Alexander at the World's End

by Tom Holt

  Things were getting lively now. I didn’t have a torch of my own, so I held my shield over one of the men who did. There were people running in every direction, bundling out of the houses as we set fire to them, bumping into us and jostling us out of the way as they ran in terror from the flames, or crashing into our shields as they blundered out, their arms full of their precious possessions. Most of them acted as if we weren’t even there, as if they had far too much on their plate already to be bothered with us; but there was one old man, white-haired and stark naked, who jumped at me with a big wooden spade and started smacking my shield with it, making a deep booming noise, like a drum. After he’d done this five or six times I tried to prod him off with the butt of my spear; but he either stumbled or charged forward at just the wrong time, and the butt-spike slid into his groin like a wooden spoon going into the whey. He dropped down when I pulled the spear out, and I didn’t hang around to see what became of him.

  The fire was doing our job for us, which was just as well, since we’d got completely out of line and were wandering aimlessly about, like visitors who’ve come to Athens on a grain-boat and want to see the sights. There were no arrows, no fighting; all we were doing was gently pushing people down the street towards the side gate, like shepherds driving a flock down a wide road. I gather that the encircling party took their duties rather more seriously than we were doing.

  Quite soon the fire started to spread of its own accord, which made the village a bad place to be. I heard Marsamleptes shouting to us to withdraw, but only because he was standing quite close to me; you can’t hear much at the best of times when you’ve got a thick, well-padded helmet down over your ears, and there was so much noise inside the village that I was lucky to have heard him at all.

  The only casualties we suffered that night, in fact, were four men who didn’t hear and got caught too far inside the village when the fire got completely out of hand.

  Sorry, there were five. Right at the last moment, as he was ushering us out of the main gate, counting under his breath to make sure we were all there, Marsamleptes was hit in the face with an arrow, probably the only one shot that night. He’d taken his helmet off so we could see who it was and hear his orders better, and the arrow hit him on the lower rim of the eye-socket on the left-hand side. He dropped down without a word or a movement.

  When the encircling group heard from the mobile reserve that the enemy had killed Marsamleptes, they got very angry. The Illyrians loved and trusted him —

  they’re quite an emotional people, when you get to know them — and even the Founders had come to respect him over the last dozen years. All in all, killing him was the worst possible thing the villagers could have done just then, and they paid the price of their ineptitude. When the killing stopped at dawn (I don’t know why it stopped then, but it did) both of the side gateways were pretty well bunged up with bodies, and because of the blockage, a whole bunch of people hadn’t been able to get out of the way when the main granary went up, right in close to the stockade. We didn’t bother raking through the ashes so I can’t put a figure on it, but to judge from the noise they made there were quite a few of them.

  We didn’t kill them all, of course; nothing like. We grabbed a few of the survivors at random, and left the rest standing around staring at the carnage and the mess. I was out of it by then; I’d breathed in rather too much smoke, and spent a long time while the action was at its most intense doubled up just outside the main gate, coughing my lungs up; so yes, I suppose I was looking the other way once more, as I always seem to be. Just for once, though, I wasn’t particularly sorry to have missed the main event.

  I was free to go. I’d done what I’d undertaken to do, and there was nothing to keep me in Antolbia. Just for once, I’d managed to see something through to the end, to a successful result. Maybe it would have been nicer if it had been something a bit more positive than genocide, but losers can’t be choosers, as we philosophers say.

  The news that I was going back to Athens spread quickly enough, and wasn’t well received. I suppose it was a bad time to make an announcement like that, immediately after the death of Marsamleptes. Of the two of us, there was no question who was the greater loss; he’d been an efficient and competent soldier and the effective spokesman of the Illyrian majority, in which capacity he’d shown a modest flair for diplomacy and what for the want of a better word I think I’m going to have to call statesmanship. Besides which, people liked him.

  I’d liked him. What was there not to like?

  ‘You aren’t liked and respected the way he was, obviously,’ Tyrsenius tried to explain. ‘People could — I don’t know, people reckoned he understood what they were thinking and feeling, that he was one of them. You’ve always been the oecist, however much effort you’ve put into that man-of-the-people persona of yours. But that’s not the point. You’re the Founder. You’re the man who founded the city, it’s your name on all the inscriptions and records, your name in all the laws: “Euxenus the oecist and the people decided that...

  You’re like a statue in the market square, or the figurehead of a ship; people need to see you there. And if you deliberately decide to leave —just think how that makes people feel.’

  Not for the first time, I wondered how Tyrsenius had ever managed to sell anything to anybody. ‘It’s really sweet of you to say all these nice things about me,’ I said, ‘but my mind’s made up. I just don’t want to live here any more. It’s different for you, for most of them in fact. All they expected from the place was somewhere to live, some land to farm. It was always supposed to be more for me.’

