by Judith Tarr
o0o
Alexander’s company rode out of Rhakotis in a prancing, jingling procession, with the king at their head in his bright armor. But once they had left the town behind, they dismounted and freed the horses from their bits and sent all but a few of the beasts back to Rhakotis, packed away their gauds and put on marching gear and marched.
The Companions were inured to it: they shouldered their packs, pulled their hats down over their eyes, and fell into a long, swinging stride that made nothing of sand or stones. The handful of horses kept pace in a herd, some on leads, most sensible enough to follow their fellows. The servants held their own ranks just ahead of the rear guard, none loaded down more than the Companions themselves, carrying the pots and kettles, the extra foodstuffs, and the tents and poles.
They went light and they went fast. Meriamon felt the eyes on her—and not only Niko’s. They were waiting for her to give up, she was sure, and mount Phoenix and ride.
The mare would not have minded; she was desert-bred and she did not have to suffer the war-bridle. But Meriamon had her pride. She had softened somewhat in Memphis; still, she was no weakling. She could keep pace.
They followed the coast for a long while, keeping to the road that led to a town called Paraetonium, and thence to the village of Apis. The green and wet of the Delta sank away behind them; the Red Land claimed them. There was water in plenty, and provender: ships from Alexander’s fleet paced them, putting in in the evenings as they had on the road from Tyre.
It was not ill marching. The sea cooled them with its breezes, though it brought no rain. The road was broad and smooth, a traders’ road, with people on it now and then. Those looked with curiosity on the armed company, and told tales of raiders inland. “You’ll want your spears then,” they said, “and camels if you can get them—horses and mules aren’t much good for the deep desert.”
“Even horses that are desert-bred?” Alexander wanted to know.
“Horses can’t carry as much,” said the traveler, himself on a camel and speaking barbarous Greek, “or go as long. There will be camels in Paraetonium. If you have sense you’ll buy them.”
“We might, at that,” Hephaistion said. He eyed the man’s mount, somewhat dubiously to be sure, but with interest enough. “Would this one be for sale, by any chance?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “She is a racing camel of a line of champions.”
“So are they all,” said Hephaistion sweetly. “We’ll buy our camels in Paraetonium, then. I don’t suppose you have cousins with camels to sell?”
“My uncle bred this beauty,” the man said. “Her sisters are almost as good as she. Her mother is better. But you won’t be wanting racing camels; you’ll be wanting good beasts of burden. Ask for the house of the rock. Anyone can tell you where that is.”
“The house of the rock,” said Alexander. “We’ll remember.”
The traveler went on his way, loping eastward. He vanished amazingly quickly. They continued on the westward road.
Meriamon set one foot in front of the other. And then again. And again. She had found the rhythm of it. She could leave her body to its walking and let her mind and her souls wander as they would, seeking out the powers in earth and air. Often at first her shadow left her to hunt, but as the days stretched, it clung closer.
This no longer was Khemet, though the power of the Nile was a memory in the earth, a quiver in the air. Stronger by far was the Great Green, the sea that surged and breathed beside them. Poseidon, the Hellenes called it, Poseidon Earthshaker, lord of horses.
It was no enemy to Alexander. It suffered his ships to ride on it, and murmured beside his camp in the nights, and held back the fierce heat of the desert.
That at night was no earthly heat: on the contrary, the nights could be cold, even bitter. But to Meriamon’s senses the Red Land was a flame in the dark. Old things were rising, strong things, enemies for long and long of the Black Land and the people who dwelt in it: devourers of flesh, drinkers of blood, eaters of souls.
No Parsa magic, this, feeble matter of fire and dogma that that was. This was sunk deep in the earth, woven with it, old and strong and black. The gods of the Two Lands had overcome it long ago. Now a king out of the Two Lands trespassed in its domain, and would lay claim to the oracle in the heart of it.
While they kept to the sea it had no power to do more than trouble their dreams. When they turned inland, then it would rise up against them.
