they’ll fight you to the last drop of blood one minute and let you walk all over
them the next. As far as I could tell, they didn’t really seem to notice we were
there, like we were invisible or something. They did everything we told them to
do; but when we were talking to them they appeared to be listening to somebody
else we couldn’t even see.
Personally, I liked Egypt . I could fancy living there.
Alexander decided to found a city. The pretext was that a replacement was
needed for Tyre ; it had been the commercial centre of the whole Near East and
now that it was nothing but a pile of rubble, people hadn’t got anywhere to buy
and sell things. This wasn’t actually true; the market was in the new town,
which we hadn’t really touched. I think Alexander (who absolutely adored Egypt ,
for some reason) just wanted to found a city there. There was something
distinctly fishy about Alexander and founding cities. He founded cities every
bloody place he went, he left them behind him like a trail of broken wine-jars.
As is tolerably well known by now, Alexander had no sex-life whatsoever, and my
theory is that he got his fun doing to countries what normal people do to women,
cities being the tangible outcome. At least, that’s part of it; the other part,
brother dear, is that you left him to found the perfect city, so obviously
founding perfect cities is what really great men do. And to think; I could have
strangled you when we were both kids, and I never knew it was going to be
important.
The name of this city was to be Alexandria ; hardly surprising, since all the
cities he founded were called Alexandria . Anyway, for a long time he was
utterly obsessed with the project and wouldn’t tolerate anybody even mentioning
anything else (such as the war or the King of Persia; but that was all right,
because every time the Great King tried to rally his enormous army and come
after us, something went wrong; a general died or a province rebelled or plague
broke out or a river flooded or a supply-train was robbed by suddenly
materialising nomads or the omens were bad, so nothing ever got done.
Incompetence and rotten luck every step of the way; a one-legged dwarf could
probably have conquered Persia at that time).
The Egyptian priests advised Alexander to visit the holy shrine of Ammon.
Actually, not true; they told him he’d already visited the holy shrine of Ammon,
in a sense, and unless he hurried up and actually went there in person, with his
physical body, it was going to upset a lot of things and throw the whole balance
of cosmic forces out of kilter. So off he went, with a packed lunch and an
entourage of hundreds of soldiers and thousands of Egyptian priests (who claimed
they knew exactly what had happened when he went there, but politely changed the
subject when he asked them to tell him).
The shrine of Ammon is at a place called the Oasis of Siva, in the middle of the
unspeakably awful Libyan desert . Needless to say, they got lost; the Egyptian
priests knew the way all right, but when Alexander set off in the wrong
direction they didn’t say anything, assuming that since he’d been there before
he knew the way too. When they were all about ready to drop dead of heat and
thirst, apparently they happened to bump into two enormous serpents blessed
with the power of human speech, who told them to turn left at the next big sand
dune and follow their noses; whereupon the heavens opened, it poured with rain
for two whole days and they all got soaking wet. It was either talking serpents
or a couple of camel-drovers; accounts differ. You’re the historian, you choose.
Well, they found the place eventually, and in he went, and out he came again.
‘How’d it go?’ they asked.
‘I heard what I wanted,’ he said, and that was all they got out of him on the
long trudge back to Alexandria . As a justification for a long and hazardous
journey, it doesn’t amount to much; he could have done that just as easily if
he’d stayed home, where a substantial number of the officers on his general
staff devoted their lives to making sure he only heard things he’d be likely to
want to hear, What’s not in doubt, however, is that whatever it was he heard out
there in the desert had a significant effect on him. One school of thought
regards it as some kind of spiritual rebirth, while others hold that even if you
do have a magnificent head of long golden hair, if you insist on going several
days in the desert sun without a hat, you get what’s coming to you.
At first, the changes were subtle, and could easily have been due to something
else; he was worried about something, or preoccupied with profound matters of
state and strategy, or just pissed off and in a foul mood. He didn’t talk all
the time like he used to, there was less of the obvious delight he’d always
taken in being leader of the pack. Most of all, he started wanting to be alone
occasionally, which he’d never shown any sign of wanting before. People who’d
been close to him, or reckoned they were, went around muttering about the bad
effect Egypt was having on morale generally, and how it was time to move on and
find someone new to kill, rather than moping about boozing and enjoying
ourselves.
But for once, Alexander wasn’t the sole focus of attention, every hour of every
day. It was announced that a concert party was on its way from Athens to
entertain the troops, and for a day or so nobody could talk about anything else.
