Stealing Fire

by Jo Graham

  Behind me, I heard the baking woman scream her child's name, sweeping him up. The doctor looked out of the hospital tent, a long knife in his hand. Everything seemed to happen incredibly slowly.

  The forms in the dust resolved. A young man with a black beard, a tan horse rendered golden by the dust, riding straight for me, his sword pointing at my heart.

  “Here!” There was a shriek beside me, and I looked down to see her, the woman in blue, holding out a sword to me. I wrapped my fingers around the hilt and ripped it from the scabbard, a dressy thing with an inlaid pommel, doubtless left by its owner in favor of a more serviceable blade.

  And yet it was light in my hand, light as fire.

  I did not thank her. I touched my heels to Ghost Dancer instead and at last let him go.

  A goose fled from our hooves as we flew like an arrow from the bow. My man had marked me, and I had marked him.

  We came together in a clean pass, right side to right side, my sword blocking his, the weight of the impact shuddering all along my arm. Ghost Dancer's shoulder was against his horse's shoulder, and he shoved. The Persian horse lost his footing, stumbling.

  And with the stumble I disengaged. In the second he answered his horse I thrust my sword into his neck.

  I wrenched the blade free, his blood fountaining over me. Another Persian was coming up, and I spun Ghost Dancer around. He met the Persian with raised hooves, half in the middle of the turn, just as Xenophon says a horse should do, his weight on his muscled haunches. With the strength of the horse behind me, I severed the Persian's sword arm.

  Ghost Dancer leapt again, and for a moment I thought I would fall. He had gotten me out of the way of two riders who converged. One should have been on each side of me, but now one of them was between his fellow and me, rendering the far one useless.

  I don't think he realized what had happened before I cut him down.

  Behind, at the door of the hospital tent, the doctor was fighting off a horseman. He should have been slain in a moment, had not the horse become entangled in the ropes tying the tent to the stakes.

  I turned Ghost Dancer around and we came up behind him like thunder. Ghost Dancer slammed into the entangled horse, who fell thrashing, pinning his rider beneath him. The doctor scrambled after with his knife.

  I looked back. There were more coming. Many, many more. Fifty, a hundred…

  I realized that Ghost Dancer's back was soaked with my urine, but it hardly mattered. There were no other horsemen in the street. I hoped the baker and her children had run, that the general's woman had run. Surely this had bought a little time.

  I saw them looming out of the dust. Many, many more.

  “Come on, boy,” I said, stroking his mane.

  And then I touched my heels to his side.

  We plowed into the first man, block, block, guard and thrust. Again and again. Blood ran down the fancy sword, overflowing the channels and sticking my hand to the pommel. Thrust and guard. Endless and slow, a forever.

  Ghost Dancer was heavier than many of their horses, and his weight gave my hand strength. Cut and batter.

  And then above it all I heard something different, the high clear note of horns. The dust swirled. More. There must be more.

  Out of the dust plunged the horsemen, sun glittering on steel. It was not more Persians. It was our own Companion Cavalry, Alexander on his black horse, his high white plume shaking.

  I saw it for a moment, and then something struck me on the shoulder, hard enough to grind my teeth together and fling me from Ghost Dancer's back. I lay in the dirt dazed, not even rolling to the side to avoid hooves. My shoulder was an explosion of fire.

  Hooves circled around me, and in a moment I thought I knew those feet. I had cleaned them enough. It was Zephyr. Hephaistion stood over me, trading blows with a Persian. Their horses danced.

  I watched him cut him down, Hephaistion's face serene and intent, as though the beauty of the swordplay were all, not a man's life.

  He leaned sideways out of the saddle then, looking at me. “All right, boy?”

  “Yes,” I said, struggling to my feet. I still had the fancy sword.

  He nodded sharply, and I thought he would have said something.

  Behind him, I saw the lancer charge.