Alexander had his guardsman as Meriamon had hers. Neither he nor she was about to turn back. Meriamon doubted that they could. This road was ordained for them. Each step had the inevitability of a prophecy.
That too was dangerous. It lulled the mind; it weakened the wits. She made herself ride, sometimes, and so separate herself from the earth. In camp she kept to the light and the company of men, and when she slept, she did not sleep alone. Everyone knew who kept her company—as far as she could see, the greatest scandal was that it had not happened sooner.
She found herself missing Thaïs, even with Niko to share her tent. The hetaira would have come, but Ptolemy would not let her. Even that would hardly have stopped her, if Meriamon had not bidden her remember the baby. “This is no road for an unborn child,” Meriamon had said.
Thaïs had not been happy at all, but in the end she yielded. Ptolemy had given her a host of errands to run and matters to see to, which she took on happily enough, once she had resigned herself to staying behind.
She had the Persian tent still, pitched in a field outside of Rhakotis. Meriamon had a smaller one for the march, and Phylinna to look after it.
Phylinna was a gift. She had given herself, nor would she be refused. For all her citified elegance, she had proved herself an able trooper. She marched without complaining, she kept up handily, and still she managed to look as if she had just come in from a morning in the agora.
She approved of Niko, though she would never be so crass as to admit it. She also approved of Arrhidaios, who spent most of his evenings near Meriamon, and most of the marches beside or behind her. Addled he might be, but he was large and he was strong, and he doted on Meriamon.
“You’re well guarded,” Phylinna said, “and thank the gods for it. This is no journey for a woman.”
“So?” Meriamon asked. “Then why did you make it?”
“Because you insist on doing it, and someone should be here to look after you.”
Meriamon could hardly argue with logic. They were a wall, all of them, and a shield, as the whole company was for Alexander.
She said so to Niko, the night before they came to Paraetonium, while the wind cluttered and flapped in the tentwall, and Phylinna snored on her mat. It had been disconcerting at first, having the servant next to them, and not even a blanket between for decency; but the woman could hardly sleep outside in the chill.
Niko was in comfort. He ignored her. Meriamon was learning to.
“I’m glad we’re good for something,” he said now. They were nested in the bed, she in the warm middle, he curved around her. He ran his hand over her breast and belly and let it come to rest between her thighs.
She laid her own over it. “I know it’s not your custom to share a bed all night long. You’re guarding me. Losing sleep for it, too.”
“Less than I was losing in my bed alone, wishing I were here,” he said.
She smiled, though he could not see it. “Did you really?”
“You doubt it?”
“I thought Macedonians were made of sterner stuff than that.”
“We are. Except when it comes to wicked-tongued Egyptian witches.”
“Wicked, am I?”
“Terribly.”
She turned in his arms. He was ready for her. She grinned at him. “Then let’s be wicked, and put the night to flight.”
They did their best to do just that. Her shadow came back in the middle of it, and laughed soundlessly at the spectacle they made. Niko laughed back. Bold child. If he did not learn prudence.
..
In a little while she stopped worrying. A little longer, and she stopped thinking at all.
o0o
There were indeed camels in Paraetonium. Every camel trader in that part of the world must have had word that a fool with an army needed transport to Siwah. The town reeked of camels. The air was full of their roaring and their flatulence. The herds had stripped every bit of green from the town, and given a day or two longer would strip it from every town within a day’s march.
“When they don’t have anything to eat,” the traveler’s uncle explained, “they don’t eat, or drink either. When there’s food and water to be had, they make up for lost time.”
Alexander’s face was expressionless. Meriamon suspected that he was trying not to laugh. The house of the rock had turned out to be not quite impossible to find, and its tenant to be a reasonably honest man, as camel dealers went. He was no more disposed to sell Alexander his fine racing beauties than his nephew had been, but he had lesser beasts enough. One of which was doing its best to take Seleukos’ head off.
