Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt

by Alexander at the World's End (lit)

have done any good, in any event. The wound stayed fresh, which was something;

  gods only know what would have happened if it had turned septic. I tried to

  treat it with a poultice, but whenever I went near him with the stuff Sclerus

  would start to bellow and cower, so I gave up and left him to it. Aeschrus made

  him an eyepatch out of very fine goatskin, because even though he couldn’t see

  through it, strong sunlight made it hurt terribly.

  We gave up on the barn after that.

  It occurs to me, looking back, that I should have known better. The project

  contained all the elements of my previous disasters; trying to make life better

  for other people, trying to restore a bit of the life I’d left behind when my

  father died, trying to build something, trying to make something that wanted to

  be one shape into another. When I was a boy I heard the story of an enthusiastic

  but entirely talentless boxer; when he died, they said, his family and

  neighbours had a gravestone carved showing this man standing in the ring, his

  hands bound up for fighting, his arms raised to strike; and underneath, the

  inscription ‘In memory of Polydamas, of whom it can truly be said, he never

  harmed his fellow men’. You know, I feel a bit like that Polydamas, only the

  other way round. He tried to hurt people but never managed it. I’ve tried to do

  good, on and off, my whole life, and I’ve left a trail of dead and mutilated

  bodies behind me wherever I’ve gone.

  Now, in that excellent book, I expect it says that if one of the good farmer’s

  slaves gets damaged in a way that affects his performance of his duties, the

  only sensible course of action is to cut one’s losses, sell him for what he’ll

  fetch and buy a replacement, rather than compound the loss by feeding and

  providing for a slave who does less work but eats the same amount. I didn’t do

  that, however, which meant that Syrus, Sclerus, Aeschrus and I had five good

  eyes between the four of us, and people started calling us the Graeae, after the

  three witches in the old stories who have one eye between them, which they pass

  from hand to hand. (That, by the way, is the sort of thing that passes for wit

  in rural Attica , along with tying burning twigs to the tails of dogs and

  shoving drunks down wells.) So, with Syrus unable to do anything much and

  Sclerus restricted to light duties only (when we finally managed to get hold of

  a doctor, he warned that too much exertion could mean he’d lose the other eye as

  well), I ended up having to work longer and harder to put bread on the table for

  my slaves than I’d ever done before I bought them.

  In the end I hired a couple of lads from a neighbouring farm to knock down what

  was left of the old barn and build a new one. It took them three days. They made

  it look easy.

  ‘You could have done that,’ they said to me as I paid them their money.

  ‘Probably,’ I replied. ‘But you know how it is.’

  They looked at me. ‘Come again?’ they said.

  I grinned, thinking of Diogenes and the magic talisman that made people do

  things for you, the silver coin. ‘Why do a job yourself when you can get someone

  to do it for you?’

  ‘Right,’ they said. ‘Like, you keep three men and do all your own ploughing. No

  wonder you packed in being a philosopher.’

  I nodded. ‘Get off my land,’ I said, ‘before I set the snake on you.’

  Time passes at a different rate, depending on where you are. A week in some

  strange place seems to last for ever, while you can lose a year at home as

  easily as a forgetful man misplaces his hat. I can’t say I was really aware of

  time passing; someone would mention something that happened a while ago, and I’d

  say, ‘Yes, that was the year the crows got in the laid patches in the barley.’

  And then I’d think, when was that? Not last year, because the barley stood up

  well right up till harvest. Not the year before, because I got Aristodemus’ boy

  to stand guard with his sling and a bag of pebbles, and after a week he told me

  he’d killed thirty-seven of them. So it was either the year before that or the

  year before that — and suddenly I’d taken note of the passing of four years,

  which had sneaked by me like an adulterer creeping out of the window while his

  girlfriend keeps the husband talking in the front room.

