The Pillars of Hercules (10 page)

“Not until you tell who the hell you are,” said Matthias.

“My name’s Demosthenes,” said the man. He said it as though he expected it to sound familiar, though Lugorix had never heard of him.

But Matthias had. He looked stunned. “The orator,” he said.

“It’s nice to be known for something,” said Demosthenes. “But these days I don’t do much public speaking.”

“Why’s that?” asked Matthias.

“The Assembly’s been closed.”

“Closed?” asked Lugorix.

“And I hate to rush you, but we really
do
need to leave. Barsine is back at the house, and we’ll explain everything to you.”

That was a lie, of course.

But they were about to learn a lot more then they’d bargained for.

Chapter Five

“S
ir,” said a voice.

“Leave me alone,” muttered Eumenes.

“Sir, you need to wake up.”

Eumenes shook his head, spluttered. The smell of brine and salt-air filled his nostrils. Spray smacked into his face in time with the slap of waves. He opened his eyes to see that they were almost there—that they’d traversed most of the Sea of Marmara already. Europe’s coast lay ahead; Asia’s stretched behind. It was a testament to just how exhausted he was that he’d fallen asleep on such a short crossing.   

He stretched, got to his feet. The galley was a standard transport; three rows of slaves hauled on the oars in time with the crack of the lash. Eumenes’ aides stood around him as he grasped the rail and looked out at the other ships of the squadron, their black silhouettes framed against the sun. This was the one place on earth where the Macedonians had made themselves supreme upon the water. They’d done so by a simple expedient at the outset of Alexander’s attack on Persia: further to the south, they’d stretched vast fortified booms across the Dardenelles, linked up two continents to deny the Athenian navy access to the channel, effectively turning the Black Sea into their lake. Macedonia’s ships had crossed with impunity ever since, ferrying troops and supplies back and forth as needed.

The journey here had involved hard riding across Asia Minor—relays of horses carrying Alexander and his men as they rode back over territory which they had wrested from the Persians more than half a decade previously. Once they made landfall in Europe, they’d proceed directly to Pella, the Macedonian capital, where King Philip awaited his son—a prospect that filled Eumenes with more than a little foreboding. The Fates alone knew how that conversation would turn out.

Eumenes’ reveries were interrupted by a shudder that ran beneath his feet as the ship hit the shallows and its prow ground up the beach. The smoke of Byzantium’s chimneys was dimly visible to the north. Crossing there would have made more logistical sense—the Bosphorus was only a couple miles wide—but Byzantium undoubtedly contained Athenian spies, and Alexander wanted to keep a low profile. Sailors threw ropes over the side and the passengers climbed down and waded through the surf. Eumenes resisted the urge to kneel in that surf, silently thanked the gods he’d been allowed to see Europe again. For many years he had thought he never would—all those endless Persian armies, all those deserts and mountains of the East until finally he thought that Alexander meant to continue on to the very edge of the world and beyond.

But then had come the order from Philip: for the army to turn back, leaving the hellhole called Afghanistan behind, along with the refugee Persian nobles and pretenders who infested it. The Macedonian soldiers had been as jubilant as Alexander was furious: he regarded returning west as nothing short of a ignominious retreat. Yet he had obeyed his father. Oraxthes, the brother of the deposed Darius III had been placed on the Persian throne as a puppet; the job of the Macedonian garrisons deployed across Babylonia was to keep him there while the main bulk of Alexander’s army returned to the Mediterranean coast. Though it was all too clear that the subsequent plunge into Egypt would be the primary order of business in the upcoming confrontation between father and son.

A loud shouting reached Eumenes’ ears. There was some kind of commotion aboard Alexander’s ship, which had almost reached the shore. Eumenes ran along the beach toward the boat, one hand on the hilt of his sword, while others ran alongside him. An assassination attempt on Alexander? An Athenian attempt to kill him? As he approached the ship, a man was hurled from it, into the water. The man rolled in the surf, his face bloody. Eumenes was the first to reach him.

It was Harpalus.

Alexander’s bodyguards leapt down into the ocean, and picked him up, shoving past Eumenes as they dragged him onto the beach. Alexander himself was next to follow, Hephaestion at his side.

“What in the name of all that’s holy is going on?” asked Eumenes.

