Christian Cameron - God of War - The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

Of course, she was almost completely devoid of human emotions, except lust for revenge and a desire to see her son, as an extension of her own will, succeed. They say a child is two years old before he realises that his mother is not actually part of him. Perhaps true – but Olympias never, ever realised that Alexander was not part of her. An extension of her. Those men at court who saw women only as mysterious possessors of alien sex organs – such men are common everywhere, and mythologise women in terms of sex; you know whereof I speak, young man? Good. Those men at court liked to claim that Olympias slept with her son.

Crap. She had no need to sleep with him. She lived through him, and consulted him from childhood on every aspect of her life. She was his priestess – he was her god. It was a deeply disturbing relationship, one that appalled even Alexander, and yet he was always helpless in her presence, unable to be a man or even a boy, usually just a toy to her will.

I did not like her. I avoided her as much as I could, and even now, knowing that she is safely dead at that thug Cassander’s hands, I still fear her. Men at court feared her as a witch, a woman, a beauty. They were fools. She was one of them to her finger’s ends, and they should have dreaded her as one dreads a boar turned at bay, or a royal Macedonian bent on achieving power.

Again, I tell this because without understanding her, nothing that follows makes much sense.

At any rate, there we were, in virtual exile still, even at the heart of Macedonian power, and we were to all intents under siege. She had been exiled, and if the king had recalled her, we never heard. She hadn’t followed us to Illyria, but she had suggested the move, arranged the marriage, given Alexander money . . .

Well, I for one assumed she was still in Epirus, and still in exile.

Apparently not!

She entered the room and Alexander turned pale. We were already silent, but the silence took on a new texture.

‘Whining about Philip?’ she said. She had a cup in her hand. She stopped near the door, bent with a dancer’s grace and plucked the ruins of Alexander’s gold cup from the floor. ‘Achilles was a petulant arse, too, my dear. That’s an element of his heroism I desire that you avoid.’

I remember thinking I would choke. That’s how she always struck me.

She sat on Alexander’s kline and this time she lay down, as if experimenting with the feel of a couch. She lay back – scandalous in itself. She had golden sandals and her feet were painted. Her feet were as beautiful as the rest of her – and really, she was fifteen years older than me. My lord’s mother .

She took a sip of wine. ‘Well?’ she asked the silence.

Alexander was choking. ‘This is a man’s feast, Mother.’

‘No, it is not. If you were a man, Philip would be cold rotting clay in the ground, or bleeding himself out in a pool of his own vomit. He is not, so you, my dear, are not yet a man.’ She smiled lazily. ‘I predict that soon enough, one of you will come upon a method of killing the king. And then we will take power, and proceed to rule well. Philip must die.’ She smiled. ‘I shock you. You are still such . . . boys. How dare I – a matron? A mother? Suggest that my husband must die? Listen, boys – he’s had a boy or a girl on the end of his cock every day since I first spread my thighs for him, and I laugh, because none of them can give him what I can. But now he wants to be rid of my son – my godlike son, his true heir. And me. And this is not Philip, great-hearted Lion of Macedon. This is little Philip, the lover of Diomedes and the lickspittle of Attalus. Best that he die, before all his greatness is forgotten.’

She got up. Smoothed the linen of her chiton, and handed Alexander her jewelled wine cup. ‘There, my dear. A new cup for your old one. Get it done, my dear. He means to rid himself of you and of me, too. Just this evening, one of my snakes died of something I was to have eaten.’ She smiled brilliantly at all of us. ‘I was tiring of Epirus. It was time to come back here and make Philip dine on his own vomit. Why are you shocked? I only say what you think .’ She rose on her toes to kiss her son, and I could see every inch of her body through the linen, silhouetted against the hearth fire, and I thought in that moment – what was Philip thinking? What man would want more than that?

And truly, I think that if she had not been cursed with such a sharp mind, he’d have loved her for ever. But I imagine that she ferreted out the truth once too often. Who likes to feel inferior in a marriage? Especially when one is the king.

On her way out, she paused by my couch and leaned far over. When my traitor eyes left her face to probe inside her linen to the very nipples of her breasts, she flicked her eyes over mine and her lips twitched with a familiar . . . contempt? Excitement?

‘Where is Pausanias, tonight?’ she asked.

Who knows what I choked out.

‘You have the best brain in this room, besides his,’ she said. ‘Find Pausanias. He is now in a position to help us all.’ She laughed, a horrible laugh. Later, I knew she was making a pun on the word position .

She straightened and cast her goddess-like smile around the room. ‘Be good, boys,’ she said, and glided out.

I grabbed Cleon and, I think, Perdiccas – and told them to find Pausanias. He hadn’t gone into exile with us, and we’d only seen him once since we returned. Rumour was he had allied himself with Attalus – one way you can tell when a man is pre-eminent is that his enemies start to become his friends because they have nowhere else to go.

Poor Pausanias.

Alexander was quiet after his mother’s visit – quiet and thoughtful. Since he wasn’t up to any mischief, I let him go, and threw knucklebones with Hephaestion and young Neoptolymos, one of the other highlander lords attached to the pages.

There was a disturbance down in the royal stables – loud shouting, someone screaming.

Alexander stepped behind his couch and drew his sword. That’s how close to the edge we all were.

Nearchus was on duty and sober. He took two pages in armour and raced off down the corridors towards the stables. We sent all the slaves away.

More shouting, some drunken, some sober. A weapons clash. A scream.

‘We’re Attalus’s men!’ clear as day. And another scream. The unmistakable sound of a man with a sword in his groin or guts.

Alexander was in his battlefield mode. His eyes met mine. ‘Go and find out,’ he said. He even managed a smile. ‘Don’t die.’

I grinned back, hopped over my kline and ran, barefoot, through the curtains, aware that there were slaves just outside the door, cowering out of my way, and more slaves all down the corridor – it was, after all, the main corridor that connected the king’s apartments with the prince’s. I could see a pair of his royal companions outside the king’s door – not at attention, but straining towards me like hunting hounds waiting to be released.

I waved my sword at them. They knew me. ‘If I find anything I’ll tell you!’ I called as I raced by. Hard to imagine they might actually be trying to kill me.

I got down to the stables without seeing another freeman. The screams were done – so was the shouting.

Perdiccas was just inside the stables, with two dead men-slaves – at his feet. Cleon the Black was holding another man – at first, I thought Cleon was ‘questioning’ him.

Perdiccas looked as if he was going to cry.

Cleon just looked angry and perhaps disgusted.

‘We found Pausanias,’ he spat.

The man he was holding in his arms was Pausanias. He was naked. Blood was running out of his anus – thick, dark blood. All over Cleon’s wool chiton and his legs. Cleon didn’t flinch.