“Bulls,” said the dealer. “Not the best choice for the use you’re going to put them to. You’ll take she-camels. They’re gentler, and you get milk from the ones in calf. You’ll be glad of that if your water runs out.”
“It won’t,” Alexander said. “Siwah is five days’ march from Apis, no? We’ll take water in plenty, if we have camels to carry it.”
“Five days with good luck and fair weather,” said the dealer, “and supposing you don’t meet raiders. Not that they’ll bother you, I don’t think, unless the young ones have a mind for a little sport.”
“Five days,” said Alexander. “There are three hundred of us, with servants, and a score of horses.”
The dealer frowned. “Horses? Hadn’t you better leave them here? I can see that they’re well taken care of, and at a fair price, too.”
“I think not,” said Alexander with perfect courtesy.
The man opened his mouth. Alexander smiled. He shut it again. He had just discovered, thought Meriamon, that Alexander was Alexander.
He blinked, shrugged. “You’ll do what you’ll do. Now, about those camels...”
o0o
They had their camels, and drovers for them, and saddles, and grain in addition to what the ships brought in, and waterskins now lightly filled. They would see to those more properly in Apis.
Alexander was not displeased with the price he paid for the whole. Nor, much more to the point, was Hephaistion, who did the paying. He was quartermaster here as he had been on the road from Tyre, and he was good at it. He had everything in order and the price haggled down almost within the limits of reason, and the whole caravan on the march by sunup.
They looked like a proper caravan now, men in the fore, camels behind except for the rear guard, and horses in the center, away from the camels. Phoenix did not mind them; she had been foaled among them. The Macedonian horses loathed everything about the great stinking beasts.
Boukephalas would have entered into battle with one of them, had not Alexander hauled him off. He was still prancing on his lead, throwing up his head and snorting in disgust.
“I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me,” Alexander said.
Meriamon slanted a glance at him. He looked like any other man in the company in hat and chiton, cloak and sandals, and a short spear for a walking stick. He carried his own pack though the pages had most of his gear, and swung out as cheerfully as the lowliest trooper. If he sensed what waited in the desert, he showed no sign of it.
“He’d forgive you less,” she said, “if you left him behind.”
“I know,” said Alexander. Boukephalas thrust his nose into the king’s shoulder; he sighed, but he laughed. “I never did have much luck with traveling light.”
“I call this light enough,” she said, “for an army.”
“This is the lap of luxury,” said Alexander. “Light is a knife in your belt and air in your wallet, and one cloak for two of you. Light is hunting down your supper with the knife, and sharing the cloak, and knowing yourself for a rich man.”
“Do you wish it could be that simple?” she asked him.
He did not answer at once. They measured a dozen strides of the road. Then two dozen. Halfway through the third, he said, “Sometimes. This is close, when you come down to it. Even with camels.”
She smiled. He grinned back. “It’s going to get interesting, isn’t it?” he said.
He knew. Better than she, maybe. And he was always one to laugh at fear.
He did not say that she could go back and be safe. For that, more than anything else he had done or not done, she knew that she loved him. Not as she loved Nikolaos, no; of course not. But as a woman could love the man who was her king.
Twenty-Nine
From Apis that was a fleck of green in the Red Land, a huddle of houses against the Great Green, the road bent south and turned its back on the sea. This was the pilgrims’ road to Siwah, a thread strung between the sea and the oracle. It made its way through a land both bleak and unforgiving, red sand and barren rock and the bitter vault of the sky. No rain fell here. No river ran. No Black Land sprouted green to gentle the earth.
The power in this place was alien and enemy. It knew Meriamon for what she was. And more than her, it knew Alexander.
Set was a god, as often ally as enemy. Typhon was far away in windy Hellas. This was Enemy pure, earth that would not be conquered, sky that would not be ruled, even by gods. Khemet’s power had driven it back beyond the mountains of the sunset, and walled itself against it with the tombs of its kings. But here it was whole and it was strong, and it had Alexander’s army in its hand.
