'Don't die!' he pleaded. 'Please don't die!'
She forced a weak smile. 'That is beyond my powers to grant,' she said. 'But I did not send Camfitha to find you so that you should suffer. I needed to warn you. The Lady of Samothrace. . Aida, you remember?'
'Yes.'
'She is in Macedonia. She intends to rob Alexander of his necklet of power, but she must be stopped. Without the necklet the Dark God will win.'
'I know. Do not concern yourself. I will protect Alexander.'
'Her powers are very great. You must be on your guard at all times.'
'I will be,' he said wearily. 'But tell me: is there a way to defeat the Chaos Spirit? Can you kill the demon without harming Alexander?'
'No,' she answered, 'he cannot be killed. And even when Alexander dies he will live on — once the host body is destroyed, consumed by fire or devoured by worms or carrion birds, he will be free once more.'
'But if we hold him back will he not tire of trying to possess Alexander? Surely it would be simpler to find another human and capture his soul?'
'He cannot do that,' she answered. 'That night in Samothrace where you. .' Pausing for a moment, she squeezed his hand and gave a gentle, almost apologetic smile, then went on,'. . where Alexander was conceived was not chosen at random. It was a special, unholy time. Great spells were cast, the blood of innocence was spilt. The purpose of it all was to bond the conceived child to the evil of Kadmilos. The child became the Gateway through which the Beast could pass. As long as Alexander lives, he will be linked to Kadmilos. Equally the Dark God cannot leave Alexander; they are chained together for as long as the body survives.'
'Then there is no hope?'
'There is always hope, my dear,' she told him. 'Evil does not exist alone. There are balances.'
Her voice faded and, for a moment only, he thought she had died. All thoughts of the Dark God fled from his mind.
Gripping her hand, he called her name. Her blind eyes opened and she gave a weak smile.
'Let us not talk of this any more,' he whispered. 'Tell me of your years here. Let me share them with you.'
He sat and listened as the sun faded from the sky, unaware that his officers had arrived and were standing silently by the doorway. They did not intrude on his obvious grief.
Finally, as the first stars of evening were appearing in the sky, Derae drew in a deep shuddering breath.
And was gone. .
No goodbyes, no tearful farewell. One moment she was alive, the next her soul had departed.
As her breathing stopped Parmenion fell back, and there came over the room a sense of peace that none present would ever forget. It was warm and comforting, uplifting and filled with love, touching heart and mind and soul.
Ptolemy moved forward and embraced his general. The others followed.
And with great gentleness they led the weeping Spartan back to the gardens where his war-horse waited.
Greater Phrygia, 336 BC
In the weeks that followed Parmenion threw all his energies into the planning of the campaign, working from before dawn to after dusk and exhausting even his younger officers. He checked the supplies, ordered cartographers to map the countryside, organized food wagons, sent riders to watch for the Athenian supply ships and arranged billets, pushing himself to his limits.
Attalus tried to reason with him, begging him to slow down, but the Spartan would not be opposed. Ignoring all advice, he pressed on. In the past he had been aided by Mothac, whose organizational skills had been breathtaking.
But now he felt he could trust no one. An army soon to number 30,000 would be moving across the Hellespont.
Horses would require safe pasture, the men would need meat, cereal and water. Battles, in the main, could almost take care of themselves, but keeping men ready for war was an art in itself. A four-ox cart could carry thirty barrels of water across a desert, but the oxen needed to drink and after ten days there would be only fifteen barrels left. Such were the problems in which Parmenion immersed himself to cloak his soul from the pain of Derae's death.
Then there were the squabbles and fights that flared within an army made up of such ancient enemies as Paionians, Illyrians, Macedonians, Athenians and Thracians. Blood feuds were reported daily, and many men were slain in duels. Parmenion and Attalus were often called upon to judge the survivors of such combats and it irked the Spartan to sentence good fighters to death.
But even these considerations were better than the constant, acid thought that Derae had been alive all these years and now had been taken from him for good.
In the mid-afternoon of his fifth week in this outpost of the Persian Empire, scouts brought word of a group of Macedonian officers who had landed from an Athenian ship. There was no sign yet of Philip and Parmenion cursed inwardly.
The Persians had fled before the invading force, and many of the Greek cities had invited the Macedonians to liberate them. Yet Parmenion could not spread the advance army so thin that a counterattack would crush it, and he was forced to wait for the arrival of the King and the rest of the army. This delay, he knew, would soon lead to a weakening of resolve in the cities, and many would withdraw their support.
The Spartan had commandeered a house in the captured city of Cabalia, and this he shared with Attalus. The swordsman had been in fine mood since the invasion and enjoyed sharing the command. In the main the two men got on well, Attalus leaving what he regarded as the minutiae to Parmenion, while he rode out every day hunting or scouting the land ahead.
The old warrior had even become popular with the troops, for he never hesitated to ride at the front of the battle-line and had distinguished himself in the first clashes with the Persian army.
Parmenion pushed the papers across the broad desk and stretched his back. He was tired. Bone-weary. It had not been hard to march into Asia, but a long campaign called for more stamina, nerve and sustained concentration than he had needed for longer than he cared to remember.
Three years was the timetable he had given Philip. Three years to control Asia Minor and make the land safe. Three years and 60,000 troops. This was no small undertaking and, at sixty-four, Parmenion wondered whether he would live out the campaign.
There were so many problems to overcome, foremost among which was food for the army. They had brought supplies for thirty days when they crossed the Hellespont, and two-thirds had already been consumed. Foraging parties were bringing in what could be found locally, but Parmenion was anxious for the supply ships to reach the designated — and defended — bays. Philip had a mere 160 ships. Should the Persian fleet move into the Aegean Sea, the Macedonian vessels would be outnumbered three to one, and the land-based army could be starved into submission or withdrawal.
But even with food supplies assured, there was still the problem of the Persian army. Given time the new King, Darius, could raise an army of almost a million. This was unlikely, Parmenion knew, but even if he chose only to conscript warriors from central Persia the Macedonians would face more than 120,000 well-armed, disciplined men.
Among these were almost 40,000 trained slingers and archers. Even when Philip arrived with reinforcements, the Macedonians would have only around 1,000 bowmen.
Parmenion believed that despite his awesome skills Philip had never truly understood the Persian Empire and its composition.
The Great King ruled from Phrygia in the west to the distant lands of the Hindu Kush, from fertile farmland to arid desert, from ice-covered forests to unpenetrable jungle. But it was the method of his rule that made conquest of the empire so difficult. Satraps and vassal kings were mostly autonomous, raising their own armies and setting local taxes. Even if Philip were to crush Darius he would still have a score of powerful enemies to face, each of them capable of bringing to the field an army greater than Macedon's.