Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt

by Alexander at the World's End (lit)

  ‘Thirteen talents,’ the man announced.

  (Yes, sorry, I’m losing you again, Phryzeutzis. You don’t know whether thirteen

  talents is the annual revenue of Babylon or the price of a bushel of garlic.

  Well, let’s put it this way. It’d take your average working man, a stonemason,

  say, or a carpenter, over two hundred years to earn thirteen talents.)

  ‘Still going to buy the horse?’ Philip said.

  ‘Yes,’ Alexander replied.

  ‘Really. What with?’

  Alexander looked at his father without any visible expression on his face. ‘Oh,

  I expect Mother’d lend me the money,’ he replied.

  Now don’t ask me what all that was about; but the way Philip’s face tightened

  showed that Alexander had just said something unforgivable, bad enough that

  Philip would let him try to tame the horse because he was so angry he wouldn’t

  care if his son did get himself killed. Good tactics on Alexander’s part—

  (And I thought of what I’d taught him: make the other guy make a mistake.

  Precisely what Alexander had just done. Whatever the outcome now, Philip would

  be in the wrong. If Alexander tamed the horse, he’d be quite the young Hercules

  or Theseus, subduing monsters before he was through potty-training. If, on the

  other hand, he was killed or badly hurt, then whose fault would it be for

  letting him do such a crazy thing? The mistake he’d forced Philip into making

  was losing his temper to the extent that he allowed himself to be put in this

  no-win position...

  Did I do that? I wondered.)

  ‘Bet,’ Philip said softly, and you can be sure it was quiet enough for everybody

  to hear. I’ve never heard so much venom packed into one little word, before or

  since.

  So Alexander hopped down from the rail — it was the lissom movement of a child,

  the sort of thing you can’t do when you’re a grown-up, no matter how fit you are

  — and walked calmly to the centre of the ring, where the monster horse was

  standing, radiating hatred and viciousness in all directions. I didn’t really

  want to look; on the other hand, how many chances do you get in a lifetime to

  see a prince of the blood get horribly mutilated? In Athens there’d have been

  someone going round with a tray, selling apples.

  First he just stood there, looking the horse in the eye; then he walked round

  it, patted it on the side of the neck, slipped off his cloak and took hold of

  the reins, turning the animal’s head towards the sun. Then he got on its back

  and rode it round the ring a few times.

  You’re probably way ahead of me. As soon as I told you that he made the horse

  face the sun, you reached the same conclusion that Alexander had; the stupid

  creature was afraid of shadows, and whenever it saw its own shadow, or the

  shadow of its rider’s cloak or anything like that, it bolted. That was all there

  was to it.

  After he’d shown off his horsemanship for a minute or two Alexander pulled up in

  front of his father, jumped down, looped what was left of the reins over a rail

  and resumed his seat. For a long time, nobody said anything, or moved; then

  Philip nodded his head, ever so slightly.

  ‘You noticed that too,’ he said. ‘Very good.’

  ‘I think I’ll call him Oxhead,’ Alexander replied, looking straight ahead.

  ‘I see.You think I’m going to buy you this horse, do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Philip shrugged. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘With luck I should be able to get him

  for twelve.’

  Alexander shook his head. ‘He’s worth thirteen.’

  ‘All right.’

  Now then; assuming one of them set up the other, which was it? At the time I was

  sure it was Alexander who’d taken Philip; now I’m not so sure. I wouldn’t put it

  past Philip to have arranged something like that, a test so close to the edge

  that nobody would ever believe it was a set-up. And that, of course, was why it

  would be such a triumph, the foundation for a legend; nobody in their right mind

  would ever believe a father would risk his son’s life in order that his son

  could triumph over him in public. Nobody, that is, except Philip, who was afraid

  of nothing. If he did plan it, it was one of his best ever pieces of strategy;

  because that was when Alexander first knew what hitherto he’d only believed.

  As for my lesson, Aristotle was quite right, bless his heart. In order to train

  this boy, you had to turn his head towards the sun and keep him from seeing his

  own shadow. Understand that simple fact and you could make him do anything you

  wanted.

  By the time I got home that evening, I still liked the Macedonians. But in a

  slightly different way.

  After that, I knew what I was supposed to do. It helps.

  Thanks to the books I found in the outhouse, I was able to learn enough to be

  able to teach. I did a swap with Aristotle, my astronomy and medicine for his

  lyric poetry and prosodic theory, and learned how to write poetry from

  Archilochus and how not to from Panyasis; I traded literature for economic

  theory with Leonidas, and managed to distil enough economics out of the

  silver-mines franchising pamphlet to bluff my way (actually, any damn fool can

  work out economics from first principles; you start with ‘A has a loaf of bread

  but no money, B has a silver coin but no food’ and carry on from there). As for

  military history, I had Thucydides’ account of the War, the commentary on

  tactics in Homer and that old favourite, Aeneas’ military handbook, so I was

  spoilt for choice.

