Alexander at the World's End

by Tom Holt

  Well, I sat down, perched on that folding stool like a pigeon on a thin branch, and waited. He was still staring into space. Carried on doing that for a very long time, until one of the men who’d brought me in, can’t remember who it was but it was one of the inner circle, made a sort of coughing noise and said, ‘Alexander.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he replied, still staring into thin air. ‘All right, dismissed.’

  I could tell the man didn’t want to go, but he couldn’t very well disobey an order. A moment later, there was just me and Alexander. I’ll be straight with you, Euxenus, I was scared. Well, you know I’ve never liked creepy stuff.

  ‘They tell me you’ve done a very great thing,’ he said, ‘saved the lives of your fellow soldiers. That’s good.’

  I didn’t say anything. Didn’t seem like I was expected to say anything. I just sat there.

  ‘It’s a good feeling,’ he went on. ‘I think I’m supposed to give you something now.’ He turned his head and looked me straight in the eye. ‘Do you think he knew?’ he asked.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Oh, never mind. I expect he did. A man like him, he’d have seen it. Doesn’t matter. You’re very fortunate, you know. We’ve both been very fortunate, to have known him. Still, you’d have thought he’d have mentioned it. Unless he was supposed not to, of course.’ He smiled at me. ‘It’s been hard for me, you know, coming to terms with it. If he’d said something, just given me some sort of a clue, maybe I’d have been able to cope with it a little better. Anyway,’ he said, ‘that’s enough of that, where’s that crown thing I’ve got to give you?’ He looked around. ‘Doesn’t seem to be here. Would you be terribly disappointed if we forgot about that? After all, it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?’

  I nodded stiffly. I knew I had to do my bit now, the speech about the conspiracy I’d so carefully worked out; but all I wanted to do was get the hell out of there. ‘Alexander,’ I said, ‘there’s something I have to tell you. It’s really important.’

  He looked up at me. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

  I looked round, the way I’d practised. ‘I need to tell you when we’re alone.’

  ‘We are alone,’ he pointed out. ‘Fire away.’

  I remember one time when I was a kid and I’d scrambled up into that old apple tree in the top corner of the big field at Pallene. There was a big fat apple all on its own right at the end of a long, thinnish branch, and I’d set my heart on that apple. I remember the feeling of utter disgust when suddenly I wasn’t in the tree any more, I was on the ground with a broken branch between my legs and my head feeling like someone’d just belted it with a big smith’s hammer.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  I looked round again. I suppose I was trying to create the impression that even though we seemed to be alone, there were hidden listeners hiding everywhere.

  Hiding behind what, gods know, since the place looked like it had just been raided by the bailiffs.

  ‘It’s a conspiracy, isn’t it?’ he said.

  It felt just like being punched very hard in the pit of the stomach; dizzy, frightened, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Just sat there.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he went on. ‘I know. I know all about it.’ And he smiled.

  ‘You do,’ I repeated.

  ‘Oh, yes. I’ve known for some time. Really, I’m sorry for them. It’s so pointless, isn’t it?’

  He’d said ‘them’, not ‘you’. I looked at him. He broadened the smile, till you could have dried fish in the warmth of it.

  ‘Poor Eudaemon,’ he said, ‘you look so worried. But really, there’s nothing to worry about. They can’t hurt me. Nobody can. That’s why I haven’t done anything.

  At least,’ he went on, frowning slightly, ‘not yet. I’ve been wondering about that, actually.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘It’s awkward,’ he said. ‘Really, I should know the answer to this, but I can’t seem to clarify my thinking. Ever since I’ve known, it’s been —

  well, disorientating, I suppose you could call it. I feel like a child who’s suddenly found himself inside a man’s body, it takes some getting used to. No, the thing I can’t decide is, ought I to do anything about it? I mean, if their silly plot can’t possibly succeed — and it can’t, of course, we both know that —

  then ought I to punish them for it? Should you punish someone for trying to do something that’s wicked but actually physically impossible?’ He rubbed the tip of his nose with the knuckle of his thumb — dammit, brother, he picked that up from you. I knew it was bugging me, where I’d seen someone do that before.

