Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt

by Alexander at the World's End (lit)

  swooping set of movements that was just like every snake you ever saw in every

  respect apart from actual motion, if you see what I mean; he managed to convey

  everything there is to notice about a snake without once doing anything that

  imitated how a real snake acts. It was bizarre and no end impressive; and he

  concluded it by cartwheeling across the dancing-floor, vaulting to his feet

  right in front of me, reaching down and pulling a large and bad-tempered looking

  snake of indeterminate species apparently out of the fold of my gown. He held

  this thing up for a moment in both hands — you could see it was a real live one

  by the way its tongue kept flicking in and out — then let it curl round his arm

  and slither up into his sleeve, at which point he pulled off his tunic and threw

  it in the air, and no snake fell out. Indeed, when he brought the tunic to me

  there was no sign of any snake, either inside the tunic or wrapped round Boizas

  (and since he was wearing nothing but a very short kilt there was nowhere he

  could have hidden it). Then he bowed and danced away, and as I raised my hands

  to join in the applause, I found that same snake sitting in my lap, where Boizas

  had found it in the first place.

  Oh hell, I thought; then, extremely slowly and carefully, I grabbed the snake

  firmly below the head, the way I’d seen it done, lowered it into a large pottery

  jug and slapped the lid on as fast as I could. I found out afterwards that it

  was — well, I can’t remember what the Illyrians said its name was, but it’s so

  deadly poisonous that even a tiny smear of the stuff on an open scratch or cut

  would kill you before you can count to ten.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  T alking of remarkable people, Phryzeutzis; I once knew a man who had this

  amazing, astounding, reality-distorting ability to lose hats. He was bald as an

  egg, which didn’t help matters; he had to wear a hat, because otherwise there’d

  have been nothing between the fury of the Attic sun at noon and his poor,

  squidgy brains except a thin layer of bone. But hats simply left him; they’d

  blow away in sudden gusts of wind, or snag in the low branches of trees, or slip

  noiselessly past his eyebrows when he was bending over to peer down a well. If

  all else failed they subtly attached themselves to whoever he happened to be

  with; you’d be sitting chatting to him under a tree, and then you’d look up at

  the sun and see how late it was getting, scramble to your feet (reaching

  instinctively for your hat as you did so) and hurry back to work before your

  goats had a chance to stray into someone else’s pasture. Later on, when it was

  time to go home, you’d notice something was strange; you’d reach up to pat the

  top of your head, and there a hat would be, though you knew for a certainty you

  left the house that morning without one. I’m not saying that hats hated this

  unfortunate man, or feared him, or anything like that. In the short space of

  time his hats spent with him, I seem to recall he treated them kindly. But after

  a day or so, they all seem to have come to the conclusion that it was time to

  move on, and they left him.

  With him, hats; with me, women. Not, perhaps, to quite the same extent; I don’t

  drop them down wells or carelessly leave them behind when I visit other people’s

  houses. But sooner or later there comes a time when I look round to say

  something to them and there they aren’t. No doubt they have their reasons; and

  if I could understand what those reasons were, I would understand women far

  better than I do, and maybe they wouldn’t leave.

  What I’m trying to say is that Theano left me. As a historian, I have a duty to

  record all the facts; she became very friendly with a Syracusan cheese merchant,

  a month or so after the failed attack on the Scythian village, and when he left,

  so did she. It’s a logical assumption that they left together, although I can’t

  put that down as a fact since I didn’t witness it myself. He was tall and very

  fat, this merchant; older than me, bald (like the hat-man) and with an unusually

  curly beard. I get the impression, though, that what really attracted her to him

  was the fact that he wasn’t me.

  Well, it wasn’t quite the elopement of Helen of Troy, and I’d be lying to you if

  I pretended that I was terribly upset about it. But I was still feeling no pain

  after the death of my son Eupolis; and besides, our marriage had been a mistake

  from the very beginning. One aspect of the matter that does puzzle me even now

  is the timing of it all; I mean, one moment she was sobbing herself to sleep

  over the death of her only child, and the next she was swept up by an

  overwhelming passion for a tubby, bald-headed cheese vendor with skin as pale

  and flaky as the plaster rind of his wares. Tyrsenius reckoned that the role of

  the cheese man in all this was simply as a provider of transport; since she

  couldn’t very well ask me for the price of a passage out of Olbia, she had to

  make what arrangements she could and pay her fare with what she had at her

  disposal. Maybe; I don’t know, and I’m not much bothered. All my life I’ve found

  it too much of an effort to take an interest in things I know I don’t

  understand.

