Alexander at the World's End

by Tom Holt

  I shrugged. I had grave misgivings. I also had a thousand Illyrian mercenary soldiers, whose spears laid all low before them and (further or in the alternative) whose deaths in glorious battle wouldn’t draw too many tears from King Philip’s one good eye if the worst came to the worst. I clearly had nothing to worry about. Maybe they’d all want Agenor to carve their portraits.

  ‘How long before landfall?’ I asked.

  Tyrsenius grinned. ‘You’re learning the technical seafaring terms, I see. Not long.’

  ‘Not long,’ I repeated. ‘That’s another technical seafaring term.’

  He nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘It means I don’t know exactly, but not long.’

  In fact, a contrary wind kept us hanging about for what seemed like for ever;

  during which time someone spotted our sail and scampered back to the village to raise the alarm. The reception committee we found assembled on the beach when we finally came ashore didn’t look nearly as delighted at our coming as I’d hoped or Tyrsenius had promised.

  ‘They’re just shy, that’s all,’ my friend Tyrsenius whispered to me, as the golden Olbian sun flashed off a scimitar-blade. ‘Once they’ve gone through the motions, a little show of hostility just for form’s sake, we’ll all get on like a house on fire.’

  Not the most comforting of images. Marsamleptes, the Captain-General of the Illyrians, was making grumbling noises as our keel hit the sand. He was probably trying to tell me something or ask me a question, but apparently he still hadn’t quite grasped the fact that I couldn’t speak Illyrian. He was probably telling me that his boys would eat them alive; that or we didn’t stand a chance. One of the two was always a fair bet with Marsamleptes, a straightforward man who tended to chew the ends of his moustache at moments of great stress.

  Such as this.

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘here we go. No sudden movements, anyone.’

  It feels strange, describing to an Eastern Scythian (that’s you, Phryzeutzis)

  what it felt like for the Athenian leader of a largely Illyrian expedition to come face to face for the first time with a Western Scythian. I’m not sure which of us is the funny foreigner, and which of us is Us. The situation at the time was further confused by the fact that, as an Athenian, I was quite used to seeing Western Scythians , but in a less than helpful context.

  The City of Athens , you see, has for quite some time now used Scythian slaves as policemen. Sorry, you don’t know what that word means; it means men paid by the state to keep order and catch and punish people who break the laws (or at least, that’s the theory). We had to use foreign slaves for the job because no self-respecting Greek, let alone Athenian, would dream of doing a job that involved exercising practically unlimited power over his fellow citizens. Quite right, too. Ask yourself; what kind of man would you get volunteering for a job like that? Men who want that kind of power are by definition the last people you’d allow to have it.

  So; we imported barbarian slaves, choosing Scythians because they’re quick at learning our language, skilled with the bow and arrow— which is why in Athens we just called them ‘archers’ — and (because of their entirely alien views on what constitutes wealth and happiness) almost impossible to bribe. They did the job well, by and large, but in spite of that — maybe because of it — you’d be hard put to find a Greek with a good word to say about them, or about Scythians in general. Now, I pride myself on being the sort of man who as a general rule isn’t particularly bothered about the colour of people’s skins or hair or eyes, as witness the fact that I took an almost immediate liking to the not-quite-Greek Macedonians. But a Scythian, with those distinctive cheek-bones and dark intense eyes — I can’t help getting the shivers sometimes when I look at them, and a sixty-year-old memory yells at me from the back room of my mind, ‘Run for it, here come the archers!’

  As if that wasn’t enough to contend with, I also had my friend Tyrsenius’

  last-minute confession about the role I’d assigned him as chief interpreter.

  ‘Of course I speak the language,’ he told me when I asked. ‘Not absolutely fluently, of course,’ he added. ‘I mean, from listening tome you wouldn’t necessarily assume I was Scythian by birth or whatever, but I can make myself understood, most of the time.’