On the first day it did nothing. The sky was clear of aught but birds: the desert falcon, the vulture that was holy in Khemet. The way stretched before them. Often there was nothing to mark it among the sand and the stones, but they had taken guides in Apis, men who swore by their names that they knew the way to Siwah.
Alexander would have had them swear on images of their gods, but Meriamon stopped him. “Their names will be enough,” she said. He found that very odd, but he did not quarrel with her.
Trust, she thought. He trusted her to know what men in this land would do. She trusted the land not at all. It was quiescent. Biding its time.
The second day passed. The birds wheeled. Alexander sent scouts to see what interested the vultures. A lion’s kill: a gazelle scoured to bones, and jackals feeding on it.
Aristandros saw no omen in that. Meriamon wondered if she was a fool for thinking it a message.
That night they made a waterless camp. There was an oasis, the guides promised, within the next day’s march. The water in the skins was sweet enough, if redolent of leather. They had provisions in plenty, and the last of the fodder for the horses and the camels. They were comfortable, as travelers in the desert went.
Meriamon sat on the camp’s edge and watched the sun go down. The sounds of the camp went on peacefully in back of her: men talking, horses snorting, camels chewing their cuds. The guides had shown them how to build fires out of camel dung, hardly a necessity now as the day’s heat radiated out of the sand, but later they would be glad of it.
She felt rather than saw Niko squat on his heels beside her. Sekhmet walked from his shoulder to Meriamon’s. Meriamon reached up to smooth the cat’s fur, and started. “Sparks,” she said.
“Air’s dry,” said Niko.
“It’s always dry in the—” She stopped. He was grinning. She had no laughter in her.
There was a wind blowing. Not much of one, but persistent. It picked up a handful of sand and cast it across the top of a rock, and rested; then amused itself in sculpting a dune. It blew from the left hand. South.
The horizon was the color of blood. The zenith was the color of lapis, deep pure blue. She turned her eyes southward.
Blood-red, blood-crimson. Sparks leaped in it. Flickers of lightning.
She drew herself up. Her tr
ousers were full of sand. She shook them out, taking great care. Not that it would matter. But she preferred to be clean while she had the choice.
The guides were already with the king. “You’re sure?” Alexander asked them as Meriamon came up.
The oldest of them did his best not to look offended. “We know the signs, lord king. There will be storms within a day, maybe two. That is the khamsin blowing, the dry wind.”
“It blows out of Siwah,” Alexander said, “and to Siwah I will go. Can we make the oasis if we march through the night?”
“Night is not safe,” the man said, “lord king.”
“Is day any safer?”
The man rubbed at his beard. “Demons walk the night, lord king.”
“The dry wind walks the day, if what you say is true. Should I fear a demon that may growl at me, over a sandstorm that can scour the flesh from my bones?”
“You should not speak lightly of these things,” said the guide. “Lord king.”
Alexander’s blood was up, but his mind was cool enough. He scanned the camp with a swift eye; met Meriamon’s stare. “Well?” he asked her.
“I don’t like the look of the sky,” she said. “If we had water enough I’d say stay, and wait it out.”
“But we don’t,” said Hephaistion. “We have enough for one more round for the men. Barely enough for the horses. Precious little for the camels, even if the men and the horses go thirsty. Camels,” he said, “need a great deal of water, when they need it.”
“They can go longer than you think,” the guide said.
“Horses can’t,” said Hephaistion. “Men shouldn’t. If this storm is bad and we’re held up, we won’t be in good case.”
Alexander paced along the line of them, turned sharply. “We’ll rest half the night. After that, we march.”
o0o
The wind died down near middle night. Meriamon did not ease for that. Alexander, unfortunately, did.
By the time the trumpet sounded the Wake and Arm, it was nearly dawn. They had drunk their ration of water and eaten their bit of bread, struck camp and turned their faces toward the southward road, when the sky began to lighten in the east.
