“Besides, you did not summon me here to urge me to attend the council. The few times I did come you wouldn’t listen to anything I said. I just decided to stop embarrassing you. So perhaps now you’ll tell me what you really want.”
“What do you know about Elimeia?” Perdikkas, who was evidently glad for an opportunity to stop sparring with his younger brother, pushed the map across the table toward him. Philip hardly did more than glance at it.
“What is there to know?”
“They have a new king and he is in rebellion against me.”
Philip smiled as if at some private joke. “Pray don’t take it personally, brother—the kings of Elimeia have been in rebellion for over a hundred years.”
“Yes, but this one means it. He is sending raiding parties down to the plains and he has to be persuaded to stop. You must persuade him.”
“What are you talking about?”
Now it was Perdikkas’s turn to smile. It was evident that he had finally achieved his objective of complete surprise.
“I want you to go to Aiane and see what can be done with this bandit who calls himself a king. I need peace along my western borders, and I expect you to get it for me. Bribe him, threaten him, do whatever you think is needful, but persuade him to stop his raids.”
“No.” Philip shook his head. “Send someone else. Send an ambassador—that is what they are for.”
“Derdas would probably send my ambassador back in pieces.”
“Then thank you very much indeed!”
“Oh, you will be safe enough.” Perdikkas made a dismissive little gesture with his left hand, rather like waving away a fly. “He knows it would mean war if he killed you and, besides, there is some sort of family connection. Can you leave tomorrow?”
Philip was on the point of refusing yet again when he realized that he did not want to refuse. He put little enough faith in Derdas’s notions of family feeling, but at least this would be doing something.
For the first time in weeks he felt a spark of interest in life.
“Yes, very well, then—tomorrow morning.”
* * *
Philip left early enough that the guards at the city gates were the only people to witness his departure. Perdikkas had offered him a military escort, but he had refused, thinking he would make better time alone. Besides, once he reached Aiane, and should Derdas take it into his head to kill him, twenty or thirty soldiers could offer him no protection whatever.
He had allowed himself three days for the journey. “I will endure two nights of this barbarian’s hospitality,” he’d told Perdikkas. “What cannot be accomplished in that span will never be accomplished. And then I will return. Thus if I am not back in ten days, you will know that I am dead.”
“And you shall be avenged,” Perdikkas had answered complacently. “But he would never dare—”
“Would he not? I am always astonished at what men will dare.”
He made good time on the first day and camped on the western plains, at the foot of the mountains and well out of sight of the sea. After that the terrain grew rougher and his pace slowed. There were fewer cultivated fields and more herds of sheep, but he could have closed his eyes and known that he was entering Upper Macedon—he could hear Alastor’s hooves scraping against the stones in the ground.
Along the way he stopped in a few villages to buy food and refill his waterskin. The elders would come to greet him, to hear the news and to indulge themselves in the luxury of a new audience for their complaints. If they asked his name, he would simply tell them, “Philip, son of Amyntas,” and they would nod. By itself, a name means nothing, and to these people he was merely a stranger. They told him of the raids along the border.
“The king should do something. We need a garrison here, that the Elimoitai will stay at home.”
“Has there been much trouble?”
“My wife’s sister married a man from a village two hours’ walk from here. He was killed and his house burned down. They may ride fine horses, but these upland nobles are nothing more than thieves.”
He glanced at Philip’s horse and then looked embarrassed, but Philip merely laughed and turned the conversation to the prospects for a good harvest.
Yet what he had heard of the raids was true. About an hour before sunset Philip passed through a village that had been burned out only four days earlier. Several people had been killed, including three children, and almost all the sheep had been driven off into the mountains. Philip gave them money in the king’s name, but he could not promise them safety or even vengeance. He rode away with the sound of the women’s lamentations still ringing in his ears.
He made his second camp in the shadow of Mount Bermion, which marked the limit of his brother’s kingdom. Tomorrow he would be in the land of the Elimoitai.
Had he been sent here to die? Did Perdikkas expect him to be killed? Such thoughts occur to a man as he stirs the embers of his lonely campfire, far from the safety of home, yet he could not bring himself to credit them. Perdikkas had nothing to fear from him and could not profit from his death. Besides, the country was too weak to sustain a war, even against Derdas of Elimeia, and the army would demand such a war if the heir to the throne were murdered. Yet Perdikkas could risk his brother’s life based on a calculation that the king of a petty hill tribe would think like a statesman and not like a bandit chieftain. Alexandros had sent him as a hostage to Bardylis of Illyria, hanging his life on a same slender thread. What was wrong with his family, Philip wondered, that they seemed to love each other so little?
Down on the plains it was summer, but at this altitude one could almost have imagined a hint of snow in the cold wind that blew down from the mountain. Philip had found a bit of shelter below an outcropping of rock and he had his sleeping blanket wrapped around his shoulders, so he was not uncomfortable. He had passed worse nights in the open.
He tried to settle on some plan for approaching the negotiations but at last gave it up and decided to rely on his instincts. The gods alone knew what he would find when he reached Aiane. The gods alone knew what sort of a man he would find in Derdas, who had succeeded his father less than a year before and was little more than a name outside his own kingdom. It was better to have no plan—a plan might only get in the way.
