And a bridge would stretch from Italy to Sicily.
It would span a distance of two miles, but it was the only solution the three men had been able to come up with to the problem of the Athenian navy. Eumenes suspected that Alexander had had it in mind all along; then again, if they’d been able to break through to what supposedly lay beneath Avernus, the war might have been won without ever going to Sicily. But it was certain that once the Macedonians got across, the Athenians would have no choice but to fall back into Syracuse and brace for the mother of all sieges. Should the city fall, that would essentially be the end of the Athenian Empire.
And the beginning of so much else. The tellers of tales regarded the island of Ortygia as the birthplace of the divine twins Apollo and Artemis. The god of the Sun and the goddess of the Moon—but what did such myths really mean?
“It’s not the primary site,” said Alexander, still not taking his eyes off the Sicilian coast. “It’s a secondary. Same with Avernus. Same with Siwah.”
Eumenes nodded tactfully. For Alexander, myths were as literal as his destiny. Hephaestion, on the other hand, had been growing ever more alarmed as Alexander grew ever more distant, ever more in sync with something that only he could hear. If the king wasn’t going insane, he had told Eumenes during the trip to Avernus, then something had been communicating with him ever since Siwah—some kind of intelligence that spoke very distinctly and very precisely to Alexander and that had kept speaking to him since inside his head, and that clearly knew a lot more about him then he did about it. It had promised him dominion over the earth, known and unknown. It had assured him of his divine birthright. And it had given him certain powers—had allowed him to activate previously-untapped portions of his mind….
“It’s a function of the bloodline,” Hephaestion had said, though that just begged the real question. Eumenes had just nodded. “That’s what it must be keying on,” added the king’s lover. “Why it told him so much more than it ever told any of those backward desert priests who’d been getting rich off it. And it’s why we have to get our hands on her.”
“How far along is she?” asked Eumenes.
“Four months going on five,” said Hephaestion as though he wanted to vomit. Eumenes could only guess what he and Alexander said about the matter behind closed doors. It wasn’t that Hephaestion minded Alexander’s dalliances with women. And this particular one had been intended to generate a very particular result.
Problem was, Alexander no longer had control of it.
“We should have headed straight for Gibraltar,” said Hephaestion.
“We’d never have made it in time,” said Eumenes. “An army isn’t what’s going to catch her.”
Hephaestion had nodded. They’d said nothing more of the matter. Eumenes had no doubt that Hephaestion felt uneasy for confiding in him. But the two of them had been forced to cooperate by virtue of sharing responsibility for all the special weapons—and by the necessity of keeping the ship of state on track in what were increasingly surreal waters. What was at the heart of all this? What lay in the far west? How could they stop Barsine from getting there first? With a start, Eumenes found himself once again staring into Alexander’s variegated eyes. They bored into him as though they were taking full measure of his worth.
“How soon can you leave?” asked the king.
“I’m ready now,” replied Eumenes.
“There’s something I need to give you before you go,” said Alexander. He drew his sword. “I regret having to do this.”
That turned out to be an understatement.
Chapter Sixteen
At last they were back on the water.
The storm had eventually died out, though not for want of trying. Euryice said she suspected it was simply a matter of range—that Alexander was unable to reach them that far west. But the water near the Pillars was rough enough anyway. The deck was pitching up and down like the time he’d held on to win his village’s bull-riding contest. But at least that had stopped. This time he couldn’t get off the bull, and it kept on charging in a direction he didn’t want to go, toward the edge of the world. Eurydice had told him that was nonsense—there was no edge—but he trusted his common sense over her long-winded explanations.
“Look at that,” hissed Matthias.
Gripping onto the rails, Lugorix forced himself to look. All he could see were just more waves. “Where?” he asked.
“There,” hissed Matthias, pointing. Lugorix followed the direction in which he was gesturing—through the swell of waves, out to where the haze of sky met that of sea.
And then he saw it.
Up ahead, two mountains protruded from the ocean, their tops lost in the low-hanging clouds. The coastline stretched away on both sides, leaving a gap between those peaks—a gap toward which they were sailing.
