The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

  She sent the man out, and sat looking before her. On the far side of the room stood a bronze youth looking back, a Hermes, holding a lyre. He stood on a plinth of green marble, Attic, poised; his gravity seeming stern to an eye used to modern prettiness. A subtle melancholy in his face had once made her ask an old palace steward who he was. Some athlete, said the man, done by Polykleitos the Athenian; he had heard it was during the great siege when the Spartans won the war, and Athens was broken. No doubt King Archelaos’ agents had picked it up cheaply afterwards; there was a great deal, then, to be had for very little.

  The bronze face gazed at her with eyes of dark-blue lapis laid into white glass, between lashes of fine bronze wire. They seemed to say, “Listen. I heard the footsteps of Fate.”

  She got to her feet, confronting him. “You lost. But I am going to win.” Presently she would give orders to raise the army and prepare to march. But first she must write to Kassandros and call him to her aid.

  Travel to the south was quick. Her letter reached him in three days.

  He was camped before a stubborn fort in Arkadia. That dealt with, he planned to reduce the Spartans, those relics of an outworn past. They had come down to walling their city, that proud open town whose only bulwark had been its warriors’ shields. Their soul was cowed, they would soon be under his hand.

  Athens had made terms and had let him appoint its governor. The officer who had taken the Piraeus for him had expected the post; but he had been looking too ambitious, and Kassandros had had him disposed of in a dark alley. The new governor was a harmless, obedient client. Soon, thought Kassandros, he must visit the Lyceum. There was a great deal to be done there.

  Eurydike’s appointment of him as supreme commander, though too precipitate, had helped to sway many wavering Greek allegiances. Even some who had killed their oligarchs and restored democracy were now thinking again. He would be glad to finish with the south; he was interested in war only as an instrument of policy. He was not a coward, he could get his orders obeyed, he was a competent strategist, and that was all. Deep in his being, burned there since his youth, was a bitter envy of Alexander’s magic. No one would cheer himself hoarse for Kassandros, no one be proud to die for him; his men would do what they were paid to do. That vain tragedian, he thought; let us see how he looks to the new age.

  The news that Polyperchon was withdrawing his forces and heading north had been no great surprise. He was old and tired and a loser; let him go home with his tail between his legs, and bed down in his kennel.

  Eurydike’s despatch, therefore, had been a rude shock to him. The stupid, reckless girl, he thought. Had this been the time to denounce Alexander’s brat? He fully intended, once Philip was out of the way, to govern at first as the boy’s regent. There would be plenty of time before he came of age. Now, instead of biding the hour, as anyone would who had the beginning of statecraft, she had flung the country into a succession war. Did she know no history? One of her family should have remembered better than that.

  Kassandros reached a decision. He had made a bad bargain and must get it off his hands, quickly, like an unsound horse. Afterwards, everything would be simpler.

  He sat down to write a letter to his brother Nikanor.

  With banners and standards streaming, with shrill flutes and the deep-toned aulos giving the time, the royal army of Macedon marched through the high western hills towards Epiros.

  Summer had come. The thyme and sage bruised by the tramping feet censed them with aromatics; the uncurled bracken stood waist-high; heather and sorrel purpled the moors. The burnished helmets, the dyed horsehair plumes, the little bright pennants on the tall sarissas, glittered and glowed in long streams of moving color, winding down through the passes. Herd-boys on the crags cried the warning that soldiers were coming, and called their little brothers to help drive in the sheep.

  Eurydike in burnished armor rode at the head of the cavalry. The heady air of the hills exalted her; the wide prospects from the heights stretched before her like worlds to conquer. She had always known that this was her nature and her fate, to ride to victory like a king, her land behind her and her horsemen at her side. She had her Companions as a ruler of Macedon should. Before she marched she had made it known that when the war was won the lands of the western traitors would reward her loyal followers. Not far off, led by Nikanor, rode the clan of the Antipatrids, a hearteningly solid force.