“It’s very simple,” said Alexander, his voice dangerously calm. “He’s a spy.”

“That’s not true,” yelled Harpalus. He started to pull himself to his feet, but Alexander pushed him back into the surf, declaring that he had the proof. Which was when Ptolemy reached them—he’d run further than anyone else, as his ship had beached a short distance from the others.

“What’s the proof?” he asked.

Everyone fell silent. Alexander grasped Harpalus by the hair, who stopped resisting. He looked at all those gathered around him.

“Documents from Carthage,” he said. “Not only has Harpalus been embezzling Persian gold, but he’s been corresponding with the same Carthaginians we freed when we took Tyre.”

Harpalus began to loudly protest his innocence. Alexander seized a spear from one of his bodyguards, stepped back from Harpalus, and in one smooth motion impaled his treasurer through the chest like he was spitting a boar. Harpalus fell back into the water, his legs kicking and thrashing, blood everywhere. Even now he seemed to be trying to deny his guilt—but all that spouted from his mouth was blood. Then he convulsed once more, and lay still.

Alexander pulled out the spear, handed it back to the bodyguard.

“Bury him,” he said.

They rode inland, and there wasn’t much talking. Alexander and Hephaestion were up in front, Eumenes and Ptolemy closer to the back. Eumenes urged his horse down the narrow road, watching peasants stare as they charged by. His mind was racing even faster than his horse. Had Alexander killed his boyhood friend because he wanted his own correspondence with Carthage to remain a secret? Or had he just been enraged that Harpalus had intercepted that correspondence? None of which made a great deal of sense—if Alexander was conducting surreptitious negotiations with Carthage, there wasn’t any compelling reason why he would hide that from his inner circle.

Unless those conversations went beyond a mere attempt to subvert Carthage from Athenian rule. Eumenes thought of what Harpalus had been saying about the temples just beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Perhaps Harpalus knew more than he had told Eumenes? Then again,
what
Harpalus knew may have mattered less then what Alexander
thought
he might know. Eumenes thanked the gods above that Alexander hadn’t realized that Harpalus had said anything to him.

Though…. maybe he
had
. Being around the prince was starting to feel like walking on very thin ice. Eumenes could only imagine how much worse it was going to get when they reached Philip. Which—now that Eumenes reflected on it—may have been the issue, after all. Alexander had been worried that there was a spy
for his father
among his advisers. Why he believed this, Eumenes didn’t know. Maybe he had evidence, maybe it was paranoia. Though such paranoia ran in the family: Philip would certainly have been doing his utmost to corrupt or turn one of his son’s men. But if Alexander had become convinced that Harpalus was his father’s man, then no wonder he had acted as he did. A spy for a foreign government—that could be punished. A spy for the King of all Macedonia—well, technically such a spy couldn’t be touched. There was nothing illegal about that. Which might explain why Alexander had used the Carthage excuse to execute Harpalus there and then. And if whatever Harpalus knew about Alexander’s intentions vis-à-vis the Pillars had been passed back to Philip, who knows what might happen when the two met face to face.

Or maybe it was all just more paranoia. There was nothing to prove that—even if Philip
did
have a spy—it had been Harpalus anyway. Eumenes let the wind rush against his face, tried to empty his mind as he looked out at the hilly countryside. Clouds bedecked the horizon toward which they were riding. It was hard to believe that scarcely an hour ago he’d been looking forward to returning. He felt like turning around and swimming back to Asia. But he was—despite everything—a loyal servant of his prince. He never thought to question that. There was no reason he would. He’d followed him to the end of the earth and back, followed him for years. He drew himself up in his saddle: he was a Macedonian nobleman, and if he wasn’t Macedonian, he’d just have to be even more of one. There was a code. They all knew it. And Eumenes was prepared to die by it if necessary.

He just hoped it wouldn’t be in the manner that he’d just witnessed.

It was almost dawn by the time they got back. Demosthenes led them through the gate into a house that was already well into its morning routines. Slaves were cooking and cleaning; gardeners were showering the plants with water. Other slaves had breakfast ready.

“We’ll bring it upstairs,” said Demosthenes, taking a piece of proffered barley bread and dipping it in wine. A slave handed him some figs. Lugorix and Matthias helped themselves, followed Demosthenes up the stairs, up to the rooms they’d been sequestered in—

“Not this again,” said Lugorix, still chewing on his bread.

