The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

  Gyras looked at his eyes. He had faced such eyes through helmet-slits. He said, “Now, come, now, you don’t mean that.”

  “No one will even know I did it. I shall just leave your body in that thicket, for the wolves and kites. You’ll never be buried, or given your rites to set you free.” His voice grew rhythmic. “And the shades of the dead will not let you cross the river to join their company, but you will wander alone forever before the wide gates of Hades’ house. No, don’t move.”

  Gyras sat immobile. It gave him time to think. Though ignorant of the supper party, he knew about the King’s new wedding, and those before. There was already a boy from one of them. Folk said it had started bright enough, but had turned out an idiot, no doubt poisoned by the Queen. Maybe she had only bribed the nurse to drop it on its head. Maybe it was just a natural. But there might be others. If young Alexander wanted to make himself a man ahead of time, one could see why.

  “Well?” said the boy. “Will you pledge yourself? I can’t stand like this all day.”

  “What I’ve ever done to deserve this of the gods, they only know. What do you want me to swear to?”

  “Not to get word to Pella of me. To tell no one my name without my leave. Not to keep me from going into battle, or get anyone else to do it. You must swear all that, and call down a death-curse on yourself if you break your oath.”

  Gyras felt himself flinch. He wanted no such compacts with a witch’s son. The boy lowered his weapon but kept the thong in his fingers, twisted for a throw. “You’ll have to do it. I don’t want you creeping up to bind me when I’m asleep. I could sit up to watch, but it would be stupid before a battle. So if you want to come out of this wood alive, you’ll have to swear.”

  “And what’s to become of me after?”

  “If I live I’ll see you right. You must chance my dying, that’s war.” He reached into his leather saddlebag, looking over his shoulder at the still unsworn Gyras, and took out a piece of meat. It smelled high, not having been fresh when it left Pella. “This is from a haunch of sacrifice,” he said, slapping it down upon a boulder. “I knew we should have to do this. Come here. Lay your hand on it. Have you respect for oaths before the gods?”

  “Yes.” His hand was so chilly that the dead goat-flesh felt quite warm.

  “Then say this after me.”

  The oath was elaborate and exact, the death-fate invoked was ghastly. The boy was well versed in such things, and had on his own account a ready awareness of loopholes. Gyras finished binding himself as he was told, and went to swill his bloody hand in the running stream. The boy sniffed at the meat. “I don’t think this is fit to eat, even if we were to waste time making fire.” He tossed it away, holstered his javelin, and came back to Gyras’ side. “Well, that’s done, now we can go on like friends. Let’s finish eating, while you tell me about the war.”

  Passing his hand across his brow, Gyras began to recite his kinsmen’s injuries. “No, I know about that. How many are you, how many are they? What kind of country is it? Have you horses?”

  Their track threaded green hills, steadily rising. Grass gave way to bracken and thyme, the track wound past pine woods and thickets of arbutus. The ranges heaved up all round them; they met mountain air, with its life-giving holy pureness. They entered the open secrecy of the heights.

  Gyras traced back the feud three generations. The boy, his first questions once answered, proved a good listener. Of his own affairs, he said only, “When I’ve taken my man, you must be my witness at Pella. The King didn’t take his man till he was fifteen. Parmenion told me so.”

  Gyras planned to spend the last night of the journey with distant kinsmen, half a day’s ride from home. He pointed out their village, clinging to the edge of a gorge, with rocky slopes above it. There was a mule-track along the precipice; Gyras was for taking a good road round the slope, one of King Archelaos’; but the boy, having learned that the pass was just usable, insisted on going that way to see what it was like. Between the steep bends and giddy drops, he said, “If these are your clansmen, it’s no use our saying I’m your kin. Say I’m your commander’s son, come to learn about war. They can never claim you lied to them.”

  Gyras readily agreed; even this would hint that the boy must be kept an eye on. He could do no more, on account of the death-fate. He was a believing man.

