The Macedonian

by Nicholas Guild

  “I had expected to have this conversation with the king in Aiane,” he said, smiling with pleasure in spite of himself. “And how is it that you know of my mission when he did not?”

  “My brother has no wife so I run his house, as I have since our mother died. The chamberlains tell me everything.”

  “And they did not tell him?”

  “He would not listen.”

  She said this without emphasis, as if presenting a neutral fact. She wanted him to understand, but she did not wish to criticize her brother. It was an interesting balance and offered an insight into the struggle between loyalty and prudence, which probably consumed much of her life.

  “Why would he not listen?” Philip asked, less for the answer than for the pleasure of hearing her speak it.

  “You came late, and my brother does not like to be troubled with business when he is with his friends.”

  “So the chamberlains told you, in hopes that you would tell him.”

  “Yes. And I would have, in the morning. Women are not permitted at the king’s banquet. In the morning you will find him—different.”

  “And will you stand beside his chair, whispering into his ear what he should say?”

  Philip smiled with mischief and the king’s sister dropped her eyes, which was a great pity since he took such pleasure in looking into them.

  “My brother will receive you alone,” she replied, making it sound like the answer to a reproach.

  Yet she would speak to him in the morning, Philip thought. And perhaps, since she knew his mind, what he heard from her might predispose him to something like reason. Thus it might be useful for her to know more.

  Besides, he was enjoying the conversation.

  “Then I will speak to him in a way I would not in front of his sister.” He allowed his smile to fade into the merest ghost of itself. “I will tell him that he risks the Lord Perdikkas’s wrath, for he has raided villages well beyond his own borders, burning and carrying away plunder and leaving many dead.”

  “The king of Elimeia is not a bandit!” she said with a heat that one suspected was not usual with her.

  “Lady, I have seen the charred huts and the graves of the dead—with these eyes have seen them, not two days’ ride from this tranquil garden. If your brother is not a bandit, then his soldiers do evil behind his back, knowing it will be he and not they who will be called to account for the innocent blood they have shed. Is he so heedless, Lady? Is he king here or only master of the revels? Which would pain you less, to believe he is a bandit or a fool?”

  Once more she dropped her gaze, since there was no possible answer. She had already turned to go when he called her back.

  “Lady…”

  “Yes, My Lord?”

  To see her face in that instant was to feel the most tender pity, for she seemed to raise it only to receive another blow.

  “Pray, Lady, what is your name?”

  “My name?” There was genuine surprise in her voice, as if she could not imagine why he would wish to know it. “My name is Phila, My Lord.”

  This time, when she disappeared soundlessly into the shadows, he made no effort to detain her, for all that the night seemed rendered darker by her absence.

  * * *

  Phila was mistaken. Late the next morning, when Philip was at last shown into the king’s presence, he was not alone.

  Derdas was in his stables and, while the grooms prepared for another day of hunting, he and the same three companions who had shared his table at dinner stood about making a breakfast of the bread, goat cheese, and wine that had been set out for them on a small table near the door. He was sober enough now—no man with sufficient wit to find his beard will mount a hunting horse drunk—but his eyes were just as barren of intelligence as they had been the night before. He greeted Philip almost as an old comrade.

  “My Lord, come join us. Have they fed you yet?”

  “Thank you, but, yes, I have eaten,” Philip answered, looking about him with a certain distaste. Normally he would have felt himself insulted to be received by a foreign king in a room that smelled of horse dung and hay, but he had the sense that Derdas simply didn’t know any better.

  “Then come hunting with us—the boar in the forests a few hours’ north of here are as big as plow oxen!”

  “And if we don’t find any boar,” one of the others broke in—last night his name had been Dipsaleos, so presumably it still was—“the king knows a woodcutter’s hut up there with five daughters in it. Imagine. Five daughters! Enough for everybody!”

  “My Lord, pray spare me a word in private,” Philip said after the gleeful laughter had died away a little. “I have made the journey here to treat of matters that should be more important to you than hunting.”

  “Oh—I trust my friends,” the king answered, throwing his arm over one of them. “Speak, My Lord Prince, for you have my undivided attention.”

  There was a moment of silence, punctuated by one quickly suppressed giggle of Dipsaleos’s, a sound that made one think of a donkey braying into a pillow.

  “My Lord…” Philip took a moment to let his anger mellow into something like contempt. “My Lord, your soldiers have been conducting raids across the border. King Perdikkas has a decent regard for the lives and safety of his people and he requires that you—”

  “Requires?” interrupted the man whose shoulder at that moment bore the weight of his sovereign’s arm. “Who dares to require anything of Derdas, lord of the Elimoitai? In Pella it may be you are allowed to use such language to a king, but here your words are merely so much…”

  He was in the midst of a little dismissive wave when Philip caught him by the wrist, squeezing hard enough that the king’s friend had to clench his teeth to keep from crying out.

  “Dares? Who dares?” Philip released the man with a disdainful push, which made him stumble and fall back onto a pile of horse blankets. “Perdikkas his king dares. You may have heard of him. He is the Perdikkas who is lord of all Macedon and whose grandfather’s grandfather set the first Derdas on his throne—that Perdikkas. Or have the Elimoitai somehow forgotten that they are Macedonians?”