In retrospect there’s nothing surprising about that; we’re Athenians, grandsons
of Eupolis, we grew up with it, but for provincials (I’m being nice here,
calling them that) the thought of seeing genuine Athenian theatre was rather
more exciting than pyramids and crocodiles and the singing statue of Memnon, Son
of the Dawn. Indeed, people even started taking notice of me, what with the
family connection and all, and it was no use my saying I was completely out of
touch and I’d never been all that keen to start with, they automatically assumed
I was a theatre buff, drama critic and boyhood chum of every Athenian actor
they’d ever heard of. They made me recite everything I could remember, from
Grandfather’s stuff right back to the slabs of Aeschylus that Father made us
learn when we were kids, and when I’d run out and told them I couldn’t remember
any more they just got snotty and accused me of being stand-offish.
When the concert party finally arrived, I expected there’d be a riot. Instead of
the flower of the Attic stage, we’d been sent the trash, the dross, the
understudies’ understudies. You remember Telecritus, that doddering old ham we
saw a few times when we were kids? I’d assumed he’d died years ago, and the
performances he gave while he was there didn’t do much to convince me otherwise;
but the Macedonians loved him. They thought he was marvellous, even when he
forgot his lines and started making them up, or patching in bits from other
plays. Honestly, I thought it was a rather clever skit and was laughing quietly
to myself, when some big hairy joker sitting next to me told me to shut my face
or he’d push it o
ut my neck for me.
I’ll tell you who was in that company, though. I don’t suppose you’ll remember
him, but I knew him quite well at one stage —Sostratus, our neighbour Achias’
eldest boy.
‘Hello, Sostratus,’ I said, having walked up quietly behind him. ‘What’re you
doing here?’
He jumped about twice his own height into the air, then spun round. ‘Sorry,’ he
said. ‘Do I know you?’
‘Eudaemon,’ I replied. ‘Eutychides’ son. Our fathers shared a boundary in
Pallene, remember?’
‘Oh,’ he said, and his face fell like a bucket down a well-shaft. ‘You.’
I grinned. ‘Nice to see you too, Sostratus. How’s the nose these days?’
He scowled. ‘Still not right,’ he said.
‘After all these years,’ I replied, ‘fancy. That’s a shame. How’s things at
home?’
‘Awful,’ he replied. ‘That’s why I’m here. Anything to get out of the City for a
month or so.’
‘In what way awful?’ I asked.
He made a vague, all-encompassing gesture; far better than anything he’d done
on stage, where he acted with all the style and fluency of a ploughshare. ‘Every
way you can possibly think of,’ he said. ‘Harvests have been pathetic, prices
through the roof, goddamned Macedonians chucking their weight around, nothing in
the shops, everybody at each other’s throats in Assembly—’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Good to see some things never change. So you’re an actor now,
are you? Since when?’
He sighed. ‘Since I gave Orestes my share of the farm. No point both of us
starving to death, after all.’
‘I see,’ I replied. ‘And how is your brother? Did he ever marry that tart from
over the Mesogaia he was so crazy about? What was her name, now? Callipyge,
something like that.’
Sostratus looked at me. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I did.’
‘Oh. And how’s she keeping?’
‘She died last year.’
‘Ah. That’s too bad.’
‘Not really,’ Sostratus said, with another sigh. ‘She was an evil bitch.’ He
studied me for a moment down the full length of his nose. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what’s
it like, working for the Macedonians?’
‘Not so bad,’ I replied. ‘It’s a living.’
‘You were probably wise to clear out when you did,’ Sostratus said. ‘Things have
been getting steadily worse all the time. Oh, by the way.’
‘Yes?’
‘You remember Megasthenes? He was in our gang when we were boys.’
I smiled. ‘Of course I remember him. Never been anybody who could imitate a dog
being sick like Megasthenes could. How is the old son of a—?’
‘He’s dead too,’ Sostratus said. ‘Got stabbed to death by robbers on the way
home from the City. In broad daylight, too.’
You’ve no idea how much meeting Sostratus cheered me up. I’ve always found other
people’s bad news has that effect on me; you listen to a catalogue of woes and
then think of your own troubles, and you come away all happy and grateful. What
really bucked me up, though, was the thought that if I’d stayed in Athens and
taken my rightful share of the family property, I could well have ended up just
as miserable as Sostratus. In fact, he made me feel so good about myself that I
decided to do something for him.
‘What’re these?’ he asked, as I pressed the gift into his hands.
‘Just dried leaves,’ I told him. ‘You chuck them on the fire and they make the
room smell nice.’
‘Oh.’
‘All the way from Scythia ,’ I pointed out.
‘Oh. Are they valuable?’
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Depends,’ I said. ‘If you mean valuable as in selling
them for money, probably not. On the other hand, how can you put a price on
happiness and a general sense of well-being?’
He looked at the leaves for a moment as if he expected them to try to steal the
money out of his mouth. ‘I could do with something like that, actually,’ he
said. ‘That bastard Coenus has started a tannery right across the street from
our house, and you wouldn’t believe the stench—’
‘Try the leaves,’ I said. ‘Just the job.’