“No,” said Demosthenes, leading them up more stairs, up to the top floor of the house and into a cluttered study filled with furniture and strange devices. Shutters were thrown back on a wide balcony that looked out upon Athens—a far more expansive view then that which had been possible on the lower floor. The Parthenon gleamed in the morning sun in all its radiant colors; far beyond that, Lugorix could see the massive city-walls and battlement-laden towers visible between some of the buildings. The smoke of cooking fires hung everywhere.

“Here,” said Demosthenes, gesturing to what Lugorix had assumed was a large abstract mosaic that filled most of one wall of the study. Demosthenes started tapping one particular area of it.

“That’s Athens,” he said.

“What?” asked Lugorix, totally confused. He pointed out the window. “I thought
that’s
Athens out the—”

“It’s called a map,” said Barsine as she entered the room. She was dressed in a light blue gown, Greek-style rather than Persian. Somehow that made her look even more familiar to Lugorix—made him want to look away. Her hair was done up behind her head, and she appeared to be far more rested than Lugorix felt. Matthias bowed, though the effect was rather spoiled by his dropping crumbs as he did so.

“My lady,” he said, through a mouth half full of bread.

“What’s a map?” asked Lugorix.

“A representation of geography, from a bird’s eye view,” said Demosthenes. Lugorix was about to ask what
representation
and
geography
meant, but the old man explained what really mattered: “This depicts the empire of Athens.”

Lugorix stared, beginning to see. The blue represented water—the Mediterranean Sea, hemmed in by the brown and green and yellow land of Europe, Asia and Africa. Demosthenes drew his hand from Athens up into the mountains of northern Greece, and from there to—

“Pella,” he said. “The Macedonian capital. Which now controls all this”—he swept his hand to the right—“past the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and on toward Bactria and Sogdiana and a myriad other provinces.”

“And then closer to home,” said Matthias, “there’s Egypt.”

“Egypt. Yes.” Demosthenes gestured at chairs, sofas and cushions around the room. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

“We’ve been a little
too
comfortable these past few days,” said Matthias edgily. As he said this, Lugorix settled himself into a couch—but the couch slid backward and knocked into an elaborate contraption of levers and pulleys nestled in a corner. It hit the wall, making a strange whirring noise. A wooden bird emerged and began whistling—then fell off its perch altogether and struck the floor. The whistling ceased.

“Nice one,” said Matthias.

Lugorix turned an abashed face toward Demosthenes. “Your pardon,” he said.

“Not to worry,” said Demosthenes. “It’s just a clock. But do please sit down before you break anything else.”

They did. Barsine sat cross-legged on Demosthenes’ desk—which struck Lugorix as somewhat unladylike. But Demosthenes remained standing. The born orator, thought Lugorix as the old man cleared his throat.

“Where’s Damitra?” said Matthias suddenly.

Demosthenes looked annoyed. Barsine just shrugged. “She’s meditating.”

“About what?”

“The future.”

“Naturally.”

“Can we get back to the matter at hand?” asked Demosthenes.

“Sure,” said Matthias. “You were telling us why you’d locked us up.”

Demosthenes shrugged. “We needed to keep you here while we awaited more information and resources.”

“Horseshit,” said Matthias. “You were still deciding what to do with us.”

“Were we now?” Demosthenes didn’t seem offended. “Maybe that’s so. It’s like that clock your friend just broke: there’s a lot of moving parts. And the situation outside is very volatile.”

“You said they shut down the Assembly,” said Lugorix.

“They did,” said Demosthenes. “The archons closed it.”

“Who are the archons?”

“The generals of Athens. They made the announcement in the wake of Alexander’s taking of Egypt.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” said Matthias.

“Think about it,” said Barsine, her tone implying that was the last thing Matthias was capable of doing. “It’s the worst disaster to ever befall Athenian arms. Particularly since a tenth of the navy got destroyed too, and the navy’s thought to be invincible. When the news reached Athens, there was panic in the streets. The lending markets collapsed and the banks shut. Merchants went bankrupt. Several of the archons in charge were thrown out. And those that took over shut down the Assembly for fear of what the people would do next.”