  ‘I suppose I’ve got to,’ he went on. ‘I mean, my father does. He punishes blasphemers and perjurers and people who desecrate His temples. If my father does it, I suppose I’ve got to do it too; for their sake, really, not mine, otherwise if I don’t, how can they possibly have any faith? I don’t know, it just seems so unnecessary, somehow. So petty, if you know what I mean.’

  I nodded. ‘So you know who’s in the plot, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course I know. I’ve always known.’ He grinned. ‘I guess it’s a bit like people who get hit on the head and lose their memory, and then a while later it slowly starts coming back. Yes, that’s a good way of putting it; there’s all these things I’ve always known, and slowly I’m beginning to remember them.

  Explains a lot, really; like how I’ve always known exactly what to do in a battle, without really knowing why.’ He frowned. ‘That’s a point, actually.

  Since I’m — well, what I am — do you think there’s any point in carrying on with the war? I mean, it all seems so unfair. They can’t possibly win, can they?’

  I realised that I’d stopped breathing some time ago. ‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Maybe I should stop, then,’ he said. ‘Except, I can distinctly remember a whole lot more battles, ones we haven’t had yet. There’s going to be one quite soon, in fact, once we’ve crossed the Tigris . I wouldn’t remember if it wasn’t going to happen, it stands to reason. There’s all sorts of odd things I can remember, you know. I can even remember dying, which is a really strange sensation, let me tell you.’

  ‘It must be,’ I said.

  He sighed, and shook his head. ‘That’s the trouble,’ he said, ‘I’m blundering about, not really having the faintest idea what I’m doing, and of course there’s nobody I can ask, which is what’s really annoying. You’d have thought my father would have told me by now, or sent somebody. But I assume that’s all part of it, working it out for yourself. It’s very lonely, you know? I’ve never been alone before, I’m not sure I like it. There’s so much I don’t understand yet. Still, that’s my problem. I’ve enjoyed talking to you, though. It’s almost like talking to your brother. We must do it again. Often.’

  ‘Sir,’ I said.

  He stood up, and I stood up too, just in case he was about to bite me. ‘I’ve been thinking of sending for him, you know. I can’t think of anybody else who might possibly understand. But I don’t think I should, really. It’d be unfair on him, for one thing. And really, I do have to deal with this on my own, there’s no getting away from it. He’d say the same thing if he was here, I know.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said. ‘Am I dismissed?’

  He nodded; then, before I could get out of there, he went on, ‘I think I’d better punish them after all. For one thing, it’s what I would have done — you know, before. And I’ve decided that until I’ve remembered a bit more and I’ve understood what I’m supposed to be doing, it’d probably be better if I carried on as if nothing had happened. Otherwise it might upset people. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. It seemed safest, somehow. And true, of course.

  ‘I think it’s best,’ he said, with a slight nod of his head. ‘Until I really know what I’m doing and what I’m about, I’d better keep it to myself; otherwise I’m just going to make m
yself look ridiculous. I’ll send for you when I want you again.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘That’s all, then. I’m sorry about the bees, by the way. It was an accident, obviously. We’ll get some more in a week or so. They do say the African ones are much fiercer, so in a way it’s all for the best.’

  I got out of there as quickly as I could, which wasn’t nearly quick enough. As I sneaked back across the camp, I felt as if someone had scratched the word IDIOT across the back of my mirror-burnished breastplate in very big letters. My first instinct was to head back to my tent, stoke up the fire but good with medicine, and try to get away from it for as long as possible; but something prompted me to go to look in on the bees first, so I did.

  Wish I hadn’t; because when I got there, I found my two Scythian friends standing inside one of our specially adapted siege-tower frames, with the lid flung open and a noticeable absence of angry, buzzing bees. The old boy was in tears, and his sidekick not much better off.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  The old boy looked up at me, great fat teardrops rolling down his face. ‘They’re all dead,’ he said.

  I tried to look surprised. ‘What do you mean, they’re all dead?’ I asked.

