Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt

by Alexander at the World's End (lit)

  side. Before we could get the ships with the portable drawbridges in, they’d

  sealed it again — a whole ship full of workers and engineers got caught out

  then, and the lot of them were killed when the enemy set their ship alight. So

  we tried again next day, the whole army (except me; I was standing by); and

  somehow those crazy Macedonian infantry managed to get across the jerry-rigged

  drawbridges and into Tyre . The whole of the first wave got themselves killed in

  the breach; and Alexander saw this and went charging in there himself, waving

  his sword and yelling like a lunatic. Should’ve been killed just like all the

  others. Wasn’t.

  So we stormed Tyre . Killed eight thousand civilians, sold thirty thousand more

  to the slave dealers, along with some of our surplus labour — we needed the

  money, we were hopelessly over budget after all this fooling about, the cost of

  materials alone was enough to have bankrupted a city. But we won. I guess.

  Oh, and that Persian army I was telling you about? They got held up. Pure fluke;

  bad roads, rivers in spate, that sort of thing. Instead of sweeping down on us

  when we were at our most vulnerable and butchering us where we stood, they were

  backing up in narrow mountain passes that had got blocked by freak rockslides,

  or frantically repairing bridges that had been swept away by flash floods. When

  they realised they weren’t going to make it in time, the Great King sent

  Alexander a message with a peace offer — 10,000 talents cash and half the

  empire, everything west of the Euphrates , provided he’d piss off and leave

  Persia alone. They had a council of war to discuss the offer. ‘I’d take it, if I

  were you,’ said old general Parmenio. ‘Sure, so would I,’ said Alexander, ‘if I

  were Parmenio.’ Then he told the embassy what they could do with their offer,

  and told us we were going to conquer Egypt .

  In all the excitement, of course, he’d completely forgotten the reason he’d

  wanted to sack Tyre in the first place; the Persian fleet, which was all poised

  and set to sweep down on Greece while our backs were turned. But that turned out

  all right; the Byblians and the Sidonians fell out with the Persian admirals

  over something or other and buggered off in a huff, the Cypriots joined them,

  and a whole bunch of ships changed sides and came over to us, asking for a job.

  And that was the end of the Persian fleet, our part in its downfall being

  exactly nothing.

  ‘Oh, well,’ my mate Peitho said to me, when we heard about this. ‘We needn’t

  have bothered with Tyre after all, then.’

  ‘Apparently not,’ I agreed, and I chucked some more leaves in the fire.

  ‘How come you stayed out of the fighting?’ Peitho asked me. He’d been hit twice,

  once during the dredging operation, once during the assault, and the second

  arrow had put out his left eye.

  ‘I was standing by,’ I replied.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Peitho said, breathing in deeply through his nose. ‘Grows on you,

  this stuff, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Very good for bad backs and sprained ankles,’ I said.

  ‘Quite likely. Hey, I wonder if Alexander realises all that business with Tyre

  was for nothing?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘You tell him,’ I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘T hat’s a really amazing story,’ I said, stifling a yawn. ‘And now, if it’s

  all the same to you, I really must go and get some—’

  ‘Shut up,’ my brother said.

  It was after the siege of Tyre , and because of the siege of Tyre , that my

  friend Peitho and I realised that there was something we could do to make the

  world a better place, yank the human race back from the brink of an abyss, and

  win ourselves an honoured place in history at the same time.

  We could kill Alexander.

  Now then, brother, before you turn white and start screaming for the guards, I

  ought to point out that when we reached this con­clusion, Peitho and I had been

  kippering ourselves in that wonderful Scythian smoke more or less non-stop for a

  couple of weeks (Peitho had really bad toothache, the sort that gets to you so

  completely that you can’t think of anything else, and I felt it was my duty as a

  fellow human being to do what I could to alleviate his misery), so we were both

  as crazy as a jarful of polecats or we’d never even have con­sidered the idea

  for a moment. After all, enough innocent, harmless men had their throats Cut

  because of entirely mythical and non­existent plots against Alexander to make a

  sane man think very seriously indeed about embarking on a real one. But we,

  medicated as we were from the soles of our feet to the tips of our ears, were

  above such mundane considerations as fear or common sense. Really, brother, I

  wish I had some of that stuff left, it’d do you a world of good. Maybe even

  loosen you up a little, if that’s humanly possible.

  Now, it’s all very well to say, ‘I know, let’s kill Alexander and then

  everything’ll be sweet’; but getting close enough to him to stick a knife in his

  back wasn’t going to be easy. First off, he was surrounded day and night by his

  lifelong companions, the young Macedonian nobles you prattled away to in dear

  old Mieza; animals, the lot of them, who’d cleave your skull without a moment’s

  hesitation if they didn’t like the way you wiped your nose. I put this point to

  my fellow conspirator one evening, when we’d pitched camp for the night and were

  sharing a sociable lungful or two of medicine. He thought about it for a while,

  while I shovelled another double handful of leaves on the fire.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Fair play to you, Eudaemon, you’ve got a point there. No

  way we can get to him while the Companions are about. They’d slice us up like

  bacon.

