Orion and the Conqueror

by Ben Bova

  "The young hothead thinks he's a new Achilles," grumbled Pausanias as we rode toward the capital. "He wants glory and the only way he can get it is by bloodshed."

  "How young is he?" I asked.

  "Eighteen."

  I made myself chuckle. "It's understandable, isn't it? Didn't you want to be a hero when you were eighteen?"

  Pausanias did not reply to my question. Instead, he told me, "A few years ago, while we were campaigning in northern Thrace, Philip left Alexandros in Pella, to govern while he was in the field. Gave him the ring and the seal and everything. That's when people started calling him the Little King. He couldn't have been more than sixteen."

  "He was left in charge at sixteen?" I marveled.

  "Antipatros was left with him, of course, to steer him by the elbow, but Alexandros took himself very seriously, even then. One of the hill tribes, the Maeti, stirred up some trouble. They're always raiding one another, those cattle herders, or trying to get away from paying the king's taxes."

  "Alexandros went after them?"

  Pausanias nodded. "Left the capital in Antipatros' hands, and he and his boyfriends went galloping out to deal with this miserable handful of cattle thieves."

  He broke into a sour grin, the closest I had seen Pausanias come to laughter. "The Maeti ran off to the hills, of course, and left their pitiful little village empty. So Alexandros sent back to Pella for a dozen or so Macedonian families, resettled them in the village, and changed its name to Alexandropolis."

  I waited for the rest of the story. Pausanias gave me an exasperated look.

  "No one is allowed to put his name to a city," he explained impatiently. "Only the king."

  I said, "Oh."

  "Do you know what Philip said when he heard about it?"

  "What?"

  " 'At least he might have waited until I'm dead.' "

  I laughed. "He must be fond of the boy."

  "He was proud of him. Proud! The little snot slaps him in the face and he's proud of it."

  I looked around us. We were riding at the head of the group but there were others of the guard close enough to overhear us. It was not wise to call Alexandros names.

  "Don't worry," Pausanias said, seeing the concern on my face. "None of my men will inform on us. They all feel the same way."

  I wondered if that were true.

  Pausanias went silent for a while and we rode with no sound but the soft padding of the horses' hooves on the dusty ground and the occasional jingle of metal from their harnesses.

  "It's his mother, if you want to know where the fault lies," Pausanias muttered, almost as if talking to himself. "Olympias has filled the boy's head with crazy tales ever since he suckled at her breast. She's the one who's made him think he's a godling. Made him believe that he's too good for us, too good even for his own father."

  I said nothing. There was nothing that I could say.

  "All those tales that Philip isn't his true father, that he was sired by Herakles—that's Olympias' twaddle, for sure. Sired by Herakles! She would've loved to have Herakles plow her, all right. But she settled for Philip."

  I recalled that Nikkos had called Olympias a witch, and the other men had argued about her supernatural powers. And her reputation as a poisoner.

  For my part, Alexandros seemed like a typical teen-age lad—albeit a teen-age boy whose father was king of Macedonia; a teenager who had already led cavalry in battle a half-dozen times. To me he seemed eager to show the men around him that he too was a man and no longer a boy. And even more desperate to prove himself in his father's eyes, I thought. He was heir to the kingdom, but his accession to the throne was apparently not all that certain: the Macedonians elected their kings, and if anything happened to Philip, young Alexandros might have a difficult time convincing the elders that he was ready for the throne.

  He had his Companions, though: the lads he had grown up with, mostly the sons of Macedonian noble families. He was their natural leader, and they seemed almost to worship him. Four of them seemed especially close to him: smiling Ptolemaios, gangling Harpalos, the Cretan Nearkos, and especially the handsome Hephaistion vied with one another to shine in Alexandros' eyes. In battle they rode together, each trying to outdo the other. They even shaved their chins clean, as Alexandros did, although the word among the guards was that Alexandros hardly needed to shave at all.

  "He's effeminate that way," Pausanias told me, more than once. He seemed to take pleasure in saying it. I wondered if he realized that my own beard grew so slowly that I shaved only rarely.