“Here we go,” said Matthias. He stepped over to the hatch and called down to the women.
“We see it,” said Eurydice rather curtly. Matthias rejoined Lugorix, a wan smile on his face.
“Everything still okay with you two?” asked the Gaul.
“Nothing’s ever been okay with us,” said Matthias.
“Because she wears the pants?”
It took Matthias a moment to realize that was a Gaulish expression—Greeks didn’t use pants. His face darkened as he got the joke.
“Very funny,” he said.
“But true?”
“I get the feeling she thinks I’m just her plaything.”
“Perhaps you are.”
Matthias nodded. “Near as I can make out, there’s only one person she ever cared about.”
“Her father.”
“And she’s the first to admit he wasn’t exactly a great dad.”
“So she’s not ready for something serious,” said Lugorix. “So you take what you can get.”
“It’s not enough.”
It never is, thought Lugorix. But he said nothing—instead just stared at those oncoming mountains. Now they were getting nearer, they looked more like pillars, reaching up toward the roof of some unseen temple. The closer they got, the stranger they seemed. They didn’t appear natural at all. He stared through the spray flying off the waves—
“By Taranis,” he said.
“I see it,” said Matthias.
The peaks were natural enough, but the figures carved into them weren’t. On the left was a single gigantic stone warrior. He held a club ten times the size of the Xerxes and his face was enclosed by the snarling jaws of a lionskin. Opposite him was a monstrosity: three human heads sprouting from the body of a serpent. The warrior and the monster gazed at each other across the straits, locked in eternal antagonism, forever separated by the narrow body of water that was the gateway to the outer ocean.
“Hercules and Geryon,” said Matthias.
“But who the hell carved them?” asked Lugorix.
“Someone who’s dead. I hope.”
Lugorix started to answer—but his voice trailed away as he suddenly caught sight of something else. Something far more mundane than those rocks.
But far more of a problem.
“Ships,” he said.
There were two squadrons of them, each one vectoring from behind one of the Pillars. Their size marked them as five-decker penteremes. Their colors marked them as Carthaginian. It looked like they’d been expecting the Xerxes.
“Crap,” hissed Matthias. He turned to the hatch just as Eurydice started bellowing at them to get below. Lugorix was right behind his friend as they clambered down to where Eurydice and Barsine were already pulling levers and hauling away on dials—
“Shut the hatch and start rowing,” said Barsine.
“Not this again,” said Matthias.
Eurydice almost looked amused. “You’d rather stay on the surface?”
Even Lugorix had to admit that wasn’t an option. He and Matthias started hauling on the oars while gears cranked around them and the Xerxes dove beneath the surface.
And kept diving.
“Uh… what the fuck?” said Lugorix.
“Shut up and keep rowing,” said Eurydice as Barsine retracted that strange instrument called a periscope. They plunged down while Barsine and Eurydice argued with each other over angles and distances and depths. Lugorix wondered why they hadn’t done this during the storm. Perhaps the fact that it was no normal storm meant it created disturbances beneath the water. Or perhaps it was because submerging was just so damn dangerous anyway—all the more so as it was clear that Eurydice and Barsine weren’t in agreement on the optimal way to thread the craft through the space between the surface and the seabed that connected Europe with Africa. The central point of contention seemed to revolve around the question of how far out the Pillars jutted beneath the surface.
But it turned out they all had more immediate problems.
A muffled boom resounded in the Xerxes, hard enough to make the metal hull clang—and then the whole ship twisted from side to side as though it was a rat being shaken by a dog. Even as that shaking died away, they could hear other explosions out there, though none came anywhere near as close as the first had.
“They’re bombing us,” said Eurydice.
“How are they doing that?” yelled Matthias.
“Black-powder charges, weighted and timed”—but even as Eurydice said the words another explosion washed across them. This one was almost on top of them; Lugorix was knocked forward, hitting his head against the oar and Eurydice was sent sprawling across the cabin. The other two managed to cling to their seats. Lugorix wiped blood from his forehead as Eurydice staggered to her feet—only to be hurled from them again by the jets of water pouring into the cabin.