  On a flattish shelf a few furlongs round about, between a broken hillside and the gorge, was the hamlet of Skopas, built of the brown stone which lay loose all round it, looking like an outcrop itself. On its open side was a stockade of boulders filled in with thorn-brush. Within, the coarse grass was full of cow-pats from the cattle that spent the night there. One or two small hairy horses were at graze; the rest would be out with the herders and hunters. Goats and some ragged sheep moved on the hill; a goat-boy’s piping sounded from above, like the call of some wild bird.

  Above the pass, on a gnarled dead tree, was spiked a yellow skull, and a few bones left of a hand. When the boy asked about it, Gyras said, “That was a long time back, when I was a child. That was the man killed his own father.”

  Their coming was the news of half a year. A horn was blown to tell the herdsmen; the oldest Skopian was carried in from the lair of still older rags and skins where he was waiting to die. In the headman’s house they were offered sweet small figs, and some turbid wine in the best, least chipped cups; people waited with ritual courtesy till they had done, before the questions began, about themselves, and the distant world. Gyras said the Great King had Egypt under his heel again; King Philip had been called in to set things to rights down in Thessaly, and was Archon there now, as good as King; it had put the southerners in a taking. And was it true, asked the headman’s brother, that he had taken a new wife, and put the Epirote Queen away?

  Aware of a stillness more piercing than all the voices, Gyras said that this was a pack of lies. The King as he got new lands in order might honor this lord or that by taking a daughter into his house; to Gyras’ mind, they were by way of a kind of hostage. As for Queen Olympias, she stood in high respect as the mother of the King’s heir, a credit to both his parents. Having got off this speech, sweated over in silence some hours before, Gyras cut off comment by asking in his turn for news.

  News of the feud was bad. Four enemy Kimolians had met in a glen two of Gyras’ clansmen, out after deer. One had lived just long enough to creep home and tell them where to find his brother’s corpse before the jackals had it. The Kimolians were puffed with pride; the old man had no hold upon his sons; soon no one would be safe from them. Many deeds were milled over, many words quoted which had struck someone as telling, while the livestock was driven in, and the women cooked the goat which had been slaughtered to feast the guests. With the fall of dark, everyone went to bed.

  Alexander shared with the headman’s son, who had a proper blanket. It was verminous; so was the child, but being in awe of his guest he let him sleep in what peace the fleas allowed.

  He dreamed that Herakles came up to the bed and shook him. He looked as he did in the garden shrine at Pella, beardless and young, hooded in the fanged mask of the lion, its mane hanging down behind. “Get up, lazy boy,” he said, “or I shall start without you. I have been calling you this long time.”

  All the people in the room were sleeping; he took his cloak and stepped softly out. A late bright moon lit the wide uplands. No one kept watch but the dogs. One huge wolflike beast ran up to him; he stood still to be smelled, and it let him be. It was movement outside the fence that would have had them baying.

  All was quiet, why had Herakles called him? His eye fell on a tall crag, with an easy way up well worn by feet, the village lookout. If a guard was there…But no guard was. He scrambled up. He could trace the good road of Archelaos, winding on down the hill; and on it a creeping shadow.

  Twenty-odd horsemen, riding light, without burdens. Even in the far-sounding hills, they were too far off to hear; but something twinkled under the moon.

  T
he boy’s eyes widened. He raised both hands to the sky, his shining face uplifted. He had committed himself to Herakles, and the god had answered. Not leaving him to find the battle, he had sent the battle to him.

  In the light of the gibbous moon, he stood printing on his mind the shape of the place, the vantage points and the hazards. There was nowhere down there to ambush them. Archelaos, a good road-builder, had no doubt planned against ambushes. They would have to be ambushed here; for the Skopians were outnumbered. They must be roused at once, before the enemy got near enough to hear the stir. If he ran about shaking them up, they would forget him in the scramble; they must be made to listen. Outside the headman’s hut hung the horn which had called the villagers. He tested it softly, and blew.

  Doors opened, men ran out with clouts clutched round them, women squealed to each other, sheep and goats bleated. The boy, standing up on a high boulder against the glimmering sky, called, “War! It is war!”

  The gabble hushed. His clear voice cut in. Ever since he left Pella, he had been thinking in Macedonian.