  ‘You bet,’ I agreed, nodding. ‘Our head’s be rolling on the deck before we got

  close enough to smell his sweat.’

  Peitho frowned. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘there’s no need to get all nega­tive

  about it. Like the philosopher said, a problem is just a challenge in disguise.’

  ‘Oh.’ I thought for a moment. ‘Which philosopher was that, then?’

  ‘My cousin Gelo,’ Peitho replied. ‘He wasn’t a professional philos­opher, mind,

  it was more like a hobby with him.’

  ‘I see.’ I paused, filled my lungs with smoke, held my breath for a count of

  five and breathed out again slowly. ‘What about poison?’ I suggested. ‘Don’t

  have to be anywhere near for that.’

  Peitho scratched his head. ‘Doesn’t he have all his food tasted before he eats

  it?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ I replied, ‘but that’s no problem. Use a slow poison. Some­thing that

  doesn’t start working till the next day. Then, by the time the taster goes

  bright purple and keels over, it’ll be too late to do anything about it.’

  Peitho yawned. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘So you know all about poisons, then, do

  you?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Haven’t a clue.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Peitho said. ‘Know anybody we could ask?’

  ‘Not really,’ I replied. ‘Besides, you go around asking people about poisons,

  they’ll want to know why. M
aybe there’s a book about it we could read.’

  ‘Probably,’ Peitho said. ‘There’s books about heaps of stuff. Who do we know

  who’s got a lot of books?’

  I sat back on my chair — one of those three-legged folding efforts, as I recall

  — and tried to think. Wonderful insight those leaves give you, though your mind

  does tend to go racing off on side-issues. ‘How about Anaxarchus?’ I suggested.

  ‘He’s got a whole box of the things.’

  Anaxarchus was one of Alexander’s tame philosophers; he had two of them with him

  on the trip, Anaxander and Callisthenes (who was the nephew of Aristotle, who

  was — oh, of course, you’ve met him, haven’t you? All right, you know about

  Aristotle). I’d only met Anaxarchus a couple of times, barely spoken a dozen

  words to him, but if ever there was a man who was likely to own a book about

  different types of poison, it’d be Anaxarchus. Not that he’d have had any use

  for it, in the same way that a dagger’d be wasted on a shark.

  ‘All right, then,’ I said. ‘First thing in the morning, you go round there and

  ask him.’

  He looked up at me, eyes narrowed. ‘Why me?’ he said.

  ‘You’re a Macedonian,’ I replied. ‘He’ll trust you.’

  ‘Why? He’s isn’t Macedonian.’

  I sighed and poured myself another drink. Actually, my Scythian friends had

  advised me not to drink booze while using the medicine; the combination, they

  claimed, could sometimes have the effect of making a man somewhat light-headed.

  Never had that effect on me, though, or not that I was ever aware of.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘He’ll trust you because you belong to the ruling

  class. The elite.’

  ‘No I don’t,’ he objected. ‘My dad works seventeen acres on the Paeonian border.

  My mum isn’t even a citizen.

  I shook my head. ‘Missing the point,’ I said. ‘The Macedonians are the chosen

  people, the beloved of the gods. They shall inherit the flicking earth. While a

  poor bloody Athenian like me goes in some philosopher’s tent asking to borrow

  his copy of Poisoning for Pleasure and Profit, next thing I know, my body’ll be

  waving at my head and telling it not to be a stranger. Besides,’ I added, ‘I

  don’t think he likes me.’

  ‘Really? Why not?’

  ‘Because my brother was Alexander ‘s tutor.’

  ‘Really?’

  I nodded. ‘When he was a kid.’

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘Alexander. When Alexander was a kid. Anaxarchus is jealous because he’s only

  come on the scene recently, he’s got to sit there listening

  to how Euxenus said this and Euxenus said that. Cramps his style. Wouldn’t lend

  me the wax out of his ears, let alone enough poison to wipe out half of bloody

  Asia .’

  Peitho tipped his head up and down, like a man leaning to and fro in a chair.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Suppose I’d better do it. What if he says no?’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Why’d he do that?’

  ‘Maybe he hasn’t got a book about poisons,’ Peitho pointed out. ‘No reason to

  think he has, when you get right down to it.’

  I sighed. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Only one way to find out. Ask the bastard. Just go in

  there, look the bastard straight in the fucking eye, and ask him. He’ll tell

  you, I promise you.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘How’s your tooth?’

  ‘Much better, thanks.’

  Now, as a rule, going to bed and sleeping for a bit tended to dissi­pate the

  effects of the medicine; but we were both of us so utterly fumigated with it

  that it no longer seemed to wear off the way it had at first. Accordingly,

  Peitho did go to see Anaxarchus, and afterwards he came to see me.

  ‘He hasn’t got one,’ he told me.

  ‘Buggery,’ I replied. ‘So that’s that, then.’

  Peitho shook his head. ‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘He thinks he knows who might

  have one.’

  ‘Ali. Right. Who?’

