The Macedonian

by Nicholas Guild

  He held up his hand to forestall the inevitable question.

  “It is enough to know that it is said, My Lord. It will do you no good to know by whom. But if Perdikkas is named the heir, as is only right, since he is the next in age, then all such voices will be stilled.”

  “And now there is this business of the owl,” Alexandros murmured through clenched teeth. He had heard of it, for everyone spoke of Prince Philip’s strange encounter—an owl, and in broad day. How could it not have been the Lady Athena? He had heard the story, and he had tried to dismiss it. He did not want to believe there was anything of the gods in it, yet he did.

  “Yes. It is all over the city. Send Philip away,” Ptolemy went on. “Wait awhile, and then name Perdikkas heir. By the time you call Philip back, everyone will have forgotten you even have another brother.”

  “How can I send him away? People will imagine I am afraid of him.”

  “If you are wise, you are afraid of him.”

  The two men exchanged a look that was almost like hatred but was not.

  “Yet he is loyal to me and everyone knows it. If I seem to punish him against justice, it will be taken for a sign of weakness.”

  The smile returned to Ptolemy’s lips, only now Alexandros imagined himself to understand its meaning.

  “The Illyrians seek assurances of your goodwill,” he said. “Why not arrange an exchange of diplomatic hostages? It will satisfy the Illyrians without creating the impression that you are afraid of them, and it will get Philip out of the way.”

  “Yes, precisely.” And now Alexandros smiled, as if at his own cunning. “It would do him good to see a bit more of the world than old Glaukon’s hearthstone. Philip will probably even bless me for it, since his has never been a quiet spirit.”

  “No one will think badly of you, only that you mean to keep your father’s treaties since you pledge your brother’s life to them.”

  “And my brother will come to no harm.” Alexandros turned to his kinsman with something almost ferocious in his expression, for Philip was still his brother. “We will have him out of the way for half a year or so, and then he will come home, no worse for having been gone. I will not have him murdered by savages.”

  Ptolemy continued to smile, but his eyes were dead and lightless.

  “As everyone knows, My Lord, the Illyrians are famous for their hospitality.”

  * * *

  For several days Philip’s face itched where the owl had left the marks of its claws. That was a normal part of healing, Nikomachos had said. There was no evidence that the wounds were turning putrid. Nevertheless, he had warned, with his customary gravity of manner, one should resist the temptation to scratch.

  But no one can be virtuous all the time, and one morning, while Philip still rolled about on his sleeping cot, hardly even venturing to open his eyes, a hand automatically found its way to his jaw.

  Sleep fled at once. He sat bolt upright, wondering if he could possibly be mistaken.

  No, he could feel them. Between the two angry red welts he could feel a coarse stubble. His beard was coming in.

  He ran his fingers over his throat and jaw, but the rest of his face seemed to be perfectly smooth. Hair was growing around the two cuts left by the owl’s claws, and nowhere else.

  If he had needed confirmation of the goddess’s omen, then this was it. “You are mine,” she was telling him. “I have marked you and I have made you. You belong to me.”

  There was no longer any space in his mind for doubt, for in token of her favor the Lady Athena had given him his manhood.

  Within a matter of days his face was covered with a reddish-gold down so that the change was obvious to everyone—so that when he was summoned into the king’s presence the two brothers met for the first time as men.

  Alexandros was supervising cavalry drill on the vast unplowed flatlands north of Pella, and Philip had to ride straight through the afternoon to reach him.

  That day’s exercises were at an end, and perhaps as many as three hundred horses were tethered in groups of eight or ten, their heads pointing in to the center of a circle, their graceful necks stretched down to the earth as they companionably ate knee-high, yellowing grass, which the lowering sun shadowed to the color of old leather. The smoke from scores of cooking fires tainted the air, and as Philip passed, weary men glanced up from their suppers and then immediately lost interest. Some few who knew him smiled or raised a hand in greeting, but most looked at Alastor first, making sure they were out of the way of his great hooves, and did not even notice the rider.