And while he turned the matter over in his mind, it occurred to him that he was happy. He had something to occupy his thoughts that did not automatically fill him with remorse and pain. His gaze was once again turned on the world. He had escaped from himself, which was perhaps as close an approximation of happiness as he could imagine.
The next morning, a few minutes before noon, he saw the first of the Elimiote sentries—a single man on horseback, to the south, at the top of a ridge that stood out against the sky like a knife’s edge, perhaps half an hour’s ride distant. Horse and rider kept quite still for a long time and then cut away and disappeared over the horizon. He had fulfilled his task. He had made Philip aware of him.
But Philip had felt their eyes on him for some time—one had to be dead not to feel them. This was only the first time one of their number had actually presented himself for inspection. There were others, of course. Philip estimated that there were probably ten or twelve men in the patrol that had been dogging him for the past three hours or so.
These things followed a certain protocol. They hadn’t approached him, but they wanted him to know that they were there, if only to assert their king’s authority. By now a rider was halfway to Aiane, and they would not act until they had instructions.
Probably they didn’t know quite what to make of him. He didn’t have a packhorse, so he wasn’t a merchant. His horse and gear marked him out as an aristocrat, but diplomats, or even members of the gentry on a family visit, as a rule traveled in far greater state. Perhaps it had crossed their minds that he could be a fugitive, in which case his arrival in Derdas’s kingdom might be a blessing or a political embarrassment. They would have been able to form no conclusions, but unti
l he arrived in their capital, the heads of the king’s ministers would be kept buzzing with lively speculations.
Good, Philip thought. Let them simmer. He wanted to keep all the advantage of surprise on his side.
Since crossing the border he had passed two or three large villages, but he had not stopped in any of them. The women and children ran away at the sight of him, and even the men lowered their eyes as if to render him invisible. Even in the mountains Macedonians were generally welcoming of strangers, but not here. Perhaps they too felt the eyes of the king’s sentries and were afraid.
In the early afternoon, as he rode through a narrow valley, there they were, to the right and the left of him, strung out along the trails that girdled the hills to the north and south. He counted eleven in all—with the twelfth man probably this moment giving his report in Aiane. They were close enough now that he could have carried on a shouting conversation with them. Philip would have liked to do that, if only just to rattle their delicate nerves, since by now they were trying to intimidate him, but he kept silent. After all, it wouldn’t have been polite.
It was nearly evening by the time he came within sight of Aiane. He looked up and suddenly there it was—a wall and a few towers crowning a low, flattened hill. It was said that some four or five thousand people lived there, but one’s first impression was that the capital of the Elimoitai didn’t amount to much more than a fortified village.
His escorts, having apparently decided that he had come close enough, now closed on him from both sides. They were driving their horses at a gallop, although there was no need—Philip had reined Alastor in to a halt and was waiting for them. Within a few minutes he found himself surrounded by a tight little circle of armed soldiers.
“Hand over your sword, stranger, and state your business,” one of them, presumably their officer, growled in his slightly roughened version of the Macedonian dialect. He was a fierce-looking man—indeed, one might have guessed that he put something of a premium on looking fierce—and he seemed unpleasantly surprised when Philip grinned at him.
“My business is with your king, bumpkin, not with you. And if you compel me to draw my sword, you will probably not live to regret it.”
This reply betrayed a few of the other soldiers into a few smothered syllables of laughter, but they quickly recovered themselves when they saw how it angered Philip’s interrogator.
“You claim to be some sort of ambassador, then?” he asked, trying to climb down a little without losing face, but Philip was not inclined to let him off so easily.
“I don’t claim anything except that you are beginning to become a nuisance. So take a bit of friendly advice and get out of my way.”
It was one of those decisions that seemed to make itself. Philip was alone. His claims to authority came down to a letter carrying Perdikkas’s seal and his own audacity. There was nothing else. And of these, he judged, audacity was probably the more useful, for if he did not command respect from these rustic bandits, he would not get it.
Besides, for all that this officer doubtless bullied his subordinates, Philip judged that he was no more dangerous than a barking dog. He had probably made it to his present rank by a careful mixture of bluff and servility, but in his bowels he was nothing more than another shrewd coward. Thus he would not be fool enough to kill someone who might be some sort of foreign emissary—Derdas would have him up by his heels before the sun set—nor was he brave enough to risk a quarrel with a man who didn’t seem the least afraid of him. Philip was prepared to bet his life that the fellow wouldn’t accept his challenge.
In fact, he was betting his life.
“I must refer this to the captain of the watch,” the officer said, scowling like he had just awakened with a headache. “He will at least want to know your name.”
“Then he can ask it.”
The officer colored but said nothing. An instant later he yanked the reins around and rode away at a gallop. Philip touched his heels to Alastor’s flanks, urging him to a walk. He did not join, nor even seem to notice, the other men’s delighted laughter.
The soldiers dropped in behind him so that he seemed to be leading the patrol back to the city walls.