  ‘The perfect society,’ Tyrsenius said. ‘Quite. Actually, I don’t see what the problem is there. Look at us; we’ve got no faction fighting, no oligarchic tendency slugging it out with the mob, no military dictator screwing everybody for taxes. We’ve got Greeks and Illyrians living quite happily side by side;

  we’ve even got Budini. Isn’t that your perfect society, Mister Philosopher?’

  I shook my head. ‘Tyrsenius, the only reason we haven’t got those sorts of problems is that we’re too small. Everybody knows everybody else, we’ve all got roughly the same amount of land, we’ve just fought a war against a foreign enemy; obviously we’re all united and filled with brotherly love now, you’d hardly expect anything else. And I’m not leaving because the experiment’s failed. I’m leaving because it’s over. Do you understand?’

  He nodded. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘I think you were never part of this community to start with. You came here to study, to see what it’d be like. You’ve done that, and now you’re off to study something else. You know what? I think you really are a philosopher after all.’ He frowned. ‘And to think I reckoned you were an honest charlatan, a genuine confidence man with a snake in a jar to prove it.’

  ‘What’s wrong with being a philosopher?’ I asked.

  ‘If you don’t know, I don’t think I’m up to explaining it to you,’ he said.

  ‘Just take it from me, there’s a place in decent society for snake-in-a-jar operators. Philosophers; well...’

  I thought he was making a joke, but he wasn’t. And when I thought about it, I could see his point.

  It turned out I wasn’t the only one who was ready to leave. Agenor the stonemason asked if he could share the journey home with me; he’d always fancied trying his luck in Athens , he said, where people really appreciated fine sculpture and works of art.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But what’s the matter? I thought you were nicely settled here.’

  He looked at me as if I’d said something offensive. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he replied. ‘You know what I’ve been doing virtually since the moment I got off the ship? I’ve been building houses, and barns, and city walls, and wells, and gods only know what else. As soon as I’ve finished one building job, someone comes up to me and more or less demands I come and build something for him. And I hate building work, Euxenus; it’s hard, dirty, boring, degrading work an
d I’ve had enough of it.’

  ‘But think what you’ve achieved,’ I said. We were standing in the market square;

  I pointed, and swung round in a circle. ‘You see all this? You did all that, Agenor. What you didn’t build with your own hands you designed or supervised; if anybody deserves to be remembered as the Father of the City, it’s you. Don’t you feel good about that?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s crude, ugly, makeshift stuff. The materials are rubbish, I’m ashamed of some of the techniques I used, it’s a miracle most of it’s still standing. Just look at that,’ he went on, pointing at our little temple. ‘See those proportions? All wrong. Height’s all wrong for the length, which means the pillars had to be too close together, and too thick. If I had my way, we’d pull the whole lot down and start over.’

  I was shocked. ‘I didn’t know you felt like this, Agenor,’ I said. ‘And I can’t see anything wrong with it. I think it’s beautiful.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘So does everyone else. That’s why I’m finally leaving.

  Twelve years of living with your own sloppy work is bad enough; knowing it’ll probably never be put right is just too much. I want to go somewhere they’d pull something like that down tomorrow.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. After all, his complaint was more or less the same as mine. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘but why now? If you hated it so much, why did you stay so long?’

  He shrugged. ‘Laziness,’ he said. ‘Tried to kid myself into thinking that I was doing a good job. You probably noticed, I’ve always been the one who’s tried to help, got involved wherever I thought I could make myself useful; I tried, Euxenus, I really did. But this war — I didn’t like that. I’m not saying it was wrong,’ he went on, before I could interrupt. ‘On the contrary, it had to be done or we’d never have had a moment’s peace. But my apprentice; you remember, he lost a hand in that raid? He was going to be a good builder, he had the knack; he’d have been able to do good work with this lousy crumbly stone and all the little annoying things that I could never see how to get round. Now he’s as good as dead and I don’t want to train anybody else.’ He breathed out and looked around. ‘I just don’t like living here any more,’ he said. ‘I suppose you could say that if I’ve got to live in an imperfect city, I’d rather it was one that someone else has cocked up, not me.’

  There was nothing more to say, so I walked home. The house was dark and quiet, and every part of it seemed filled with me; I was sick and tired of having nothing but my own personality around me all the time. Once I’d had a wife and son living here with me, only I hadn’t appreciated them for what they were. Most of the time I tried not to notice them, because who they were and what they wanted didn’t seem relevant to what I was trying to do. At that moment, I could cheerfully have lit a torch and set fire to the place.

  It comes to something when you can walk away from twelve years of your life with nothing more than you can carry in a small goatskin bag. In fact, I was hard put to it to fill the bag. Most of the weight was coined money; I’d sold my armour and my plough and the tools that were worth having, and some of the furniture (though most of it wasn’t fit to give away; I’ve never been bothered about things like that) and Tyrsenius had advanced me the value of my harvest and my small flock of goats, as well as giving me free passage on his ship as far as Athens. I had enough money to get home and to live on for a few weeks while I got my lawsuit under way; I had more money deposited with a bank in Athens to pay for the rest of the suit, left over from my relative affluence as a respected teller of fortunes. I wasn’t worried about what I was going to do when I got home; if necessary I was sure I could go back to my old trade of cheating gullible businessmen. In fact, I wasn’t worried about anything, because in order to worry you first have to care.

