Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt

by Alexander at the World's End (lit)

  he’d been born and brought up, to go hundreds of miles away and make a new home

  somewhere else. That wasn’t something they could ever imagine doing; for better

  or worse, they reckoned, a man belongs where he’s born, and that’s where he

  stays if he possibly can; which is why exile is a far more cruel punishment than

  death among these people. Accordingly, they figured that we were either mad or

  else had been banished for some awful crime; in either case, it wasn’t going to

  take much to shift us, since we’d already abandoned one home and were therefore

  capable of abandoning another, if only we were given the incentive.

  The fact that the original raid had happened at all proves how high feelings ran

  in the village. We hadn’t known a thing about it, but the only reason we’d had

  ten years of peace was because of an old witch (every village has a witch; she

  gets drunk, breathes in the smoke of strange poisonous herbs, and rides on an

  eight-legged horse into the spirit kingdom to ask the advice of the ghosts

  there. They take it all very seriously, and the village witch is as near as they

  get to a community leader) who refused to let them do anything to us. The

  ghosts, or her own good judgement, had warned her that tangling with the Greeks

  could only end in disaster; even if they managed to dislodge us, it’d cost so

  many lives and so much property that the village would cease to be functional.

  Accordingly, whenever she was consulted about us (fairly regularly, it seemed)

  she made it unequivocally clear that as long as she was alive, anybody who

  picked a fight with us would get no help from the ghosts in this world or the

  next.

  But she died, about a month before the raid, and when the villagers met to

  choose their new witch it was pretty clear that the successful candidate would

  be someone who talked to a different bunch of ghosts or could get them to give a

  different answer on this subject. Predictably, the new witch came back from the

  spirit world with the news that the ghosts had revised their views about the

  Greeks, to the effect that they were now extremely unhappy with anyone who

  didn’t help drive the offcomers into the sea with all due dispatch.

  That there wasn’t an immediate all-out attack was, it appears, largely due to my

  old acquaintance Anabruzas. Every time the subject was raised, he’d stand up and

  say that he didn’t give a toss about what the ghosts said, he wasn’t going to

  have anything to do with a war with us, for the simple reason that he knew

  Greeks the way none of the rest of them did, and a war could have only one

  outcome; namely, that the ghosts would suddenly have so much new company out

  there in the spirit world that they’d be hard put to itto find a patch of grass

  to graze their horses on. The villagers believed in the ghosts, but they also

  knew and respected Anabruzas; he’d gone away and come back a rich (by their

  standards) and wise man, he’d learned all manner of strange and incredible

  skills in the city of the Greeks, he knew how to cure diseases and make things,

  he’d picked up a wonderful way with words. He now argued that it didn’t make any

  sense that the ghosts should have changed their tune to such a drastic extent

  just because one witch had died and another had taken her place. They all knew,

  he said, that the new witch was telling them what they wanted to hear, which

  wasn’t necessarily the same thing as the truth. He knew all about that sort of

  thing, he told them, after living in the city of Athens , where the people met

  every day in Assembly to do democ­racy, which is the art of telling each other

  what they want to hear and then taking a vote to turn it into the truth. The

  Athenians, he said, were perfectly capable of passing a law stating that the sea

  is pink, if that’s what they wanted it to be; but the sea wouldn’t be noticeably

  pinker as a result, if they voted till they were blue in the face. The Athenians

  didn’t usually go that far, of course; but they did vote that everybody should

  be happy and well fed and rich and that there wouldn’t be any more stealing or

  fighting in the streets and that Philip of Macedon would crawl down a hole and

  die; and if the villagers believed that the ghosts were telling them that it was

  now all right to attack the Greeks, they’d be demonstrating that they had no

  more of a grip on reality than the people of Athens — and if that was the case,

  then the ghosts have mercy on them all.

  But Anabruzas had a son; a foolish, rather crazy kid who didn’t get on with his

  father and was at that age where he’d do anything provided it was what his

  father didn’t want him to do... It occurred to one of the leading anti-Greeks

  that if Anabruzas’ son got involved in an attack on the colony, it’d force his

  father to stop opposing the war and that’d be the main obstacle out of the way.

  So they talked the kid into coming with them and set off to do just enough

  damage to start a war.

  It was supposed to be a quick, safe job, but of course it didn’t turn out like

  that. Two of the raiders were killed, another badly injured, in an attack on a

  small group of supposedly unarmed farmers walking out to the fields. The Greeks,

  in other words, appeared to be every bit as dangerous a proposition as Anabruzas

  and the old witch had said they’d be, and it was a matter of cold fact that we

  outnumbered them at least four to one. Enthusiasm for the war melted away like a

  candle on a bonfire, particularly when Anabruzas tore into the raiders in the

  meeting that followed and set an awful example by handing over his son to us to

  be killed.

