‘Ha, ha,’ I said sourly. ‘Can we apply that saying for a man with elephants, too? Harry Krishna woke me up eight times last night. Thank you, Brazza,’ I said, taking Chiron from him and baring my breast. The baby grabbed a nipple and hung on for dear life. I winced.
Alexander looked at him and grinned. ‘Takes after his father, doesn’t he?’
I smiled. ‘Which one?’
‘This one.’ He leaned forward and suckled the other breast, then he licked his lips and winked. ‘Ambrosia must be like that; sweet, warm, and coming from a woman’s breast. What more could one ask for? Chiron’s absolutely right to scream for it every four hours.’
I giggled and bent my head, covering Chiron’s and my nakedness with silvery hair. Alexander sat back and watched us for a while. His face reflected the contentment I felt. ‘I want to talk to Sharwah some more, I don’t think he told us everything,’ he said.
‘I agree. There’s something odd about all this.’ I glanced out the tent flap that Axiom had raised. Dawn was just beginning to break and the sky was streaked with salmon pink. ‘It is a beautiful place. How is it that it doesn’t seem to have a king or an army? Every place I’ve been before there have been fortifications, guards, a satrap, or a king. What is this place? Where’s the temple? I looked last night when we walked through the village, but I didn’t see one.’
‘It is strange. And I’ll tell you something else that’s strange – the people don’t look like any people I’ve ever seen.’
I frowned. ‘It’s like in this book I read. There was a valley with a rushing stream and a lake, where elves lived.’
‘What are they?’
‘They’re sort of like a nymph or a sprite. Except they’re not immortal.’ I tried to remember the story. ‘They’re magic, they make magic weapons. That’s it. Maybe Sharwah is an elf.’
‘You won’t believe in water nymphs but you’re sitting there telling me about things called nelfs that make magic weapons?’ He made a droll face. ‘Maybe I can ask for a magic spear that will strike down my enemies, or a flaming sword, and then I’ll be the king of kings.’
‘Believe me, you don’t want to be the king of kings. And it’s not a nelf, it’s an elf.’
‘That’s what I said.’ He leaned over and kissed Chiron on the back of his neck. ‘I love that spot. It’s so soft, and smells so good.’ He moved his mouth over and grabbed my nipple again. ‘And I love this too,’ he said. Then he sighed. ‘I hope my ankle will heal soon. Staying in bed in the morning is definitely tiring me out.’
‘What do you mean? We’re just sitting here.’
‘Has Chiron finished?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘And is Paul’s breakfast ready?’
I leaned over and looked. Axiom had set food on the table. ‘Yes, it looks like it.’
‘Good. Brazza?’ he motioned to him. ‘Can you take Chiron now? And Paul?’ He waited until Brazza took the children then he leaned over and drew the curtain. ‘This is what I mean,’ he said, and his eyes were dark with desire.
Afterwards, I stretched languorously. ‘I see what you mean.’
Alexander blinked and yawned. ‘If I didn’t know better, I would think I was becoming a sybarite.’
‘But you do know better?’ I teased.
‘I know we’re going to have to find a nurse for Paul. Brazza won’t be able to look after both children,’ he said fondling my breast.
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Hmm. If I don’t get up now, I’ll never get up. I hear footsteps.’ He propped himself up on his elbow and cocked his head. ‘Someone’s in a hurry.’
He was right. He had ears like a bat. Craterus came in, sweeping under the tent flap, his long face mournful as usual. ‘Iskander, I have news from our scouts.’
‘What is it?’
‘Forces are being gathered in the Swat valley northwest of here. Mostly mercenaries. They’ve banded together at Massaga, a fortified town.’
‘Do you want to go see for yourself?’ Alexander asked.
‘If you think I should,’ Craterus replied.
‘I do,’ Alexander said. ‘And while you’re there, see where they can attack us, where we can attack them, and all their possible routes of escape. Take fifty soldiers with you and get local guides to help.’ He looked pleased. He loved planning an attack.