  The Thracians, very sensibly, never came back; but the Budini we’d hired for the

  attack stayed on, first as soldiers, then as settlers. They didn’t ask for land,

  of course; which was just as well, since the Founders would never have let them

  have any. They didn’t even admit that they intended to stay permanently. They

  just stayed, and made their living as hired labourers, a commodity much in

  demand. For all our noble professions that we had come to Olbia to work with our

  own hands, we were getting a little bit jaded after twelve years of high-minded

  nobility. It was nice to be able to watch someone else being uplifted by manual

  labour for a change, especially from under a shady tree with a cup of wine in

  one’s hand.

  I suppose about six months must have passed; six or seven, since the abortive

  raid. I remember that we heard the news of the great battle between Alexander

  and the Persian King at the river Granicus, where the Macedonian heavy infantry

  with their absurdly long pikes and Alexander’s heavy cavalry between them

  humiliated the Persian army, and where Alexander, fighting always in the front

  rank, twice breaking his spear, his horse shot dead under him, somehow failed to

  get himself killed in spite of everything. He was Achilles that day for sure,

  except for the happy ending; and when he raised his trophy of captured armour

  and weapons, I doubt whether he had to borrow swords and lances from his own men

  to get it to a respectable height.

  Maybe it was hearing about the battle, I don’t know; but there was a general

  feeling among us all that we should finish what we’d started with our

  neighbours, before the first anniversary of our first vintage came round with

  our dead still not yet made comfortable. The Illyrians in particular were all

  for taking some strong action; so too, unaccountably, were the Budini, though it

  may just have been a way of dealing with the fact that they’d been stuck in one


  place for so long. Most curiously, our fire-breathing Founders weren’t nearly so

  enthusiastic as they had been. Prodromus actually tried to talk me out of

  organising an attack; he said that it would be much better to wait until we’d

  got the harvest in, because otherwise we’d be vulnerable to reprisals when we

  were out working in the fields. I told him he’d missed the point; that if we did

  a proper job this time, there wouldn’t be anybody to make any such reprisals,

  and so the consideration wasn’t valid. He didn’t like the sound of that very

  much, and accused me of being bloodthirsty and blinded by my personal tragedies

  to the moral implications of what I was proposing. I told him to go stuff his

  head up something dark and wet, and on that note we parted.

  Well, the cattle-raid stunt wouldn’t work again, so we had to think of something

  else. Marsamleptes pointed out that we’d done best when the enemy had tried to

  press home a charge against our heavy infantry; if we could provoke them into

  making the same mistake twice, there was no reason why we shouldn’t take them on

  in the open field, rather than resorting to some over-elaborate stratagem.

  My first inclination was to tell Marsamleptes to take a cold bath and think

  again; but then I thought of Alexander and the Granicus battle. Once you pared

  away all the Homeric stuff, what you were left with was a disputed

  river-crossing. The Persian infantry took no part in the battle; it was their

  cavalry who lined up on the other side of the river and tried to stop Alexander

  from struggling through the ford. In other words, Alexander had kidded the

  Persians into using their cavalry as infantry; and when it comes to infantry

  fighting, a man sitting on a horse is at a significant disadvantage.

  So, I thought; the greatest threat to us was the speed and manoeuvrability of

  the war-band and their ability to shoot their bows from the saddle. Trick them

  into standing still, and you deprived them of their advantage, while tilting the

  balance in favour of our well-drilled, disciplined heavy infantry. All that was

  needed, I realised, was a suitable river-crossing; and as luck would have it, I

  knew the very place.

  It was a hot day. You know what it’s like when you’ve had to wake up earlier

  than you’d have liked, and as soon as you open your eyes the brightness of the

  sun makes you wince. I overslept, like a fool, and by the time I came to it was

  well past dawn. Of course, nobody had thought to come and wake me up.

  By the time I’d struggled into my armour and stumbled out into the bright

  sunshine, I had a blinding headache, which didn’t go well with the upset stomach

  I’d failed to shake off by not eating anything the day before. Anything less

  than a battle or harvest and I’d have stayed in bed, but an

  oecist-cum-commander-in-chief doesn’t have that option, no matter how dodgy his

  tummy might be.

  By the look of it, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t really feel in the mood for

  mortal combat that day. We marched slowly, coughing and grumbling as we breathed

  in the dust we were kicking up into a towering cloud. In my capacity as general,

  however, I didn’t mind the dust-cloud. In fact, I was counting on it to attract

  their attention and get them to come trotting out to meet us. Timing, of course,

  was important. If we wanted to fight them in the place we’d chosen, it was

  fairly crucial that we got to the river first. If the enemy crossed over before

  we arrived, we’d be facing another kind of battle entirely, and one I didn’t

  really want to be involved in.

  But somehow we reached the ford, and in reasonable order too.We didn’t have to

  wait very long before the enemy cavalry put in their appearance; and, just as

  I’d wanted them to, they spread out along their side of the river and waited to

  see what we had in mind.