  While I was drifting aimlessly between harvests at home, Alexander of Macedon

  was marching from victory to victory, as unstoppable as a cart running down a

  hill. I could give you a battle-by-battle account of the campaign, I suppose,

  but it’d only be a rehash of what I’ve read in books; I wasn’t there, remember,

  I was in Antolbia, then Attica, where the glorious achievements of the son of

  Philip were as remote and as irrelevant as the Trojan War. As far as we were

  concerned in Athens , Alexander had marched off the edge of the world, and the

  further he went away from us, the better we liked it. Sure, he wasn’t hated and

  feared the way his father was. Truth to tell, he left us pretty much alone, and

  there were days you could go from dawn to dusk without anything reminding you of

  the Macedonian presence in Greece, or the effects of the battle of Chaeronea. If

  any of my neighbours knew I’d been to Macedon, been the boy’s tutor, they were

  too tactful to mention it. Just occasionally, though, something reminded us of

  his existence; news of another glorious victory, rumours that he was dead

  (‘Alexander dead?’ someone said on one such occasion. ‘Don’t you believe it. If

  Alexander was dead, the stench would fill the earth’) or had been captured by

  the enemy, or had ascended bodily into the heavens to rejoin his real father

  Zeus; there were rumours that he’d listened to bad advice and marched his army

  into a vast, waterless desert, where most of them had died of thirst. There were

  rumours that he’d finally gone mad, and was demanding that everybody worship him

  as a god. He’d married the daughter of the King of Persia, there was to be peace

  and Alexander was to succeed to the Great King’s throne; he’d been shot in the

  chest while storming a fortress, and was hanging onto life by a thread; he’d

  murdered his best friend in a fit of drunken rage and burned down the capital

  city of the Empire in an excess of guilt-ridden insanity; he’d decided to merge

  the Greek and Persian races, and soon we’d all be shipped off and forcibly

  resettled in Asia, each of us being required to take at least one Persian wife,

  and wear trousers, on pain of death. Oh, there were always rumours; and of

  course we ignored them, or half-accepted them, not caring whether they were true

  or not — it’s like when you read books about faraway lands, and you’re told that

  beyond the great deserts of Africa there live people whose faces are in their

  bellies, whose ears are so long that they trail on the ground as they walk. You

  read, and you neither believe nor disbelieve, because even if you live to be a

  thousand years old, there’s no possible set of circumstances whereby things like

  that could ever be relevant to you. If it’s all lies, then so what? It’s a

  pretty story. If it’s true, then your belief or your scepticism aren’t going to

  alter
anything; it doesn’t matter. Whichever way it does, the fact that there

  may or may not be people in Africa who have one enormous foot instead of two

  normal-sized ones isn’t going to make it easier or more difficult for you to cut

  your late barley before the crows flatten it, so you dismiss such things from

  your mind with a shake of your head and get on with your work. Similarly, the

  fact that at least three-quarters of the rumours we heard about Alexander turned

  out in the end to be true was neither here nor there. So what? Nothing, the gods

  be praised, to do with us.

  Indeed. It’d have been nice, I guess, if it had stayed that way.

  They called for me a couple of hours before dawn, in the early autumn of the

  eighth year after I came home. I’d made a start on the pruning the day before; I

  was tired out and fast asleep, so I didn’t hear them ride up. The first I knew

  about it, in fact, was when Aeschrus grabbed my shoulder and shook me awake.

  ‘There’s soldiers outside,’ he said, in a terrified whisper.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I mumbled. He’d pulled me out of an

  all-too-familiar dream, the one in which I’d decided not to leave

  Antolbia after all; curiously enough, he woke me at the point in the dream where

  Theano usually shook me awake to tell me the Scythians were overrunning the

  city.

  ‘Soldiers,’ he repeated. ‘In armour, on horses. Can’t you hear?’

  I listened. Someone was kicking the door. ‘Get out of sight,’ I told him,

  swinging my legs off the bed and discovering that I had pins and needles in both

  of them — well, I wouldn’t be running far like that. No escape option; well, it

  simplified matters. ‘And get the other two under cover as well,’ I added, as he

  scurried off. ‘I’ll keep them talking if I can.’

  I suppose I was scared; most of all, though, I was just plain sleepy and

  bewildered. It was perfectly possible that I had enemies, con­sidering

  everything I’d been responsible for over the years, but I couldn’t think of any

  who were in a position to send soldiers to get me.

  I didn’t have to wait long before I found out the answer. They were Macedonians;

  to be precise, they were troopers from King Alexander’s mobile reserve.

  ‘Are you Euxenus?’ one of them asked, as I opened the door a little wider.

  No point in denying it, I thought. ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘You’re coming with us,’ the soldier said. ‘If you want to pack some stuff, be

  quick. We haven’t got time to hang about.’

  I stayed where I was. ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  The soldier grinned at me. ‘ India ,’ he said. ‘Are you taking any­thing with

  you or not?’

  ‘ India ?’ I repeated.

  ‘You heard me.’

  Of course, I didn’t have the slightest intention of going to India , or anywhere

  else for that matter, in the company of these ferocious-looking men. They were a

  sight to see, no question, standing there in their armour — Macedonian-pattern

  helmet, breastplate and greaves; if you looked closely you could see dozens of

  small repairs, where a dent had been raised or a hole had been patched and

  brazed. Their clothes told the same story — here bleached by the sun or by being

  soaked with water, there darned and patched, all neatly done (a soldier may be

  reduced to wearing rags, but they’d better be neat rags if he doesn’t want to

  find himself pulling extra latrine-digging duty). I could well believe that

  they’d just come from somewhere like India , and in a hurry too.

  I tried to think of a plan of campaign, a way of getting away from them and

  keeping away until either they gave up and left me alone or neighbours showed up

  in force and rescued me. Unfortunately, both versions of a happy ending were no

  end improbable. I had no way of calling for help, and these people didn’t look

  as if they’d just go home again if they didn’t get what they wanted.

  ‘Who sent you?’ I asked. They didn’t reply; instead they surged forward into the

  house, pushing me gently but firmly out of the way. ‘Could you at least tell me

  what it is I’m supposed to have done?’ I added.

