Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt

by Alexander at the World's End (lit)

  we hadn’t got close enough to make out the colour of their eyes, let alone hit

  anybody. At this rate, it’d be a long, dangerous crawl to the village, provided

  that their arrow supply held out.

  It was at this point that someone quite unexpectedly did some­thing intelligent.

  Corus, the captain of the remaining Budini (he wasn’t their regular leader; he

  hadn’t made it), suddenly led a frantic charge, apparently at right-angles to

  everything that was going on. It was as if he’d caught sight of that other

  battle I was speculating about just now, the one that everybody else but I could

  see, and had gone racing off to join it.The enemy lowered their bows and stared,

  unable to fathom what the hell was going on; we were staring too, come to that.

  If it hadn’t been for the drawn scimitars and levelled lances, I’d have sworn

  they were running away. But they weren’t. After they’d galloped about a quarter

  of a mile, they abruptly veered off to the right and swung back; they’d gone

  just far enough to be behind the enemy’s line, provided they could reach it

  before the enemy had a chance to get out of the way.

  It was close; the war-party had to back and shuffle before they could turn round

  to face the incoming attack, which was closing at a hell of a rate, and that was

  when I saw it, the complicated manoeuvre in the face of the enemy — the mistake.

  I scrambled to my feet and yelled for an immediate attack; Marsamleptes was way

  ahead of me, and he had the wit to give the order to the trumpeters, who blew

  the charge. In the event, I did well to keep up and not get trampled on.

  When they saw us coming, the enemy tried to turn back again, thereby getting

  themselves hopelessly tangled up. It was more by luck than judgement, but both

  charges, cavalry and infantry, went home at more or less the same time. We were

  holding them like a piece of hot metal in a pair of tongs. They couldn’t shoot

  or run. It was just like the Granicus, only better.

  Being rather slow off the mark, I ended up in the fourth row of the infantry

  formation, where I couldn’t see anything past the helmet of the man in front of

  me, and couldn’t contribute anything beyond my body-weight. As to what actually

  happened, therefore, I have no idea; I didn’t get to see any of the cut and

  thrust of hand-to-hand combat, the lunging and feinting and parrying, the

  footwork and shieldplay. My experience of the battle was something like being

  caught in a big, over-excited queue, like when you’re lining up to get into the

  theatre or Assembly, and they open the doors and everybody surges forwards at

  once, sweeping you along with them. I was scared, no question, but not of the

  enemy; the immediate threat to me (and a very real one too) was from the

  butt-spikes on the ends of other people’s spears, the terrifying risk of

  slipping and getting trodden into the dirt, or being crushed like a bug between

  two ranks of armour-clad bodies. In fact, I only have other people’s word for it

  that we engaged the enemy at all. I didn’t see any of them, certainly, unless

  you count one or two dead bodies I trod on when something suddenly gave way and

  for a few short, scary moments we were all stumbling forward out of control.

  They must have been the enemy, those dead men, because they weren’t wearing

  armour; but that was all I had time to notice about them.

  It’s not as if I gave a damn, anyway. Fighting and killing were the last things

  on my mind just then.

  From what other people told me, I gather that we sort of squeezed them into

  nothing, as if you took on overripe pear in your hand and crushed it, till the

  pulp squirted out between your fingers and you were left holding the core and

  the pips. It was something like a hundred and seventy-odd killed, as many again

  captured, while our losses were in single figures, apart from the Budini shot

  down in the river (seventeen killed, twenty or so wounded). Anyway, people who

  knew about this sort of thing reckoned that it was a good closing score and we’d

  done well, and there was plenty of stuff for a proper trophy this time. But the

  rest of them got back inside the village and shut the gates, and after we’d

  caught our breath and sorted ourselves out, there was nothing else to do but go

  home again. Complete waste of time, if you ask me.

  ‘We did well,’ Tyrsenius said, ‘considering. Of course,’ he went on, ‘we’ll have

  to be very careful from now on. Very careful indeed.’

  I yawned; it was late and I was very tired after all that frantic pushing and

  shoving. ‘What you’re saying is,’ I replied, ‘we’ve attacked them, provoked

  them, killed nearly two hundred people, and sooner or later they’re going to

  attack us again.’

  ‘That’s a rather negative way of looking at it, don’t you think?’ Tyrsenius

  said. ‘After all, we’ve just won a rather splendid victory.’

  ‘Which achieved nothing,’ I said. ‘If anything, we’ve made things worse. You

  know what I’d do if I were in charge in that village? I’d send messages to every

  Scythian community in reach, saying, Dire warning, unprovoked attack, we must

  all band together now and get rid of these Greeks once and for all, or else we

  don’t stand a chance. After all,’ I added, ‘isn’t that what we did?’

  Prodromus the Founder looked at me. ‘I thought you were the one who wanted this

  war,’ he said.