  There was something in Alexandros' eyes, though, that disturbed me. More than ambition, more than an avid quest for glory. His eyes seemed to me far older than eighteen. Something glittered in those golden eyes that seemed ageless, timeless. Something that seemed faintly mocking whenever the Little King looked my way.

  As the days passed, my memory did not improve. It was as if I had been born, fully grown and dressed in a mercenary hoplite's armor, just a few days earlier. The men around me took me for a Scythian, since I was tall and broad of shoulder, and had gray eyes. Yet I understood their language—the various dialects and even the outright foreign tongues that some of the men spoke.

  I tried to remember who I was and why I was here. I could not avoid the feeling that I had been sent here purposely, dispatched to this time and place for a reason that I could not fathom.

  The dagger strapped to my thigh was a clue. It had been there for so long that even when I removed it the straps and sheath left their imprint against my flesh. I had not shown it to anyone since the night the Argives had tried to assassinate Philip.

  But on the trail back to Pella one night I removed it from beneath my skirt and one of the other guardsmen noticed its polished onyx hilt glint in the firelight.

  "Where did you get that?" he asked, eyeing the beautifully crafted dagger appreciatively.

  From Odysseus, I started to say. But I held my tongue. No one would believe that. I was not certain that I believed it myself.

  "I don't know," I said, letting him take it from my hand and examine it closely. "I have no memory beyond a week or so ago."

  Soon the other members of the guard were admiring it. They began to argue over its origin.

  "That's a Cretan dagger," said one of the men. "See the way the hilt is curved. Cretan."

  "Pah! You don't know what you're talking about. Take a good look at the design on the hilt. You ever see a Cretan design that used flying cranes? Never!"

  "All right, hawkeye, where's it from, then?"

  "Egypt."

  "Egypt? You've had too much wine!"

  "It's an Egyptian piece, I tell you."

  "So's your mother."

  The men nearly came to blows. Pausanias and I had to push them apart and change the subject.

  But the following night the armorer of the guardsmen asked to see my dagger. It was becoming famous, which worried me. I had always kept it hidden so that I could use it in an emergency when all else failed. If everyone knew about it, how could I use it as a surprise weapon?

  "That blade," said the armorer admiringly. "I've never seen work like that. Nobody makes an iron blade like that. It's a damned work of art."

  The flying cranes were the symbol of the House of Odysseus, I knew. Somehow I had received that dagger from Odysseus, king of Ithaca, in the Achaian camp outside the walls of Troy.

  A thousand years ago.

  It could not be, yet I seemed to remember it. I could see in my mind's eye those high thick walls and the single combats between heroes on the plain before the city. I could see valiant Hector and fiery Achilles and stout Agamemnon and wary Odysseus as clearly as if I were with them now.

  When I stretched myself out on the ground beneath my guardsman's cloak that night I clutched the dagger in my hand, determined to dream a dream about it, and about who I was and why I could remember a war from a thousand years in the past yet could not remember anything from a month ago.

  I drea
med.

  It was a confused, troubling dream, whirling and moving and filled with half-hidden faces and voices I could not quite hear.

  I saw Alexandros, golden hair streaming in the wind as he galloped on his midnight steed over a stark desert made of human skulls. His face changed ever so subtly, still the golden-haired intense face of that royal youth, yet now he was someone else, someone mocking and scornful who laughed as he rode roughshod over living men, crushing their bodies beneath his horse's hooves.

  Everything shifted, changed, melted like hot wax into a different scene where Philip slumped drunkenly against a dining couch, wine cup in one hand, his good eye glaring balefully at me.

  "I trusted you," he mumbled at me. "I trusted you."

  He was not drunk, he was dying, blood spurting from a sword gash in his belly. In my right hand I held a bloodied sword as I backed away from Philip's throne.

  Someone laughed behind me and I turned, nearly slipping on the blood-slicked stones of the floor, and saw that it was Alexandros. Yet it was not him, but a different person, the Golden One, age-old yet ageless, youthful flesh with eyes that had seen the millennia pass by. He laughed with a bitterness and scorn that chilled my soul.

