stepson of Philip. For gods sakes, brother, you’re one of the most famous men in
the Empire. And,’ he added with a shrug, ‘I’m your kid brother. Wonderful.’ He
let go a long, measured sigh. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘by the look of you it hasn’t all
been wine and honey-cakes. You look pretty bloody awful, brother, no offence.’
‘Thank you so much,’ I said.
Just then the surgeon bustled in. He was wearing a fancy dinner gown with red
wine spilt down the front, and as he walked through the door he masked a
cavernous yawn with the back of his hand. I don’t know, there was something
about him that didn’t inspire confidence.
‘What the hell was so urgent,’ he said, ‘that I had to be dragged from my
dinner...?’
He’d made a tactical mistake. He’d got just a little bit too close to the bench
my brother was lying on, and before he could finish his sentence, Eudaemon
reached out with his enormous left paw, grabbed the surgeon’s gown where the
folds hung round his neck, and dragged him to his knees. Sweetly done.
‘You’re drunk,’ he said.
The surgeon was too shocked to answer; so would you have been, I reckon, if you
suddenly found yourself kneeling at less than arm’s length from my brother’s
savage, staring eyes. Eudaemon held him there for a count of five, then relaxed
his fingers and let him go. He stood up and backed away a couple of paces.
‘Are you drunk?’ I asked.
‘No, of course not,’ the surgeon replied.
‘You’ve got booze all down your front,’ my brother said. ‘If you can’t even find
your face when you’re sober, you must be a bloody rotten surgeon.’
‘It was an accident,’ the surgeon said, rather desperately. ‘Look, do you want
me to set your leg or not?’
My brother made a soft, growling noise in the back of his throat. ‘I’m not
sure,’ he said. ‘I used to think I was a pretty tough character; I mean, I’ve
fought the Persians and the Bactrians and the Medes and the Indians and a whole
lot of other people whose names escape me right now, and they didn’t bother me
too much. But I’ve got to admit, this clown scares the shit out of me.’
‘That’s enough,’ the surgeon said. ‘I’m going.’
‘Stay where you are.’
The unfortunate man froze in mid-step. I’d have done the same. My brother had
the perfect parade-ground voice, not so much loud (though it was loud enough) as
densely packed with a lifetime of contempt, weariness and disgust.
‘Please,’ the surgeon said, ‘make your mind up. Either you want me to treat you
or you don’t.’
My brother sighed. ‘Get on with it,’ he said. ‘And do a proper job, or you’ll
wish you were never born.’
Now, I’ve never had a broken bone, so I don’t know from personal experience, but
people I’ve met who’ve had bones set say it’s probably the most intense pain
there is, though women tell me childbirth is worse. I’ll admit, the click as the
surgeon put the thing back where it belonged was enough to make me want to throw
up. But Eudaemon didn’t make a sound, apart from a tiny grunt, the sort of noise
you’d expect from a fieldmouse belching. As for the surgeon, he looked scared to
death. I had the feeling his evening wasn’t going quite the way he’d planned.
‘Well,’ Eudaemon said, after the surgeon had packed up his things and gone,
‘that wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d thought it would be.’
‘You don’t like doctors, do you?’ I said.
‘Whatever makes you say that?’ Eudaemon replied. ‘True, half of
them are butchers and the other half are frauds, but by and large they’ve never
done me any harm. Though I’ve always done my best to stay well clear of them,
I’ll be honest with you there. Anyway, you’d better help me back to my quarters.
And this time, try not to break anything else. I really don’t want to have to go
through all that again.’
Luckily, Eudaemon’s quarters weren’t too far away. He had a place to himself,
smaller than a cowshed but much larger than a clothespress, say, or a beehive.
Inside it was sparse, to put it mildly. Stacked against the wall, his armour —
expensive breastplate and helmet, lavishly decorated with enamel that had been
chipped and scraped into worthlessness, a small shield with a large letter A
painted on it, and a pair of battered silver-plated greaves — and beside it a
goatskin pack with the hair still on, the strap frayed and repaired with rawhide
cord. There was a plain cord-mattress bed, the type common to all the quarters
in the place, and a folding three-legged stool with a patched rush seat. That
was it.
‘So this is home,’ I said, as I lowered him off my shoulders onto the bed.
‘Of course not,’ Eudaemon replied. ‘I’m not planning on staying here, or at
least I wasn’t. Now I guess I’ll be stuck here for however long it takes the
bone to knit. Thanks again.’
I sat down on the stool and leaned forward, my elbows on my knees. ‘All right,’
I said. ‘Maybe now you’ll tell me what’s going on. I got this crazy-sounding
letter, apparently from Alexander himself—’
‘No apparently about it,’ Eudaemon interrupted. ‘I know all about your precious
letter, thank you very much. Seems like I’ve got you to thank for being elbowed
out of the service.’
I shook my head. ‘Don’t blame me,’ I said. ‘First I knew of all this was when a
couple of soldiers turned up outside my house and told me I was going to Asia .’