  This was the point during the battle of the Granicus at which Alexander launched

  his cavalry charge, to hold off the enemy while his heavy infantry waddled

  across the ford. Characteristically of Alexander’s military planning, it was a

  bold, innovative and highly successful manoeuvre, and nobody could ever deny

  that it worked like a charm —

  — Which is why we were all at a loss to know why it didn’t work nearly so well

  for us. The situation, after all, was more or less identical

  — river, cavalry on one side, heavy infantry on the other; it was as if we’d

  taken the ingredients for honey-cakes, mixed them together in the prescribed

  manner, and ended up with cheesecake.

  I remember the stone in my boot, which I hadn’t had a chance to get rid of all

  the way from the city to the ford. I remember how the headache made it such an

  effort to think at all, let alone try to revise my plan in mid-flow. I remember

  thinking, right in the middle of the fighting, that unless I managed to control

  my irregular bowel movements until the battle was over and I could snatch a few

  moments behind a bush somewhere, it was all going to be terribly sordid and

  embarrassing. I clearly recall the high curtain of water thrown up by the hooves

  of the Budini’s horses as they clattered into the ford at a brisk, jarring trot.

  I have a whole library of pictures in my mind from that battle, dozens of little

  scenes and observations, all as self-contained as the black and red pictures on

  the sides of fancy pottery. Quite a few of them I’d be delighted to get rid of,

  such as the sight of the entire front rank of our cavalry charge sliding dead

  off their horses into the water as the Scythians poured a volley of arrows into

  our ranks from about fifteen yards away. Those horses; I can see them clearly,

  trotting up the opposite bank of the river, as if they knew that without the

  burden of men on their backs they were safe, they were welcome as being valuable

  commodities, not just martial scrap to be heaped up on a trophy. Of course, I’m

  proud to recall how our line of spear-points hardly wavered as the infantry line

  crossed the river, though that image isn’t as sharp as the others. What I do

  remember is how wet the water was when we knelt down in the river, taking

  shelter behind our shields from the next volley of arrows. I can feel the claggy

  wet cloth of my kilt against my skin, and the singularly disagreeable sensation

  of water running down the inside of my legs as I stood up afterwards. I can

  remember the colour of the water; briefly muddy with kicked-up silt and the

  blood of the dead Budini.

  These images are all so sharp and immediate, in fact, that it amazes me that

  I’ve never come across them or others like them in the great battle-scenes in

  Homer, which are supposedly about men fighting each other. It makes me wonder;

  did Alexander get wet and shivery as he crossed the Granicus; or did the water

  somehow fail to soak into whatever he was wearing that day? Perhaps kings and

  heroes have a special dispensation that lets them off getting wet when they

  fight battles in the beds of shallow rivers. I don’t know; and although over the

  years I’ve had plenty of opportunities to ask people who were in a position to

  analyse what happened and what went wrong, I’ve never quite been able to deal
/>
  with it.

  Most curious of all is that when I’ve talked about that battle to other people

  who were there, they claim to have noticed an almost completely different set of

  observations and impressions, as if they’d been at a different battle in the

  same place on the same day. There can’t have been another battle, can there? I’m

  sure I’d have noticed, and so, I assume, would they, unless it started half an

  hour after I’d gone home. But they reckoned they saw me there, and most of them

  were far too unimaginative to have made up something like that.

  We were about halfway across the river when they fell back, pulling their

  horses’ heads round and cantering off a hundred yards or so towards their

  village. They were conceding the crossing to us. They weren’t meant to do that.

  The whole idea was that they were meant to see that we’d made a tactical error —

  trying to cross an awkward obstacle in the face of the enemy, it’s suicide, ask

  any general — and that they should immediately press home their advantage before

  we had a chance to recover, let alone get across the damn river. This would mean

  riding down onto the riverbed to fight us, or at least holding their bank

  against us, which from our point of view would mean they’d lose all their

  advantages as cavalry and accordingly succumb to our superior infantry, just the

  way it had happened at the Granicus.

  But they didn’t. I can only assume they were too stupid to see the obvious

  advantage, or too cowardly to dare to seize the moment. Instead, they waited

  till we’d pulled ourselves out of the water and started shooting at us again.

  The fools.

  Fortunately, we were ready for them, thanks to all those hours of foot drill. We

  dropped down on one knee, lifted our shields, same as before; they scratched and

  dented a lot of expensive metalwork, but they didn’t kill anybody. After three

  or so volleys they stopped, worried about running short of arrows. We got up and

  started to advance. They let us come on seventy-five yards or so, then rode off

  another hundred yards and started shooting again. We knelt, waited, got up,

  advanced, a hundred or so yards at a time. It was slow and painful stuff, not to

  mention embarrassing — by rights, we should have killed them all by now, whereas