  “I am Alexander, King Philip’s son. Gyras knows who I am. I have come to fight in your war for you, because the god has warned me. The Kimolians are there on the valley road, twenty-three riders. Listen to me, and before sunup we’ll make an end of them.” He called up, by name, the headman and his sons.

  They came forward in stunned silence, their eyes starting in the gloom. This was the witch’s child, the son of the Epirote.

  He sat on the boulder, not wishing to part with the height it lent him, and spoke earnestly, aware all the while of Herakles at his shoulder.

  When he had done, the headman sent the women indoors, and told the men to do as the boy had said. They argued at first; it went against the grain to strike no blow at the accursed Kimolians till they were in the stockade among the cattle they had come to steal. But Gyras came out too for it. So in the loom of the false dawn the Skopians armed themselves and caught their ponies, and clustered the far side of the houses. It was clear the Kimolians reckoned on attacking when the men had gone out about their work. The bar of thorn-brush which closed the gateway had been thinned enough to let them in, but not to make them think. The shepherd boys and goat-boys were sent up on the hill, to make it look like a common morning.

  The peaks stood dark against the sky, in whose deeps the stars were paling. The boy, holding his bridle and his javelins, watched for the first rose of dawn; he might be seeing it once for all. This he had known; for the first time, now, he felt it. All his life he had been hearing news of violent death; now his body told back the tale to him; the grinding of the iron into one’s vitals, the mortal pain, the dark shades waiting as one was torn forth to leave the light, forever, forever. His guardian had left his side. In his silent heart he turned to Herakles, saying, “Why have you forsaken me?”

  Dawn touched the highest peak in a glow like flame. He had been perfectly alone; so the voice of Herakles, still as it was, reached him unhindered. It said, “I left you to make you understand my mystery. Do not believe that others will die, not you; it is not for that I am your friend. By laying myself on the pyre I became divine. I have wrestled with Thanatos knee to knee, and I know how death is vanquished. Man’s immortality is not to live forever; for that wish is born of fear. Each moment free from fear makes a man immortal.”

  The rose-red on the hilltops changed to gold. He stood between death and life as between night and morning, and thought with a soaring rapture, I am not afraid. It was better than music or his mother’s love; it was the life of the gods. No grief could touch him, no hatred harm him. Things looked bright and clear, as to the stooping eagle. He felt sharp as an arrow, and full of light.

  The Kimolians’ horses sounded on the hard earth of the road.

  They paused outside the stockade. A goat-boy piped on the hill. In the houses children talked, innocent of guile; a guileful woman was singing. They kicked the thorn-brush aside, and rode in laughing. The cattle they had come for were still within the pound. They would have the women first.

  Suddenly came a yell so loud and high that they thought some wild girl had seen them. Then came the shouts of men.

  Horse and foot, the Skopians burst out on them. Some were already making for the houses; these were dealt with quickly. Soon numbers were almost even.

  For a while there was only chaos, as men dived and stumbled about among the bawling cattle. Then one of the raiders made a bolt for the gate, and was off. Cheers of triumph rose from the Skopians. The boy perceived that this was the beginning of flight; and that the Skopians were going to allow it, content that the day was theirs, not looking to another day when the enemy would come back, sore from defeat and bent on vengeance. Did they take this for victory? With a shout he rode towards the gate, calling fiercely, “Head them off!”; and, drawn by his certainty, the Skopians followed. The gate was blocked. Cattle still milled about; but men were facing men; there had formed, in little, opposing battle-lines.

  Now! thought the boy. He looked at the man across from him.

  He had on a war-cap of greasy black old leather, stitched with crudely forged plates of iron, and a corselet of goat’s hide with the hair on, worn bald here and there. His red beard was young, his face freckled and peeled with sunburn. He was frowning deeply, not in anger but like a man charged with some work he is not skilled in, who has time for no one’s concerns except his own. Nonetheless, thought the boy, that is an old war-cap, often used; and he’s a grown man, quite tall. One must take the first comer, that is the proper thing.

