Ben Bova: Orion and the Conqueror

“Alexandros went after them?”

Pausanias nodded. “Left the capital in Antipatros’ hands, and he and his boyfriends went galloping out to deal with this miserable handful of cattle thieves.”

He broke into a sour grin, the closest I had seen Pausanias come to laughter. “The Maeti ran off to the hills, of course, and left their pitiful little village empty. So Alexandros sent back to Pella for a dozen or so Macedonian families, resettled them in the village, and changed its name to Alexandropolis.”

I waited for the rest of the story. Pausanias gave me an exasperated look.

“No one is allowed to put his name to a city,” he explained impatiently. “Only the king.”

I said, “Oh.”

“Do you know what Philip said when he heard about it?”

“What?”

“ ‘At least he might have waited until I’m dead.’ ”

I laughed. “He must be fond of the boy.”

“He was proud of him. Proud! The little snot slaps him in the face and he’s proud of it.”

I looked around us. We were riding at the head of the group but there were others of the guard close enough to overhear us. It was not wise to call Alexandros names.

“Don’t worry,” Pausanias said, seeing the concern on my face. “None of my men will inform on us. They all feel the same way.”

I wondered if that were true.

Pausanias went silent for a while and we rode with no sound but the soft padding of the horses’ hooves on the dusty ground and the occasional jingle of metal from their harnesses.

“It’s his mother, if you want to know where the fault lies,” Pausanias muttered, almost as if talking to himself. “Olympias has filled the boy’s head with crazy tales ever since he suckled at her breast. She’s the one who’s made him think he’s a godling. Made him believe that he’s too good for us, too good even for his own father.”

I said nothing. There was nothing that I could say.

“All those tales that Philip isn’t his true father, that he was sired by Herakles—that’s Olympias’ twaddle, for sure. Sired by Herakles! She would’ve loved to have Herakles plow her, all right. But she settled for Philip.”

I recalled that Nikkos had called Olympias a witch, and the other men had argued about her supernatural powers. And her reputation as a poisoner.

For my part, Alexandros seemed like a typical teen-age lad—albeit a teen-age boy whose father was king of Macedonia; a teenager who had already led cavalry in battle a half-dozen times. To me he seemed eager to show the men around him that he too was a man and no longer a boy. And even more desperate to prove himself in his father’s eyes, I thought. He was heir to the kingdom, but his accession to the throne was apparently not all that certain: the Macedonians elected their kings, and if anything happened to Philip, young Alexandros might have a difficult time convincing the elders that he was ready for the throne.

He had his Companions, though: the lads he had grown up with, mostly the sons of Macedonian noble families. He was their natural leader, and they seemed almost to worship him. Four of them seemed especially close to him: smiling Ptolemaios, gangling Harpalos, the Cretan Nearkos, and especially the handsome Hephaistion vied with one another to shine in Alexandros’ eyes. In battle they rode together, each trying to outdo the other. They even shaved their chins clean, as Alexandros did, although the word among the guards was that Alexandros hardly needed to shave at all.

“He’s effeminate that way,” Pausanias told me, more than once. He seemed to take pleasure in saying it. I wondered if he realized that my own beard grew so slowly that I shaved only rarely.

There was something in Alexandros’ eyes, though, that disturbed me. More than ambition, more than an avid quest for glory. His eyes seemed to me far older than eighteen. Something glittered in those golden eyes that seemed ageless, timeless. Something that seemed faintly mocking whenever the Little King looked my way.

As the days passed, my memory did not improve. It was as if I had been born, fully grown and dressed in a mercenary hoplite’s armor, just a few days earlier. The men around me took me for a Scythian, since I was tall and broad of shoulder, and had gray eyes. Yet I understood their language—the various dialects and even the outright foreign tongues that some of the men spoke.

I tried to remember who I was and why I was here. I could not avoid the feeling that I had been sent here purposely, dispatched to this time and place for a reason that I could not fathom.

The dagger strapped to my thigh was a clue. It had been there for so long that even when I removed it the straps and sheath left their imprint against my flesh. I had not shown it to anyone since the night the Argives had tried to assassinate Philip.

But on the trail back to Pella one night I removed it from beneath my skirt and one of the other guardsmen noticed its polished onyx hilt glint in the firelight.

“Where did you get that?” he asked, eyeing the beautifully crafted dagger appreciatively.

From Odysseus , I started to say. But I held my tongue. No one would believe that. I was not certain that I believed it myself.

“I don’t know,” I said, letting him take it from my hand and examine it closely. “I have no memory beyond a week or so ago.”

Soon the other members of the guard were admiring it. They began to argue over its origin.

“That’s a Cretan dagger,” said one of the men. “See the way the hilt is curved. Cretan.”

“Pah! You don’t know what you’re talking about. Take a good look at the design on the hilt. You ever see a Cretan design that used flying cranes? Never!”

“All right, hawkeye, where’s it from, then?”

“Egypt.”

“Egypt? You’ve had too much wine!”

“It’s an Egyptian piece, I tell you.”

“So’s your mother.”

The men nearly came to blows. Pausanias and I had to push them apart and change the subject.

But the following night the armorer of the guardsmen asked to see my dagger. It was becoming famous, which worried me. I had always kept it hidden so that I could use it in an emergency when all else failed. If everyone knew about it, how could I use it as a surprise weapon?

“That blade,” said the armorer admiringly. “I’ve never seen work like that. Nobody makes an iron blade like that. It’s a damned work of art.”

The flying cranes were the symbol of the House of Odysseus, I knew. Somehow I had received that dagger from Odysseus, king of Ithaca, in the Achaian camp outside the walls of Troy.

A thousand years ago.

It could not be, yet I seemed to remember it. I could see in my mind’s eye those high thick walls and the single combats between heroes on the plain before the city. I could see valiant Hector and fiery Achilles and stout Agamemnon and wary Odysseus as clearly as if I were with them now.

When I stretched myself out on the ground beneath my guardsman’s cloak that night I clutched the dagger in my hand, determined to dream a dream about it, and about who I was and why I could remember a war from a thousand years in the past yet could not remember anything from a month ago.

I dreamed.

It was a confused, troubling dream, whirling and moving and filled with half-hidden faces and voices I could not quite hear.

I saw Alexandros, golden hair streaming in the wind as he galloped on his midnight steed over a stark desert made of human skulls. His face changed ever so subtly, still the golden-haired intense face of that royal youth, yet now he was someone else, someone mocking and scornful who laughed as he rode roughshod over living men, crushing their bodies beneath his horse’s hooves.