  It was an ugly moment. Dipsaleos actually had his hand on his sword hilt. There was no knowing how it might have ended had not Derdas, whose puzzled expression suggested that he hadn’t the slightest idea what everyone was shouting about, suddenly begun to laugh.

  “Serves you right, Antinous!” he shouted as if he had just that instant seen the joke. “My sister warned me we should treat the Lord Philip with respect. Hah, hah, hah!”

  And then, as if dismissing the rest of them from existence, he picked up a piece of bread, dipped it in a cup of wine, and ate it, chewing the whole damp wad as thoughtfully as a cow does her cud.

  “But he has a point, you know,” he said, looking at Philip. “Pella is far away and the Macedonians have many kings—Perdikkas is only one of them. Besides, I have heard nothing of any raids.”

  Derdas was not sufficiently intelligent to have mastered the art of concealing his thoughts, and Philip had only to look at his face to know he wasn’t telling the truth.

  “Perhaps the local barons were simply reclaiming stolen property,” Antinous said, with a thin smile of malice. “Everyone knows that peasants are always thieving.”

  “Perhaps that’s it.” Derdas’s face lit up, as if with inspiration. “Perhaps, instead of making accusations against his fellow kings, he should ask a few pointed questions in the villages along his side of the border.”

  That seemed to resolve every difficulty. It was wonderful. Philip was by now perfectly aware that he was wasting his time—these boors were simply mocking him—but he felt an obligation to try at least once more.

  “My Lord, no ruler can either know or control everything that happens in his realm,” he began as he tried to cleanse his mind of anger. “King Perdikkas is aware of this and is prepared to overlook the past—provided that he receives an undertaking from you that these
raids will cease. Write the king a letter pledging that you will hereafter respect the border and will see to it that your nobles do the same, then everything can be as it was. I leave for Pella in the morning. Let me carry your words with me when I go.”

  Philip bowed. He would withdraw now, without giving the fool a chance to refuse. Let him think on the matter. Perhaps his sister had some influence—let her have time to use it.

  “I shall await your call, My Lord.”

  Yet the call never came. Food was brought to his room that night and he was told that the king and his companions were celebrating the anniversary of some famous battle and thus the banquet was closed to foreigners. The next morning, he attempted to wait upon Derdas in his private apartments but was told that the king was indisposed and would see no one. By midmorning Philip had had enough. He went to the stable to reclaim his horse and left the city.

  This time there were no sentries to watch him. The guard at the main gate did not even salute as he rode past—they knew now why he had come and probably knew that he had failed in his mission, so he was no longer of any interest to them. By the time he was four hours from Aiane he was quite sure that no one was following him.

  He stopped for the night in an Elimiote herding settlement near the border, and the villagers too must have sensed that he was not being watched, for his reception was very different from what it had been two days before. The headman invited him to sleep in his own hut and, after Philip had bought a pair of sheep with which to feast the whole village, they celebrated his arrival with beer and honey cakes.

  Philip and the headman got a little drunk together. The headman’s wife had been dead for five years and his children were all grown, so he was glad of the company. And the beer had made him careless, or perhaps he had just decided that his guest was someone to be trusted. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t very long before Philip found the man looking sidewise at him through narrowed, speculative eyes.

  “You have been to the great city?” the headman asked. When Philip nodded the headman nodded too, as if the proposition were self-evident. “And did you go there to see the king?”

  All at once Philip had the sense that he might be about to hear something of use. The man only needed a little encouragement. So he nodded again.

  “Yes.” He sighed. “I have been to see the king—for all the good it did me.”

  “Did you go to ask a favor?” Why else, after all, would a foreigner come all this way?

  “I went at the request of the great king in Pella. King Derdas has been raiding villages across the mountains, and I was sent to persuade him to stop. I did not succeed.”

  “Will there be war, then?”

  He asked more out of curiosity than anything else, for wars were not fought by shepherds. Possibly, if a battle were to be fought nearby, the men of this village might walk an hour out of their way to sit on the rocks at a safe distance and watch. They might bring their lunch and eat it while the battle raged. Then, when everything was over, they might rob the corpses of the fallen. Otherwise, war was not something they would feel much concerned them.

  “I don’t know,” Philip answered.

  The headman seemed to turn this over in his mind for a while, and then he took another long pull on his beer jug.

  “Well, if there is to be war,” he began, wiping the foam from his beard with the back of his hand, “I hope you lowlanders fight like you mean it. We need a new king.”

  “You don’t like this one?”

  The headman didn’t answer for a moment, as if he knew he was on dangerous ground. “The father was good enough, but the son…” He shook his head. “Sometimes the nobles raid our villages too. A king should know how to be strong—otherwise everyone who owns a horse and a sword just does what he likes.”

  * * *

  During the next two days, while he was on the road back to Pella, Philip was aware that, almost of its own accord, an idea was growing in his mind. Perhaps it was less an idea than a conviction, but he knew that he had reached a great turning point in his life.