  He had his two javelins, the first to throw, the second to fight with. Spears were flying, and one Skopian had jumped on a house-roof with a bow. A horse neighed and reared, a shaft sticking in its neck; the rider fell, and scrambled off hopping on one leg; the horse bolted round the houses. Much time seemed to pass in these beginnings. Most of the spears had missed, through impatience, distance or lack of skill. The red-haired man’s eyes shifted, waiting for the melee to throw up his own enemy he must fight. Before long, someone else would have him.

  The boy poised his throwing-spear as he kicked his pony forward. An easy mark; there was a black patch on the goatskin over the heart. No; this was his first man, it must be hand to hand. Alongside was a dark, stocky, swarthy man with a black beard; the boy jerked back his arm, and threw almost without looking; his fingers reaching for the second shaft the moment the first was gone, his eyes seeking the red-haired man’s. The man had seen him, their eyes met. The boy shouted a wordless battle-yell, and urged on his horse with his spear-butt. It leaped forward jerkily over the broken ground.

  The man leveled his spear, a longer one, peering about. His eyes passed over the boy, shifting and seeking. He was waiting for someone; for a grown man, whom he must heed.

  The boy threw up his head, and shouted at his lungs’ full pitch. The man must be roused, made to believe in him, or it would not be a proper killing; it would be like taking him in the back, or half asleep. It must be perfect, there must be nothing that could ever be said against it. He yelled again.

  The raiders were a big-made tribe. To the red-haired man, it seemed a child who came riding. He gazed in unease, disliking the need to keep an eye on him, fearing that while he beat him off some man would rush in and take him off guard. His eyesight was only middling; though the boy had seen him clearly, he took some moments to make out the approaching face. It was not a child’s. It raised the hair on his neck.

  The boy set his face into a warrior’s, that he might be believed in and challenge death. In a perfect singleness, free from hatred, anger, or doubt, pure in dedication, exultant in victory over fear, he swooped towards the red-haired man. With this face of inhuman radiance; with this being, whatever it was, eerie, numinous, uttering its high hawklike cries, the man wanted no more to do. He swerved his horse; a burly Skopian was nearing, perhaps to single him out; someone else should deal with the matter. His eye had strayed too long. With a shrill “Ahii-i!” the shining man
-child was on him. He thrust with his spear; the creature swung past it; he saw deep sky-filled eyes, a mouth of ecstasy. A blow struck his breast, which at once was more than a blow, was ruin and darkness. As sight faded from his eyes, it seemed to him that the smiling lips had parted to drink his life.

  The Skopians cheered the boy, clearly a luck-bringer; it had been the quickest kill of the fight. The raiders were shaken; this was the favorite son of their headman, who was old and would get no more. They struggled in bad order to the gate-gap, forcing their horses through the cattle and the men; not all the Skopians were resolute. Horses squealed, cows bawled and trampled the fallen; there was a stink of fresh-dropped dung, crushed herbage, sweat and blood.

  As the flight cohered, it was seen to head for the road. The boy, steering his horse through goats, remembered the lie of the land, seen from the lookout. He burst out of the press, with an ear-piercing yell of “Stop them! The pass! Head them for the pass!” He never looked back; had the spellbound Skopians not streamed after him, he would have confronted the Kimolians all alone.

  They were in time; the raiders were contained, all ways but the one. In full panic now, unfit for a wise choice of evils, scared of the precipices, but ignorant of the goat-ways on the rocky hill, they crowded onto the narrow track above the gorge.

  At the back of the rout, a single man wheeled round to face the pursuers. Straw-haired, darkly tanned, hawk-nosed, he had been first in attack and last to fly; last, too, to give up struggling to reach the road. Knowing the choice of evils had been wrong, he waited where the mouth of the pass grew narrow. He had planned and led the raid; his youngest brother had fallen, at the hand of a boy who should still have been herding goats; he would have to face their father with it. Better redeem shame in death; the odds were on death in any case; a few might escape, if he could hold the pass awhile. He drew the old iron sword which had been his grandfather’s, and, dismounting, straddled the rough way.