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Alexander pulled his palfrey up short. He was riding between me and Hephaestion. He looked back and forth between us, and the look on his face was strained – almost like a mask of rage.
‘I feel like I have been a god on Olympus, and now I’m being forced to go back to being a pig in the sty,’ he said, and gave an uncharacteristically savage jerk to his reins.
Hephaestion raised an eyebrow. We were never truly close, but Athens deepened our alliance – I didn’t threaten him, and he admitted that I was part of the family. Together, we’d learned – through fifty symposia and a dozen di
‘Storms at sea,’ he said.
I winked – thinking that it would all pass soon enough – and we rode down into the city.
The pigsty.
Pella was small, dirty and provincial. Want to understand what kind of society you live in? Look at a prostitute. In Athens, most of the prostitutes were self-owning – many were freemen and -women. They had houses and a guild. It’s rotten life, but they were clean and free. The first thing I saw in Pella was a very young girl – maybe fourteen – wearing nothing but a man’s chiton, begging for clients on the road. Her lip was split and she had two black eyes.
Pella.
Philip had changed. I saw it in his body language as soon as we arrived at the palace. He didn’t quite turn his back on Alexander, but he was distant, cold and very, very businesslike.
I didn’t even hear the exchange, it was so brief. Alexander asked where his mother was, and Philip replied that he had no idea.
So little information. And yet, all the information we should have needed.
I had a home to go to – a house that did not hold Nike. But that’s where my horse would be stabled, now, and my armour stowed. So I waited by the gate for dismissal, observing. Noting that Attalus stood with the king, and commanded the grooms as if he were the king himself. Our eyes met, and he smiled.
I felt a chill.
Alexander came over in person – uncharacteristic. ‘You can go home,’ he said.
Hephaestion was at his shoulder.
‘Take care, my prince,’ I said. ‘Something is wrong.’
‘Agreed,’ Alexander said. ‘I think my mother is in exile. I will dine at your house tonight, I think.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I said. ‘Without Nike . . .’
Alexander smiled – a sad smile he’d learned in Athens. ‘I know you miss her,’ he said. ‘Now go.’
I had the feeling that Alexander was afraid.
That made my fingers cold.
I rode around the corner of my street and found that my house was burned. To the ground. The houses on either side were burned, too.
Gone.
Ten minutes of increasingly angry knocking at doors – Polystratus helped – revealed that no one knew anything, to a suspicious degree.
Polystratus grew more agitated.
‘I need to go home,’ he said.
We had Nearchus and Cleitus with us. Cleomenes was on duty.
‘Let’s go together,’ I said. We all loosened our swords in our scabbards, and we rode fast.
Polystratus’s farm was . . . gone. The house was erased. His fields were under tillage.
We rode to find the headman.
He hid in his house. His wife burst into tears, but barred the door.
And then, while we sat there, Diomedes appeared with a dozen outriders – Thracians. All well mounted and all armed.
‘Looking for something?’ the king’s catamite asked sweetly. ‘Lost something you value?’
Polystratus looked at me. It was up to me – we weren’t in Athens, and peasants don’t talk to lords in Pella.
‘We’re looking for Polystratus’s wife,’ I said pleasantly enough. ‘We didn’t expect to find her moved.’
Diomedes smiled. ‘I thought you might come looking. So I came out to help.’ His grin covered his face. ‘She’s been apprehended by the law, and she’s back at work with her rightful owner. I’m sure that you didn’t know that she was an escaped slave.’
Polystratus choked.
I looked at him.
‘The law seized the farm as penalty for the crime of hiding an escaped slave,’ Diomedes continued. ‘And now that the felon has returned, I have a royal warrant for his arrest.’ He held out a scroll.
I reached to take it, but Diomedes swished it away. Somehow this juvenile act enraged me where everything else had merely made me cold.
Diomedes leaned in close. ‘Perhaps this time you’ll notice when we cut you, you fuck. Because we will cut you until you cease to exist. No one pisses on Attalus and lives.’
I had no idea what he was talking about. But I knew that my friends could take his Thracians. On the other hand, he was the royal’s favourite.
I looked back at Polystratus. ‘Is this true?’ I asked, but I could see on his face that it was. ‘You stupid fuck – why didn’t you tell me? I’d have bought her freedom.’
Polystratus bit his lip. I remember that it was odd to have the boot on the other foot. He was the older man, the adviser – Nestor to my Odysseus. Suddenly he was the supplicant.
Polystratus had been at my shoulder for a year, and I owed him . . . everything. And I had seen Kineas and Niceas, remember. Polystratus was not a peasant. He was a man. My man. Who had helped save me from myself.
I turned back, seized the scroll with one hand and tipped Diomedes into the winter mud by the simple expedient of reaching down, grabbing his foot and flipping him up. I pulled my spear from the bucket at my shoulder with my free hand, pointed it at his chest and looked at the Thracians.
‘Move, and I’ll have the lot of you sold as slaves.’ I said it in their language, and I meant it.
The street was mucky, full of winter rain and ordure, pigs’ guts and cow manure.
The Thracians rustled, and my friends had their swords in their hands.
I flipped the scroll open one-handed and read enough of the royal warrant to know that Diomedes was full of shit. I knew the laws – better than most men. I put the point of my boar spear against Diomedes’ chest. Every movement of my horse pushed it a little farther into his skin. ‘Just lie there,’ I said. I read the document to the end.
‘Nothing here about arresting my man,’ I said. ‘Nor anything naming you as an officer of the court.’ I smiled down into the mud. ‘So you’re a brigand with a band of Thracians.’
‘You stupid fuck,’ he said. ‘The king will have you killed.’
‘I doubt you’re that good in bed,’ I said. ‘Get up.’
He got to his feet, backed away.
I was begi
‘You burned my city house?’ I said. Had I been Achilles, I would have killed him then and there. But I am not Achilles. I’m Odysseus, and things were falling into place, like the pins and cogs of one of the astrological machines I’d seen in Athens.
‘Oh, very good,’ he hissed. ‘At last, you begin to see.’ He was mounted, and in the middle of his Thracians. I regretted letting him up. ‘We’ll kill your people. And you. Attalus is going to rule Macedon. You are going to suck my cock.’
‘You are a dumb bastard,’ I said, because thanks to that outburst, I could see the whole thing.
He turned and rode away, and the Thracians surrounded him. He was already hectoring them for their cowardice, but hired muscle is never the equal of determined freemen.
Well – actually that’s not true. Hired muscle often wins. But in the long run . . .
Attalus was pla
‘Back to the palace,’ I said.
We rode hard. We crossed the fields at a trot, staying on the field dividers to keep out of the mud, and we were back on the streets of Pella well before Diomedes.
Into the foreyard of the palace.
I turned to Polystratus. ‘We’ll find your girl. For now – get ready to move. Stable the horses, but stay close.’
With Nearchus and Black Cleitus at my shoulder, I entered the palace through the stables and moved along the main corridor. Of course we had the passwords, but I could feel the eyes of the companions on my back.