  Philip found his eldest brother squatting on the ground with five or six of the other men, eating flatbread rolled around pieces of roasted meat from a little iron cooking pot. The king wore a dirty linen tunic that only reached to his knees. His handsome face was stained with dust and dried sweat, and he ate with a bronze knife that could have belonged to a cobbler’s son. Here he was merely a soldier among soldiers.

  Alexandros raised his eyes as the shadow of Philip’s horse fell across him, and then he grinned and threw out his arms in comic surprise.

  “Little brother, can it be? Is that a beard on your chin, or is your face just dirty?”

  Everyone laughed with the king, even Philip.

  “Come down from that black demon and wash the dust from your throat with some of this frog piss.” Alexandros held up a wineskin. “Groom! Take the Lord Philip’s horse.”

  The messenger sent to Pella to fetch him had told Philip nothing except that it was the king’s pleasure he should come at once, yet Alexandros seemed in no hurry to explain his summons, and Philip decided that explanations could wait. He was astonishingly hungry. He upended the wineskin so that a thin stream trickled over his tongue, and then he tore off a strip of bread and used it to scoop out a few chunks of meat from the pot, devouring them greedily although they were still hot enough to burn the roof of his mouth. For perhaps half an hour, everyone was content to eat in silence.

  When he was finished, Alexandros wiped his fingers on his tunic and lay back on the grass with his hand behind his head, closing his eyes. Almost at once he began snoring gently, for he had the soldier’s knack of falling asleep as if by an act of will. No one paid any attention.

  * * *

  “I have to inspect the defenses—do you want to go for a walk?”

  It was just sundown. Alexandros hadn’t opened his eyes yet, but he sounded wide awake.

  “Yes, fine. I was beginning to think you were dead.”

  Alexandros did not laugh. For an instant he looked as if Philip had slapped him. Then he stood up.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Soldiers have to see that the king cares how they perform their duty.”

  As they made their tour of inspection, Philip studied the way his brother conducted himself, and he began to understand why Alexandros was so popular with his soldiers. He seemed to know everyone’s name, and he had time for everyone. He inquired after their wives and children and the condition of their horses. He spoke with men about their performance on the drill field, praising and sometimes criticizing but always giving the impression that every detail of the day’s exercises was held in his memory. Thus did he tighten the bonds of loyalty, for an army must believe that its commander understands his business and is not too grand to care about the humblest among them. It seemed a lesson worth remembering.

  “What do you know about the Illyrians?”

  It was the blackest part of the night, and they had only just finished checking on the last man at the last guard station. The only light was from the sentry fires. Philip glanced at his brother’s face and noticed that it was creased by an expression he had never before seen there, as if Alexandros had been made uncomfortable by some inner doubt.

  “Little enough,” he answered. “I know that they are a nation of thieves, that they oppress their subject peoples and cause trouble for their neighbors. I know that their king is named Bardylis and that he is old and considered cunning. Wha
t else is there to know?”

  Alexandros threw back his head and laughed. The laughter went on too long, and there was something hollow about the sound.

  “Whatever there is,” he said finally, “you will know it before any of us. Bardylis is frightened by the warlike reputation of Macedon’s new king and wants some assurance of our continued goodwill. Thus there will be an exchange of hostages—he sends me one of his numberless descendants, and I send him you. Remember, when you are among them, to keep your eyes open.

  “It will not be for long, and you will be treated as an honored guest. I almost envy you, little brother.”

  Somehow Philip could not shake off the sense that he was listening to someone else’s voice.

