Alexander at the World's End

by Tom Holt

  At seventy-five yards they broke into a gallop and shifted formation, flowing round us like a river bursting its banks. One of the Illyrians drew his bow and loosed an arrow; it missed. The Scythians were drawing their bows now; a couple of shots went wide, then Pericleidas the Corinthian staggered and sank down to his knees. He’d been hit, and there was an arrow sticking out of his stomach about a thumb’s length above the navel, a little to the right of centre. He wasn’t dead, but the pain and shock were so great he couldn’t speak or even make a noise, only mouth the words, as if he didn’t want the enemy to hear. I was staring at him, trying to think what to do, when Ptolemocrates suddenly swore loudly and keeled over, shot through the heart. A moment later I heard the sound of something heavy crashing through tree-branches and a heavy bump as it hit the ground; they’d shot the boy down out of the tree. One of the other boys, who was standing quite close to me, started to scream; he had an arrow through the middle of his left hand. On my other side, an Illyrian was bending his bow, taking aim, when an arrow hit his jaw about halfway along. The bow flew from his hands and the arrow cartwheeled sideways; I stared at the arrow sticking straight through his face, the broad barbed head standing a hand’s breadth clear of his cheek on the other side. He was still on his feet, looking groggy with shock; he tried to speak, and as he did so the arrow bobbed up and down.

  And that, I’m thoroughly ashamed to say, was enough for me. I’d never seen actual fighting before, though of course I’d speculated endlessly about what it must be like. Let’s say it wasn’t at all like I’d expected, and leave it at that.

  The wounded Illyrian’s bow had landed a foot or so from where I was standing. I grabbed it, then pulled a handful of arrows from his quiver. He saw what I was doing and tried to say something, making the feathers on the arrowshaft sticking out of his face waggle about in a ludicrously comic fashion. What he was actually trying to say, the gods only know.

  An arrow flew past dangerously close, a foot from my right shoulder, if that. I couldn’t help it; I ran. At least two of them called out my name, but I didn’t want to hear what they were saying. I ran.

  I went about eighty yards without looking round. Then I heard hooves drumming, not a terribly long way behind. I had no idea what to do.

  There was one Scythian horseman, a kid of seventeen, bearing down on me. He’d stowed away his bow and was holding his lance. I only saw him close for a very short time, six or so heartbeats, at which point I realised that I wasn’t running. I was down on one knee, bending the bow I’d taken from the Illyrian, with one of his arrows on the string. I was never any good at shooting arrows, as a boy or later on in life; it’s always been one of those things that other people make seem easy, but which goes by me entirely. At the actual moment when I relaxed my fingers and let the string pull off my hand, I may even have had my eyes shut (I’ve been told that’s what I do when I loose the arrow, though I’ve never been aware of it). If I did, I opened them in time to see where my arrow had bone. By fluke, luck or providence, it had punched through the boy’s thigh, pinning him to his saddle. Needless to say, the horse was going mad, prancing and thrashing about, trying to shake loose whatever it was that was causing all that unexpected pain. Ordinarily the boy would have been thrown clear, but the arrow pinned him tight in his seat. His eyes were huge and round, and his mouth was nearly a perfect circle.

  I left him to get on with it, dropped the bow and carried on running. I was the only one who tried to escape, just as I was the only one who got away. You hear stories about men who’re the only ones to survive out of this or that mighty army; they’re supposed to be crippled with guilt and remorse for ever after, and I can understand that, in a way. But as I ran, I was praying to all the gods, Let them hill the others and forget about me, concentrate on the others, maybe they’ll exterminate each other so there aren’t any left to chase me. I’m not proud of it. The number of things I’ve done in my life that I’m proud of you could count on the fingers of one badly mutilated hand.

  I was never a great athlete, but I ran a good race that day, and I only stopped when I tripped over something and found I couldn’t get up. I’d twisted my ankle and I couldn’t move. Now that was a horrible feeling, that helplessness, that feeling of clumsy, lethal stupidity. I managed to drag myself round so I could look back towards where I’d come from; I couldn’t see any horsemen coming. There was a dip and a slope in the way, so I couldn’t see the fighting. For a moment, in fact, I wondered whether any of it had actually happened, until I caught sight of a thin red weal across the inside of my left forearm, where the bowstring had hit me. Apparently, so competent archers assure me, that’s a sign of a sloppy loose, holding the bow all wrong with your left hand.