He thought a little longer, then said, ‘Thank you.’ I think he was almost as
surprised as I was to hear the words come out of his mouth. ‘Well then, this
trip won’t be a complete dead loss, then. Almost,’ he added, ‘but not quite.’
I frowned. ‘Aren’t they paying you, then?’ I asked.
‘Oh sure. Not much, but something. Trouble is, I spent most of what I’ve been
paid already on what I thought were genuine bona fide goods, and it turns out
they’re worthless.’ He grinned wretchedly. ‘Just my luck,’ he added.
‘Sounds like it,’ I said. ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, I was in the market at Ephesus , we stopped there a day or so on our way
here, and I saw this stall selling jars of honey. Dirt cheap; of course, if I’d
had the sense I’d been born with I’d have suspected something was wrong then and
there. Anyhow, I bought the stuff, twelve jars of it, and stowed it under my
bench back on the ship. Turned out later — and of course I only found this out
after we’d set sail, when it was too late to do anything about it — this honey
was made by bees who fed off this special sort of shrub you only get in that
region; big bushy job with glossy leaves, purple flower in late spring. Can’t
remember the name offhand. Anyhow, the point is, honey made with pollen from
that stuff’s deadly poison. Eat so much as a finger’s wipe of it and you’re
dead, just like that. Talk about a narrow escape; I could have wiped out half of
Attica with that lot. Although,’ he added, ‘the way things are there right now,
maybe I’d have been doing them a favour, at that.’
I waited for a moment before saying anything. ‘This honey,’ I said. ‘Where is it
now?’
‘Still on the ship,’ he replied. ‘When I’ve got five minutes I’ll dump it into
the sea and wash out the jars. Might get a few obols for them, you never know.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’ll take them off your hands for you.’
‘Why?’
‘Sorry?’
He scowled at me. ‘What do you want with twelve jars of deadly poison?’
Well, he had me there. ‘I’ll give you what you paid for them,’ I said.
‘Answer the question, dammit. What do you—’
‘Mice,’ I said. ‘And wasps. They can be a real pest, out here in the desert.’
‘I don’t know,’ he muttered, looking away. ‘What if someone ate some by mistake
and died? Wouldn’t people say it was my fault?’
‘Doubt it,’ I replied. ‘And anyway, I’ll take full responsibility. But nobody’s
going to die, I promise you. Not any more.’
‘What do you mean “any more”?’
‘Do you want to get rid of the stuff or don’t you?’
‘Oh, all right. But you’ll promise me you won’t—’
‘I promise.’
Well, we hauled the stuff back on a cart. Then I gave Sostratus the slip and
went to look for Peitho.
‘Poisoned honey?’ he said. ‘That’s right.’
He bit his lip
thoughtfully. ‘How do you know it works?’ he said.
I frowned. ‘Well, it’s not as if he was trying to sell it to me. Why’d he say it
was deadly poison if it wasn’t?’
‘Maybe he was just exaggerating,’ Peitho said. ‘Maybe it just makes you ill,
gives you the runs or something.’
I considered this for a moment. ‘So what do you suggest?’ I said. ‘You want to
test it on somebody first, is that it?’
He looked at me all strange. ‘No, of course not. Well, not on somebody.
Something.’
I couldn’t see any harm in that. ‘Such as?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. It’d have to be something big,’ he went on. ‘If we use a dog or a
sheep, that wouldn’t prove anything.’
I had a brainwave. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘What about a camel?’
‘That’d do,’ he replied. ‘Where are we going to get a camel from?’
I clicked my tongue impatiently. ‘This is Egypt ,’ I said. ‘Everywhere you
look, there’s bloody camels.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘You find us a camel.’
So I did. I marched straight down to the livestock pens, grabbed the smallest
and most hapless-looking Egyptian clerk I could find and started yelling at him,
hoping he wasn’t one of those annoying cosmopolitan Egyptians who can speak
Greek. Fortunately he wasn’t, so I was able to terrify him into letting me book
out a camel without actually stealing it. Works every time, that trick; if
you’re annoyed and you outrank them and they can’t understand a word you’re
saying, all they really want to do is get out of your way. Understandably, of
course; the Macedonian reputation for unmitigated bastardry is entirely
merited.
The camel hit the deck like a windfall apple off a tree; I’ll swear its stupid,
ugly mouth was still churning away when it went splat. Don’t
think I’ve ever seen anything taken dead that quickly since my first campaign in
Illyria , when the man next to me in the line had his head taken off by a
catapult bolt.
‘It works, then,’ Peitho said.
‘Looks like it,’ I replied.
He prodded the camel’s nose with his foot. ‘What are we going to do with this?’
he asked.
I hadn’t really given the matter any thought. Under normal circumstances, I’d
simply have called over the nearest couple of squaddies and told them to clear
Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt Page 59