  ‘Dead,’ the old boy replied. ‘I can’t understand it. When I looked in on them a few hours ago they were fine. When I came to give them their honey just now, they were all—’

  I walked over and looked in. He was standing up to his ankles in dead bees.

  Damnedest sight you ever saw.

  ‘How did that happen?’ I asked.

  The younger Scythian shrugged. ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t cold or hunger or smoke. They just died.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. ‘Bees don’t just die, surely. Nothing just dies. They die of something. What’ve you two been doing to them? And what the hell are we going to tell Diades?’

  They didn’t reply, either of them. Just then, they couldn’t be bothered with me.

  Reasonable enough, I suppose; the deaths of literally millions of living things, even bees, is liable to scale things down a bit. Really, I was glad they were preoccupied. Otherwise they might have noticed how calmly I took the news;

  like I’d been expecting it or something.

  ‘Get rid of them,’ I said. ‘I’ll put in for some more. We can buy locally. I do hear the African variety’s a whole lot more aggressive than the Greek strain, anyway.’

  I walked away, but the picture went with me; all those dead bodies, heaped where they’d fallen, like men surrounded by the enemy in some battle, hemmed in till they couldn’t move and cut down. Alexander’s battles were often like that.

  All right, then; let’s say there were a million dead bees, at a very conservative estimate. Now let’s think how many people Alexander killed — and I’m not talking about those he killed with his own hands, or who died in his battles, I’m thinking of every man, woman and child who died because Alexander decided to invade Asia; killed in battle, died of disease along the line of march, died of starvation and exposure after our army had marched through their land, died in a wide variety of ways because of him. A million? Very conservative estimate. Now then; imagine them piled up in one place, the way the bees had been. Lay them out on the mountain and from a distance they’d look like a forest or a city. Dump them in the sea, and people would think it was a new island. Think of the bee-keeper standing over his ankles in dead bees, or the god in dead men. Enough to put you off your porridge, it really is.

  I asked myself as I walked back to my tent, How did the fucker know? And there were only two answers; either he had them killed, or he really was—

  Peitho was waiting in my tent when I got there. ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  ‘Bastard killed my bees,’ I replied.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He killed my damn bees,’ I repeated. ‘Why’d anybody do a thing like that?’

  Peitho half-rose from his stool, then sat down again. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he asked. ‘Did you see him? Have you set up the meeting?’

  I shook my head. ‘It didn’t work out that way,’ I replied.

  ‘You did go, didn’t you? You didn’t lose your nerve and not turn up?’

  I shook my head. ‘Of course I turned up. It didn’t work, that’s all. We’ll have to think of something else.’

  ‘Oh, for—’ Peitho scowled and screwed up his eyes. ‘It was the perfect opportunity. What was it; wouldn’t he go for the conspiracy thing?’

  ‘Reckons he knows all about it already,’ I said. ‘He’s gone mad, by the way.

  Completely off his head. Here, look, you nearly let the fire go out.’

  Well, we got the fire going again, and we were just building up a nice head of fog when the tent-flap was thrown open and in stalked a couple of guardsmen.

  Startled the life out of me, as you can imagine.

  ‘Which one of you’s Peitho?’ the officer said.

  Peitho looked round. He was pretty far gone with the medicine, which was unfortunate. ‘Me,’ he said. ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘You’ve got to come with us.’

  I wanted to do something, but between fear and medication I was pretty well paralysed. Peitho stood up, staggering slightly. The guards officer was coughing and pulling faces, but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Peitho asked.

  ‘Am I coming too?’ I added. Gods know why.

  The guards officer shook his head. ‘Just him,’ he said. ‘All right, move it along. You,’ he added, looking at me, ‘stay there.’

  So I stayed there, until my eyes grew heavy and I fell asleep. When I woke up, there was light flooding in through the tent-flap and the smoke-hole, and some bugger in armour shaking me by the arm.

  ‘What?’ I asked, noticing that my head was splitting.

  ‘Come on,’ the man said. ‘He says he can’t start the trial without you.’

  I stood up. ‘Remembered something else, has he?’ I asked. ‘What?’

  ‘Forget it,’ I said.