Craterus left, looking pleased too. He loved scouting.
I shook my head; they were like two boys with a new toy. ‘Great,’ I said sarcastically when Craterus had left. ‘More bloodshed. Why don’t you send a diplomat and see if you can talk? Maybe you can settle this with words instead of war!’
He peered at me from underneath lowered lashes. ‘And will you choose the diplomat?’ he asked.
‘Why not?’ I drew my brows together.
‘And if the man’s hands come back first, will you feel bad?’
‘Of course!’
‘Well, before I send a diplomat I prefer to see if he can be protected and what will happen if he can’t be, and what I can do if his hands come back without him. All right? I promise I won’t rush in shooting arrows if I can talk first.’ He tilted his head. ‘How does your world conduct war?’
‘It’s rather complicated,’ I admitted. ‘Sometimes it’s a civil war, in which case the outside countries stay out of it as much as possible. If another country attacks across borders, then there are allies and enemies and everyone gets involved.’ I paused. ‘There’s no one person dragging his army around after him conquering all the territories he goes through.’
‘There’s not? How depressing.’ He grinned. ‘So all your countries are static?’
‘Well, not exactly.’ I scratched my head.
‘And what about your weapons? You spoke to me about machines that could fly and things called “cars”. Has progress also invented a better spear? Or catapult? Has it invented arrows that shoot themselves?’ He said this with a mocking grin.
I had long ago decided to lie. I didn’t want to give him any ideas. But most of all, I was embarrassed to come from a society that used nuclear weapons, biological warfare, and ray guns that anyone could procure and which spat death at a distance and precision that was chilling beyond Alexander’s comprehension. ‘No. The weapons are basically the same. Made to kill.’
‘Yes, but how? I mean, there must be …’ His sensitive hearing caught my half-truth.
‘I want to talk about something different,’ I interrupted. ‘Did you notice anything else odd last night?’
‘You mean, besides the weird old man, the tall, fair people, the wind chimes, the lack of a temple, and the village itself, all neat and clean? As if they had been waiting for us for days?’
‘Well, besides that. Think!’
‘No, I didn’t see anything else …’
‘Children! Where are the children? When we come to a village, the first ones rushing to see us are always children. We came with elephants! There should have been a crowd of kids around. Even this morning we should be able to hear children’s voices.’
‘It is strange,’ he said. ‘We’d better go. I have much to ask Sharwah.’
In daylight, the village seemed even stranger. The streets were swept and quiet. The only sound came from the hundreds of wind chimes hanging from the trees. People peeked out of doorways, but I saw no children. I started to get nervous, and I clasped Chiron tighter in my arms.
Alexander, still on his litter, was silent, but his eyes missed nothing. I could practically hear him thinking. He looked at the houses, the roads, the path through the woods, and then back up towards the high peaks and the twisting route that led to the pass. He frowned, and started searching again. I didn’t know what he was looking for. Paul sat on his lap, and he seemed content there. I loved seeing them together. Their profiles were so similar.
At Sharwah’s house, the door stood open. We entered, but no one was in the main room. Faintly, from the back, we heard the sound of splashing water.
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Alexander hailed the old man, who answered, ‘I’ll be right with you. Have a seat, make yourselves welcome.’
I played with Paul. He had a wooden chariot and a little wooden horse. He also had a lump of soft clay and he was squeezing it. I showed him how to roll snakes. Chiron watched for a few seconds, got bored, cried, then fell asleep. Paul studied him carefully.
‘That’s a baby,’ he said. ‘I’m a big boy.’
‘That’s right.’ I kissed him on the cheek and he laughed.
Sharwah came in and bowed to us. His bow was polite, but there was none of the reverence we usually got from strangers. It didn’t bother me, but it did intrigue me. Alexander got straight to the point.
‘Where are the children?’ he asked.
Sharwah showed no surprise. ‘Our children were all taken.
