orion,” Demetrios told me once we reached the cell. He came inside with me, while his men waited out in the dark corridor that was lit only by a weak shaft of dusty sunlight slanting in from an airshaft. “It’s the king’s standing order. The instant you showed up again in Pella you were to be arrested. For desertion.”

“The king himself gave you this order?” I asked.

“No!” Demetrios seemed shocked to think that the king would speak to him personally. “Pausanias gave me the order, months ago. But it’s from the king’s mouth; he told me so.”

“How many months ago?” I asked. “Was it when the Hindi ambassador from the Great King returned to Pella?”

“The Hindi…” Demetrios frowned with thought. “Oh, you mean the one with the name nobody can pronounce. No, I think it was before then. Yes, it had to be before then; I remember I was surprised that you’d be accused of desertion—of anything—because you were so far away in the Persian Empire. How’d the king know you’d deserted?”

Indeed , I said to myself. How could he know what I was doing in Parsa before Ketu or anyone else returned to tell him?

“I remember!” Demetrios said. “It was during all that hubbub when the king married Attalos’ niece and Olympias stormed off to Epeiros with Alexandros.”

“ That’s when the order was given?”

He bobbed his head up and down. “Yes, I remember it clearly now.”

“And you received the order from Pausanias?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” I said, looking around at the stone walls of my cell, “please tell Pausanias I am back, and safely lodged in my new quarters.”

In the dim light of the cell I could not make out the expression on his face, but Demetrios’ voice sounded strained. “I will tell him, Orion. Believe me, I’m going to him right now.”

“Thank you.”

He left me alone in the cell. The thick wooden door, reinforced with iron strapping, swung shut. I heard the bolt shoot home. I was in almost total darkness, alone except for the dagger strapped to my thigh. Then I noticed a pair of red beady eyes glowering in the darkest corner of the cell. I would not be totally alone, I realized. There were the rats.

I had plenty of time to think. The hours dragged by slowly in that dark cell. I counted the days by the times that the jailor shuffled by and shoved a shallow metal bowl of thin gruel through the slot at the bottom of the door. It was decent enough. He took the chamberpot, too, when I left it by the slot. No one came in to change the straw, though.

I can go for many days without sleep, and I feared to lie down on that straw pallet and offer myself to the rats that chittered in the darkness. In the dim recesses of my memory I recalled Anya being killed by a pack of huge, fierce rats in the filth and slime of a city’s subterranean tunnels. Her name was Aretha in that lifetime and I had been powerless to save her.

I tried to focus my thoughts on Pella and Philip and Olympias, on this time and place, on the commands that Hera had given me—and others.

There was no doubt in my mind that Hera was manipulating all of us now: Alexandros, me, even Pausanias. She had taken on human form and become Olympias, Queen of Macedon, the witch of Pella. She had created a son, Alexandros. She and Aten.

Seeing Anya take on human form and fall in love with one of their creatures, Hera did the same. And so did Aten, the Golden One, the cynical self-styled progenitor of the human race, the one who had called himself Apollo at Troy. They created Alexandros, the godling, the golden-haired offspring of the Golden One. Now Hera/Olympias was scheming to make him King of Macedon and eventually conqueror of the whole world.

“Why?” I asked in the dark solitude of my prison cell. “Why are they doing this?”

I knew there was only one way to find out. I had to face them myself, in their own domain. But to do that I had to put this body of mine into sleep, and leave it at the mercy of those hungry, baleful eyes.