  So that was the situation the anti-Greek faction faced when the horse-stealing

  affair came about, and the man I told you about who’d been on the raid was

  trying to rally support. Obviously, he needed to find something to change the

  odds significantly in the villagers’ favour; and, because of the business with

  the horse, he found it.

  The difference was, of course, the rich man in the next village who’d started

  the horse-theft rumour. What he wanted most of all was to be able to fetch his

  son home again. If the Scythians went to war with the colony, then his version

  of what had happened would be accepted as the truth essentially by default, and

  he wouldn’t have to worry about accusations of horse-stealing. Since he was as

  influential in his village as Anabruzas was in what I’m going to call our

  village, he didn’t have much trouble in whipping up a nice anti-Greek froth on

  the surface. But he knew that when it actually came time to do something about

  it, it might well be a different story. His people had heard about how very

  formidable these Greeks were — by this time the facts were starting to grow ears

  and whiskers, the way they always do; the number of raiders had grown, the

  number of Greeks had diminished, the Greeks tore the dead raiders apart with

  their bare hands, it was more like twenty dead rather than two, and so on;

  furthermore, the King of the Greeks was under the direct protection of a

  ghost-snake who accompanied him wherever he went in the form of a beautiful but

  ferocious yellow-eyed woman (you know, except fo
r the fact that Theano’s eyes

  were dark brown rather than yellow, I’d say there was more than a germ of truth

  in that part of it) and any attack on them was doomed to ignominious failure.

  The rich man — I wish I knew his name, but I don’t; I’m sorry —didn’t give up.

  Instead, he thought it all through quite carefully and came to the conclusion

  that what he needed was proof that these Greeks weren’t nearly as tough as

  people now thought they were. He’d taken pains to find out what had actually

  happened by talking to the man who’d been on the raid, and when he analysed it

  carefully he saw that the only reason there’d been any casualties at all was

  that the raid had been poorly planned and carelessly executed, as you’d expect

  from a spur-of-the moment escapade by a bunch of young hooligans.

  Fortuitously, about that time, a party of Scythians from much further north

  arrived in the area. Unlike our Scythians, they were true nomads who’d had to

  leave their tribe on account of one of the messy, complicated blood-feuds that

  break out up there every now and again. These men were to all intents and

  purposes professional soldiers; what with cattle-raids and counter-raids and

  ambushes and hot pursuits, they’d gained an impressive amount of experience in

  small-scale warfare, and were now at a loose end, badly in need of a job. The

  rich man took them into his household and spent a long time with them, asking

  their advice and listening to what they had to say.

  But he still wasn’t going to rush into anything. He knew that if something went

  wrong, or if the exhibition turned out not to be sufficiently impressive, he’d

  only make things worse for himself and his ally in ‘our’ village. What he really

  needed, he decided (and his nomad friends were very much in agreement) was some

  good, solid military intelligence. For example, some of the Greeks had their

  bows with them wherever they went, others didn’t. Some of them were trained

  soldiers, others were apparently as soft as butter. What he needed was someone

  who could give him reliable information,

  — sufficient to make intelligent plans. This was going to be awkward to achieve

  now that there was active hostility between them and us; but there was still one

  man in the colony who kept up apparently friendly relations with the Scythians,

  namely my very good friend Tyrsenius. The rich man decided that he was the

  likeliest prospect, and set out to find a way of establishing contact without

  being too obvious about it.

  When I finally climbed out of the dark hole the news from Athens had dropped me

  into, almost the first thing I saw was an enormous soppy grin on the face of my

  friend Tyrsenius. It made me wonder whether I hadn’t been better off down the

  dark hole.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he barked at me, grabbing me by the elbow and

  marching me from my front door towards the market square. ‘Really, you ought to

  have more consideration than to go wandering off when there’s work to be done.

  Still, here you are at last, so that’s all right.’

  I should point out that the big soppy grin was quite unlike Tyrsenius’ usual

  predatory, slightly leering grin, which was such a fixture on his face that it

  always reminded me of the old story of Medusa’s head, which turned people into

  stone. My favourite theory was that Tyrsenius had been unlucky enough to

  encounter the Gorgon’s petrifying visage as a young boy while on the point of

  eating a particularly lush, sticky honey-cake he’d just stolen from a smaller,

  less quick-witted child. Theano, on the other hand, held to the view that he’d

  had a nasty shock while relieving himself after a long and uncomfortable bout of

  constipation. Her version was more arresting but I prefer my own, if only

  because it’s more literary and cultured.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘You may well ask,’ Tyrsenius replied helpfully. ‘Come on, you can see for

  yourself.’