“Oh crap,” said Matthias.
“Air-tank’s punctured,” muttered Eurydice as she crawled back to where Barsine sat at the controls. “Jettison it.” Barsine pulled on the controls; there was a vibration and then a clang as an iron plate slid across the perforated wall. “You two keep rowing,” she hissed. “Like your life depended on it.” Lugorix didn’t have any doubts on that score; he and Matthias hauled on the oars while Barsine and Eurydice worked the tiller and let the Xerxes drift still deeper. It was terrifying to be in a vehicle that was sinking in such a way, that couldn’t see where it was going—even more so when that vehicle was getting shelled by unseen attackers above it. The only consolation was that those attackers couldn’t see their quarry either.
But they were about to feel it.
“Suck on this,” said Eurydice as she pulled on a switch; the craft shook once more—releasing something else. Had Lugorix been able to follow its trajectory, he would have seen it shoot up through the water like a cork bobbing to the surface, impacting against the underside of one of the warships right above—and tearing that warship in two with a gigantic explosion that sent pieces of it flying almost all the way to shore. No sooner had Eurydice released the weapon then she grabbed the tiller; the Xerxes started turning. Barsine looked concerned.
“You sure we’re past the Pillars?” she asked.
“We’re about to find out.”
They kept on turning and they were still alive. The rumbling of the explosions began to fade. But the sea was buffeting the ship from side to side ever harder.
“Ocean,” said Eurydice.
“We’ve made it,” said Barsine.
But Lugorix knew damn well it was really just beginning.
The atmosphere aboard the Carthaginian flagship was sufficiently grim that no one dared go near the squadron’s commander. Hanno stood alone on the rear-deck, his leopard-skin warding off the wind while the Pillars faded behind them. Not only had the Persian vessel slipped past them, but they’d lost one ship already. That didn’t bode well for what lay ahead. All the more so as the stakes were as high as it was possible to get. If Carthage wanted to keep the liberty she’d just won, she wasn’t just going to have to fight for it, she was going to have to stay one step ahead of the competition. For now, she was allied with Macedonia, but Hanno was under no illusions as to what that nation really wanted. He’d looked into the eyes of Perdiccas back at Carthage, had known immediately that this was a man not to be trusted. The Macedonians wanted nothing less than total dominion. And if they gained what was reputed to be at the ends of the earth, such dominion would be within their reach…
But not if Hanno had a say in the matter. He’d taken shit from the Athenians for years, and he wasn’t about to exchange them for a new set of masters. He was ashamed to admit it, but he’d despaired that Carthage would ever be free; it seemed impossible that anything could ever loosen the grip of Athens. But now the impossible had occurred; now his city would be able to recapture her glory days and resume her place as chief power in the western Mediterranean. And maybe more... Hanno had been briefed at length by the Sufetes on the knowledge that had been uncovered from the secret recesses in the Library. The whole thing was insane, but it wasn’t his to question it. He was a soldier. That was why he was in charge of this mission—because he could be relied upon. Should it succeed, he’d be faced with the ultimate temptation. But really, it was no temptation. Betrayal of the city that had given him life wasn’t an option.
For Carthage itself, liberation was a little confusing.
It was hard to keep it all straight. The Athenians were gone but the Macedonians had arrived. Not that their army had been allowed inside the city. Well, some of their army had: various commanders and engineers were having discussions with the Sufetes who now ruled Carthage. And those Sufetes were largely the same men who had administered Carthage on behalf of Athens. Not all of them, of course: a few had been fed to the Baal for opposing the rebellion that threw out Athens. Or at least, allegedly opposing… for in the taverns and ale-houses there were those who whispered that those sacrifices were really just the result of power-plays amidst the Sufetes, with the losers served up to the ever-hungry Moloch. Or maybe it was just a matter of expediency, for how could the exact same group serve Carthage as had served Athens? Even if the gods didn’t need a scapegoat, surely the people did.