‘Explain!’ Alexander’s voice was harsh.
‘Our valley has been protected by the gods for thousands of years, but recently there have been great changes in the world. The pass opened not long ago. It was not always so accessible. However, a small earthquake opened the breach and our enemies came. In the old writings it says that ‘Children shall suffer, men shall make strife, and gods shall live forever’. There is a fortress on the sacred mountain which even Hercules could not capture. There lives upon that mountain a tribe of people who still sacrifice children to the living gods. They stole our children.’
‘They stole your children?’ I cried.
The old man held up his hand. ‘We had very few. Ours is an old society and has reached its end. There were five children in the village. Aged six to thirteen. The invaders came and stole them.’
‘Why?’ Alexander asked.
‘They are our enemies. They have been since the beginning of time.’
‘And where did they go?’
‘To the fortress on the top of the sacred mountain. In Aornos.’
‘Is it really impregnable?’ asked Alexander, leaning forward, his eyes bright.
‘More than that. It has resisted everyone throughout the ages.’
‘The sacred mountain? Where is it?’
‘Perhaps when your ankle has healed you could go yourself and see.’
‘I will capture the mountain and recover your children.’ Alexander sounded sure of himself.
The old man looked dubious. ‘If you do that, we will sing your praises until the end of time.’
We sat without saying anything for a while.
Paul played happily at my feet; he was a sweet little boy. He looked at me and smiled, but his eyes strayed constantly to the Sogdian woman, and I realized that for him, she was his mother.
I put my face in my hands. Sharwah’s voice came to me, gently. ‘I know your dilemma, my lady. I cannot help you make up your mind but I can speak. So think of this. Paul is a special child. He could grow here, surrounded by people who love him and wish him well. No one will ever hurt him. It is true that this valley is a small world, but it is unsullied and isolated. It will resist the demons of progress for longer than any other place. It will keep its innocence, its pureness. In the summertime, children can play in the lake. The stream has many fish and the forest is full of deer and wild pheasant. We are a civilized people who worship one god. Our temples are ourselves. We believe in the God-within. For us, it is a sacrilege to kill another human being, because if we do, we kill a divinity. It is not utopia. However, we were happy, until our children were taken.’
‘I will get them back.’ Alexander wiggled his leg experimentally. ‘In two weeks Usse said I could walk on it.’
‘Rest it well until then,’ I said, ‘otherwise you’ll make it worse.’
‘I hate being wounded.’
‘It’s tough being a conquering hero.’
‘Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Ashley,’ he said seriously.
That night Alexander returned to the subject of war in my world.
I lay in my husband’s arms and we talked. Around us the air was filled with the gentle snores of men and Chiron. He snored too, which always made me smile. Paul didn’t snore; he lay on his pallet and his small body hardly made a lump in the covers. I kept lifting the edge of the curtain to look at him.
Alexander took my hand away and drew the curtain closed. ‘You were lying about the weapons – why?’ he asked.
‘How could you tell?’
He sighed. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? You can’t throw spears at flying machines. War has always moved men to do more than anything else, at least in my world.’
‘You’re right, of course.’ I sounded sad. ‘We nearly destroyed ourselves. We made weapons that killed millions of people at a time. Women, children, men, animals, the weapons made no distinction. There was no intelligence behind them. If you kill someone now, you kill him yourself. You see him die. You feel his death and it shocks you. You cannot ever be the same again. You feel responsible for their souls. I see your men after battle when the shock has worn off. The whole army sacrifices to their gods. They think of the souls they have killed. They can see the faces of their victims.’
‘That’s normal,’ Alexander spoke softly. ‘The first time you kill, you slay part of yourself. If I had known that, I never would have lifted my sword.’
‘Liar.’ I spoke without rancour.
‘Continue. Please.’
‘Our weapons dropped from one of the flying machines and destroyed whole cities ten times as great as Babylon. Everybody perished. And the poison that remained killed people for generations afterwards.’