  5

  The Illyrians had always held a prominent place in Philip’s imagination. In the endless games of war that had occupied his childhood, the Illyrians were heavily favored for the role of opponent. For some perverse reason, Arrhidaios, when it was someone else’s turn to be king of Macedon, invariably wanted to be an Athenian general, but in the opinion of Philip and his other friends the Illyrians made the best enemies. They were cruel and cunning, and their horsemen were almost a match for the Macedonian cavalry. Besides, they enjoyed that aura of fascinating villainy that belongs only to half-savage races.

  So Philip’s first reaction when told that he was about to be turned over to King Bardylis was a shudder of dread, for he had heard enough stories of how the Illyrians treated prisoners that the prospect of falling into their hands made his flesh crawl. Then he decided that this was cowardly of him, that a diplomatic exchange of hostages would be quite another matter, and that the whole thing was likely to be a marvelous adventure. He even began to look forward to it—always provided that he was able to forget the expression on Alexandros’s face as he told him.

  But as the summer wore on, it seemed to Philip that his sojourn among the Illyrians was fated never to happen. The only horsemen who threaded their way across the bleak mountains that formed the frontier between the two kingdoms were dispatch riders, for the negotiations made no progress, as if Bardylis were using them toward some hidden purpose of his own.

  The delay played on Alexandros’s nerves.

  “What is the old bandit planning?” he raged. “Does he imagine we will be content to wait forever?”

  “I could go myself.”

  The Lord Ptolemy shrugged, as if unconvinced that his personal intervention would serve in such a case, but he was a shrewd judge of his new king’s temper—Alexandros accepted at once.

  “Yes, by all means. Go as soon as you can.”

  Ptolemy left the next morning. Twenty days later he returned, with an agreement. There was to be a straight exchange of hostages, fifteen days hence, at the Vatokhori Pass. If there were any additional understandings, only Ptolemy, and perhaps the king, knew of them.

  And Philip did not care. He only cared that in ten days’ time he would be on his way north. He would be away from the smothering haven of his family, surrounded by strangers, living a man’s life. It would probably even be dangerous—he hoped it would be dangerous. He did not know how he was to endure the few remaining hours he would be forced to abide in Pella.

  But he kept his impatience hidden, for Alcmene’s sake.

  Poor Alcmene, whom he loved with a son’s love, how her haunted eyes followed his every movement! He remembered how, through all of his childhood illnesses, it had been just the same, as if she half expected him to fade from sight forever.

  And on the morning of his departure there was the formal leave-taking, with the king there to embrace him. A small crowd had gathered, among whom he saw his mother and—it made his heart swell within him—his cousin Arsinoe. As he climbed on his horse he caught Arsinoe’s eye and smiled. There was just a hint of a return before she dropped her gaze. His mother hardly even glanced at him.

  “Take this, Lord,” Alcmene murmured. She had approached as silent as a shadow and stood holding up to him a stout leather bag, even as her hand came to rest stealthily upon his knee. Alcmene was afraid of horses, and particularly of Philip’s, so only the courage of desperation could have allowed her to venture so close. “It is a long way to that place, and you will be hungry.”

  Philip laughed that even now she could not bring herself to call the Illyrians by their name, or even to admit their existence. He went not to them but to “that place.”

  He took the bag, which was still warm and smelled of cooked lamb—doubtless its contents would feed him for a month—and leaned down to kiss her lips.

  “You worry too much, Alcmene,” he said, still laughing. “Old Bardylis may, in the end, cut my throat, but he is unlikely to starve me.”

  Pulling back hard on the reins, he turned and galloped out of the palace courtyard so that his escort were hard-pressed to catch up with him.

  * * *

  Even in late summer the mountain winds that poured down through the Vatokhori Pass felt laden with snow. Philip shivered inside his fleece cape. He could not help himself. He had the impression he would never be warm again. A stream flowed across the trail, its water so cold that it seemed to tinkle like shards of broken ice as it lapped over the stones.