  Teaching poetry was a piece of cake. None of the Macedonians had any interest in

  the subject whatsoever, so by mutual consent we whittled the curriculum down to

  being able to compose lines that scanned in pentameters and hexameters, iambics,

  dactyls and anapaests, to recognise the dumb-beast basic lyric forms (alcaics,

  anacreontics, hendecasyllables, sapphics); basic caesura rules, elisions, epic

  license and archaic forms — yes, I know this means nothing to you, Phryzeutzis;

  what passes for poetry in this barbarous land works on an entirely different

  system of lines ending in words that sound vaguely similar, so I won’t even try

  explaining how real poetry works. Let’s say that if I’d been teaching them

  carpentry instead of poetry, they’d have learned the names (but not the uses) of

  the saw, the rasp and the bow-drill, and which end of the hammer you use to hit

  the nail with.

  I’ve mentioned economics already. Young Harpalus, the fat kid, was talented and

  enthusiastic in this field, which was a nuisance, but the rest of the class were

  happy just to mark time. I based everything on the one bit of economic theory I

  remembered from my own schooldays, namely Socrates’ theory of growth. Actually,

  like so many of Socrates’ theories, it’s so full of holes you could use it for

  straining curds — it’s a misbegotten fusion of science, politics and mysticism,

  which equates the tendency of things in nature to grow (trees and grass and

  stuff like that) with the practice of lending money on interest, on the basis

  that money somehow reproduces, like mice in the thatch, and so it’s all right to

  borrow because ea
ch silver owl you borrow will hatch out a clutch of little baby

  owls, which’ll pay the interest on the loan and still leave you change for

  things like food and rent. Piffle; but I made it sound totally convincing, and

  in due course you’ll see what hatched out of it when Alexander and Harpalus

  eventually came into serious money.

  But what they really wanted to learn — and I wanted to teach, because I had

  three books to teach it from — was military history; so we fiddled about with

  the curriculum until it ended up like the proportion of wine to water in the

  mixing bowl during the closing stages of a really evil party. I taught them the

  battles of the Persian Wars (from memory), the major engagements of the

  Peloponnesian War (from Thucydides’ book), the theory of chivalry and clean

  warfare (from Homer) and the future of military science (from Aeneas the

  Tactician; thirty years out of date and still every bit as impractical as the

  day it was written). I tell you, Phryzeutzis; if I’d been a slightly better

  teacher, or if they’d had slightly less inherent ability, I could have

  guaranteed the safety not only of Greece but the whole of the Persian empire .

  Leonidas, of course, objected to my teaching Homeric warfare, because Leonidas

  taught Homer. It was his subject, the only one he knew anything about, the only

  one that really mattered in the eyes of Philip and the other boys’ fathers. I

  felt it was bitterly unfair that he should be getting at me over this; after

  all, I loathe and despise Homer, and wanted nothing at all to do with the

  matter, but the fact remains — teaching war without Homer is like teaching a lad

  to be a smith while omitting any reference to metal. Can’t be done.

  The net effect of this was to make me even more rabidly anti-Homer than before;

  which in turn brought me into conflict with Aristotle, who worshipped the stuff,

  and by association Alexander, who liked Homer in the same way a fish likes

  water. All that blood and honour, that simple equation between prowess, exertion

  and reward — it was the sort of world he most wanted to live in, regardless of

  whether or not it bore any relation whatsoever to real life.

  We fell out over it, in fact. What brought it to a head was a dis­cussion on the

  role of the archer in various philosophies of war. I’d pointed out that whereas

  the Greeks had never reckoned much to the bow and arrow, the Persians had won

  their empire with them. I was just explaining why this was— ‘Ibex horn,’ I said.

  ‘The only decent bows in Greece are made of ibex horn, and they’re difficult and

  expensive to build, so very few people have them. The majority of the bows we

  use are just plain wood, and Greek trees make lousy bows. The Persians, on the

  other hand, make vastly superior bows out of slivers of horn, wood and sinew

  laminated together; the materials are plentiful and they’re good enough at it to

  be able to make the bows affordable, so everyone who wants one has a chance to

  own one. So the Persians fight with the bow, whereas we Greeks prefer to fight

  with spears, in armour; and we prefer to fight that way because we have a

  different notion of what winning means. For the Persians, winning means killing

  the enemy. For us, it means making the enemy run away and leave us in possession

  of the disputed territory. That’s what we call honourable warfare, and it’s

  purely fortuitous that armoured spearmen can bash the crap out of archers

  nineteen times out of twenty, because otherwise I’d be telling you this in

  Persian—’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Alexander said. Please note: whatever else I may have failed to do,

  I’d at least taught him the rudiments of civility. ‘But that’s not the reason.’

  I suppose I should have been used to remarks like that by then; but we were

  running late and I wasn’t in the mood. ‘Really,’ I said. ‘Then maybe you’d care

  to tell us what the real reason is.

