Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt

by Alexander at the World's End (lit)

  whose hands the blood of all of them would lie. And yet I’m not a bad man,

  Phryzeutzis, I’ve never been more than careless or insensitive, never evil or

  malicious; and everything I did in Olbia I did for the best.)

  Things were getting lively now. I didn’t have a torch of my own, so I held my

  shield over one of the men who did. There were people running in every

  direction, bundling out of the houses as we set fire to them, bumping into us

  and jostling us out of the way as they ran in terror from the flames, or

  crashing into our shields as they blundered out, their arms full of their

  precious possessions. Most of them acted as if we weren’t even there, as if they

  had far too much on their plate already to be bothered with us; but there was

  one old man, white-haired and stark naked, who jumped at me with a big wooden

  spade and started smacking my shield with it, making a deep booming noise, like

  a drum. After he’d done this five or six times I tried to prod him off with the

  butt of my spear; but he either stumbled or charged forward at just the wrong

  time, and the butt-spike slid into his groin like a wooden spoon going into the

  whey. He dropped down when I pulled the spear out, and I didn’t hang around to

  see what became of him.

  The fire was doing our job for us, which was just as well, since we’d got

  completely out of line and were wandering aimlessly about, like visitors who’ve

  come to Athens on a grain-boat and want to see the sights. There were no arrows,

  no fighting; all we were doing was gently pushing people down the street towards

  the side gate, like shepherds driving a flock down a wide road. I gather that

  the encircling party took their duties rather more seriously than we were doing.

  Quite soon the fire started to spread of its own accord, which made the village

  a bad place to be. I heard Marsamleptes shouting to us to withdraw, but only

  because he was standing quite close to me; you can’t hear much at the best of

  times when you’ve got a thick, well-padded helmet down over your ears, and there

  was so much noise inside the village that I was lucky to have heard him at all.

  The only casualties we suffered that night, in fact, were four men who didn’t

  hear and got caught too far inside the village when the fire got completely out

  of hand.

  Sorry, there were five. Right at the last moment, as he was ushering us out of

  the main gate, counting under his breath to make sure we were all there,

  Marsamleptes was hit in the face with an arrow, probably the only one shot that

  night. He’d taken his helmet off so we could see who it was and hear his orders

  better, and the arrow hit him on the lower rim of the eye-socket on the

  left-hand side. He dropped down without a word or a movement.

  When the encircling group heard from the mobile reserve that the enemy had

  killed Marsamleptes, they got very angry. The Illyrians loved and trusted him —

  they’re quite an emotional people, when you get to know them — and even the

  Founders had come to respect him over the last dozen years. All in all, killing

  him was the worst possible thing the villagers could have done just then, and

  they paid the price of their ineptitude. When the killing stopped at dawn (I

  don’t know why it stopped then, but it did) both of the side gateways were

  pretty well bunged up with bodies, and because of the blockage, a whole bunch of

  people hadn’t been able to get out of the way when the main granary went up,

  right in close to the stockade. We didn’t bother raking through the ashes so I

  can’t put a figure on it, but to judge from the noise they made there were quite

  a few of them.

  We didn’t kill them all, of course; nothing like. We grabbed a few of the

  survivors at random, and left the rest standing around staring at the carnage

  and the mess. I was out of it by then; I’d breathed in rather too much smoke,

  and spent a long time while the action was at its most intense doubled up just

  outside the main gate, coughing my lungs up; so yes, I suppose I was looking the

  other way once more, as I always seem to be. Just for once, though, I wasn’t

  particularly sorry to have missed the main event.

  I was free to go. I’d done what I’d undertaken to do, and there was nothing to

  keep me in Antolbia. Just for once, I’d managed to see something through to the

  end, to a successful result. Maybe it would have been nicer if it had been

  something a bit more positive than genocide, but losers can’t be choosers, as we

  philosophers say.

  The news that I was going back to Athens spread quickly enough, and wasn’t well

  received. I suppose it was a bad time to make an announcement like that,

  immediately after the death of Marsamleptes. Of the two of us, there was no

  question who was the greater loss; he’d been an efficient and competent soldier

  and the effective spokesman of the Illyrian majority, in which capacity he’d

  shown a modest flair for diplomacy and what for the want of a better word I

  think I’m going to have to call statesmanship. Besides which, people liked him.

  I’d liked him. What was there not to like?

  ‘You aren’t liked and respected the way he was, obviously,’ Tyrsenius tried to

  explain. ‘People could — I don’t know, people reckoned he understood what they

  were thinking and feeling, that he was one of them. You’ve always been the

  oecist, however much effort you’ve put into that man-of-the-people persona of

  yours. But that’s not the point. You’re the Founder. You’re the man who founded

  the city, it’s your name on all the inscriptions and records, your name in all

  the laws: “Euxenus the oecist and the people decided that...