  I tried crawling, but it hurt and I got only a few yards before I gave it up as a bad job; I was too far from home for that. The ridiculous thing was that I was home, I was in our fields, a piece of land owned by an Illyrian called Bardylis (he had the same name as one of their national heroes, who was killed fighting Philip at the age of ninety —imagine that, I thought as I lay there, ninety years old and he still couldn’t escape from this shit, you’d have thought a time would come when you didn’t have to do it any more, but apparently not) and any moment now, assuming the whole plain wasn’t crawling with marauding Scythian war-parties, Bardylis might appear over the brow of the hill, looking for somewhere out of the wind to eat his lunch, and find me. He’d stare and ask me, in atrociously bad Greek, what the hell had happened to me; and what was I going to say to him?

  In the event, it was a war-party of our own that found me. Apparently, someone else had seen the whole thing and scampered back to the city to raise the alarm.

  He went to my house, but of course I wasn’t there; Theano sent him to find Marsamleptes, who wasn’t there either, so he went home, got his horse (being a sensible sort; his name was Lytus, an Illyrian) and rode out to Marsamleptes’

  holding, which was only a short way out of town. Marsamleptes knew exactly what to do; he’d been quietly and hopefully planning, and so was able to mobilise an early response unit — I think that’s the right jargon — in under an hour. They rode to where the fighting had been, but all they found were dead bodies. It was sheer chance that they stumbled across me, following what they’d mistakenly thought was the trail of the retreating Scythians (in fact, it was a goat-track). A couple of them took me home on a spare horse, while Marsamleptes continued the search. He came home late that afternoon looking thoroughly miserable; he’d found neither hide nor hair of the Scythians, just the bodies of the men we’d seen being killed before the horsemen turned on us, and a courting couple who’d sneaked off into a small copse on the edge of our territory and been spitted with lances and left to die. He found two dead Scythians at the place where my group had been killed, both shot with arrows; no trace of a young lad with an arrow in his thigh, or a dead or wounded horse.

  It didn’t occur to anybody that I’d been with that group; they assumed that I’d been on my own and that the Scythians had tried to ride me down, and I’d somehow got away from them. Many of the Illyrians regarded my miraculous escape as proof that the sacred snake was watching over me; I gather that there was this story about how as I was lying there with Scythian lancers all round me poised to strike, a monstrous snake sprang up out of the earth and coiled itself about me, protecting me from the spear-thrusts with its impenetrable scales and driving the attackers away with spumes of poison (or, in some versions of the story, fire) sneezed out of its nose. In any event, my standing with the Illyrians went up considerably, and Marsamleptes, a superstitious man, took to averting his eyes when he spoke to me and treated me with great respect, in spite of several requests to pack it in. Needless to say, I never contradicted any of it, not even the snake stuff, and this is the first time, Phryzeutzis my friend, that I’ve ever told anybody the truth about what happened there. After all, where the hell is the point of lying to you? For all you know, I might be making the whole thing
up, just to make my story a little bit more interesting.

  Now, you’re thinking that this unprovoked attack by the Scythians was what I was talking about when I said that that day, the seventh of Metageitnion in the tenth year of the colony, was a day that changed the world. Not a bit of it. The truly significant and memorable event of that day took place in Greece , at a place called Chaeronea , which is between Thebes and Delphi . There, King Philip, ably assisted by Prince Alexander and the other young Macedonian nobles who’d been brought up with him, fought a battle against the Greeks who still resisted him and utterly defeated them, thereby effectively making him the ruler of the whole of Greece. A thousand Athenians died that day and a further two thousand were taken prisoner; among the dead were my brothers Eudorus and Euthyphron. My brother Eudemus lost an eye, but escaped; Eumenes and Eugenes were both captured, but were later released unharmed along with the rest of the Athenians.

