Ben Bova - Orion and the Conqueror

“You two sleep very lightly.”

“It comes from the life we’ve led,” said Batu lightly. “Those others in there, they’ve been paid soldiers all their lives. Bandits don’t sleep as well as they do.”

I grinned back at him.

“But what makes you think the king will pardon you?” Batu asked again.

“Even if he doesn’t, I have to warn him. Pausanias plans to kill him at the wedding.”

Harkan scowled at me. “That’s a serious charge, Orion.”

“He told me himself.”

“And the queen is behind it?”

“Yes.”

“That means Alexandros is in it, too.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “He will certainly benefit from it—if we allow it to happen.”

“We?” Batu asked.

“I need your help,” I said. “I can’t get into Aigai by myself.”

They both fell silent for many moments. I could understand what was going through their minds. They had found employment, a roof over their heads, a place in the world here in Philip’s kingdom. They were no longer outlaws, hunted, living in the wild little better than the beasts. And I was asking them to throw all that away, to desert their positions and fling themselves into the midst of the machinations being hatched by the witch-queen Olympias.

They would be fools to agree. Yet they owed their comfortable positions to me and they knew it. I had brought them to Pella and Philip’s employ. If anyone had a right to ask them to give it up, it was I.

Before either of them could speak, my own mind hatched a plot of its own.

“Has Pausanias left for Aigai yet?”

“He departs tomorrow at first light,” said Harkan.

“Then listen to me,” I said, “Pausanias will send you scouring the countryside when he finds that I have broken out of confinement. He knows I will head for Aigai and he’ll send you and most of the guard searching for me. All I ask is that when you find me you bring me to the king, not to Pausanias or the queen.”

“How do you know Pausanias will send us?” Harkan asked.

“And even if he does, he will not send only the two of us,” added Batu. “How can you be certain that we will be the ones who will find you?”

I gave them a grim smile. “Pausanias will send almost the entire royal guard, never fear. And I will find you , my friends. In the hills outside Aigai.”

Harkan looked doubtful, Batu amused at my certainty.

“When does the wedding take place?” I asked.

“The night of the full moon.”

I looked up at the fat waxing moon. “Three nights from now, I judge.”

They agreed.

“Search the hills to the right side of the road before Aigai,” I said. “I’ll be waiting for you there.”

Before they could argue I reached up to the edge of the eave and, after lifting myself onto the roof, ran toward the section of the barracks where Pausanias and the other officers slept in individual rooms.

I had no way of knowing which window was his. I simply swung myself through the first one I came to. It was not Pausanias, but the man stirred in his sleep as I leaned over him close enough to see his face in the darkness. Four sleeping rooms I went through before I found Pausanias. There were no guards in the corridor that linked the rooms, although I knew there was a perfunctory pair of men drowsing on guard duty down in the yard, before the door to the barracks.

At last I found Pausanias’ room. He was tossing unhappily in his sleep, moaning slightly. The thin chiton he wore was soaked with perspiration.

I clamped my left hand over his mouth and pointed my dagger at his suddenly wide-open eyes.

“Dreaming of the queen?” I asked. “Waiting for her to invite you into her bed once again?”

His right hand moved slightly, but I touched the point of my dagger to the artery pulsing in his throat. He froze into immobility.

“Has she promised to make you regent here in Pella while her son goes off to conquer the Persians?”

I could see by his eyes that this idea was a surprise to him.

“Not even that?” I asked. “All she’s offered you is her body? She certainly has you entranced, then.”

He tried to say something but my hand muffled his words.

“Your cell wasn’t strong enough to hold me, Pausanias. Now I’m going to the king and tell him what you told me. The next time you see me, you’ll have a noose around your neck.”

I sheathed my dagger. He shoved my hand away from his mouth and reached for the sword hanging beside the bed. I punched him solidly on his temple and he went limp, unconscious.

Then I ducked through his window and back up onto the roof, heading for the stables and a fast horse and the hills before Aigai.

Pausanias reacted almost exactly as I had expected. By the time I had swung off the road to Aigai and nosed my horse up into the brown hills, couriers on lathered horses raced to the old city’s gates. Before the sun went down that day a troop of royal guards came up the road, riding almost as hard as the couriers, with Pausanias at their head. They made camp in front of the city wall, obviously to block my entry into Aigai.

Pausanias went inside. To the queen, I imagined, breathless to tell her of the danger to their plans that I represented. I smiled to myself as I made my own camp for the night. No fire for me. I was not ready to be caught just yet. I let my horse crop the scrawny grass pushing up through the rocky ground while I armed myself with a handful of small stones and went hunting. I killed a hare, skinned it and ate its meat raw. It was tough, but nourishing enough. Then both the horse and I drank at a shallow stream bubbling down the hillside.

She came to me in my dreams, of course.

Hera was furious. No sooner had I closed my eyes in sleep than I found myself standing before her in a chamber so vast that I could see neither its walls nor its ceiling. Enormous columns of gray-green marble rose like a forest, dwarfing even the many-columned hall of the Great King. Hera sat on a throne that glowed faintly, completely alone, magnificently beautiful in a flowing white robe that left her slim arms bare except for her jeweled bracelets and armlets, all in the shape of coiling snakes.

Staring down at me with fiery eyes, she snapped, “You are more trouble than you’re worth, Orion.”

I smiled at her. “I accept that as a compliment.”

Her eyes blazed. She leaned forward slightly, hands clenching into white-knuckled fists, body rigid with tension.

I felt the beginnings of the pain she had inflicted on me before, but I fought against it, strove to banish it from my consciousness. It faded away before it became anything more than an annoying tingling.

Hera’s face contorted into an even angrier frown.

“It’s not working,” I said. “You can’t punish me the way you once did.”

“You’re being protected!” The thought seemed to surprise her.

“Or perhaps I’ve learned to protect myself,” I said, not daring to hope that Anya was near. She was the only one who would protect me, I knew.

“Impossible. We wiped that capability from your mind before we sent you here.”

“We?” I asked. “You and the Golden One?”

She did not need to answer; I knew.

“You failed, then. My memories are returning. My abilities are growing.”

“We will destroy you, once and for all.”

I thought of Ketu. “And grant me the release of oblivion?”

Hera glowered at me.

“The Golden One fathered Alexandros, didn’t he? The two of you are playing at kings and empires. Does it amuse you? Is there some point to it beyond your own pitiful entertainment?”

“You don’t understand anything, Orion.”

“Don’t I? As far as I can see, you are serving the whims of Aten, the Golden One, whatever he’s calling himself now. He wanted to create a Trojan empire that spanned Europe and Asia. I stopped him then. Now he gets you to help him create the empire he’s wanted all along—by bearing his son, Alexandros, and allowing him to conquer the Persians.”