The Macedonian

by Nicholas Guild

  “If I were a great prince, I would never stray farther than the closest wineshop,” one of them said. “You wouldn’t catch me crawling over these mountains in winter.”

  There was a general murmur of agreement.

  “Yes, the man is wise who knows to stay home.”

  “Drunk on a whore’s belly.”

  Everyone laughed except Zolfi, who appeared not even to have heard.

  “What makes a prince want to come here, Philip?” the first man asked, making the question sound like a reproach.

  Philip smiled, even as fear turned his bowels to water.

  “I am still too young for whores,” he said.

  This made everyone laugh all over again.

  As soon as there was light enough to see by, Philip set off on the steep trail that led up to the spine of the mountain range. Zolfi followed silently, keeping fifteen or twenty paces behind. They had left their horses at the hut, for the path was narrow and the frost had loosened a treacherous amount of rock. The climb was arduous but without particular difficulty or danger, and they were both well rested and strong. They made such good time that when they reached the summit the sun was still only directly across the horizon.

  Philip had but to look about him to know that old Bardylis was probably right. Not five paces from where he stood the mountain broke off into a sheer drop. There were trails in the rock face, but they were slippery with ice at this time of year, and if the man climbing them put a foot wrong there would be nothing to break his fall. No one but a fool would try to bring an army up that side, so the only way in was through the pass, which was impregnable if defended by even a handful of men. Thus the Dardanians were safe inside their valley.

  He could feel the faint winter sun on his back. There was no wind, and a terrible stillness seemed to have descended on the world. In the distance the snow-laden peaks of mountains glittered in bright daylight while the valleys below were still buried under the shadow of night. It was like being at the very edge of existence. Only a little way in front of him the land simply fell away into an emptiness seemingly as vast as death itself.

  Yes, death was close. He could almost smell it. He felt it beckoning to him.

  He let himself be drawn a step or two closer to the edge—slowly, like a man in a trance. It was almost true. He felt his mind emptying, as if he were about to shed existence like a garment the weight of which had begun to oppress him. He seemed to stare directly ahead, captured by the obliterating grandeur. Yet something nagged at him. His eyes kept flitting down to the snow-covered ground.

  Then, between one heartbeat and the next, he was quick with life again. This moment, this instant, was all that mattered. There was no time to think—there was only now.

  Before he knew what he was about, Philip found he had thrown himself down. He had simply taken a dive at the ground, and was actually astonished to find himself with his face in the snow.

  Then he knew everything. With a sharp twist of his body, he rolled away from the precipice and almost immediately slammed into a pair of legs—he heard a little grunt of surprise as the man stumbled against him, and for some reason the sound filled him with a cold, pitiless fury.

  He pulled his left arm free and struck out with it so that his elbow caught Zolfi almost precisely behind the knees and made him start to topple over helplessly.

  But it wasn’t quite enough. Philip knew, without giving the thought a chance to form in his mind, that it wasn’t quite enough.

  He pitched over onto his back, twisted around, and kicked straight out with both feet, striking Zolfi just at the base of the spine.

  Zolfi made a sharp little cry and threw out his arms to try to catch himself, clawing at the snow like an animal, but he was too close to the edge. He just slid forward, helpless, and then plunged headfirst into oblivion.

  There was a high-pitched scream of terror that seemed to echo for a few seconds through that vast emptiness, even after it had stopped abruptly.

  Philip was glad he had not had to see the man’s face.

  At first, while the dread of it still gripped him, like claws that pierced his flesh, he could not bring himself to move. In his whole life he had never known such fear. He lay there, his legs wide apart and his arms thrown out to the sides, appearing to cling to the earth as if afraid that he too would tumble off into the void. The sky seemed to be spinning wildly over his head.

  At last, little by little, the fear began to drain away. Finally he was able to sit up and then, on his hands and knees, he crawled toward the edge. He had to lie down again on his belly before he could bring himself to look over.