To be sure, there was ample reason to believe the gods were angry. Yes, they’d blessed the citizens of Carthage with liberation from the eastern overlords under whose yoke they’d choked for almost a century. But there were odd tales afoot. These ones were too dangerous to be told even in the bars; instead, there were whispers in back rooms and beds and alleys that thieves or demons (or maybe it was both) had taken advantage of the revolt of the Athenian prisoners to break into the treasure chambers beneath Carthage and steal a magickal jewel of terrible power. Some kind of amulet…others said that the demon-thieves had actually been caught infiltrating the libraries, but why would a library contain anything a demon would want? It made no sense.
Neither did the Macedonians. Hadn’t their kings said they intended to conquer all the known world? So why were the Sufetes even dealing with them? Had Carthage thrown out one batch of invaders only to have a second invasion hanging over her people’s heads? But the walls of the city were some of the strongest in the world, and the Macedonian army (most of it anyway) was outside the city, lacking all siege equipment and paying for all the goods it bought like allies rather than enemies. But that army had come across the desert for a reason, and what was that reason if it wasn’t going to attack Carthage?
Some said it was here to hitch a ride.
Those were the most disquieting rumors of all: that the fleet now prepping in the harbors of Carthage was going to take the Macedonians on board as passengers. Like any good rumor, it put a new twist on an expected development, for it was only logical that the fleet should be prepping to put to sea to defend Carthage against any Athenian counter-incursion. Only this fleet didn’t look like it was going to be doing much defending. Supplies were being loaded for a long voyage, and huge horse-transport barges were being prepped. The citizen-militia had been issued with arms for the first time in a long while, and mercenaries were being hired from the surrounding African terri
tories. All of which felt a lot more like an invasion was about to be launched rather than thwarted. And the Macedonian general Perdiccas had been spotted at the dockyards more than once—indeed, some said that he’d actually been aboard one of the ships during the prison revolt. So if the newly liberated Carthaginian fleet really was going to transport the Macedonian army somewhere—well, there weren’t too many places it would be going. There were only so many targets.
And if you thought about it, there was really only one.
Farseeker held up to his eyes, Agathocles scanned the artificial peninsula jutting out from Italy—a protuberance that now reached a quarter of the distance across the Straits of Messina to where he stood amidst the hills of Sicily. Other members of the resistance stood around him; they had ridden out here before dawn and would ride back to Syracuse under cover of night. From the looks on their faces they’d come to the same conclusion he had: nothing was going to stop the Macedonians from crossing. The bridge they were building was the cheapest sort imaginable, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t effective. Near shore, pylons had been sunk into the seabed to support rope and a myriad wooden planks; further out, newly constructed boats had been lashed together to form a causeway over which an army could move. Agathocles could see the tents of that army spreading over every Italian hill in sight—tens of thousands of men and horses and elephants awaiting the moment when they could cross the sea and storm into Sicily.
Nor were there any prizes for guessing where they’d go there when they got there. Agathocles had spent his entire life trying to free his city from Athenian rule, but he was under no illusions about what would happen were Syracuse to fall into Macedonian hands. Athens was an empire that had passed its prime; it was weakened at the core, and it would one day fall. Macedonia was a rising power, and its rulers seemed to have an intensity about them that Athenian democracy had always lacked. If they got their hands on Syracuse, Agathocles had no doubt that he would die long before the city was freed. In fact, he would probably die very soon, as he had a feeling that the Macedonians would root out the resistance organizations in Syracuse with an alacrity that the Athenians had never brought to the task. Even in the wake of the death of Cleon, Athens had still proven unable to clean up the city. Of course, convenient as it was to blame him for the viceroy’s death, Agathocles was reasonably sure that they knew he wasn’t responsible for it. The rumor-mill said that Macedonian agents had broken into the Ortygia, killed Cleon, and made off with documents and maps vital to Syracuse’s defense. Which would make keeping that city out of Macedonian hands all the harder.
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