  On the other side of the stream, mounted on horses with coats already ragged from their winter growth, were an Illyrian warrior and a soft, spindly limbed boy of perhaps eight or nine years, who clutched at his horse’s mane as if afraid of falling off. The boy was presumably of the Illyrian royal house, although he hardly looked the part—his nose was dripping, and the only thing that gave animation to his face was the dissatisfied expression that was concentrated around his otherwise rather lifeless eyes. He showed no hint of interest in the party of strangers he had journeyed so far to meet in this desolate place.

  The warrior, on the other hand, studied Philip with an intense and hostile gaze. His huge left hand held the reins with an almost feminine gentleness, but the rest of his strong, agile-looking body seemed taut with rage.

  “Perhaps they plan to cut my throat after all,” Philip whispered to himself, even while he touched his heels to Alastor’s withers—for all that fear writhed in his bowels like a serpent, it would not do to appear afraid. As his horse walked forward to meet the Illyrians, he could hear the splash of its hooves in the shallow stream like the cries of terror-stricken women.

  “I am Philip, son of Amyntas and prince of Macedon,” he said in a voice that surprised him with his steadiness. “I am he for whom you have come.”

  The warrior said nothing. He only reached over to slap the other horse on the rump so that it too stepped into the icy water. As they passed, Philip glanced at the boy, who looked at nothing, whose eyes were glazed with indifference, as if he neither understood or cared what was happening around him. Deep in his soul, Philip felt a quaver of horror.

  He turned back to his companions, men with whom he had traveled for four days and nights, and raised his hand in farewell, forcing himself to smile. One of them rode forward a few paces, seemingly about to speak, and then merely caught at the bridle of the Illyrian boy’s horse, leading it back with him.

  “There is nothing to keep us, then.” Philip looked at his new guide, assuming the voice of command he had learned from listening to Alexandros. “Take me to King Bardylis.”

  The Illyrian appeared not to have heard him. For perhaps a quarter of an hour the two of them remained there in silence, watching the backs of the retreating Macedonians until they disappeared from sight. Then the Illyrian swung his horse around and returned the way he had come, leaving Philip to follow if he would.

  By the time they made camp that night they were high into the mountains, and the wind tugged at their meager fire so that one hardly felt its heat. Philip huddled inside his fleece cape, utterly miserable. Sleep was impossible, not only because he was in danger of freezing but because the Illyrian, who was sitting well away from the fire with his back against a rock, seemingly oblivious to the cold, had not spoken to him a
ll day. The obvious explanation was that the man probably knew no Greek, but Philip still was not quite sure that he dare fall asleep.

  He judged he was safe enough, however, since the Illyrian had already had more than seven hours in which to act and did not give the impression he was the type who would need to wait for sleep to render his victim defenseless. He was an immense, savage-looking brute with a black beard that seemed to begin immediately below his eyes—eyes that never seemed to close, the restless eyes of a predator. A fur jacket covered his chest but left his arms bare, and the right one bore a wide, ragged scar that ran from shoulder to elbow. No, this was not a man who would hesitate to kill, and, after all, there was nothing to stop him. Philip was a hostage and carried no weapon.

  Thus, he concluded, since he was alive now he would probably live at least long enough to reach King Bardylis. It made no immediate difference, however. He still couldn’t find his sleep.

  They traveled for three days through a series of mountain valleys that Philip was reasonably sure did not belong to the Illyrians’ native territory but was instead part of their small empire of conquered tribes. In the midst of grasslands that would have fed great herds of sheep and cattle, the villages were poor and desolate looking, full of dirty, potbellied children with hopeless eyes. And their parents seemed frightened, giving Philip and his guide a wide berth when they encountered them on the trails, never speaking or even glancing up from the snow-crusted earth upon which they stood. None of the men carried weapons, and they gave the impression they would have run away if only they had dared, as if generations of the most brutal subjection had taught them the futility of pride. Philip had never seen anyone behave with such frightened servility, for among the Macedonians the king himself was only a man like other men, before whom even the humblest peasant would have scorned thus to abase himself.