  The corpse lay just above the floor of the pass. Philip thought he could see a smear of blood on a bare stone shelf two hundred or so cubits above that, about halfway down—Zolfi must have struck there first, and was probably dead long before his body came to rest.

  It was his shadow that had killed him. It had stretched before him on the snowy ground as he came rushing toward Philip to push him over the edge, and the sight of it was what Philip had been waiting for, without even realizing. On such a little thing did a man’s life turn, on forgetting all that it meant to have the light at one’s back.

  * * *

  The sun was just at its zenith when he returned to the stone hut. One of the guards was sitting outside the doorway, preoccupied with the contents of an iron cooking pot that hung from a tripod over a small fire—when the smell reached Philip’s nostrils it made his guts clench with nausea.

  Finally the guard looked up and, seeing Philip, frowned with perplexity.

  “You’re alone,” he said as if he thought that Philip might not have noticed. “Where is Zolfi?”

  “He had an accident.”

  “Is he dead, then?”

  “Yes.”

  The guard, who had a narrow, worried face and was thin enough that his legs gave the impression of being unnaturally long, considered this for a moment, then held up a bony finger to make a gesture describing the arc of a falling object.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded gravely, as if Philip had confessed to murder, and then let his hands fall to his thighs with a slap and stood up, having apparently lost interest in his meal.

  “Then we had better fetch his body before the wolves find it. I hope you know where he came down.”

  The impact had caved in Zolfi’s whole face so that nothing was left except a ragged, blood-soaked wound. The scars on his right arm were distinctive, but otherwise the broken, torn corpse they found wedged into an outcropping of rock could have been anyone. They wrapped him in a blanket the guard had brought along for the purpose, but the smell of blood made the horses skittish, and Philip had to blindfold the dead man’s mount before they could tie the body onto its back. This was no longer anything human, just a load of carrion.

  “I wouldn’t care to die like that,” the guard said as they cleaned their hands in the snow—carrying what was left of Zolfi down from the rocks had been a gruesome piece of work. “I don’t know what you two were thinking of, climbing around up there. Those mountain trails are treacherous if you weren’t born to them. I leave all that to the goat herders, and welcome. As for civilized men, anywhere you can’t go with a horse, you’re better off not going.”

  Philip was wiping his hands dry on his tunic. Only the scrupulous care he brought to the task betrayed his excitement.

  “I would think even a goatherd might prefer keeping to the flatlands.”

  “Around here the flatlands are for us. We chased the local people out generations ago, and they have to find their pasture where they can. But don’t waste sympathy on the likes of them. They almost never fall. They’re like animals, with all their sense in their legs. Hah, hah, hah!”

  The guard was too pleased with his own joke to notice that Philip wasn’t laughing. It was like the Dardanians, he thought—they held the peasants of these mountains in such subjection that they had at last forgotten even to be afraid of them. In his mind Phil
ip saw twenty or thirty men silently working their way up these trails …

  One had only to put swords in their hands—and teach them not to be afraid to use them.

  “You will have to spend another night with us,” the guard went on as he mounted his horse. “There’s too much of the day gone to make it back before sunset, and it’s bad luck to bring a corpse under the city gate at night. It’s too bad about Zolfi.”

  “Did he have a wife?” Philip asked, experiencing a sudden twinge of guilt.

  “No, no wife. But the Lord Pleuratos will be as displeased as any widow. Zolfi was his good right hand.”

  * * *

  The men on watch along the walls must have seen him coming: a rider alone, leading a horse with what was obviously a corpse tied across its back. Either that, or the officer in command at the pass had sent someone on ahead the night before, because Bardylis and half his court were waiting at the city gates as Philip approached.

  While the others stayed behind, Bardylis rode forward to meet him, just out of hearing.

  “What happened?” He frowned, and his gaze settled on Zolfi’s hand, which was sticking out of the blanket.

  “He slipped on the ice. Apparently he was the one you should have warned.”