  The soldier looked at me oddly. ‘You haven’t done anything,’ he said. ‘At least,

  not anything wrong. Alexander needs you for some­thing, that’s all I know. And

  that’s enough, too.’ He picked up a small terracotta statue of a man riding on

  the back of a bird, examined it as if checking to make sure there wasn’t a

  company of archers hiding in it waiting to ambush him, then put it back. ‘All

  right,’ he said, ‘time’s up. Your things’ll have to be sent on later. I expect

  the Colonel’ll see to that for you.’

  One of the soldiers took hold of my shoulder. His grip didn’t hurt, but it was

  firm, like a well-trained dog retrieving a hare in its mouth. ‘Colonel?’ I

  hazarded.

  The soldier nodded. ‘Colonel Eudaemon,’ he said. ‘Your brother. The one who’s

  going to be living here now you’re going to India .’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The soldier’s name was Colonel Timoleon, and as soldiers go, he wasn’t so bad.

  Once we were safely on board the ship and there wasn’t any likelihood of my

  getting him into trouble by escaping or wandering off, he relaxed a little.

  ‘Colonel Eudaemon,’ he said. ‘We served together for years, off and on. Of

  course, he was mostly in the rear of the line of march, being an engineer.’

  I looked out over the dark-blue sea, the same view I’d got so thoroughly sick of

  on the long journey back from Olbia. ‘I haven’t seen him for — oh, twenty years

  at least. In fact, if you’d asked me I’d have told you he was probably dead. He

  was just a kid when he left home.’

  Timoleon nodded. ‘It’s easy to lose touch with home when you’re in the service,’

  he said. ‘Me, I’ve been away sixteen years, and I wasn’t with the original army,

  the first lot who crossed into Asia and fought at the Granicus. Most of them

  have never been back — the ones who’re still alive, that is. Even losing as few

  men as the King does, the casualties mount up over twenty-odd years. And that’s

  just the ones who get killed in the actual fighting,’ he added. ‘Mostly they die

  of disease, bad water, bad food, that kind of thing.’ He smiled bleakly. ‘Truth

  is, the enemy’s always the least of your problems.’

  I shrugged. ‘I suppose so,’ I replied. ‘I’ve never been a regular soldier, so I

  wouldn’t really know.’

  Timoleon turned his head to watch a seagull flying low. ‘I heard about what

  happened in Antolbia,’ he said. ‘Bad business. One of these days, he’ll sort

  them out for what they did, you can count on that. After all,’ he added, ‘it’s

  one of the few parts of the world he hasn’t been yet, so he’s bound to go there

  sooner or later.’

  The way he said that impressed me. ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Do you believe Alexander

  will end up conquering the whole world? Every last bit of it, I mean?’

  He nodded. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘You look at the rate he’s been

  going. In ten years he’s taken in the whole of Asia ; and next year, once he’s


  finished tidying up in India , he’ll reach the far ocean, which is the end of

  the world, you just can’t go any further than that. Then he’ll head back

  north-west, clean up those Scythians and bits and pieces up there; then it’ll be

  Africa, and afterwards on to Italy and Spain; and everyone knows, they’ll be

  easy as squashing grapes com­pared with the East. I reckon he’ll have conquered

  the whole world by the time he’s forty. Just think of that, will you? The whole

  world, one end to the other.’ He shook his head, then grinned. ‘Then maybe we

  can all go home,’ he said. ‘Unless he goes ahead with this idea of settling us

  all down in these new cities and creating this ideal society everyone’s always

  banging on about. Can’t see it ever happening myself. Still, I expect they said

  the same about the idea of conquering Asia .’

  I looked away so that he couldn’t see my face. ‘I heard rumours about that

  idea,’ I said. ‘But we get so many rumours in Athens , it’s hard to know which

  ones to believe. So that’s really a serious proposi­tion, then, planting Greek

  colonies all over Asia ?’

  ‘Too right,’ the Colonel replied. ‘Only it’s more than that. He reckons that the

  only way there’ll ever be peace and harmony between us and them is if there

  isn’t any more Greeks and Persians, just one big happy family. So we’re all

  going to be given land and wives in Asia , and they’re going to ship most all of

  the people out of Greece and settle them down all over the world. Greeks and

  Persians, Greeks and Egyptians, Greeks and Italians when we get there, Greeks

  and Indians, Greeks and Scythians—’

  ‘Been done,’ I interrupted. ‘Didn’t work too well.’

  He shook his head. ‘That’s because it wasn’t done right,’ he said. ‘No

  disrespect to you and your people,’ he added quickly. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I

  don’t really know enough about all this to have an opinion, I’m just a soldier,

  me. But you’ve got to admit, if it can be made to work, it’s got to be a bloody

  good idea.’

  ‘Ideal,’ I said. ‘Wonder where he got the notion from?’

  Timoleon looked at me oddly. ‘From you, of course,’ he said. ‘Else, why’s he