  And beyond him stood a tall, regal, utterly beautiful woman with flowing red hair and skin as white as alabaster. She smiled at me grimly.

  "Well done, Orion," she said. And she stepped past the Golden One to put her hands on my shoulders and then slide her arms around my neck and kiss me full on the lips.

  "You are not Athena," I said.

  "No, Orion. I am not. You may address me as Hera."

  "But I love—" I was about to say Athena, then I realized that that was not her true name.

  "You will love me, Orion," said flame-haired Hera. "I will make you forget about the one you call Athena."

  "But . . ." I wanted to tell her something, but I could no longer think of what it was.

  "Go back to the timeflow, Orion," said the Golden One, still smirking. "Go back and play out the role we have written for you."

  His eyes were on the dead form of Philip as he commanded me. The bloodied sword was still tight in my grip.

  I awoke in the camp with Philip's other guardsmen, still clutching the ancient dagger, sick at heart at my dream.

  We resumed our march along the rocky trail through the coastal hills back to Pella. Following along behind us was the long, long train of wagons bearing the grain harvest that we had taken. Already there was talk in the camp each night that Philip would sell the grain harvest to raise more troops and then attack Athens. Or sell the grain to Athens in exchange for Perinthos and Byzantion. Or store the grain at Pella in preparation for an Athenian attack on the capital.

  If Philip expected an attack on Pella, however, the city certainly did not look it. My first glimpse of Philip's capital, on the morning when we finally rode into sight of it, impressed me. There was no wall around the city. It sat on the rolling plain by the high road, a sizeable city of stone buildings, as open and defenseless as the Athenian grain fleet had been.

  "We are its defense," Pausanias said. "The army. Philip fights his wars in the enemy's territory. They never get the chance to threaten his cities."

  Pella was a new city, Pausanias explained to me. "The old capital, Aigai, up in the mountains, it's got walls around it, all right. Built to be a fortress, Aigai is. But Olympias hated it there, so Philip moved his capital here, by the high road, just to please her."

  The city was still being built, I saw as we rode closer. Houses and temples were being constructed from stone and masonry; before us as we approached was a large theater carved into the hillside. Up on the highest ground stood a cluster of columned buildings of polished granite: Philip's palace, Pausanias informed me.

  "It's big," I said, meaning the palace.

  "The biggest city I've ever seen," said Pausanias.

  "You haven't seen Athens," came a voice from behind us.

  Turning on my mount I saw it was Alexandros, golden hair shining in the morning sun, eyes aflame with inner passion.

  "Athens is built in marble, not this gray, dull granite," he said. His voice was sharp, high-pitched. "Thebes, Corinth—even Sparta is more beautiful than this pile of rocks."

  "When were you in Athens?" Pausanias asked icily. "Or Thebes. Or Corinth. Or—"

  Alexandros shot him a glance of pure fury and darted past us, his black Ox-Head kicking dust in our faces as he galloped away.

  Pausanias spat. "To hear him talk, you'd think he's been around the whole world in a chariot."

  Half a moment later Alexandros' Companions dashed past and we got more dust in our mouths.

  When we stopped for the noon meal Pausanias made us clean up our gear. Grooms brushed our horses, slaves polished our armor. We trooped into the city bright and shining, and the citizens of Pella came out into the streets to welcome us with flowers and warm shouts of victory. I did not feel particularly victorious, and my dream still troubled me. I wondered if there were anyone in the city whom I could trust to interpret the dream without denouncing me as a traitor for even dreaming of slaying the king.

  Philip rode in our midst, and the people showered him with flowers and cheers. From what I had heard among the soldiers, when Philip had become king, less than twenty years ago, Macedonia was being carved up by its neighbors. Now Macedonia had either conquered those neighbors or forced them into alliances. Philip was so successful that his capital needed no wall around it. Now he was struggling to make himself master of all the region, from the Illyrians along the Adriatic Sea to the Byzantines on the Bosporus, from wild northern tribes along the Ister River to the mighty cities of Thebes and Corinth and even Athens herself.