  Their chief had not appeared, nor sent her word. Clearly, as Nikanor said, some misadventure had overtaken her messenger. It would be better to send again, and she had done so. Then, too, the troops in the Peloponnese were often on the move, and that might have caused delay. At all events, said Nikanor, he himself was doing as he knew Kassandros would wish.

  Philip on his big steady horse was riding near by; he, also, panoplied for war. He was still the King, and the troops would expect to see him. Soon, when they came near the enemy, he must be settled in a base-camp out of the way.

  He was placid and cheerful, traveling with an army; he could hardly remember when this had not been his life. Konon was with him, riding as usual half a length behind. Philip had wanted him alongside, the better to talk about the sights upon the way; but Konon, as usual, had said it would not be proper before the men. Dimly, after the years, Philip still missed the days of strangeness and changing marvels, when his life had moved with the journeys of Alexander.

  Konon had withdrawn into his thoughts. He, too, could have wished for Alexander, and for more urgent reasons. Ever since his young master Arridaios had become King Philip, he had known that the time would come which was coming now, had felt it in his bones. Well, he thought, it was an old proverb, not to look back at the end. He was nearly sixty, and few men lived longer.

  A rider showed briefly on the crest of the ridge ahead. A scout, he thought; had the girl seen? He looked at Philip ambling along, a half-smile on his broad face, enjoying some pleasant fantasy. She ought to take more thought for him. Supposing …

  Eurydike had seen. She too, long before this, had sent out scouts. They were overdue; she sent off two more. The army moved on, bright, burnished, the flutes giving the time.

  Presently, when they reached the next ridge, she herself would ride up and survey the terrain. That, she knew, was the duty of a general. If the enemy was in sight she would study his dispositions, then hold a war council and dispose her troops.

  Derdas, her second in command—a new promotion, so many of the higher ranks had marched with Polyperchon—rode up to her, young, lank-limbed, frowning with responsibility. “Eurydike, the scouts ought to be back; they may have been taken. Shouldn’t we make sure of the high ground? We may be needing it.”

  “Yes.” It had seemed that the gallant march in the fresh morning would go on till she herself chose to end it. “We will lead with the cavalry, and hold it till the infantry comes up. Form them up, Derdas; you take the left wing, and of course I shall take the right.”

  She was issuing further orders, when a harsh, peremptory cough sounded at her elbow. She turned, startled and put out. “Madam,” said Konon. “What about the King?”

  She clicked her tongue impatiently; far better to have left him behind at Pella. “Oh, take him back to the wagon train. Have a tent set up there.”

  “Will there be a battle?” Philip had come up, looking interested and eager.

  “Yes,” she said quietly, mastering her irritation before the onlookers. “Go to the camp now, and wait till we come back.”

  “Must I, Eurydike?” A sudden urgency disturbed Philip’s placid face. “I’ve never been in a battle. Alexander never let me. None of them let me. Please let me fight in this one. Look, here’s my sword.”

  “No, Philip, not today.” She motioned to Konon; but he did not move. He had been watching his master’s face; now he looked into hers. There was a short silence. He said, “Madam. If the King wishes. Maybe it would be best.”

  She stared at him, at his sorrowful and sober eyes. Understanding
, she caught her breath. “How dare you? If there were time I would have you flogged for insolence. I will see you later. Now obey your orders.”

  Philip hung his head. He saw that he had misbehaved, and everyone was angry. They would not beat him; but the memory of ancient beatings moved in his mind. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope you win the battle. Alexander always did. Goodbye.” She did not look after him as he went.

  Her favorite horse was led up, snorting and tossing its head, full of high spirits. She patted the strong neck, grasped the tough mane on the withers, and vaulted with her spear onto the scarlet saddle-cloth. The herald stood near, his trumpet at the ready, waiting to sound the advance.

  “Wait!” she said. “First I will address the men.”

  He gave the brief flourish for attention. One of the officers, who had been watching the ridge ahead, began to speak; but the trumpet drowned it.