  The king’s frown deepened, and then he nodded curtly.

  “That will do to tell the others—now what really happened?”

  “He tried to kill me.”

  “And you killed him instead.” Bardylis seemed genuinely impressed. “You have done well for yourself, Philip of Macedon, for Zolfi was no barnyard cock.”

  “I have done better than you can possibly imagine.”

  Bardylis started to laugh—a breathless, surprised little laugh—and then seemed to think better of it. For a moment it was almost possible to believe he had understood.

  “I make no inquiries,” he said, “for sometimes it is better not to see into the hearts of young men, but when you look like that, Philip, you make me glad that I am old and near death.”

  Without another word he turned his horse, and the two men rode back through the city gates together.

  * * *

  That night, Philip was tormented by dreams. He had slept peacefully enough in the garrison hut, where the air was heavy with the murmur of other men’s snoring, but now, covered in blood, his face nothing but a rim of glittering, splintered bone, Zolfi appeared at the foot of his bed, demanding to know how Philip had the effrontery to be alive.

  He awoke—or, rather, he opened his eyes, for the dream seemed still to be with him. In the doorway, surrounded by a flickering nimbus of light, hovered the dark outline of a human form.

  “Philip! Philip, are you asleep?”

  Relief flooded through him as he realized the voice was that of a child.

  Audata’s hand had been shading the lamp she carried. She raised it and revealed her face.

  “Great-Grandfather says you are not safe here tonight,” she said, once she was satisfied of having his attention. “Come with me.”

  She knelt beside his bed, as if he were the child whose fears she must comfort away. Her face was grave and oddly beautiful.

  “If there is danger, I am surprised the king involves you in it,” he answered, seeming to choose the least of the many things he might have said to her in that moment.

  Audata reached out and touched his hair.

  “I have nothing to fear from anyone who dwells in this house, Philip of Macedon.” She stood up abruptly. “Come—now.”

  He let her take his hand and lead him out into the corridor, where the only sound came from their naked feet against the stones.

  Philip could not overcome the sensation of having made some decision at the very core of his being, a decision about which he understood nothing except that it was not concerned with Bardylis’s fears for his safety. Indeed, if there were assassins waiting somewhere in the silent darkness, he hardly thought of them. He seemed aware of nothing except the strength of those delicate fingers as they curled around his.

  They had not very far to go. She guided him around a corner and then stopped in front of a door that was standing slightly open. She gestured that he should follow her inside, but Philip’s attention was on a slit of light along the floor some ten or twelve paces farther on.

  “That is Great-Grandfather’s room,” Audata murmured. “He does not sleep well and keeps a lamp burning by his bed all night. I think it is because he is so old.”

  Philip supposed it more likely to be because Bardylis was a king and knew better than to trust the darkness, but he said nothing.

  “Come.”

  It was a small room but perhaps not too small for a child—and she seemed to have it all to herself, which was unusual enough even for the great-granddaughter of a king. The light from her lamp was guttering out, but Philip thought he saw a doll lying on a shelf. Unaccountably he found the sight of it disturbing, as if he had forgotten to think of Audata as a child and found the reminder something of an embarrassment.

  She had a bearskin robe on her bed. They slipped beneath it, and within a few minutes he knew from her breathing that she was asleep. Once she turned and nestled her head against his arm. He stayed awake a long time, filled with a strange contentment from which he did not want to be parted.

  It was perhaps an hour before dawn when the door opened soundlessly and Bardylis stepped in.

  “You are awake?” he whispered. “Good. Come away, and we will have a little stroll before breakfast. Try not to wake her—it is well to leave young children to their rest.”

  He handed Philip a fur-lined cloak, although his own was of cloth and showed years of wear.

  “Put it on, for the morning is sharp.”

  Philip glanced back at the still figure of Audata, her face nearly covered by the bearskin. It caused him a twinge of regret to think she would wake up to find him gone.