  He explained it all to Perdikkas before he had been an hour inside the city gates. Without preamble, he simply blurted it out. “You must send an army into Elimeia and topple Derdas.”

  “Then I take it your diplomatic mission was not a success,” Perdikkas replied. He had fallen into the habit of taking a short nap before dinner, and Philip had awakened him. He was not cross, because he had been dreaming about his mother.

  “No, it was not a success. The man is a fool who thinks life is a hunting party followed by a feast. His nobles are a leaderless mob and the common people wish him in his grave. We can topple him—it can be done.”

  “Derdas can field an army of four thousand men. We would need at least six thousand to be sure of success and I cannot spare anything like that number from the northern garrisons without the Thracians and the Illyrians falling upon us like wolves.”

  “Then raise a new army.”

  “There is no money. I cannot afford to raise a new army.”

  “You cannot afford not to. If you do not show your strength and make an example of Derdas, soon all our borders will be under pressure. If that happens, Macedon will crumble into pieces like stale bread.”

  Perdikkas did not answer at once. For a long time he merely sat on the edge of his bed, glaring at his brother with something like real hatred, which of course meant that he knew Philip was right.

  “I cannot afford an army of six thousand men,” he said at last, as if that settled the matter.

  “You don’t need six thousand men to deal with this empty-headed bandit. If you can’t manage that number, then give me a thousand.”

  He said this as his elder brother was just about to rinse his mouth out with a sip of wine, but as Perdikkas listened he stared at the contents of his cup as if it were so much fresh blood. He set it back down on his night table with evident distaste.

  “Are you mad?” he asked quietly. “Did a snake bite you up there in the mountains, or did you fall on your head? To send an army of a thousand men into Elimeia would achieve nothing except to precipitate a war with a disaster.”

  Philip put his hands together and pressed them against his mouth. As he looked at his brother there was almost an expression of pleading in his eyes.

  “I have spent most of the last three years in Thebes,” he began, speaking as if to himself. “They understand more of war there than anywhere else in the world, and I learned much. Believe me when I tell you, brother, that a small army, properly trained, can defeat a mob of any size. Give me a thousand men, and the summer and winter to train them, and I can break the Elimoitai like a rotten twig.”

  The two men seemed to watch each other for a moment, as if each were trying to assess the other’s motives. Inside the mind of each there lurked the thousand little doubts and apprehensions that had accumulated through their shared childhood. Was Perdikkas too weak to grasp this chance? Was Philip trying to make himself even more glorious in men’s eyes? Was it safe to trust him?

  At last Perdikkas took the long-delayed sip from his wine cup, bringing his head back, seeming to roll the taste of it over his tongue.

  “Very well, then—you shall have a thousand men and your summer and winter to train them. If, at the end of that time, you have performed some miracle with them, you may take them into Elimeia. If not, then they will go north to fortify the garrisons where. And you will go with them.”

  That was all Philip wanted to hear. When he was almost at the door of his brother’s bedroom, Perdikkas asked him a single question.

  “Tell me, Philip—when you conquer Derdas, will you take his place and become lord of the Elimoitai?”

  “No, brother.” Philip forced himself to smile. “When I conquer I will become whatever it is your pleasure to make me, but you will be lord.”

  25

  Perdikkas thought he was mad when Philip announced that he wanted body armor and weapons for seven hundred infantry troops. �
��Derdas has nearly three thousand horsemen—what are you going to do up there in the mountains with a rabble of foot soldiers?”

  “First of all, the mountains are poor terrain for cavalry, so I will have the advantage. Second, by the time I finish, my infantry won’t be a rabble but an army. Most of the Theban army is infantry.”

  “Oh, well, what choice do they have? Greek horses are hardly bigger than dogs.”

  “Then why are we so afraid to take the field against them?”

  Perdikkas stalked off in a huff, but the smiths were put to work forging spears and breastplates. And since the Pella garrison could easily spare three hundred horses for the new army, all Philip had to do was recruit his foot soldiers.

  And to find these he turned his eyes to the western mountains, to the lands the Elimoitai were plundering. He wanted men whose courage would be sharpened by the knowledge that they were protecting their own homes.

  For a month Philip toured the villages along the narrow strip of lowland through which ran the Haliakmon River, many of which had been ravaged and burned by the Elimiote horsemen. He had powers of impressment—he could simply have rounded up men and marched them off—but he did not use them. He did not need to. There were plenty of shepherds whose herds had been run off and who didn’t know how they were going to survive the winter. To these Philip offered a wage paid in Athenian silver drachmas and the chance for revenge.

  It was always an event when Prince Philip would show up in some cluster of mud huts with an escort of only two or three horsemen. He would buy sheep and beer with which to feast everyone in the village, many of whom had perhaps not tasted meat in half a year, making them all guests of the king’s bounty.

  He had the gift of being able to make himself liked, for, although a prince of the royal house and thus hedged about with that awe that the common people felt for the sons of the Argeadai, he never created the impression that he held himself above other men. He would joke with the youths, even the children, and he would take counsel with the elders, rarely uttering a word but listening as a son listens to his father.