  “Men of Macedon!” Her clear voice carried as it had on the march from Egypt, at Triparadisos, at the Assembly where they had voted her the regency. Battle was near; let them only be worthy of their fame. “If you were brave fighting against foreign enemies, how much more gloriously you will fight now, defending your land, your wives, your …”

  Something was wrong. They were not hostile; they were simply not attending, staring past her, speaking to one another. Suddenly, young Derdas, gravity changed to urgency, grasped her horse’s headstall, wheeled it round to face forward, and shouted, “Look!”

  All along the crest of the ridge ahead, a dark dense bristle had sprouted. It was thick with spears.

  The armies faced each other across the valley. Down at the bottom was a stream, low now in summer, but with a wide bed of stones and boulders bared by winter scour. The horsemen on both sides looked at it with distaste.

  The western rise which the Epirote army commanded was higher than the Macedonian position. If their full strength was on view, however, they were outnumbered three to two on foot, though somewhat stronger in cavalry.

  Eurydike, standing on an outcrop to survey the field, pointed this out to Derdas. The enemy flanks were on broken, brushy ground which would favor infantry. “Yes,” he said, “if they let our infantry get there. Polyperchon may be no”—he just stopped himself from saying Alexander—“but he knows better than that.”

  The old man could be clearly seen on the opposite slope, in a clump of horsemen, conferring. Eurydike’s men pointed him out to one another, not feeling him a great menace in himself, but bringing the comfortless thought that they were about to fight old comrades.

  “Nikanor.” (He had left his contingent to join the council of war.) “There is still no signal from the beacon?”

  He shook his head. The beacon had been laid on a peak behind them, commanding a view of the southern pass. “Without a doubt Kassandros would be here, if something had not prevented him. Perhaps he has been attacked upon the march. You know the confusion in the Greek states, thanks to Polyperchon.”

  Derdas made no comment. He did not like Nikanor’s disposition of his men, but this was no time to say so.

  Eurydike stood on the tall flat rock, shading her eyes to look across at the enemy. In her bright helmet and gold-studded cuirass, her knee-high kilt of scarlet wool above her shining greaves, she looked a gallant figure. Derdas thought to himself that she looked like a boy actor in a play, masked to enact the young Achilles at Aulis. It was she, however, who first saw the herald.

  He emerged from the knot around Polyperchon, and rode down towards them; unarmed, bareheaded, with a white wool fillet round his grey hair, carrying a white rod bound with olive; a man with presence.

  At the stream-bed he dismounted, to let his horse pick its way over the stones. Having crossed, he walked a few paces forward and waited. Eurydike and Derdas came down to meet him. She turned to Nikanor to join them, but he had disappeared into the mass.

  The herald had voice as well as presence, and the curve of the slope threw up his words like the hollow bowl of a theater.

  “To Philip son of Philip, to Eurydike his wife, and to all the Macedonians!” He sat at ease on his strong stocky horse, a ward of the gods, protected by immemorial custom. “In the name of Polyperchon, guardian of both the Kings.” He paused, just long enough for suspense. “Also,” he added slowly, “in the name of Queen Olympias, daughter of King Neoptolemos of Molossia; wife of Philip, King of the Macedonians; and mother of Alexander.”

  In the silence, a dog could be heard to bark in a village half a mile away.

  “I am charged to say this to the Macedonians. Philip found you pressed by enemies and torn with civil wars. He gave you peace, reconciled your factions, and made you masters of all Greece. And by Queen Olympias herself he was the father of Alexander, who made the Macedonians masters of the world. She asks you, have you forgotten all these benefits, that you will drive out Alexander’s only son? Will you take up arms against Alexander’s mother?”

  He had thrown his voice past Eurydike and her staff, to the silent ranks of men. When he ceased, he wheeled round his mount, and pointed.

  Another rider was coming from the group above. On a black horse, in a black robe and veil, Olympias paced slowly down towards the stream.

  She rode astride, in a wide skirt that fell to the tops of her crimson riding-boots. The headstall of her horse glittered with gold rosettes and silver plaques, the spoils of Susa and Persepolis. She herself wore no ornaments. A little way above the stream, where she could be seen by everyone, and where Eurydike had to look up to her, she drew rein and threw back the dark veil from her white hair. She said nothing. Her deep-set grey eyes swept the hushed murmuring ranks.

