their bare hands (I saw a bee-keeper once capture a wild swarm with nothing but
an empty honey-jar; he judged the moment just right and swiped the whole swarm
out of the air and into the jar, and he didn’t get stung). Nothing bad happened
to me while all this was going on. Afterwards, people said the snake protected
me, same as bloody always.
I suppose the attack lasted about the time it takes to bring a basin of water to
the boil; it seemed longer, while at the same time it was all over in a moment.
Someone shut and bolted the gate, while others manned the wall. People were
running or walking, calling out names, screaming, sobbing. Agenor, who didn’t
know much about medicine but who’d seen his fair share of nasty accidents while
he was working as a stonemason, was organising people to see to the wounded,
sorting out the dying from the merely damaged. The basic principles of looking
after badly injured people are calm and patience; I once watched Agenor piecing
together a shattered vase that I’d simply have given up on and thrown away. Of
course, it’s that bit harder to throw away people, but the temptation’s there
all the same.
I went over and looked at the body of my son, who was every bit as dead as
Philip of Macedon (why did I think of that, I wonder, at such a moment? Sure, I
wasn’t thinking straight; it was like the time I stood up sharply under a low
beam and gave my head the most almighty crack. For a long time, everything
seemed to be very slow and far away, and I remember wondering whether I was
still alive, and being pleasantly surprised to discover that I was).
They were using the wine to clean out scimitar-wounds. I saw two children
standing very still, looking down at a dead body. They were just as still as I
was; then one of them kicked the body, which was almost but not quite dead,
presumably because it was Scythian — only it wasn’t, it was Budini, and he’d
died with his axe in his hand, trying to fight the enemies of his people. Made
no difference really, of course, a kick in the head from a child was neither
here nor there in his condition, but it was the total lack of expression on the
boy’s face that lodged in my mind, like the barbed sting of a bee.
I’d never known Theano go all to pieces before. Hardly surprising, of course;
but like I said I wasn’t thinking straight. I expected her to be cold and hard,
to lock her feelings out or shove past them, like a bad-mannered man in the fish
queue. But she didn’t; she broke up into tears and rages, and I’m ashamed to say
I left her to get on with it.
As for myself I was — we have this expression for someone who’s blind drunk,
‘feeling no pain’; that was me. It was very much like being drunk, that aimless,
drifting, out-of-it feeling when you’re using everything you’ve got just to keep
your balance and not fall over, nothing to spare for anything less immediate. In
a sense, you’re never more intimately aware of being alive, because all the
things you usually do without thinking take so much conscious effort. Yes, that
was me. Feeling no pain. I was completely out of it. I guess the snakes
protected me.
Whenever you get really huge disasters, there’s always so much work to be done
afterwards, so much clearing up and mending, digging graves and covering for the
people who’ve been injured and can’t milk their own goats; so many strategy
meetings and heads-of-department meetings — just when we could have used the
Founders, we had five dead and seven seriously wounded — and who knows what
else. As an excuse for staying out of the house, they were just what the doctor
ordered. I really pulled my weight over the next few days.
Azus, my bodyguard, died on the fourth day after the attack, of blood poisoning.
I was with him when he died, and all he could talk about was how he’d let me
down, how he hadn’t done his job, how he should have saved my son’s life. I told
him not to worry about it, but he didn’t want to listen. He died with tears
running down his face, trying to think of the Greek word for honour. Oddly
enough, I couldn’t remember it either.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘Kill the bastards,’ they told me. ‘Kill all of them. Every one.’
‘Believe me, I’d like to,’ I replied. ‘Nothing would please me more. Now, if
someone would just suggest a way of going about it that won’t get all the rest
of us killed—’
‘Wrong answer.’ My friend Tyrsenius shook his head. ‘If you say that, some
hothead’s bound to stand up and say he’s got a plan that’ll bring ‘em to their
knees by the end of the month, and everybody’ll start cheering and waving their
arms; and either you’ll have to hand over command to him or take it yourself.
Either way, it spells disaster.’
‘And what if it was one of the Illyrians,’ Prodromus the Founder added, ‘and he
actually took command and he won? We might as well turn over the government of
the city to them now and be done with it. That’s exactly how Cleon grabbed power
in Athens during the Great War, when the Spartans were on Sphacteria.’
That sounded like typical Founder talk to me, but I wasn’t in the mood to play
political games. ‘All right, then,’ I sighed. ‘So what do you suggest I tell
them? Anybody?’
‘Easy,’ said Tyrsenius, getting in ahead of the others by a comfortable margin;
years of practice in business negotiations. ‘They say, Kill the bastards. You
say, We will. We’re going to. We’re working on it right now. Obviously it’s
going to be a while before we’re in a position to make our move, but you can
rest assured that as soon as the moment’s right we’re going to make them pay.
