Arthur Clarke - Time’s Eye

Around him the smoke of a thousand fires rose to the pale sky. The men were emerging from their tents, hefting clothing and gear heavy with mud. Some of them shaved off their stubble: an order to be clean-shaven had been one of the King’s earliest initiatives when he had taken over the army from his assassinated father, ostensibly so that enemies would not be given an easy handhold in close quarters. The Macedonians moaned, as usual, about this fancy Greek practice, and about the wretched, barbarous state of this place the King had brought them to.

Soldiers always liked to grumble. But when the fleet had first arrived here in the delta, having sailed down the Indus from the King’s camp, Eumenes himself had been appalled by the heat, the stink, the clouds of insects that had hovered over the marshy ground. But Eumenes prided himself on his disciplined mind; a wise man got on with his business whatever the weather. It even rains on god-kings, he thought.

Hephaistion’s tent was a grand affair, far grander than Eumenes’, a sign of the favor with which the King regarded his closest companion. The living quarters were surrounded by a series of vestibules and antechambers, and were guarded by a detachment of Shield Bearers, the army’s elite infantry—reputed to be the finest foot soldiers in the world.

As Eumenes neared the tent he was challenged. The guard was a Macedonian, of course. He certainly knew Eumenes, yet he stood before the Secretary now, holding up his stabbing sword. Eumenes held his ground, his gaze unflinching, and eventually the soldier backed down.

The hostility of a Macedonian warrior for a Greek administrator was as inevitable as the weather—even if it was founded on ignorance, for how did these half-barbarians imagine that the great machinery of the army kept them all alive and provisioned, organized and directed, if not for the meticulous work of Eumenes’ Secretariat? Eumenes pushed his way into the tent without glancing back.

The vestibule was a mess. Chamberlains and pages righted tables, gathered up fragments of smashed crockery and bits of ripped clothing, and mopped up wine and what looked like blood-stained vomit. Last night Hephaistion had evidently once more been entertaining his commanders and other “guests.”

Hephaistion’s usher was a small, fat, fussy man with peculiar strawberry-blond hair. When he had kept Eumenes waiting in the vestibule for just the precise time required to reinforce his own position, he bowed and waved Eumenes forward into Hephaistion’s private chambers.

Hephaistion was on his couch, loosely covered by a sheet, and still in his nightshirt. He was the center of industry: chamberlains laid out clothes and brought in food, and a file of pages brought in jugs of water. Hephaistion himself, propped up on one elbow, picked languidly at a tray of meat.

There was a stirring under the sheet. A boy, eyes heavy with sleep, emerged and sat up, looking bewildered. Hephaistion smiled at him. He touched his fingers to his own lips, and then the boy’s, and patted his shoulder. “Go now.” The boy clambered off the couch, naked. A chamberlain pulled a cloak around him and led him from the chamber.

Eumenes, waiting by the entrance, tried not to show his disdain for all this. He had lived and worked with these Macedonians long enough to understand them. Under their Kings they had been welded into a force capable of conquering the world, but they were highland tribesmen only a couple of generations removed from their ancestral traditions. Eumenes would even strive to join in with their revels when it was politic to do so. But still, some of these pages were the sons of Macedonian nobility, sent to serve the King’s officers in order to complete their education. Eumenes could only imagine what impression it must make on such young men when they spent their mornings mopping up the stinking detritus of some barbarian-warrior in his cups—or spent their nights serving his needs in other ways.

At length Hephaistion acknowledged Eumenes. “You’re early today, Secretary.”

“I don’t think so—not unless the sun has begun to jump around the sky again.”

“Then I must be late. Hah!” He waved a meat-laden skewer at Eumenes. “Try some of this. You’d never think a dead camel could taste so good.”

“The reason the Indians spice their food so heavily,” Eumenes said, “is because they eat rotten meat. I’ll stick to fruit and mutton.”

“You really are a bore, Eumenes,” Hephaistion said tensely.

Eumenes bit back his irritation. Despite his endless rivalry with Hephaistion, he thought he understood the Macedonian’s mood. “And you miss the King. I take it there has been no word.”

“Half our scouts don’t even return.”

“Does it comfort you to lose yourself between the thighs of a page?”

“You know me too well, Secretary.” Hephaistion dropped the skewer back on the plate. “Perhaps you’re right about these spices. Still, they cut a passage through the gut like the Companion Cavalry through Persian lines …” He clambered off his couch, stripped off his nightshirt and pulled on a clean tunic.

This Macedonian was a contradiction, Eumenes had always thought. He was taller than most, with regular features, though a rather long nose, startling blue eyes, and close-cropped black hair. He held himself well. But there was no doubt he was a warrior, as the many scars on his body attested.

Everybody knew that Hephaistion had been the King’s closest companion since they were boys, and his lover since adolescence. Though the King had since taken wives, mistresses and other lovers, the latest being the wormlike Persian eunuch Bagoas, he had once, drunk, confided in Eumenes that he always regarded Hephaistion as the only true companion, the only true love of his life. The King, no fool even when it came to his friends, had put Hephaistion in command of this army group, and before that made him his Chiliarch—that is, his Vizier, in the Persian style. And as for Hephaistion there were no others, none but the King; his pages and other concubines were no more than ciphers to warm him when the King was away.

Hephaistion said now as he dressed, “Does it give you satisfaction to see me suffer over the King?”

“No,” Eumenes said. “I fear for him too, Hephaistion. And not just because he is my King—not because of the devastation his loss would cause in all our lives—but for him. You can believe that or not, but it’s nevertheless true.”

Hephaistion eyed him. He went to his bath, took a flannel and dabbed at his face. “I don’t doubt you, Eumenes. After all we have been through a great deal together, following the King on his great adventure.”

“To the ends of the Earth,” Eumenes said softly.

“The ends of the Earth—yes. And now, who knows, perhaps even beyond … Give me a moment more. Please, sit, have some water, wine, fruit …”

Eumenes sat and took some dried figs. It had indeed been a long journey, he thought. And how strange, how—disappointing—if it was all to end here, in this desolate place, so far from home.

With Iron Age soldiers pointing spears at their back, Bisesa, Cecil de Morgan, Corporal Batson and their three sepoy companions climbed over a final ridge. The delta of the Indus opened up before them, a plain striped by the glimmering surface of the broad, sluggish river. On the western horizon Bisesa could make out the profiles of ships on the sea, made indistinct by the dense, misty air.

The ships looked like triremes, she thought, wondering.

Before her an army camp was laid out. Tents had been set up along the riverbanks, and the smoke of countless fires coiled up into the morning air. Some of the tents were huge, and had open fronts like shops. Everywhere there was movement, a steady churning. There weren’t just soldiers: women walked slowly, many heavily laden, children ran over the muddy ground, and dogs, chickens and even pigs scampered through the churned-up lanes. Farther out, big enclosures held horses, camels and mules, and flocks of sheep and goats fanned out over the marshy land. Everybody and everything was muddy, from the loftiest camel to the smallest child.