“And Alexandros?” I asked.
The news was awful. At the wedding feast, oily Attalos had smugly proposed a toast that Philip and his niece produce “a legitimate heir to the throne.”
Alexandros leaped to his feet. “You call me bastard?” He threw his wine cup at Attalos, opening a gash on the older man’s forehead.
Philip, seemingly stupefied with wine, staggered up from his couch. Some said he pulled a sword from one of the guards in murderous rage and wanted to kill Alexandros. Others claimed he was merely trying to get between Alexandros and Attalos to prevent a bloody fight from breaking out. The entire hall was on its feet; mayhem was in the air. Whatever Philip’s intention, his bad leg gave way and he sprawled clumsily to the wine-slicked floor.
Shaking with fury, Alexandros stared down at his father for a moment, then shouted, “This is the man who would take us across into Asia. He can’t even get himself from one bench to the other.”
Then he swept out of the hall, his Companions close behind him. Before dawn he and his mother had left Pella for Epeiros.
“He is still there?” I asked.
“So I hear. With his mother. In Epeiros.”
“It’s too bad about the Little King,” said one of the stable men. “Bad business, his falling out with his father that way.”
“But good riddance to the witch,” said another as we exchanged our horses.
They were not going to get rid her that easily, I knew.
BOOK III — TRAITOR
Chapter 29
At last we came to Pella, on a fine summer morning under an azure sky, with a cool breeze from the mountains moderating the heat of the sun. Harkan, riding beside me, murmured, “That’s a sizeable city.”
I nodded, and noted that Pella had grown noticeably, even in the two years I had been away. New houses reached up into the hills, new arcades and markets spread along the high road. A cloud of gritty gray-brown dust hung over the city, kicked up by the many corrals where horses and mules stirred and whinnied, by the building work going on everywhere, by the traffic streaming along the high road and into the city’s streets.
As we rode into the city itself Batu laughingly complained, “Such noise! How can a man think in all this bustle?”
I had paid scant attention to the city’s constant din before, but once Batu had said it I realized that the cities in Asia were much quieter and more orderly than Pella. Certainly the marketplaces were noisy with the cries of sellers and arguments of buyers, but the other sections of those ancient cities were sleepy in the hot sun, orderly and quiet. Pella was more like a madhouse, with the constant din of construction hammering everywhere, chariots and wagons and horsemen clattering through the cobblestoned streets, people laughing and talking at the top of their lungs on almost every corner.
No one stopped us or even paid us much attention as we rode up the main street toward Philip’s palace. The people were accustomed to seeing soldiers; the army was the backbone of Macedonian society and these people did not fear their army, as the peoples of the Persian Empire’s cities did.
But at the palace gate we were stopped. I did not recognize any of the guards on duty there, so I identified myself and told their sergeant that I had brought Harkan and his men to join the army. The sergeant looked us over with a professional eye, then sent one of the boys lounging nearby to run for the captain of the guard.
We dismounted and the sergeant offered us water for ourselves and our horses. Two of his men went with us to the fountain just inside the gate. They were treating us with civility, but with great care, as well.
“What’s the news?” I asked the sergeant after slaking my thirst.
He leaned casually against the doorjamb of the guard house, in the shade of the doorway—within arm’s reach of the clutch of spears standing there.
“There’s to be a royal wedding within the month,” he said, his eyes on Harkan and the men by the fountain.
“Philip’s marrying again?”
That brought a laugh out of him. “No, no—he’s still content with his Eurydice, for the while. She’s presented him with a son, you know.”
“A son?”
“A truly legitimate heir,” the sergeant said. “No question about this babe being sired by a god.” He glanced around, then added, “Or whomever the Molossian witch bedded down with.”
“And what of Alexandros?”
The sergeant shrugged his heavy shoulders. “He had gone off to Epeiros with his mother when Philip married Eurydice, but the king called him back here to Pella.”
“And he came back?”
“You bet he did. He obeyed the king’s order, all right. He’d better, after all the trouble he stirred up.”
I was about to ask what trouble Alexandros had stirred when the captain of the guard came tramping up to us, flanked by four fully-armed men. It was not Pausanias, but the officer of the day, a man named Demetrios. I recognized him; like me, he had been quartered in the barracks by the palace.
“Orion,” he said, pronouncing my name like a heavy sigh.
“I’ve returned, Demetrios, with seven new recruits for the army.”
He looked at me sadly. “Orion, you’ll have to come with me. You’re under arrest.”
I was stunned. “Under arrest? What for?”
Harkan and Batu and the others came back toward us from the fountain. The sergeant stood up straighter and glanced at the spears resting by his side.
Demetrios said, “Those are my orders, Orion. From the king himself. You are charged with desertion.”
Before a fight broke out I said, “Very well. I’m willing to accept the king’s justice. But these men are volunteers for the army and they should be treated as such. They are professional soldiers, all of them.”
Demetrios looked at them. “I’ll see that they’re well taken care of, Orion. But you must come with me.”
“All right.”
“I have to take your sword.”
I unbuckled it and handed sword and belt to him.
Harkan asked, “What will they do to you?”
“It’s all right,” I told him. “Once I’ve had a chance to speak with the king this will all be cleared up.”
Demetrios looked utterly dubious, but he did not contradict me. To the sergeant he said, “Take these men to the army barracks and have the officer in charge look them over. If they meet his approval, see that they’re properly housed and equipped.”
“Yessir,” said the sergeant.
Then he turned back to me. “Come along, Orion.”
Escorted by Demetrios and his four fully-armed guards, I marched across the palace courtyard and into a prison cell.
The cell was underground, beneath the palace, dark and so small that I could touch the walls on both sides without even extending my arms to their full reach. No window, except a barred slot on the heavy locked door. No bed; just a straw pallet on the bare dirt floor. And an earthenware jug for a chamberpot.
“I really hate to do this to you, Orion,” Demetrios told me once we reached the cell. He came inside with me, while his men waited out in the dark corridor that was lit only by a weak shaft of dusty sunlight slanting in from an airshaft. “It’s the king’s standing order. The instant you showed up again in Pella you were to be arrested. For desertion.”