Something like that,’ he added. ‘There’s absolutely nothing anybody can object
to there, and you haven’t committed yourself to anything.’
I shook my head. ‘Sounds to me like I’ve just committed myself to military
action against the Scythians,’ I said. ‘They’re not fools, you know; that line
might get them off our backs for a week or so, but they aren’t going to forget
all about it as soon as there’s something new to talk about. And the longer I
hang about, the weaker my position’s going to get.’
Tyrsenius thought for a moment. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘let’s try this. It’s an
old trick, but I’ve never known it fail. You say, Yes, of course we’re going to
attack, we’re going to attack straight away, just as soon as the rest of the
alliance are ready, which’ll be any day now. And whoever’s asking the
question’ll look bewildered and say, Alliance , what alliance? Ah, well, you’ll
reply, I wasn’t planning on making an announcement on this until it was all
agreed a hundred per cent, but I’ve been talking with our neighbours in Olbia
and Odessus; basically the only thing we’ve still got to agree on is the precise
number of ships they’re going to send. That way, you see,’ Tyrsenius added,
‘when time goes on and nothing happens, it’ll be their fault in Olbia and
Odessus, not ours. And then finally, when you’ve played it along as far as it’ll
go, you make an announcement that the alliance isn’t ac
tually going to happen,
because the other guys have pulled out at the very last moment; and by then, of
course, they’ll be so used to the idea of the alliance that they won’t want to
take the risk of just us going in alone. And the whole thing’ll blow over, which
is what we want.’
Prodromus looked up sharply. ‘No, it isn’t,’ he said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Tyrsenius snapped. ‘We aren’t getting tangled up in any
war with the Scythians. Why the hell would we want to do a stupid thing like
that?’
I closed my eyes for a moment. ‘Tyrsenius,’ I said.
‘Oh, come on,’ he replied incredulously. ‘Don’t say you’ve actually been taking
this nonsense seriously.’
The very same Tyrsenius who’d demanded, a mere four days earlier, that when we
took the village (when, mark you, not if), we should burn down all the houses
and plough up the site, and distribute the land between our citizens. I knew
where he was coming from then; he was already looking ahead to buying up all
this extra land cheap, once everyone had realised it’d be completely impractical
to try to farm a large additional holding a day’s ride from Antolbia, with a
view to selling it dear to the next wave of settlers he was already planning to
bring in once the Scythians had been dealt with. It was gold to bronze he had an
equally sound commercial reason for this latest change of heart, but I really
wasn’t interested in hearing about it.
(The very same Tyrsenius who killed four Scythians during the raid, pulling them
down from their horses and hacking them to death with one of their own
scimitars; all this in spite of having been shot through the left bicep in the
first volley of arrows, losing so much blood that when it was all over he passed
out and nearly died in the night. I, of course, just stood there and did
nothing, while the sacred snake shielded me in its coils and flicked flying
arrows away from my head with its tongue.)
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this,’ Prodromus was saying meanwhile. ‘Euxenus,
for gods’ sakes, the whole future of the colony’s at stake here. How the hell
can we be expected to get on with our lives with the threat of something like
this hanging over us every day till we die? You’ve got to do something and it’d
better be soon. Two more families are talking about getting on the next ship
out. Soon there’ll be nobody left here but the Illyrians.’
He was making me lose my temper. ‘That’s what’s really bugging you, isn’t it?’ I
said angrily. ‘You’re afraid that unless we true-born Greeks take control of the
situation, the Illyrians are going to lose patience and go off on their own to
do something about it; and then you won’t be a Founder any more, just some Greek
who’s got to work for a living.’
‘I resent that,’ Prodromus replied, predictably enough. ‘I think you’d better
take that back, before—’
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘That’ll do. As it happens, I agree with you, not Tyrsenius. I
want to kill the bastards, every last one. It’s them or us; there’s no way we
can live peacefully together after what’s happened, and I wouldn’t want to if
there was. All I’m saying is, unless we do it right they’re going to massacre
us.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ Prodromus said. ‘Isn’t it?’
The last part of his remark had been directed at Marsamleptes, who’d been
sitting there still and quiet as a log, through all Prodromus’ comments about
the shifty and treacherous Illyrians, without once taking his eyes off the
sconce on the opposite wall. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Euxenus is right. If we attack, we
must do it properly.’
‘If?’ Prodromus repeated. ‘Don’t you start. It’s bad enough Tyrsenius here wants
to pretend nothing’s happened. For pity’s sake, Euxenus, just for once take your
responsibilities seriously and tell him—’
I held up my hand for silence and, much to my surprise, I got it.