  Twice in so many days; most soldiers’d give their right arms to be commended by the King himself for two separate and distinct acts of conspicuous merit on two successive days. But for me, he said, this terrible plot might have succeeded.

  But for me, the army, the kingdom, the empire would now be an orphan child cruelly bereft of its father, a ship without its rudder, a people wandering in the dark. But for me.

  Of the six poor buggers standing up in front of the tribunal, three I’d never seen before in my life; the other three were Callisthenes, the philosopher nephew of Aristotle who’d lent us the book; my junior Scythian bee-keeper; and Peitho, my friend.

  It was a chilling tale, right enough. The three staff officers, companions of Alexander since childhood, brought up as his brothers, educated with him under the shade of the same tree at Mieza, had conspired to kill Alexander and divide the empire between them. To this end they’d suborned the other three;

  Callisthenes, who did the research in his extensive library of books about poison and murder, the bee-keeper, who acquired the poisoned honey, and Peitho, who co-ordinated the whole operation. Mercifully, they made the fatal mistake of confiding their terrible scheme to a loyal, honourable man who, in spite of his friendship with all three of them, never hesitated to put his duty before his personal feelings, and revealed the whole sordid business to the King.

  Brother, everybody’s scared of dying; but as I stood there in front of the tribunal hearing all this, I could think of worse things. There was a part of me that wanted Peitho to turn round and say ‘It was him, it was all his idea’ —

  honestly, if he had, I’d probably have admitted it then and there. As it was, I was too shit-scared and ashamed to move at all. Peitho didn’t even look at me.

  The Scythian called out to me — ‘Eudaemon, tell them it’s not true, tell them I never even saw the poison honey’ — but I pretended he wasn’t there. Callist
henes just included me in his general bewildered stare. They were found guilty, of course. Then everybody went very quiet, as Alexander stood up to announce the sentence.

  Well, there weren’t any surprises; death by hemlock for all six, sentence to be carried out forthwith. The Scythian and one of the Macedonians started shrieking and kicking; the guards bashed them on the head and dragged them out by their feet. The other four just walked away, and that was the last I ever saw of them. Alive, at any rate; dead, it was rather hard not to see them, since their heads were put up on poles and planted at the corners of the drill-square, in the usual manner. As soon as it was safe to go, I walked away fast; but someone ran up behind me. It was another of those damned guardsmen.

  Here we go, I thought; but instead the man pushed a wreath of leaves and a small brass tripod into my hands. ‘Alexander says you forgot to take these,’ he said.

  ‘You left them behind, remember?’

  I thanked him, took them and went back to my tent. Someone had been in there and taken away the rest of the leaves, which was a blow, but there was still plenty of wine left, at least when I started on it. Not so much later on. I chucked the laurel crown on the fire, but its leaves turned out to have no perceptible medicinal value.

  Afterwards, we marched for a long time and fought a battle. We won. I say ‘we’;

  I spent the battle standing by.

  They never got me any more bees. Apparently there were difficulties in Supply;

  the purchasing clerks didn’t get the necessary docket, or they got the docket but it was sealed at the beginning instead of the end. Something like that. It didn’t matter, anyway; as a reward for my part in unmasking the evil plot I was promoted to acting adjutant to the Chief of Countermines (there was no Chief of Countermines) and issued with a garish red sash for standing by in. Since by this stage the Department of Bees consisted of me and the old Scythian, who quite sensibly deserted the day after they killed his friend, the Department was consolidated with Livestock and Stores and never heard of again. I had absolutely nothing to do now except ride a horse while the army marched and hang around in my tent all evening on the off-chance of being summoned to a staff meeting. I asked for a transfer back to the auxiliary infantry, but the Macedonian in charge of establishments and personnel told me that my request couldn’t go through unless it was sanctioned by my immediate superior. When I explained that I didn’t actually have one, since there was no Chief of Countermines, I was told, no superior officer, no sanction; no sanction, no transfer. I tried to explain that this meant I was drawing pay and eating up rations and not doing a hand’s turn in exchange. ‘Aren’t you the lucky one?’ he replied, and ordered me to go away.