Eudaemon was silent for a moment. ‘Figures,’ he said. ‘It all sounds a bit like
Alexander arranging things for the best. You know, that man’s a miracle. He can
do more damage with a good intention than twenty thousand of the Great King’s
crack guardsmen let loose in a crowded marketplace.’ He turned his head and
looked at me. ‘From what I gather, you’re pretty much the same, though on a
suitably low and primitive level. I don’t know; maybe it’s one of the things
that marks you men of destiny out from the rest of us.’
I let go a long, deep sigh and shifted the stool back a few yards. ‘All right,’
I said. ‘Now you can start explaining what’s behind that and all the other snide
little cracks you’ve been making ever since I laid eyes on you. And before you
start lashing out and trying to strangle me, you’ll please observe I’ve had the
sense to move out of range.’
‘Good thinking,’ he replied with mock approval. ‘Obviously a certain rudimentary
tactical ability runs in our family. You really think I’d hurt you, my own
brother?’
I nodded.
‘Also,’ he added, ‘an ability to judge character at a glance.’ He wriggled a
little, trying to get comfortable, and groaned. ‘You know, you’re not the same
man as the one I’ve had cluttering up my memory all these years. At least,’ he
added with a sigh, ‘I guess you were both one and the same person, but you’ve
sort of grown apart, like we have. Figures; my version of you has been all round
the world with me, seen things you’ll never see if you live to be a hundred and
twelve.’
; I nodded. ‘Which of us do you prefer?’ I said.
He thought about that. ‘Hard to say,’ he replied. ‘I mean, my version’s a right
bastard, done me no end of harm over the years. But he never went so far as to
bust my leg.’
‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘about this Euxenus of yours.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Draw up a seat, I’ll tell you all about him.’
I’d actually shifted the stool an inch or two before I saw it. ‘No thanks,’ I
said. ‘What did you call it? Basic tactical ability?’
‘Rudimentary was the word I used. Sounds better. Longer.’ He shrugged, then
regretted it as a spike of pain made him shudder. ‘Please yourself, then, and
stay where you are. This Euxenus I know is an arrogant, thoughtless,
self-centred jerk who doesn’t give a stuff about anybody except himself — not
really bothered about himself, even, or at least not in the way most people are.
Doesn’t really care about money or position or pleasure or even comfort. He’s
the sort of cold, dead bugger who cares about ideas, not people. Dangerous sort,
that; they tend to be horribly persuasive, people listen to them and get all
fired up with these ideas of theirs. They attract disciples, like honey attracts
wasps. Give one of these arseholes a disciple or two and he can burn down
cities.’
‘Or found them,’ I added with a smile.
‘Same difference,’ he said. ‘You need the same mentality for both. Now me,’ he
went on. ‘I’ve been a soldier all my adult life—’
‘Yes,’ I interrupted again. ‘What about that? Last I knew, you were hanging
round that man — what was his name? The one who made you read the book about the
bees.’
Eudaemon looked at me, then burst out laughing. ‘Bias,’ he said.
‘And the book was Aeneas the Tactician. Now there were two more
inspirers-of-disciples. If I had my way, the whole lot of you’d be rounded up
like sheep and strangled with your own intestines.’
‘Probably wise,’ I admitted. ‘Go on. You were a sort of apprentice to the man
Bias.’
Eudaemon sighed. ‘We went to join the service of the King of Macedon,’ he said.
‘Or at least, I did. I’d saved up a bit of money —thirty drachmas, I think it
was — to pay my passage and travelling expenses to get there and buy some extra
kit, and Bias told me he’d make the necessary arrangements for us both, so I
gave him the money and I never saw him again; at least, not for years. But by
the time I twigged, of course, I was on board this ship going up the coast, and
without so much as a dud copper obol to pay for my fare. The master wasn’t at
all pleased, as you can imagine.’
‘How far had you got?’ I asked.
‘Bias told us both he’d be joining the ship at Oropus — why he said that and why
we believed him I have no idea. Anyway, there we were at Oropus, and no sign; so
that bastard of a ship’s captain slung me out, kept my sword and spear for
payment, which was a total rip-off, and sailed away. I had a breastplate, a
helmet, shield and a pair of greaves (all second-hand, and the greaves didn’t
fit worth a toss) but no weapons and no money; so after a day or two of moping
about in Oropus getting laughed at when I went looking for work I did the
sensible thing, sold the rest of my gear for what I could get — secondhand
armour was a real drug on the market back then, of course, because of all the
kit taken off dead people after battles; you’d be amazed how cheap people let
their armour go for when they’re dead — and then bummed around a bit more trying
to decide what to do.
‘Couldn’t bring myself to slink back home; nobody wanted to hire me as a
mercenary soldier, or anything else much, at that. Finally I decided I’d had
enough of sitting in the shade eating my capital, so I set off to walk to
Macedon. Turned out to be far less hassle than I thought it’d be — straight
roads all the way, not much bother. Didn’t have much to eat, of course, or
anywhere to sleep, but there’s always a wall or a tree when you want one, and it
toughened me up, got me used to long marches, short rations and sore feet.