  You’re like a statue in the market square, or the figurehead of a ship; people

  need to see you there. And if you deliberately decide to leave —just think how

  that makes people feel.’

  Not for the first time, I wondered how Tyrsenius had ever managed to sell

  anything to anybody. ‘It’s really sweet of you to say all these nice things

  about me,’ I said, ‘but my mind’s made up. I just don’t want to live here any

  more. It’s different for you, for most of them in fact. All they expected from

  the place was somewhere to live, some land to farm. It was always supposed to be

  more for me.’

  ‘The perfect society,’ Tyrsenius said. ‘Quite. Actually, I don’t see what the

  problem is there. Look at us; we’ve got no faction fighting, no oligarchic

  tendency slugging it out with the mob, no military dictator screwing everybody

  for taxes. We’ve got Greeks and Illyrians living quite happily side by side;

  we’ve even got Budini. Isn’t that your perfect society, Mister Philosopher?’

  I shook my head. ‘Tyrsenius, the only reason we haven’t got those sorts of

  problems is that we’re too small. Everybody knows everybody else, we’ve all got

  roughly the same amount of land, we’ve just fought a war against a foreign

  enemy; obviously we’re all united and filled with brotherly love now, you’d

  hardly expect anything else. And I’m not leaving because the experiment’s

  failed. I’m leaving because it’s over. Do you understand?’

  He nodded. ‘I think s
o,’ he said. ‘I think you were never part of this community

  to start with. You came here to study, to see what it’d be like. You’ve done

  that, and now you’re off to study something else. You know what? I think you

  really are a philosopher after all.’ He frowned. ‘And to think I reckoned you

  were an honest charlatan, a genuine confidence man with a snake in a jar to

  prove it.’

  ‘What’s wrong with being a philosopher?’ I asked.

  ‘If you don’t know, I don’t think I’m up to explaining it to you,’ he said.

  ‘Just take it from me, there’s a place in decent society for snake-in-a-jar

  operators. Philosophers; well...’

  I thought he was making a joke, but he wasn’t. And when I thought about it, I

  could see his point.

  It turned out I wasn’t the only one who was ready to leave. Agenor the

  stonemason asked if he could share the journey home with me; he’d always fancied

  trying his luck in Athens , he said, where people really appreciated fine

  sculpture and works of art.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But what’s the matter? I thought you were nicely settled here.’

  He looked at me as if I’d said something offensive. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he

  replied. ‘You know what I’ve been doing virtually since the moment I got off the

  ship? I’ve been building houses, and barns, and city walls, and wells, and gods

  only know what else. As soon as I’ve finished one building job, someone comes up

  to me and more or less demands I come and build something for him. And I hate

  building work, Euxenus; it’s hard, dirty, boring, degrading work and I’ve had

  enough of it.’

  ‘But think what you’ve achieved,’ I said. We were standing in the market square;

  I pointed, and swung round in a circle. ‘You see all this? You did all that,

  Agenor. What you didn’t build with your own hands you designed or supervised; if

  anybody deserves to be remembered as the Father of the City, it’s you. Don’t you

  feel good about that?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s crude, ugly, makeshift stuff. The materials are rubbish,

  I’m ashamed of some of the techniques I used, it’s a miracle most of it’s still

  standing. Just look at that,’ he went on, pointing at our little temple. ‘See

  those proportions? All wrong. Height’s all wrong for the length, which means the

  pillars had to be too close together, and too thick. If I had my way, we’d pull

  the whole lot down and start over.’

  I was shocked. ‘I didn’t know you felt like this, Agenor,’ I said. ‘And I can’t

  see anything wrong with it. I think it’s beautiful.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘So does everyone else. That’s why I’m finally leaving.

  Twelve years of living with your own sloppy work is bad enough; knowing it’ll

  probably never be put right is just too much. I want to go somewhere they’d pull

  something like that down tomorrow.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. After all, his complaint was more or less

  the same as mine. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘but why now? If you hated it so much,

  why did you stay so long?’

  He shrugged. ‘Laziness,’ he said. ‘Tried to kid myself into thinking that I was

  doing a good job. You probably noticed, I’ve always been the one who’s tried to

  help, got involved wherever I thought I could make myself useful; I tried,

  Euxenus, I really did. But this war — I didn’t like that. I’m not saying it was

  wrong,’ he went on, before I could interrupt. ‘On the contrary, it had to be

  done or we’d never have had a moment’s peace. But my apprentice; you remember,

  he lost a hand in that raid? He was going to be a good builder, he had the

  knack; he’d have been able to do good work with this lousy crumbly stone and all

  the little annoying things that I could never see how to get round. Now he’s as

  good as dead and I don’t want to train anybody else.’ He breathed out and looked

  around. ‘I just don’t like living here any more,’ he said. ‘I suppose you could

  say that if I’ve got to live in an imperfect city, I’d rather it was one that

  someone else has cocked up, not me.’