  According to the reliable accounts of the battle, it was Alexander who led the charge that broke the Theban Sacred Band, the best soldiers in all of Greece .

  As well as directing his troops with outstanding skill and flair, he forced his way into the thick of the fighting and turned the tide of the battle by the sheer ferocity of his onslaught; he was like an Achilles, they said, something out of Homer and the old stories, utterly regardless of his own safety, and he came back to his tent after the battle almost unrecognisable for blood, spattered on his face and hair, his own blood and that of the men he’d killed.

  They say that Philip didn’t know what to think; his heart was bursting with pride at the outstanding prowess of his son, but at the same time he was furiously angry that on the day of his crowning achievement Alexander had eclipsed him and taken all the glory for himself. Personally, I have a clear mental picture of the scene, as Philip looks at his tall, handsome young son all covered in dried blood, like something not human; he looks at him for a while with his one good eye and says nothing. After the battle, they say, Philip got more drunk than he’d ever been before; he danced up and down the battlefield, kicking the bodies of the dead and singing (loudly and off-key; Philip couldn’t sing):

  Demosthenes, Son of Demosthenes, Of the parish of Paeanea, proposes these—

  — Which is how the heralds at Assembly made the formal announcement each time Demosthenes had got up to urge the Athenian people to resist Philip, in those immortal speeches of his. Demosthenes, they say, ran like a hare almost as soon as the battle started. He’d bought a new shield especially for the occasion; it had the words GOOD FORTUNE painted on it in huge gold-leaf lettering. He threw it away when he bolted, and Philip used it as a chamber-pot for weeks until the leather rotted away.

  Interesting, I’ve often felt. I mentioned earlier that remark I made, about Homer and Achilles, Who’d you rather be, the all-corners champion at the Olympic Games, or the little fat guy with a scroll who calls out the names of the winners? Now, the Olympic Games, like the battle of Chaeronea, is a time when all the Greek states send their finest men to compete together for honour and glory and all the dearest values of free Greek citizens; and on the day when Alexander took part and came away the all-comers champion, I was at another battle, of which I’m the only surviving witness, the only one who can call out the names of those who took part. At the time, I also gave a certain amount of thought to the fact that I was the only son of Eutychides who wasn’t at the battle, the only son of Eutychides who got home that night, albeit with my own little consolation prize of a twisted ankle. It bothered me, I have to say, and not just because the seventh of Metageitnion turned out to be a bad day all round for the Eutychides boys; to be the only one left (or left out), twice in one day — you can’t help thinking about things like that, even if you’re not a great and notorious philosopher.

  I don’t know. The best rationalisation I’ve heard so far is the story about the enormous snake, and I don’t believe that for a moment.

  What I dislike most of all about catastrophic tragedies is the amount of extra work they cause. They hauled me back to my house, propped me up in a chair with my twisted ankle on a footstool and started arguing with each other. A Founder by the name of Agesilaus (as soon as the news reached the city the Founders had suddenly materialised, like monsters in a bad dream, and scampered round to my house in a flock; they were all there, looking impatient and helping themselves to wine and figs, when I was carried in) immediately demanded that we abandon the colony and return to Macedon, before the Scythians swooped down and massacred us all; to hear him talk, you’d think the whole plain was carpeted in Scythians squashed together heel to toe, with scarcely any room to breathe, let alone draw a bow. About two-thirds of the remaining Founders all started jabbering at once; we were here to stay, we weren’t going to be chased out of our homes by a bunch of renegade savages, immediate retribution employing the maximum degree of force, where was Marsemleptes when he was needed, something must be done. I’d have been quite happy to let them babble themselves hoarse, even though it was my wine they were lubricating their throats with; but my friend Tyrsenius, who’d also appeared out of nowhere or who might have been there before they arrived, saw fit to intervene at this juncture, pointing out that even as he spoke Marsamleptes was out hotly pursuing the marauders and would doubtless return at any moment with their heads woven into a string, like onions. At this, the other third of the Founders boiled over, like an unwatched pot on the fire — on whose authority, how dare he escalate the incident and risk bringing the whole Scythian nation down on our heads, he would be held personally responsible, although in accordance with the chain of command ultimate responsibility lay with the oecist—

  ‘Hey,’ I objected feebly. ‘All of a sudden it’s my fault. Did I miss something?’