  Of the dialect of this particular region, it turned out, he knew about five phrases; things like ‘Where are we?’ and ‘Which way is the sea?’ These were, it goes without saying, useless questions to ask, because he had no chance whatsoever of understanding a single word of the reply.

  In the event, it wasn’t relevant. The chief spokesman spoke excellent Attic Greek —‘— As a result,’ he assured me, ‘of spending twenty years in Athens as an archer, before I saved up enough to buy myself out and come home.’ He looked at me for a long time without speaking, and behind him his escort of tall, solemn-faced warriors allowed their fingers to creep forward and touch the strings of their bows. It was a shall-I-eat-him-now-or-save-him-for-later look, and even thinking about it all this time later still bothers me some.

  ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘It’s a gift I have, I never forget a face.’

  That startled me, for sure. ‘How can you know me?’ I replied. ‘We only just met.’

  He shook his head. ‘Every face I’ve ever encountered,’ he went on, tapping his forehead, ‘stored away somewhere, in here. And besides,’ he added unpleasantly, ‘even if I had a rotten memory I’d still remember you.’

  I looked at him again; and, though the face was still entirely unfamiliar, I noticed that he did have a significantly crooked nose and a gap in his front teeth. A memory dropped into place.

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  (It was a long time ago. I was young, not used to drinking undiluted wine on an empty stomach. And it wasn’t just me; in fact, I didn’t really participate, I was just tagging along with the rest of them and happened to be the one that got caught— You want to hear the story, don’t you? Oh, all right. Like I said, I was little more than a kid at the time, and we’d been at a fairly boozy party. When it finally wound up, we roamed around the streets for a while, singing abominably and breaking up minor works of civic art, the way one does at that age, until we found ourselves outside the house of some girl that one of us fancied. So we started singing serenades, according to the time-honoured tradition; and when the archers showed up to shoo us off, we made a bit of a fight of it, just to prove we were free-born Athenians who don’t take kindly to being pushed around by foreign slaves. . . And one of us, can’t remember a thing about him, got a little bit carried away and clubbed one of the archers across the face with the arm off a statue that had got in our way earlier. There was a loud crunch and ever so much blood, and the man went face down; we were sure we’d killed him. At that point, my fellow revellers did the sensible thing and ran like hell. But it was the first time I’d ever seen real, messy violence, and I just stood there staring, a torch in one hand and a walking stick in the other, watching the way the blood trickled out, cutting channels through the dust.

  One of the archers told me to put down my stick and my torch —they aren’t allowed to lay hands on a citizen unless he hits them first or resists arrest. I heard the words but I wasn’t listening, if you see what I mean. He said it three times, then tried to take the stick out of my hand. I was so completely out of it by that stage that I reacted purely on instinct; I smacked him hard across the face, not as hard as the boy with the bit of statue but enough to break his nose and knock out some teeth. He howled and stumbled off into the shadows; the third archer looked at me, and the man on the ground, then slowly pulled his bow out of his quiver, stepped through it to string it, drew an arrow out of his quiver; I knew for a fact that he was going to shoot me. It was something about the deliberate nature of his movements, the fear and wariness in his eyes. It was as if I could read his thoughts, as clearly as if they were cut in marble on a wall. Why should he risk getting killed or mutilated by coming within range of my stic
k, when he could kill me from ten yards away, with no witnesses to say it wasn’t self-defence? I could watch the debate behind his eyes — how would he account for having his bow strung and ready? Obviously he’d thought of something he reckoned would pass muster. Was he certain he could kill me cleanly, without the risk that I’d live long enough to accuse him of cold-blooded murder? He calculated the odds and accepted them, with a tiny nod of the head, and started to draw the bow —

  — At which point, I realised that if I dropped the torch I was holding, he wouldn’t have enough light to shoot by, and I could escape. So I did; and that was the last I ever saw of him. But the other man, the one I hit with my stick —)

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  I chewed my lower lip for a moment. What I really wanted to ask was, ‘Did the man die? The one who got hit with the statue?’ But I didn’t. ‘Small world,’ I said.