  There was nothing more to say, so I walked home. The house was dark and quiet,

  and every part of it seemed filled with me; I was sick and tired of having

  nothing but my own personality around me all the time. Once I’d had a wife and

  son living here with me, only I hadn’t appreciated them for what they were. Most

  of the time I tried not to notice them, because who they were and what they

  wanted didn’t seem relevant to what I was trying to do. At that moment, I could

  cheerfully have lit a torch and set fire to the place.

  It comes to something when you can walk away from twelve years of your life with

  nothing more than you can carry in a small goatskin bag. In fact, I was hard put

  to it to fill the bag. Most of the weight was coined money; I’d sold my armour

  and my plough and the tools that were worth having, and some of the furniture

  (though most of it wasn’t fit to give away; I’ve never been bothered about

  things like that) and Tyrsenius had advanced me the value of my harvest and my

  small flock of goats, as well as giving me free passage on his ship as far as

  Athens. I had enough money to get home and to live on for a few weeks while I

  got my lawsuit under way; I had more money deposited with a bank in Athens to

  pay for the rest of the suit, left over from my relative affluence as a

  respected teller of fortunes. I wasn’t worried about what I was going to do when

  I got home; if necessary I was sure I could go back to my old trade of cheating

  gullible businessmen. In fact, I wasn’t worried about anything, because in order

  to worry you first have to care.

  As well as the money, and of course my lucky snake-jar, I took a comb that had

  belonged to Theano (after all, a man needs a comb), a set of knucklebone dice

  I’d made for my son (because a man can virtually make a living playing dice on

  board a ship, provided he knows which way the dice are going to fall; and my

  dice were utterly predictable, because Eupolis always got so upset if he lost),

  a knife, a razor and a scraper, and a roll of mostly blank Egyptian paper, on

  which I’d started to write the history of Antolbia, back before it was ever

  called that. I’d intended it for Aristotle, as a contribution to his vast

  database on matters political, and as a smug and offensive lesson in how a

  perfect society is perfectly possible, if only you’re prepared to get out there

  and do, rather than just sitting on your backside and talking about it.

  It was a very long, excruciatingly boring journey. The ship crawled along the

  coast from city to city, converting figs into honey at one port of call, honey

  into iron ore, iron ore into dried fish, dried fish into olive oil, olive oil

  into figs (about thirty per cent more figs than we’d started off with), figs

  into hides, hides into grain... There was nothing to do but sit on deck, staring

  at the coastline as we sailed by and trying not to get under the feet of the

  sailors. At first, Agenor and I talked all the time about a whole range of

  things — philosophy, art, religion, history — but I found that talk like that
r />   irritated me now; we disagreed I lost my temper, where once I’d have relished

  the chance of a good debate. We decided it would be better if we didn’t talk any

  more, and for most of the journey home we sat at opposite ends of the ship, me

  staring in one direction, he in another. In the end, he couldn’t face any more

  of the tedium and discomfort and left the ship at Scione; he’d see if there was

  any work going there, he said, and if not he’d carry on to Athens as originally

  planned. As and when he got there, he promised to come and look me up; after

  all, in spite of the fact that we’d fallen out on this long, boring sea journey,

  we’d still shared a dozen years of important experiences, and were really the

  only friends either of us had now, outside Antolbia. As he walked down the

  gangplank at Scione we waved to each other; I shouted out, ‘See you in Athens ,’

  and he called back, ‘Count on it.’

  Needless to say, I never saw or heard of him again.

  As soon as we crawled into Piraeus I hurried thankfully up the road to the City

  to treat myself to an indulgence I’d been promising myself every day I had to

  spend on that grotty, uncomfortable ship: a proper Athenian haircut and shave.

  To my delight, my favourite barber’s shop was still there, and it had hardly

  changed at all since I’d been away. The barber didn’t recognise me after all

  that time, but I recognised him; last time I’d seen him he’d been an

  eleven-year-old boy, sweeping up and whetting the razors while his father saw to

  the customers. Suddenly I felt over­whelming joy mixed with desperate sorrow;

  I’d been away far too long, but I was home.

  While I was sitting in the chair, basking in the glory of just being there

  again, I listened to the gossip. There was only one topic of con­versation. News

  had just arrived that the Macedonian colony of Antolbia on the Black Sea coast

  had been overrun by the local savages and utterly destroyed. There were, it

  seemed, no survivors.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I won my lawsuit. It took me a year and an infinity of patience and effort; I

  had to learn the law, for one thing. There’s an awful lot of it, and

  surprisingly nobody seems to know what it is; the more closely you study it, the