  “Come, Prince of Macedon.” Bardylis had his hand on Philip’s elbow, as if ready to drag him from the room. There was a curious urgency in his voice.

  The old man closed the bedroom door behind them with something almost like stealth. Philip noticed that he carried his stick with him.

  As they began their accustomed walk to the city gate and back, Bardylis looked about him at the gray stones of his capital. There was a faint smile on his lips that suggested a mingling of pride and regret.

  “I became king of the Dardanians when I was seventeen,” he said as if that fact explained much. “Sixty years and more—there is hardly a soul living who can remember any king but me.

  “Men will grow bored with a king, as with a woman. It does not matter whether he is a good king or a villain, if he reigns too long, his subjects will look to his successor as if the change from one to another could remake the world. Thus, even as I live, Pleuratos accumulates followers, men whose loyalty is of a kind to make him king already in their hearts. I do not resent this—I even understand it, for I am old enough to be sometimes weary of power. For such reasons have I given Pleuratos more latitude than is perhaps wise.”

  “Why do you tell me this?” Philip asked. The question surprised him, for he had not meant to ask it, yet he really wanted to know.

  Bardylis looked up into his face, and the smile tightened a little. He did not seem surprised.

  “Perhaps because you have already guessed it. Or perhaps to prevent you from making the same mistake someday. A king should remain a king, and his successor’s reign should not begin before the gods ordain it. Do not try to cheat the future, Philip, but mind the years of your own life.”

  “I will never be a king, Great-Grandfather.”

  “No? Then little Audata will be vastly disappointed.”

  He laughed at this, as if at a children’s game.

  When they reached the city gate Philip saw his horse, bridled and waiting.

  “It is time for you to go back from whence you came,” Bardylis said in the manner of a host announcing dinner. “I cannot answer for your safety
here, my boy, and your life has become strangely precious to me. A rider was sent ahead not an hour ago, so your way through the pass will be clear. The satchel on your horse contains food and a little purse of Athenian drachmas, enough to see you to the end of your journey. I can give you no more than half a day’s grace and then surely men will be sent after you, so do not idle on your way.

  “And remember, when you are home and begin to feel yourself safe, that you have not outrun your dangers, that the beast who hungers after your life may stretch its reach as far as Dardania, but its den is in Macedon.”

  For a moment his old eyes seemed about to cloud with tears. He stood with his hands on his great-grandson’s shoulders, ready to embrace him, and then he caught sight of the first traces of the morning sun, pouring over the eastern mountains like blood. Suddenly he grinned.

  “I was thinking of Pleuratos—he will be so furious when he finds out.”

  8

  The mere thought of death will drive a man until his heart bursts, but a horse, which fears nothing in imagination, must be fed and watered and rested, or it will not go on. Thus Philip had traveled no more than three hundred some odd stadioi before darkness obliged him to stop.

  Even assuming that Bardylis had indeed managed to purchase him half a day’s start, he doubted that Pleuratos’s men were more than a few hours behind him. They would be able to ride their horses without mercy, and to change them for fresh mounts at any of the three or four Illyrian villages through which they would have passed, asking after the young foreigner who traveled alone on a black stallion. The border with Lynkos, where King Menelaos might be unwilling to watch his nephew murdered by strangers—even if they were Illyrians—was at least three days away. Tomorrow, perhaps, or certainly the following morning, his pursuers would catch up with him.

  Half an hour before sundown, Philip left the mountain trail he had been following and managed to find a cleft in the rock that offered some concealment. He would be safe enough there until morning. He tethered Alastor, wrapped himself in a blanket, and waited for night.

  By the time stars began to appear over the western horizon the cold was really quite terrible, but under the circumstances it would have been madness to build a fire. Philip remembered hearing once that as long as a man stays awake he can’t freeze to death, so he found himself a particularly rocky and uncomfortable patch of ground on which to keep his vigil. He entertained himself by trying to define the scope of the conspiracy against him.