  ‘Very,’ he replied. ‘And full to bursting with Athenians.’

  At this point, I really wished we’d tried to do this through Tyrsenius; in which case, we’d still be at the We-come-in-peace stage. ‘Anyway,’ I replied, ‘we’re here as representatives of King Philip of Macedon, on whose behalf I extend friendly greetings from our people to yours. May I ask whether you are authorised to speak on behalf of your people? If not, might I ask you to bear a message to those who are?’

  He sniffed. He did that a lot. Something to do with having an awkwardly broken nose, I guess. All those years of sniffing and dribbling snot...

  ‘My name is Anabruzas,’ he replied. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Euxenus,’ I replied, in a very small voice.

  ‘Euzenus.’

  ‘Euxenus,’ I corrected him. ‘Epsilon, umicron, xeta—’

  ‘Euxenus. Well, that’s interesting. Euxenus anything else, or just Euxenus?

  Forgive my curiosity, but...

  ‘Euxenus, son of Eutychides of Pallene in Attica ,’ I recited. ‘Now attached to the household of King Philip, and duly authorised on his behalf—’

  He nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’d gathered. What do you people want here?

  Trade?’

  I took a deep breath, but couldn’t think what to say; at which point, my friend Tyrsenius interrupted.

  ‘Isn’t that wonderful?’ he exclaimed, shouldering past me. ‘That you two should turn out to know each other, I mean. I’m Tyrsenius, son of Mossus, commercial attaché. Now, our objective here is twofold; first, as you’ve already guessed, we’d like to trade with you — we have a fine selection of the usual quality goods together with some additional items that I’m sure will interest you.

  Secondly, we’d like to discuss establishing a more permanent presence here to facilitate further trading opportunities in the future—’

  I could see the Scythian’s patience draining away, like seed-corn through a rip in the sower’s bag. ‘First things first,’ I said, treading hard on Tyrsenius’

  foot. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I caught what you said a moment ago, when I asked if you were authorised—’

  He gave me a look that wasn’t quite a scowl but certainly wasn’t a warm and friendly smile. ‘I’m the headman of the village over that hill,’ he said, jerking his head backwards to one side. ‘We have nothing to trade that you’d want, and we don’t want anything you’ve got. Maybe you’d have more luck a bit further down the coast.’

  Tyrsenius, the clown, interrupted again. ‘Luck is what you make of it, my friend,’ he said, flashing a mouthful of teeth, like a panther. ‘I’m sure that your people will find something here that takes their fancy; and our prices are probably much lower than you think.’

  The Scythian sniffed again. If I were his wife, that constant sniffing would drive me crazy. ‘There’s an awful lot of you,’ he said, ‘for traders.’ He peered past me at Marsamleptes, who was standing behind me doing pyramid impressions.

  ‘Illyrian?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘Right,’ the Scythian said; then he sidestepped so he’d have eye-contact, and started making that extraordinary two-cats-fighting-in-an-alley noise that passes for a language in Illyria .

  Gods alone know what the two of them actually said; but from what I was able to piece together later, the gist of the conversation was something like, ‘What are these arseholes really doing here?’

  ‘We’re founding a colony.’

  ‘Oh, yes? You and whose army?’

  (Nod in my direction.) ‘His.’

  (Pause.) ‘How many of you are there?’

  ‘One thousand, most of us veteran warriors. If you oppose us, we will kill you all without mercy.’

  ‘Oh. In that case, welcome to Olbia.’

  The Scythian took two steps back, and looked at me. Then he shook his head and sighed, and walked away to talk to his followers, who numbered about fifty. I called him back.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘The other man,’ I said. ‘Was he all right?’

  ‘No. He died.’

  ‘Oh. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  He talked for a while with his friends; the discussion was heated, to say the least. He walked away while they were still talking.

  ‘If you want land,’ he said, ‘we can probably come to some arrangement. We’re leaving now.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well, it was. . . Goodbye,’ I said.

  He looked at me. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to.