  There was even talk of invading Asia, once the issue with Athens was settled, to free the Greek cities of Ionia and pluck the beard of the Persian High King.

  Up the wide main thoroughfare of Pella we rode, enjoying the crowd's welcome, until we passed through the gates of the palace wall. At home now, Philip prodded his horse to the front and thus was the first to arrive at the steps of the palace.

  Standing at the top of the gray stone stairs, proud and regal, her flame-red hair tied up in spirals that made her seem even taller than she was naturally, her royal gown purest white with shimmering crimson borders, her incredibly beautiful face haughty and imperious, stood the woman from my dream who had called herself Hera.

  I gaped at her.

  "Close your mouth, Orion," whispered Pausanias harshly. "That's the queen you're staring at: Olympias."

  It was Hera.

  And she recognized me. She looked past Philip, who was stumping painfully up the stairs. I realized for the first time that in addition to all the other wounds he had suffered, Philip was nearly crippled. But that is not what stunned me. It was Olympias. Hera. She looked straight at me and gave me an icy shadow of a smile. Her blood-red lips moved ever so slightly, mouthing a single word:

  "Orion."

  She knew me. My dream had not been a dream, after all.

  Chapter 6

  Somehow I was not surprised when I was told that the queen commanded me to appear in her presence.

  Most of the royal guard were young Macedonian nobles; once we were relieved of duty they quickly dispersed to their homes and families. Only those few of us foreigners or men who had no house in Pella remained in the barracks.

  We were quartered in one of the buildings adjacent to the palace, where slaves of all ages and both sexes bustled about to make us comfortable. Our quarters were almost luxurious, for a barracks. There were good beds in a wide room with strong rafters holding up a wooden ceiling. Plenty of room for us to stretch out. The room was well-aired, too, with windows that looked out on the parade ground.

  I saw that the men knew these household slaves well. Several of the women, and some of the younger boys as well, seemed to be lovers of certain of the guardsmen.

  A messenger informed me of the queen's command as I was bathing in
the spring-fed pool outside the exercise yard. The water was icy but I did not mind it, nor did I care that some of the men laughed at me for washing myself.

  "It will rain soon enough, Orion," called one of them from the stone benches lining the yard.

  "What are you, one of those Athenian dainties who has to take a bath every month?" jeered another.

  But when the queen's messenger arrived they quickly fell silent. To them it must have seemed as if I had known the queen would summon me. Or as if the queen had magically made me wash so that I would be sweet-smelling in her presence.

  So I followed the messenger, a smooth-cheeked youth who smelled of perfume, through the many rooms of the palace to the queen's audience chamber.

  She was Hera, the flame-haired, imperious beauty who had told me in my dream that I would love her. It had to be a dream, I told myself as I walked from the entrance of her audience room to her throne and bowed low before her. How could it be otherwise? Men sometimes glimpse their futures in dreams. And she recognized me and knew my name because she had been informed by messengers from Philip's camp. Messengers—or spies.

  That could explain how she recognized me, I thought. Yet how could I explain that the Hera in my dream looked exactly like the Olympias, queen of Macedon, who sat before me on a throne of polished ebony? I had never seen her before, except for my dream.

  Two guards in handsomely burnished armor stood behind her throne, staring stonily into infinity. Several women sat off in a corner of the large room. The floor was polished wood. Her throne was flanked by tall red-figured vases filled with vibrant flowers.

  "Your name is Orion, I am told," she said to me.

  "Yes, Your Majesty," I replied formally, thinking that she knew perfectly well what my name was. Then a new thought surfaced in my mind: Perhaps she knows more than my name; perhaps she knows who I truly am, why I am here, everything!

  "I am told that you saved the king's life."

  "I did what any loyal man would have done," I said.

  Again that ghostly smile animated her lips briefly. I realized that if Philip had been assassinated, her son might now be king.