  I leaned back and let my head rest against the wall. ‘I wanted to wipe out the

  village,’ I said. ‘No village, no more problem. It serves me right, I suppose,

  for thinking you can do that sort of thing.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Tyrsenius said. I ignored him.

  ‘All right,’ Prodromus said. ‘So now what are you saying? We should give up the

  war? Try to negotiate peace?’

  I nodded. ‘We’ve made our point, at least,’ I said. ‘And sure enough, we’ve

  thinned out the war-party, got rid of a lot of the young braves who were

  spoiling for a fight. We’ve got the anger out of our system too, I hope. What

  I’d like to do is go back to the terms Anabruzas proposed that time, and see if

  we can make anything out of those.’

  Marsamleptes stroked his beard with the ball of his thumb. ‘That’s if those

  terms are still open,’ he said. ‘Maybe now it’s their turn to be angry.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’d have hoped we’ve killed too many of them to let them afford the

  luxury of being angry,’ I replied. ‘Even though we lost control of the battle

  right at the outset, they still weren’t able to do us any real harm. We’ve

  proved they’re no match for us in a pitched battle.’

  Marsamleptes dipped his head a little. ‘Maybe they aren’t figuring on having any

  more pitched battles,’ he replied. ‘It’s not the way they do things, left to

  themselves.’

  I saw his point. If we were going to thump them every time we met in the open

  field, the sensible thing from their perspective would be not to go to the open

  field any more. But they could still launch surprise attacks, ride down our

  people as they walked home from work, and then dart back behind their gates

  before we could do anything about it. Then we’d have to follow s
uit, they’d step

  up their attacks; and when, in the middle of all this, would any of us find the

  time to do any farming? ‘So what’s your idea?’ I asked him.

  ‘Gather more men,’ he said. ‘Hire more soldiers. Then we lay a siege and destroy

  the village.’

  I sighed. ‘Back where we started, only harder,’ I said. ‘In fact, we’ve achieved

  nothing.’

  Marsamleptes shook his head. ‘Things have changed since we started,’ he said.

  ‘Back then, we could have come to an agreement. Now, we have to see it through.’

  Nobody said anything after that, and the meeting broke up. Marsamleptes went off

  to organise guard duty; his work wouldn’t be over much before dawn. We weren’t

  supposed to be doing all this; it was summer now, but soon it would be autumn;

  vintage, harvest, ploughing, sowing. In Greece , the campaigning season has

  always been very rigidly defined, wars don’t drag on into vintage and get in the

  way of people’s work. But in Greece , everybody knows what wars mean, they

  understand the meaning of a victory or a defeat. It’s like judgement in a

  lawsuit, and if the judgement goes against you, you don’t complain or try to

  wriggle out of it, you pay up and get on with your life. How would it be if

  every dispute over who owned which side of a ditch or who was responsible for

  breakages in a consignment of jars of honey had to be carried through until one

  or other of the parties was dead? That was the lesson of military history: only

  fight battles if you’re prepared to abide by the result.

  That didn’t seem to work here, which made the point. We weren’t in Greece any

  more. We’d left all that, moved on.

  Pity.

  I crawled out of my clothes, which had dried on me twice that day

  — once from the river-water, once from the sweat — and slumped onto my bed. I

  was used to being alone in the house now, it was remarkable how quickly I’d

  adapted to it. Everything had gone wrong, one way or another, and I’d accepted

  it without really noticing.

  I woke up in the middle of the night and realised that I’d decided to leave

  Antolbia.

  In a sense, there was nothing left to leave. My Antolbia was firmly based around

  the notion of home, family, farm, the life I should have had if only my father

  hadn’t screwed everything up by having so many sons. Now my own son was dead, my

  wife had fled to Sicily with a cheese magnate, I didn’t dare go to my farm for

  fear of getting shot; that didn’t leave much. The ideal society had gone the way

  of all such experiments — it had lasted longer than some, and I had the

  consolation of knowing that the forces tearing it apart were mostly external,

  but it was still a fundamentally impossible project, as close to real life as

  Homer’s version of battle. The truth was quite simple; we’d tried to found a

  Greek city that wasn’t in Greece , in a place that was already somewhere else by

  the time we got there. When Greeks founded Miletus and Syracuse and Cyrene and

  Croton and Odessus, the world was still soft and plastic, like a ball of wet

  clay that could be moulded and shaped. By the time we went to Olbia, it was

  already too hard to work.

  The only question was, when would I be free to go? Perversely, if everything had

  been going well I could have walked away without a second thought (but if

  everything had been going well, I wouldn’t have wanted to). True, I had no

  material ties worth bothering with, and thanks to Philip of Macedon and the

  battle of Chaeronea, I was the rightful heir to substantial property in Attica —

  following the deaths of Eudorus and Euthyphron, half my father’s original

  estate; I’d have to fight hard in the courts to get it, of course, and on that

  score the sooner I left Antolbia and started my campaign, the better. But

  leaving at that particular moment, either the beginning or the middle of the

  war, but most certainly not the end, was something I couldn’t bring myself to

  do. Don’t get me wrong; it wasn’t anything to do with obligation or

  responsibility or honour. It was more a matter of wanting to be looking in the

  right direction when the main event happened, just for once in my life —My

  fellow Antolbians, it is with a heavy heart...