  ‘There,’ said my friend Tyrsenius when they’d gone. ‘I told you everything would work out just fine.’

  Under other circumstances I’d have worried myself sick after that. But I didn’t have the time or the energy. Too much else to do.

  Unpacking a brand new city off a small fleet of ships is a complicated business at the best of times. Uncharacteristically, I’d given the matter some thought, and hit on the inspired idea of organising our disembarkation and the setting up of our temporary quarters in advance. First priority, I’d decided, was to delegate. I’d given responsibility for getting the gear off the ships and onto the beach to one group of Founders, finding and felling timber to another, organising work details to a third, and so on. I’d let the individuals concerned in on the secret and told them what they were supposed to be doing; they told me they understood perfectly and that I could rely on them to make sure everything went as smoothly as a well-fitted hinge.

  I was younger then, and rather more naive.

  Alpha Section, in charge of disembarkation, immediately started a bitter dispute with Epsilon Section, i/c putting up our first temporary shelters, over where the stuff was to be piled up on the beach. Epsilon wanted it all piled up neatly here, while Alpha reckoned that transferring it to dry land and leaving it where it fell was more than enough to discharge their responsibilities to the community. Before I’d realised what was happening and sprinted up the beach to separate them, they’d already started a fist-fight, and a couple of passionate Epsilons had thrown a load of jars of seed-corn into the sea by way of proving beyond question the superiority of their viewpoint.

  While I was dealing with them, a messenger from Beta Section, i/c finding timber, trotted up to inform me that there didn’t appear to be any trees in the whole of Olbia. When asked how thoroughly they’d searched, he admitted that they’d gone only as far as the edge of the neighbouring rise, about three hundred yards, so I suggested that it might be an idea to widen the scope of the search a little before we all piled back onto the ships and went home again.

  While I was doing this, the fight between Alpha and Epsilon flared up again, this time involving a couple of the Illyrians who were under the impression that Epsilon were sabotaging food supplies and ought to be killed immediately. In consequence, I was quite busy for a while (none of the interpreters were anywhere to be seen, of course, so I was having to communicate with the Illyrians by waving my arms in the air and waggling my eyebrows) and wasn’t on hand to sort out the savage row that erupted in Gamma Sec
tion (allocation of work details) over who was going to draw the black pebble and have to try to control the Illyrians. They were throwing stones at each other by the time I got round to them, one of which hit me just above the right ear and forced me to sit down for five whole minutes, during which time I should have been pointing out to Delta Section (unpacking and distributing essential equipment) that we weren’t really going to need the ceremonial rostrum quite yet, and they shouldn’t be wasting their time setting it up before they’d found the axes we needed to chop down the trees that Beta Section were convinced didn’t grow in Olbia.

  At this point, Zeta Section (surveying the site of the new city and drawing up plans) reported in to say that the maps we’d been given, on which we’d proudly drawn in the provisional street plan in cheerful red ink, bore no relation whatsoever to the actual topography, and had we in fact landed in the wrong place? It was a fair point, and they deserved better of me than a rudely-phrased suggestion that they try holding the maps the right way up; but I maintain that stomping off and sulking back on the ship wasn’t a very mature response, so it was really all their fault that that job didn’t even get started. I didn’t notice this until some time later because as soon as I could see straight again I had my hands full with stopping one of the Illyrian contingents marching off to the village the Scythian welcoming committee had told us about and razing it to the ground on general business principles.

  Then my friend Tyrsenius, seeing that I wasn’t really handling things terribly well, decided to help me out by going round the various sections issuing a whole lot of contradictory orders, reinforced by terrifying scowls from the bunch of Illyrians who had for some reason attached themselves to him as a sort of spontaneous royal guard. Thanks to his intervention, Alpha Section found themselves in charge of collecting in the axes which Delta had finally just found and issued to Gamma Section, Red Subsection, and re-issuing them to Beta Section, who’d come back with news of a small stand of nondescript saplings on the other side of the ridge, which could come in handy for tent-poles if we hadn’t brought any with us (which we had).