  I was intrigued, I must admit. It wasn’t the level of animation that caught my

  imagination; Tyrsenius was always hopping about, like a sparrow on ashes, until

  you got dizzy and sick watching him. It was more the irresistible cheerfulness

  that wafted from him, like the reek of a tanner’s yard. Only two things could

  have had this effect on him; money and love. If it was money, it meant he’d

  struck some particularly juicy deal, and for some reason he rarely required my

  official presence as oecist when he was cooking up his famous juicy deals —

  quite the reverse, in fact.That only left love. I groaned audibly, but he didn’t

  seem to notice.

  ‘Tyrsenius,’ I said, grabbing onto a doorpost to stop him swirling me away,

  ‘what’s going on? You’re in love again, aren’t you?’

  He scowled at me. ‘Rubbish,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t mess with me,’ I sighed. ‘I was there the last time, remember? And the

  time before that. And the time before that. And...’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You make it sound like I fall in love every

  other day.’

  I didn’t say anything. The plain fact was that Eros had shot my friend Tyrsenius

  so many times with his pernicious little arrows that it was a miracle he didn’t

  leak when he drank a cup of water. Over the last six months, for example, there

  had been the niece of one of the deadlier Founders, Marsamleptes’ daughter,

  Marsamleptes’ son, the night-soil boy, the Olbian dried-fish merchant’s wife,

  the cute little Illyrian girl who cleaned the guts for her father the

  sausage-maker, the girl with the gammy leg who was betrothed to one of

  Tyrsenius’ business partners in Odessus, Agenor the stonemason’s apprentice and

  (I suspected, though I didn’t have any proof) my wife Theano. It said a great

  deal forTyrsenius’ invincible amiability that people didn’t try to cut his

  throat as he walked across the square, let alone con­tinued to trade with him

  and regard him as a friend. But that was Tyrsenius all over; ill-will simply

  dripped off him, the way water refuses to adhere to the waxy belly-feathers of

  ducks.

  ‘Not every other day,’ I conceded. ‘Every other week.’

  He didn’t dignify that cheap shot with a reply. Instead, he yanked me free of

  the doorpost (he was deceptively strong for a man of his build) and carried on

  marching me across the square.

  ‘There,’ he said magnificently, as if introducing me to Zeus.

  Scythians, I thought; what joy.

  A second look confirmed that the four wretched, grumpy-looking people huddled

  together on the steps of the market hall were indeed Scythians of some kind,

  though not any kind we’d encountered before. For one thing, they were seriously

  overdressed; it was a warm day, and they were swaddled up in the traditional

  Scythian cold-weather gear; tall, conical felt hats with drooping earfiaps that

  reached to the collar-bone, tight-fitting jackets and trousers of heavy

  patterned cloth, deeply lined with felt. I could see the sweat glistening on

  their foreheads. And it took only one glance at their nervous, hawklike faces to

  tell that this was the first time they’d ever been inside a Greek city, possib
ly

  even a permanent settlement of any kind.

  ‘Who are these people?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re the Budini,’ Tyrsenius replied in a low whisper.

  Remarkably, the name was familiar. ‘I’ve heard of them,’ I said. ‘Or at least, I

  think I read about them somewhere. Aren’t they the ones who’re supposed to eat

  fir-cones?’

  Tyrsenius looked blank. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, ‘you’d have to ask them

  that. The point is, they’re here to trade and — get this — to make an alliance

  with us against the village people.’

  I stood still for a moment and thought about that. ‘Where did you say they came

  from?’ I asked.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Tyrsenius said. ‘You didn’t ask. But as far as I can tell, they live

  way up north in the frozen country, just under the lee of a big range of

  mountains.

  I nodded. ‘And they’ve come all the way from the frozen country on purpose to

  pick a fight with the inhabitants of a small Olbian village. Yes, that makes a

  lot of sense, I can see that quite clearly now you’ve explained it to me.’

  ‘Not this particular village,’ Tyrsenius said wearily. ‘That’d be silly. What I

  meant was, they’ll help us if we help them. It’s got to be the most wonderful

  opportunity.’

  ‘You mean for selling them things?’ I asked. ‘I reckon they live so far north

  that they won’t have heard the warnings about you yet.’

  He looked worried for a moment until he realised I was joking. ‘Very witty,’ he

  said. ‘Now come on, Euxenus. Even you should be able to appreciate—’

  Then I happened to catch sight of one of them and everything fell into place.

  The youngest member of the party was a girl; a pretty one at that, if you like

  that slim, boyish, ambiguous look (whichTyrsenius notoriously did; Theano always

  reckoned that what he liked was the uncertainty of not knowing for sure whether

  it was a boy or a girl until he’d actually got them home and unwrapped them, as

  it were). I looked at her, then back at Tyrsenius. The poor fool definitely had

  it bad this time.

  ‘It’s a girl,’ I said. ‘Trust me on this and save yourself a lot of time and

  hassle.’

  For a moment I was afraid I’d really upset him, but I needn’t have worried. Just