  Eurydike was aware of the distant gaze pausing upon her. A light breeze floated back the black veil, stirred the horse’s long mane and ruffled the snowy hair. The face was still. Eurydike felt a shiver go through her. It was like being glanced at by Atropos, the third Fate, who cuts the thread.

  The herald, who had been forgotten, now suddenly raised his loud voice again. “Macedonians! There before you is the mother of Alexander. Will you fight against her?”

  There was a pause, like the pause of a rearing wave before it topples to break. Then a new sound began. It was a slight rapping, at first, of wood on metal. Then it was a spreading rattle, a mounting beat; then, echoing back from along the hillside, a thunderous drumming, the banging of thousands of spear-shafts upon shields. With a united roar the royal army cried, “No!”

  Eurydike had heard it before, though never so loudly. It had greeted her when she was voted Regent. For many long seconds, she thought they were defying the enemy, that the shouting was for her.

  Across the stream, Olympias raised her arm in a regal gesture of acknowledgment. Then, with a beckoning movement, she turned her horse. She moved up the hill like a leader of warriors, who need not look back to be sure that they will follow.

  As she went up in triumph, the whole prospect on the opposite slope fragmented. The royal army drawn up in its formations, the phalanx, the cavalry, the light-armed skirmishers, ceased to be an army, as a village struck by an earthquake ceases to be a street. There was just a mass of men, with horses heaving about among them; shouting to each other, gravitating to groups of friends or clansmen; the whole united only in a single disordered movement, going like landslide pebbles down towards the stream.

  Eurydike was overwhelmed in it. When she began to shout orders, to exhort them, she was scarcely heard. Men jostled her unnoticing; those who saw her did not meet her eyes. Her horse grew restive in the crush and reared, she was afraid of being thrown and trampled.

  An officer thrust through to her, held the horse and quieted it. She knew him, he was one of her partisans from the very first days in Egypt, a man about thirty, light-haired, with a skin still yellowed from some Indian fever. He looked at her with concern. Here at last, she thought, was a man in his right mind. “How can we rally them?” she cried. “Can you find me a trumpeter? We must call them back!”

&nbs
p; He ran his hand over the horse’s sweating neck. Slowly, like a man explaining something simple to a child, which even a child must see, he said, “But, madam. That is Alexander’s mother.”

  “Traitor!” She knew it was unjust, her anger belonged elsewhere. She had seen, at last, her real enemy. Not the terrible old woman on the black horse; she could be terrible only because of him, the glowing ghost, the lion-maned head on the silver drachmas, directing her fate from his golden bier.

  “There’s no help for it,” said the man, forbearingly, but with little time to spare for her. “You don’t understand. You see, you never knew him.”

  For a moment she grasped her sword; but one cannot kill a ghost. The jostling press below was beginning to cross the stream. Names were shouted, as the soldiers of Polyperchon welcomed back old friends.

  He sighted a brother in the crush, and gave an urgent wave, before turning back to her. “Madam, you were too young, that’s all. You made a good try of it, but … There’s not a man wishes you harm. You’ve a fresh horse there. Make for the hills before her people cross over.”

  “No!” she said. “Nikanor and the Antipatrids are over there on the left. Come, we’ll join them and fall back and hold Black Pass. They’ll never make peace with Olympias.”

  He followed her eyes. “They won’t do that. But they’re off, you see.”

  She saw, then, that the force on the heathery rise was moving. Its shining shields were facing the other way. Its head was dipping already over the skyline.

  She looked round. The man had sought his brother, and vanished down the hill.

  Dismounting, she held her horse, the only living thing that would still obey her. As the man had said, she was young. The despair she felt was not the grim resignation of Perdikkas, paying the price of failure. Both had played for power and lost; but Perdikkas had never put his stake upon love. She stood by the fretting horse, her throat choking, her eyes blinded with tears.