  A pointy-faced Founder called Basiliscus nodded enthusiastically. ‘As de facto commander-in-chief—’ he began; but he didn’t get any further, because at that moment Theano, who’d been hovering in the background with a big basin of steaming water and a bandage, sprang at him, emptied the bowl over his head and bundled him out of the door. He was too stunned to resist.

  ‘And the rest of you,’ she said, scowling horribly. ‘Get out. And you, Tyrsenius. Go on.’

  If it’d been a band of marauding Scythians, they might just have hung about and tried to argue the toss. Since it was Theano in full Cerberus mode, they did the only sensible thing and left without a word.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I think.’

  She frowned. ‘What the hell do you think you’ve been playing at?’ she replied.

  ‘Sit still.’ She swept out into the inner room and came back with the basin refilled. ‘Let’s get this ankle strapped up first.’

  ‘I have an idea,’ I said, as she wrapped the bandage round, ‘that throwing the city council out into the street is a severe breach of protocol.’

  ‘Good. And besides, if anybody’s going to get into trouble for it, it’ll be you.

  The chain of command, and all that stuff.’

  ‘That’s all right, then,’ I said.

  ‘Glad you think so. Now, is that too tight?’

  ‘What, the bandage? No, not really.’

  ‘Then it’s not tight enough. Hold still while I just—’

  ‘Hey!’

  She pulled the bandage tighter still and tied it off. ‘If you had any sense you’d rest it,’ she said, ‘but I never yet saw a man who had that much sense.

  Just try and go easy on it, or it’ll be months before it’s right again.’

  They were back before very long, but this time they asked nicely before they came trooping in. This time, they had Marsamleptes and a couple more Illyrians with them, plus Tyrsenius (honorary interpreter), one or two farmers and Ptolemocrates’ widow. There weren’t enough seats, needless to say, so Tyrsenius sent my son and a couple of other lads to borrow chairs, trestles and saw-horses; meanwhile, the later arrivals had to make do with standing or crouching on the floor.

  Marsamleptes, who looke
d very tired, made his report in incomprehensible Illyrian, and one of the men with him translated it into passable Greek as they went along. There were a few raised eyebrows, sharp intakes of breath and other histrionics as he reported that they’d found no trace of the raiders beyond the two dead Scythians, but I ignored them pointedly.

  ‘All right,’ I said, summing up. ‘Looks like it might well have been a cattle raid or a spur-of-the-moment lark by some of the young braves. Quite likely it wasn’t officially sanctioned in any way. Any suggestions as to where we take it from here? Sensible suggestions,’ I added.

  ‘Sure,’ replied one of the Founders, whose name escapes me for the moment. ‘We should retaliate. They’ll think better of bothering us again if we burn a few houses and run off their horses.’

  A farmer by the name of Chersonesus replied to that. ‘Maybe that’s exactly what they said when they were planning the attack,’ he said. ‘And if we attack them, what’s the odds they’ll feel obliged to reply in kind? Next thing we know we’ll have a war.’

  ‘And there’s more of them than there are of us,’ someone else pointed out.

  ‘All the more reason for giving them a really nasty jolt,’ answered one of the Illyrians. ‘Look at it the other way. If we do nothing, what kind of message is that going to send them? I say we’ve got no choice; hit them hard, and then try talking.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said a Founder. ‘People like that only understand one thing.’

  Before the debate could develop further, the extra chairs arrived, and we were held up for a minute or so while the people who were standing fought over them.

  In the end there was one singularly rickety-looking saw-horse left over, and three men who preferred to stand rather than trust it.

  ‘We’re getting out of control here,’ I said. ‘This is probably how the Trojan War really started, and any other war you care to name. I agree that we can’t just ignore what’s happened, that’d be asking for trouble. So would responding to an unofficial attack with an official one. No, the sensible thing would be to talk first, and fight only if that doesn’t do any good.’