‘When we attack — shut up, both of you, or you might miss something important —
when we attack, we’re going to do it properly. Now, so far I haven’t heard any
suggestions as to how we should go about this that make any kind of sense at
all. Until I see a plan of action that’s got a better than seventy-five per cent
chance of success, we aren’t going anywhere, because if you think things are bad
now, you wait and see what they’ll be like if we attack and get well and truly
beaten. That really would be the end, and I’ve come too far to take chances like
that just because you Founders want to be the first in line in the fish queue.’
The homely image was intended to annoy him, and it did; nothing put Prodromus’
back up more than the thought that he wasn’t being taken seriously. That said,
he was one of the brighter Founders, and I much preferred dealing with him than,
say, Perdiccas— (Whose brains I’d seen on the steps of the market hall; four
days later, there was still a brown stain. When we buried him we tried to fit
the top of his skull back on, but the scalp had shrunk. We had to bind it on
with a strip of cloth in the end; he went into the ground looking like an old
woman with her shawl pulled up over her ears.)
‘All right,’ Prodromus said. ‘I’ll take that as a definite commitment to action,
and I’ll tell the rest of them that I’ve heard your proposals for action and I’m
prepared to go along with them. But I warn you, if I find you’re playing for
time and you don’t really have any intention of carrying the war to the enemy, I
promise you there’ll be trouble.’
I rubbed my eyes; four days with very little sleep. ‘I’ll take that as
agreement,’ I said. ‘Not that I’m all that fussed whether you agree or not. Now
then, Marsamleptes; how about some basic facts? What sort of army can we put
together?’
He thought for a long time before answering. ‘We are strong in heavy infantry,’
he replied, speaking slowly as ever, ‘very weak in everything else. My people
can mostly shoot well with the bow, but they will want to fight with the spear.
The Budini are fine archers, but there are so few of them. We have no cavalry.
If we mean to fight, we must lead to their strength and find a way of overcoming
it.’
‘I see,’ I replied. ‘And their strengths are?’
‘Cavalry,’ he replied. ‘Cavalry and archers. I cannot tell how a battle between
horse-archers and heavy infantry would be, because I have never seen one, but I
think the horse-archers would win if they were well led.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Tyrsenius interrupted. ‘Look at Leonidas at Thermopylae . Or
the Greeks at Plataea . Or Xenophon—’
I frowned. Of course, none of the examples he’d quoted had involved
horse-archers fighting against heavy infantry. ‘Marsamleptes,’ I said. ‘If you
had to fight such a battle, how would you go about it?’
Once again, long pause for thought. ‘Tyrsenius talks about the battle at Plataea
,’ he said. ‘When the Persians shot at the Greeks, the Greeks knelt down behind
their shields and made themselves small, and the Persians grew impatient and
>
attacked them with the spear. That was a mistake on their part.’ He looked up at
the roof. ‘Maybe the Scythians would make a mistake too. I doubt it, having seen
them. It would be hard to attack them in this way, of course.’
‘I’m not so sure,, Tyrsenius chimed in. ‘Think of the Carthaginians at Himera.’
That reference was so obscure I didn’t even bother considering it. ‘You want to
make them attack us, I take it,’ I said.
‘Which they will not do,’ Marsamleptes went on, ‘unless they make another
mistake. There are more of us. Why would they choose to attack a larger army?’
‘I can see your point,’ I conceded. ‘You’d better go away and think about it
some more. Prodromus, I want you to calm your people down as much as you can.
Tyrsenius’ idea about sending for help to Olbia’s a good one. Tyrsenius, I want
you to write to your friends in Olbia, just in case they might be prepared to
help us. I know, they haven’t got any quarrel with their neighbours, but you
might play up the idea that once they’ve got rid of one Greek colony, they might
like the idea of getting rid of them all. And you might make enquiries about
mercenaries; light infantry, archers, maybe even some experienced Thracian
cavalry if there’s any at a loose end.’
Tyrsenius shook his head. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Anybody who’s any good will
have gone with Alexander. You should see what he’s paying.’
That’s right, I’d forgotten; Alexander had set out with his army to conquer the
world.
You know all about it, of course, Phryzeutzis, you were brought up on it. When
you were little, your daddy told you stories about the great warrior who founded
this city. Later on, you listened to the recital of the official history on
Founder’s Day, the day when all the children get given an apple and a
honey-cake, to bribe them to be good citizens when they grow up. I’ll bet you
can name the great battles, in places you’ve never been to, in countries you
can’t imagine; when you were a child, I expect you recreated them in places you
knew, so that the stream that runs down off the mountain became the Granicus,
and the brook through the town meadow became the Issus . You staged the siege of
Tyre here in the city; it must have been a tight fit, all those hundreds of
Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt Page 41