There was an armed company of perhaps fifty men waiting for him at the gate. Several of them already had their swords drawn, as if they expected to do battle for their lives. An officer stepped forward, but Philip did not stop until his horse’s nose was practically touching his breast.
“Now I am asking it,” he said. “Your name, My Lord.”
Philip threw a leg over Alastor’s neck and dropped down to the ground.
“Philip, prince of Macedon,” he said lightly. He reached inside his tunic and took out a small scroll. “And this, you can see, bears my king’s seal. I have business with Derdas of the Elimoitai, my lord’s vassal and servant.”
Philip took it as a favorable sign that no one had the temerity to laugh in his face.
24
There was a banquet that night. Philip was informed of this by one of the palace chamberlains, who implied that it was as good a chance as any to fill his belly and that no one would trouble to ask if he had been invited. When he inquired whether the king would be there all he received was a puzzled look, as if the man couldn’t understand what difference it would make. In any case, Philip took a bath and put on the one clean tunic he had brought from Pella and went.
No one had waited for him. As soon as he stepped into the hall and looked around him, he understood that his mission was hopeless. There were about a hundred and fifty men present, it was impossible to guess which one of them might be Derdas, and the proceedings had reached that pitch of hilarity that suggested that everyone had been drinking for at least three hours. Several of the revelers were smeared with blood, so apparently they had been out hunting that afternoon and hadn’t bothered to change. The servants scurried about like rats, disappearing as quickly as they could to avoid being spattered with wine and food. Judged even by the standards of his father’s court, it was an unseemly business.
As he looked about him, Philip noticed that all the men present were about his own age. There were no elders, no leavening of graybeards among all this youth. Derdas, he knew, was just twenty—it would appear that he now surrounded himself with his own friends and that his father’s advisors had fallen from favor. For all that he was young himself, Philip recognized that this was bad—bad for his mission and possibly worse for Elimeia, for a man’s friends, particularly if they are young, tell him only what he wishes to hear, and a king, to be successful, must develop a stomach for unpalatable truths.
At a table near the door a member of the Elimiote gentry, one of the king’s chosen companions, was resting his head in the palm of his left hand while he used a finger of the right to trace pictures in a puddle of spilled wine. He was so absorbed in this undertaking that Philip had to grab him by the collar and shake him to gain his attention.
“Which one of these swine is Derdas?” he asked, smiling benevolently.
The man, to whom it apparently did not occur to take offense, scratched his head and frowned, as if the question puzzled him greatly.
“That one over there,” he said at last, pointing to a table nearer the center of the room. “The one with the curly beard is the king.”
Philip looked in that direction and saw at once who was indicated. Derdas was a tall, handsome youth with a head and beard full of black, shining curls. His appearance suggested all the qualities of a great king except intelligence, and the rather vacant expression of his eyes might have owed less to any natural deficiency than to an evening’s hard drinking. Philip told himself there might be hope after all.
There were three rather elegant youths seated with the king. The one at his right appeared from the way he was gripping the corner of the table to be about to fall under it. Philip decided anyone that drunk would probably be more comfortable on the floor and gave him a little push to help him on his way. He then occupied the man’s
place, tasted his wine, and, after having decided that the keeper of the king’s cellar had been cheating his master, set the cup back down and put his hand on Derdas’s shoulder.
“My Lord, you and I have business to discuss.”
Derdas could not have appeared more surprised if he had looked back and seen a knife held against his throat. At last, in a voice husky with overuse, he was able to murmur, “What happened to Dipsaleos? He was sitting there just a minute ago. Who are you?”
“I am a messenger, My Lord. And my message is that you should learn to curb your imprudence, for you have offended against the Lord Perdikkas, king of all the Macedonians, and risk his anger.”
“If I know what you’re talking about, friend, then I’m a turnip.” He turned to the man sitting on his left and laughed immoderately. “Did you hear that, Antinous? I’m a turnip!”
This witticism was greeted with universal hilarity—at least among those of the king’s companions who were still sober enough to understand what was expected of them. Philip, however, contrived to retain a certain gravity of bearing. Indeed, if anything, it deepened. For he realized now that not only was he dealing with an idiot but no one had bothered to inform this particular idiot of his presence.
“As to whether or not you might be a turnip it is not my province to say. But I would suggest that you make an early night of it, My Lord, for I will wait upon you in the morning.”
Derdas sat staring at him, his mouth open, like a man who is not sure whether he has just heard a jest but is inclined to laugh in any case. It was all Philip could do to restrain himself from shoving his fist down the drunken fool’s throat, but at last he contented himself with merely rising from the table and stalking out of the hall.
Outside, as he stood in the cloistered walkway that enclosed the four sides of a garden, the night air felt deliciously cool against his face.
“What does the king in Pella want with my brother?”
Philip turned around and saw a young woman, hardly more than a girl, standing behind him. She was very quiet and composed, wearing a white tunic that reached down low enough to cover her feet. She was also startlingly pretty, with black hair all in ringlets and skin as flawless as wax. Except around the eyes, which sparkled with intelligence, the physical resemblance to Derdas was quite striking so that Philip felt no need to inquire of whom she spoke.
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