Arrived at Pella , found Philip wasn’t there, off beating the crap out of the
Illyrians or some such improbable race; but they were hiring men for General
Parmenio and the home guard, weren’t all that fussed about who they took. I
pretended I was a veteran of gods know how many campaigns — made half of ‘em up,
and nobody knew the difference — so they took me on, issued me with some kit and
the mighty sarissa; now there’s an evil device if ever there was one. I’ll tell
you about it some time if I can be bothered. Anyway, that’s how I came to be a
soldier; and I was chugging along quite nicely, worked my way up to junior
captain of auxiliary infantry, thought of myself as more of a Macedonian than
I’d ever been an Athenian, when suddenly King Philip dies and King Alexander
takes over, and somehow — gods know how — word reaches him that Captain Eudaemon
is the brother of his old schoolmaster, Euxenus of Athens. At which point,’
Eudaemon said, with a dreadful scowl, ‘my life stopped being a slow but steady
progress towards self-improvement and became a steaming lake of shit. Thanks to
you,’ he added, with a nod.
‘Me?’
‘You.’ He shook his head. ‘Of course, you’d buggered off by then, off to Olbia
with your happy band of idealists. And of course you’d left behind this amazing
impression in the mind of young King Alexander. Gods know what it was you said
to him when you had that long, inspirational chat under the fig-tree at Mieza—’
‘I swear to you,’ I interrupted, ‘I can’t remember anything like that. He
mentioned it in his letter, but it was news to me, really. I think he was mixing
me up with someone else.’
‘Balls,’ Eudaemon replied. ‘You’ve just forgotten, obviously. I know it
happened, because King Alexander told me so himself, and a man like me always
believes what his commanding officer tells him; so you’re wrong and he’s right.
In any case,’ he went on, ‘I refuse to believe that anybody could ever get you
confused with a brilliant thinker or a silver-tongued orator. It’d be like
confusing a duck with an ox. So if it wasn’t somebody else, it must have been
you. That’s what we call logic,’ he concluded cheerfully, ‘in the army.’
I shrugged. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘maybe I did say something that took root in
Alexander’s mind, I don’t know. Anything’s possible. But that doesn’t explain
how being my brother ruined your life.’
Eudaemon yawned and stretched, until the movement jarred something and he
winced. ‘Isn’t there anything to drink in this rat-hole?’ he said querulously.
‘My throat’s dry as shield-leather.’
‘I can’t see anything,’ I replied.
‘Well, in that case,’ Eudaemon said, ‘one of us is going to have to trot down to
the mess and get a jar of service-issue red. Which one of us is best suited to
the task, I ask myself?’
*
Basically (Eudaemon told me, after I’d come back with the jar and two cups) it<
br />
was gratitude, or respect; that’s what screwed up my life. If you’d never been
born, or you’d died before you were weaned, or if you’d managed to find yourself
a proper job when you were a kid instead of preying off the gullibility of the
feeble-minded and foreigners, everything would have been just fine. When
Alexander became King, he’d have launched his expedition and I’d have gone along
as Captain of Auxiliaries, done my bit for the cause, earned my pay and got my
share of the plunder, probably by now I’d be a Colonel of Auxiliaries, maybe
even sub-prefect of a province, with a bunch of secretaries to do my work for me
and nothing to do all day but lie on my back boozing and making myself obnoxious
to the local women. All by my own unaided efforts, please note; not bad for a
man who walked into Macedon in a pair of raggety sandals and a third-hand tunic.
Instead, I had to be your brother. It wasn’t my fault, it was something I had
absolutely no say in, but I got dumped on all the same. I hate things like that.
I was sitting outside the mess hall playing draughts, I remember, when they came
looking for me. Staff bastards, they were, gilded belt-buckles and cream-white
tunics, sprigs of your full-blood Macedonian nobility; anyway, they told me
Alexander wanted to see me immediately, so off I went, wondering what the hell
it was I was supposed to have done, and whether I was going to make it back to
my tent alive.
Needless to say, I’d never actually met him before. Oh, seen him, yes;
everybody’s seen him, at a parade or a march-past or a public occasion. Goes
without saying, of course, that the Alexander you see from a distance over some
other bloke’s head is quite different from the man you sit and talk to. Your
public Alexander; well, you’d have to be a pretty bloody cold fish not to be in
love with him. The looks, the poise, the style, the speaking voice, the
instinctive air of command —you’d follow him to the ends of the earth, and a
hell of a lot of men have done. Fair play to them. That Alexander’s a man who
merits following. That’s as close as nine hundred and ninety-nine men in a
thousand ever get, and that’s as close as you want to get, because when a man’s
as well-nigh perfect as your public Alexander is, anything further you find out
Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt Page 52