  ‘Callisthenes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Because,’ Peitho went on, ‘Gallisthenes has got copies of all his precious

  uncle’s books, and it so happens, or at least so Anaxarchus reckons, that

  Aristotle’s done a poisons book.’

  ‘Really?’

  Peitho nodded. ‘Apparently. Well, it’s more your general book about plants, but

  in it he seems to remember there’s a lot of stuff about which plants are

  poisonous and what the poisons do to you. It’d be a start, anyhow.’

  ‘Better than a kick in the head,’ I agreed. ‘All right, then, you’d better go

  and see Gallisthenes.’

  He didn’t seem too happy about that. ‘Why me?’ he asked. ‘Why not you?’

  I had an answer ready for him. ‘Because,’ I said, ‘my brother Euxenus—’

  ‘The tutor.’

  ‘That’s him. My brother Euxenus is Aristotle’s deadly enemy.They hate each

  other’s guts. I’d have no chance.’

  ‘I see.’ Peitho thought for a moment. ‘Is there anybody in this man’s army your

  brother Euxenus hasn’t pissed off in some way?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ I replied. ‘It’s a big army, mind.’

  Callisthenes did have a copy of The Natural History of Plants, and when Peitho

  spun him some yarn about wanting to look up some wildflowers he’d recently

  gathered beside the road, he lent it to him gladly. That evening, after we’d

  pitched camp and I’d fed the bees, he brought it round to my tent and we went

  through it together.

  ‘You sure there’s stuff about poisons in here?’ I asked, after we’d been at it

  an hour. ‘Mostly it’s garbage. Can’t make head nor tail of it. Here, what do you

  make of this?’ I screwed up my eyes —it was a badly written copy, all

  abbreviations and poncified lettering, with notes scrawled in all the margins

  and over the tops of the lines. “‘And it would be thought that a man is acting

  more under compulsion and involuntarily when his object is to avoid violent pain

  than when it is to avoid mild pain, and in general more when his object is the

  avoidance of pain than when it is to gain enjoyment. For what rests with himself

  means what his nature is able to bear; what his nature is not able to bear and

  what is not a matter of his own natural appetition or calculation does not rest

  with himself.”’ I looked up and shrugged. ‘What the hell’s that got to do with

  the price of fish?’

  Peitho scowled thoughtfully, then leaned forward and craned his neck over so as

  to look at the page. ‘You clown,’ he said, ‘you’re reading the wrong book. The

  plants book’s further on in the scroll. This is something about ethics.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, fuck ethics.’ I rolled the scroll down a whole lot and

  tried again. ‘How about this?’ I said. ‘Here’s a bit all about lupins.’

  ‘Lupins aren’t poisonous, are they?’

  ‘No, but at least they’re plants, so we’re in the right book. Now then, let’s

  see what we can — Ali, now that’s more like it. The roots of the white

  hellebore, it says here, produce a poison so deadly that death is practically

  instantaneous—’

  ‘I thought we wanted a slow poison.’

  ‘Oh bugger, so
we do. Hey, this is turning out to be harder than I thought.’

  Peitho was starting to look thoughtful, like a duck trying to hatch out a stone.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.’

  ‘It’ll be in here somewhere, I’m sure. Just a case of reading it through

  carefully—’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I mean this whole killing Alexander thing. Come on, it’s

  a bit drastic, isn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Look, he’s got to go, we both agreed. He’s a bloody menace.’

  Peitho bit his lip. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘to judge by that performance when he

  rescued old Lysimachus, chances are he’ll go on some dumb adventure and get

  himself killed while we’re still trying to make sense of this goddamn book.

  Shouldn’t we just leave well alone and let the gods do it for us?’

  I looked him squarely in the eye. ‘The gods,’ I said, ‘help those who help

  themselves. So if it’s all the same to you—’

  ‘Actually,’ he interrupted, ‘you’re wrong there. They don’t. In fact, they come

  down on them like a ton of bloody bricks. Look at Daedalus.’

  ‘Fuck it, Peitho, it’s just an expression, doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Then if it doesn’t mean anything, why the hell say it?’

  I closed my eyes for a moment. ‘The point I’m trying to make is, we can’t just

  sit tight and wait for things to happen, we’ve got to get up off our bums and—’

  ‘Or what about Prometheus? Or Theseus? Or Hercules, even? Or Paris ; he surely

  helped himself, and look what happened to him.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ I put the book down. ‘I say we cut his throat while he’s

  asleep. What do you think?’

  ‘You know what I think.’

  To cut a long story short, we didn’t kill Alexander that day; nor the day after.

  And then we found ourselves at a place called Gaza, where there was another

  fortress — nowhere near as big or as grand as Tyre, but the governor, a man

  called Batis, was the Persian King’s good and faithful servant, and all the time

  we’d been fooling about atTyre, he’d been getting ready for us. He’d reinforced

  the mud-brick walls, hired a mob of Arab mercenaries, built up a stash of food

  and supplies that would last for well over a year; and when our engineers

  surveyed the position, they reported back that the hill on which the fortress