There was a deep silence next to me. I let it sink in.
‘Children not even conceived were killed, Alexander,’ I said. ‘The poisons warped the very matrix of the human body. Then there were the biological weapons. Weapons even more terrifying. We fought with weapons as light as air. Poison that you breathed, that floated on the wind. Whole countries were wiped out. Sickness ravaged the earth. The people who used these poisons didn’t understand them themselves and caused massive death and destruction. Some were even unleashed without antidotes.’ I swallowed hard. It was difficult for me to even think about the Third Great War, which had nearly annihilated the world.
‘But why?’ Alexander’s voice sounded strained. ‘Why? You said there were no more kingdoms to be conquered. No more crowns to be won. What was the reason for this?’
‘I think it happened for many reasons. War doesn’t usually have just one root. Like a tree, it has many. A big reason was ideological. Religion, if you can believe it, played a big part. The people of my world became too static, as you said. They separated into groups and became too rigid, refusing to acknowledge the other groups’ right to exist as they pleased. Economy played a big part. The world became divided. There was obscene wealth and abject poverty. Like now, where the rich are the kings and the poor are the peasants, but on a much greater scale. The poor revolted many times, but their wars were not the bloodiest. The bloodiest wars were always those fought for ideas.’
Alexander stirred restlessly. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to understand why I fight, but it seems so much easier to explain. And to explain I must go back to my father, and perhaps, before him, and back again. The world has always fought. But not on the scale you described and not for the same reasons.’
‘Tell me why you fight,’ I said.
‘I inherited the crown from my father, the crown of Greece and Macedonia. My father was king of Macedonia when the Greek states came to him and asked him to help them fight against the Persians who were attacking them. Before, the Greeks had always looked upon Macedonia with contempt. To them we were a bunch of sheep-herding barbarians. My father had been captured and was prisoner of war for a long time in Thebes. He grew to love everything that had to do with Greece; he loved its art, its culture, and its inventions. He wanted more than anything to unite Macedonia with Greece. He had no wish to wipe out the Greek culture. No, he wanted to become Greek himself. He helped the Greeks beat Persia, then, taking advantag
e of the ongoing war between Sparta and Athens, he took over all of Greece. He united the whole country, stopped the war, and gave the cities back their independence. My father became head of state but in name only. He didn’t want to impose his rule. The cities were free to rule themselves. Then Darius, who had always coveted Greece, attacked. My father fought back.
‘When my father got killed, he was in the midst of a war against the Persians, who had long wanted to absorb Greece into their empire. I was thrown into the battle; I had no choice but to fight. If Darius had won I would have been killed, Greece and Macedonia divided up into fiefs of Persia, and the great adventure would never have begun.’
‘Oh, so to you it’s a great adventure?’
‘Well, yes. Not to you? I don’t try and change what I’ve conquered. I don’t kill anyone who doesn’t fight. I don’t tear down temples and force the people to worship anything new. They are free to choose their gods, free to continue their lives as before. They can study in Greek schools if they want. They can trade now with many different nations. I am expanding their world. From what you told me, your wars are to destroy. I fight to build. Make that my epitaph.’ He grinned and his teeth gleamed in the dark.
‘In my world, there was a saying: ‘Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity’.’
‘That’s a stupid saying,’ said Alexander with the easy dismissal of a philosopher.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because it’s equating four things that have nothing to do with each other. It’s simple to use words to twist people’s opinions. That’s what my father always said about Demosthenes, the Greek lawyer. He wrote tirades against my father, the “Philippics”, accusing him of being a tyrant. I ask you, if my father were a tyrant would he have left Athens a free, democratic city-state? Would he?’
‘Shh, you’ll wake everyone up. Of course not. Demosthenes is a loudmouth looking to sound off and trying to compensate his own lack of influence by making trouble for those he thinks need taking down a peg.’
Son of the Moon Page 4