  As well as the money, and of course my lucky snake-jar, I took a comb that had belonged to Theano (after all, a man needs a comb), a set of knucklebone dice I’d made for my son (because a man can virtually make a living playing dice on board a ship, provided he knows which way the dice are going to fall; and my dice were utterly predictable, because Eupolis always got so upset if he lost), a knife, a razor and a scraper, and a roll of mostly blank Egyptian paper, on which I’d started to write the history of Antolbia, back before it was ever called that. I’d intended it for Aristotle, as a contribution to his vast database on matters political, and as a smug and offensive lesson in how a perfect society is perfectly possible, if only you’re prepared to get out there and do, rather than just sitting on your backside and talking about it.

  It was a very long, excruciatingly boring journey. The ship crawled along the coast from city to city, converting figs into honey at one port of call, honey into iron ore, iron ore into dried fish, dried fish into olive oil, olive oil into figs (about thirty per cent more figs than we’d started off with), figs into hides, hides into grain... There was nothing to do but sit on deck, staring at the coastline as we sailed by and trying not to get under the feet of the sailors. At first, Agenor and I talked all the time about a whole range of things — philosophy, art, religion, history — but I found that talk like that irritated me now; we disagreed I lost my temper, where once I’d have relished the chance of a good debate. We decided it would be better if we didn’t talk any more, and for most of the journey home we sat at opposite ends of the ship, me staring in one direction, he in another. In the end, he couldn’t face any more of the tedium and discomfort and left the ship at Scione; he’d see if there was any work going there, he said, and if not he’d carry on to Athens as originally planned. As and when he got there, he promised to come and look me up; after all, in spite of the fact that we’d fallen out on this long, boring sea journey, we’d still shared a dozen years of important experiences, and were really the only friends either of us had now, outside Antolbia. As he walked down the gangplank at Scione we waved to each other; I shouted out, ‘See you in Athens ,’

  and he called back, ‘Count on it.’

  Needless to say, I never saw or heard of him again.

  As soon as we crawled into Piraeus I hurried thankfully up the road to the City to treat myself to an indulgence I’d been promising myself every day I had to spend on that grotty, uncomfortable ship: a proper Athenian haircut and shave.

  To my delight, my favourite barber’s shop was still there, and it had hardly changed at all since I’d been away. The barber didn’t recognise me after all that time, but I recognised him; last time I’d seen him he’d been an eleven-year-old boy, sweeping up and whetting the razors while his father saw to the customers. Suddenly I felt overwhelming joy mixed with desperate sorrow;

  I’d been away far too long, but I was home.

  While I was sitting in the chair, basking in the glory of just being there again, I listened to the gossip. There was only one topic of conversation. News had just arrived that the Macedonian colony of Antolbia on the Black Sea coast had been overrun by the local savages and utterly destroyed. There were, it seemed, no survivors.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I won my lawsuit. It took me a year and an infinity of patience and effort; I had to learn the law, for one thing. There’s an awful lot of it, and surprisingly nobody seems to know what it is; the more closely you study it, the more aware you become of this, as each new aspect you address turns out to be yet another ‘grey area’, which is lawyer’s talk for ‘We haven’t a clue, and if we did we wouldn’t tell you’. I ended up with the conclusion that about sixty-four per cent of Athenian law is known by nobody at all; which is odd when you consider that if you happen to break it, ignorance isn’t an excuse.

  While I was fighting the case, I earned my living the way all poor Athenians do, by hanging round the law-courts and Assembly. Three obols a day for sitting on a jury, the same for attending Assembly; it’s a living, but by the gods you meet some unsalubrious people when you’re a professional citizen. Traditionally, juries are manned by deadbeat old men without families to care for
them who’re too old or too crippled to go to work. Half of them are stone deaf, half of the remainder are crazy or senile, so that they can’t remember their own names, let alone the points made in the previous speaker’s deposition. But if you’re on trial for your life, they’re the ones who’ll be sitting in judgement over you, and you can tell what sort of justice you’re likely to get by looking at their fingernails; you can always tell a professional juror by the thick clots of wax.

  When the accused is found guilty, you see, the jury votes on the severity of his punishment by scratching a line on a wax tablet — the longer the line, the harsher the penalty.

  It’s the same crew of dead and desiccated corpses who sit in Assembly when they can’t get on a jury (jury work’s better, because the hours are shorter; kinder to an old man’s bladder, though the experienced juror takes his chamber-pot with him. It’s disconcerting, to say the least, when you’re winding up into your closing speech and all you can hear is the steady trickle of piss on pottery)

  and it’s a great comfort to think that these are the men who wield the sovereign power in the Athenian democracy, the fairest and most perfect democracy the world has ever seen.