  — And partly, of course, cowardice, because I didn’t have the nerve to stand up

  in front of them and make that speech. No, if I wanted to leave now, I’d have to

  sneak out of town on some pretext, like the man who tells his wife he’s just

  going up to the market to buy a quarter of whitebait, and is next heard of ten

  years later, as a captain of mercenaries in libya.

  After a sleepless night (more to do with rough wine and anchovies than mental

  turmoil, I suspect) I decided on a compromise. When we’d erased all traces of

  the Scythian village, I’d be free to go. Even while I was formulating the

  proposal, I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to me over the last dozen

  years, to bring me to a state where I predicated my personal redemption on the

  wholesale slaughter of innocents. But I explained that by saying that I was

  merely reverting to type. What we’d have called genocide in Olbia would have

  been considered in Athens a sensible business pre­caution.

  I went to see Marsamleptes.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he replied, in answer to my question. ‘If we had the resources,

  I’d want catapults and battering-rams, plus at least three hundred specialist

  archers.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t afford the money, or the time. What can we do with

  what we’ve already got?’

  He thought for a while longer. ‘Attack by night,’ he said eventually. ‘In the

  dark, they can’t see to shoot. If we can force the gate before they realise what

  we’re doing—’

  I shook my head. ‘Is that likely?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Not really.’

  I chewed my lower lip for a moment. ‘What if someone opened the gates for us?’ I

  said. ‘Would that be enough, do you think?’

  As always, he considered his answer carefully before replying. ‘Yes,’ he said,

  ‘I think it would. Basically, we’d have to use the village stockade like a net,

  as if we were lamping for hares. Surround the stockade but leave the two

  side-gates unblocked. Put in an assault party through the main gate, with

  torches, setting fire to everything in reach and making it look like there’s

  more of them than there really are. Once they realise what’s going on, they’ll

  try to bolt through the side gates. That’s where we catch them and kill them.’

  I looked doubtful. ‘Isn’t that over-elaborate?’ I asked. ‘Judging by how things

  went the last two times, we’d better assume that anything that can go wrong,

  will.’

  He looked at me with a very faint smile. ‘I’m a soldier,’ he said. ‘I always

  assume that. Unfortunately, it doesn’t solve much. Just because you know a

  thing’s the weak link in the chain doesn’t mean you can do anything at all about

  it. No, we’ll just have to make sure that we make as few mistakes as possible.’

  He looked at me steadily. ‘Do you really think you can find someone who’ll be

  willing to open the
gates?’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘I think so,’ I said.

  He looked older than he had the last time I saw him. His broad shoulders were

  starting to get bony, the muscles of his forearms were shrinking, so that he

  wore the bones like an old man wears a tunic that fitted him like a glove twenty

  years ago. His hands looked bigger, and they shook a little. But he still had

  the scar I’d given him all those years before, and the look in his eyes was

  exactly the same as always.

  ‘Peace,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t think you people know the meaning of the word.’

  ‘We don’t,’ I replied. ‘That’s why it’s got to be done this way. Look,

  Anabruzas, I’m being absolutely straight with you. If you don’t open the gates

  and let us occupy the village, calmly and peacefully while every­one’s asleep,

  then we’ll come along with catapults and battering-rams and break in during the

  day; and I promise you, you won’t like that.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ he said. ‘And if I felt I could trust you, it’d be a different

  matter. But I don’t. How can I, after what you did the last time?’

  I shrugged. ‘If you don’t co-operate,’ I said, ‘we’ll definitely storm the

  stockade and kill you all. If you do what I’m telling you, there’s a chance I

  might keep my word. Even half a chance is better than none at all.’

  Anabruzas gave me a look of pure contempt. I wondered what I’d done to deserve

  it.

  ‘If I do open the gates,’ he said, ‘what will you do? Just how will you go about

  it?’

  I smiled. ‘Do I look like I’m stupid?’ I said. ‘I’m not going to tell you that.

  Listen, will you? I’m talking about a chance to save lives; your people’s lives,

  mine as well. I’m trying to be practical, for all our sakes. I’d have thought

  that you, of all people...’

  He turned away, as if he couldn’t bear the sight of me any more. ‘For your

  information,’ he said, ‘my son — my other son — was killed in the battle. I’m

  too old and too tired to raise any more. Do you know the story of the woman who

  was captured by the Persians?’

  I blinked. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘At least, I don’t think so. Is this a time to be

  telling stories?’