  ‘Simple,’ Alexander said. ‘The bow’s a coward’s weapon. It says so in Homer.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘It does indeed,’ I replied. ‘Repeatedly; though that

  doesn’t stop Ulysses from single-handedly exterminating the sons-of-bitches

  who’ve taken over his house at the end of the Odyssey with a bow, something he’d

  have had no chance of doing with a sword or a spear. In fact, you’ll remember

  that he proves he’s the king because he’s the only one who’s man enough to be

  able to string the mighty bow, which implies they weren’t quite so snooty about

  bows on Ithaca , at least. Point of interest, by the way; any bow that’s been

  laid up in the rafters for twenty years and never strung, like Ulysses’ bow was

  supposed to have been, would have snapped like a dry twig long before you could

  get a string on it, but nevertheless—’

  ‘Ulysses wasn’t a man of honour,’ Alexander interrupted. ‘He was as devious as a

  fox.’

  ‘Or as we say in Athens , an intellectual,’ I snapped back. ‘Yes, I’ll grant you

  that. It’s not really relevant to the subject at hand, but it’s true enough.’

  Alexander looked at me, and when he spoke again he’d lowered his voice. Really,

  I should have known better. ‘You don’t like Homer,’ he said.

  ‘True,’ I admitted.

  ‘Well, that’s not right,’ Alexander replied. ‘Even you must see that—’

  ‘You do, don’t you?’ I broke in. ‘You really enjoy the stuff, I can tell.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I nodded. I’d been fattening him up for this. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘who would

  you rather be, Achilles or Homer?’

  Alexander smiled. ‘That’s easy,’ he said. ‘Homer.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course. By the time Achilles was your age, he was dead.’

  I nodded again. ‘Absolutely true,’ I replied. ‘Eternally famous, yes. The

  greatest hero of all time, yes. Destined to live forever—’

  ‘Because of Homer,’ Alexander pointed out.

  ‘Because of Homer, thank you, destined to live for ever, yes. Dead, yes. And

  Homer’s still alive, I take it?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I see. Homer’s dead too.’ I smiled. ‘Listen, everybody. Alexander would rather

  be Homer than Achilles. Tell me this, Alexander, who’d you rather be? The

  all-comers champion at the Olympic Games, or the little fat guy with a scroll

  who calls out the names of the winners?’

  Alexander didn’t like that. Not one bit.

  The rest of them did.They tried to keep straight faces; by and large they

  managed it. But they’d had to put up with Alexander being Alexander for a long

  time. I’d had enough of it after three or four weeks; they’d had to deal with it

  all their lives. I made a lot of friends that day.

  (Clever me. Just like the man who fell out of the fig tree; he broke his back,

  but he shook down an awful lot of figs.)

  ‘I take your point,’ Alexander said eventually. ‘I was wrong. Thank you for

  pointing out my mistake.’

  The look he gave me as he said that made me feel cold all over. Something had

  happened to him in that moment, and I’ve been wondering ever since what the hell

  it could have been.

  All right; consider Achilles. He was the son of a goddess an
d a mortal, forever

  torn between the limitless possibilities of his mother’s divinity and the

  constraints of his father’s gross mortality. When he was little more than a boy,

  the Trojan War began; almost single-handedly he overthrew the Trojan Empire and

  brought the war right up to the walls of the city itself. At that point, after

  fighting always in the front of the battle and achieving every possible

  objective, he made a mistake; he took offence, fell out with the king on a

  matter concerning his honour, backed himself into a corner so that he could no

  longer participate in the war without a disastrous loss of face. So he sulked in

  his tent, while Zeus gave victory to the Trojans and the Greeks were slaughtered

  like pigs in the autumn. Only when it was too late to save his dearest friend

  did he return to the war, kill the enemy champion and avenge his friend; and for

  his mistake he was punished, dying too soon before the city could be taken, shot

  with an arrow by a man by far his inferior. Achilles failed; yet he was the

  greatest hero of them all, and in Homer’s Iliad he’s caught for ever, like a fly

  trapped in amber mounted in gold on a brooch, everlastingly both pre-eminent and

  imperfect.

  Consider Homer. He was poor and blind, and he was taken prisoner by the enemies

  of his people, but all the same he won immortality in his old age by creating

  something that can never die. Homer’s life was wretched, and he was a success.

  Consider Alexander.

  Well, that’s my best shot at a theory; at that moment, because of my foolish

  verbal trap, Alexander made a conscious decision to be Achilles. Consider; when

  he was little more than a boy, he began the Persian War; almost single-handledly

  he overthrew the Persian Empire and brought the war into countries that none of

  us knew existed before he arrived there to conquer them. At that point, after

  fighting always in the front of the battle and achieving every possible

  objective, he made a mistake; he fell out with his friends and the Macedonian

  people over a matter concerning his honour, backed himself into a corner so that

  he could no longer give up the war with­out a disastrous loss of face. So he led

  them into the mountains and the desert, where so many of them died. Only after

  he had caused the death of his dearest friend did he think of giving up the war,