  Most of the Persians had been armed with short sword. This was one of the lancers, and his light little horse almost floated over the ground. I did not have time to think. I did not have time to call out. Perhaps I was still befuddled, or perhaps it really was that fast.

  The lancer hit Hephaistion square on, the point going deep into his right shoulder just below the edge of the harness.

  Zephyr went up, hooves flailing, trying to prevent the Persian from closing.

  Hephaistion fell, the muscles in his arm no longer working, blood blossoming everywhere.

  I staggered out, the sword still in my hand, trusting that Zephyr knew me, that he would not turn on me the tactics that Xenophon says a warhorse is supposed to display with his rider down.

  Thrust and block, thrust and block again, on foot against a lancer on horseback, the whole business partly fouled by Zephyr's antics.

  Thrust and block, my head spinning, my feet slipping in the dust.

  Zephyr screaming as the lancer slammed him full in the face with his shield.

  Something hit me and I fell, only half aware that the body next to mine was Hephaistion, struggling to get up.

  And then there was a bugle challenging all the world. I looked up. All I could see was Ghost Dancer's belly as he stood in front of us both, teeth bared.

  I passed out, and saw no more.

  I WOKE TO screaming.

  I lay in the hospital tent, and the doctor was taking off a man's arm.

  I lay staring at the tent above and did not even try to rise. We must have won, I thought, if I am here and not given field mercy. I must have a chance, if I have not been given field mercy.

  And with that I slept.

  WHEN I AWOKE again it was night. A boy held cool water to my lips.

  “Careful,” the doctor said. “You must be very careful giving water to men with head injuries. They may not be able to swallow and may breathe it instead. Just wet his lips.”

  I made a croaking sound, and opened eyelids that must have been made of stone. The entire world tilted around me, refusing to come into focus.

  “Ah,” the doctor said, and I realized it was the same man I had seen earlier, during the battle. “Do you know who you are?”

  “Lydias,” I whispered. The water was so good. “What happened?”

  “That is the best thing you can hope for,” the doctor said, instructing the boy. “He knows his name, and he seems oriented.”

  “I can't see,” I said, and there was a note of panic in my voice.

  “Can't see light or can't focus?” He sounded concerned, and gestured for the boy to bring a lamp. I could see its bright flame, and something of his face beyond, though everything wavered as though underwater.

  “Can't focus,” I said.

  He held the lamp up, moving it back and forth several times.

  “See?” he asked the boy. “The pupil in his right eye is dilated and doesn't respond when I move the flame closer and farther. That's common with head injuries.”

  “Am I blind?” I felt panic seize me in its claws.

  “No,” the doctor said. “If you're coherent, there's not much bleeding in the brain. And the eye will usually heal in time. Give it a few weeks. In addition to that, you've got stitches in your scalp, and your left shoulder is bound. You took a blow on your back that's broken your left clavicle. But you'll see well enough in time, I expect.” He laid the lamp aside. “Drink some water, and lie down and try to sleep.” His voice was wry. “You're one of the lucky ones, son.”

  I WAS. MY sight was blurry, but I could tell it was improving. My head hurt and the stitches itched, but the worst was my taped arm with which I could do nothing. The doctor told me the next day that I
should not lift my arm for at least a month and a half.

  “I've set it,” he said, “but it's not like a leg or something. It's your shoulder in the back. The pieces will shift out of place if you move it around. That's why you're strapped.” Long pieces of linen went round it, tying it tightly.

  I fretted until he said, “Leave it alone if you ever want to use that arm again.”

  At that I stopped, for what use is a one-armed groom?

  I fretted over the horses too, until the third day.

  I woke when someone sat down on my pallet, opened my eyes, and saw General Hephaistion.

  He looked worn and ill too. His right arm was in a sling, a pad of bandages against his shoulder.

  “Sir,” I said, and tried to get up.

  “Be still, Lydias,” he said. “You've earned lying down. They've just let me up myself.”

  “The horses?”

  He laughed, putting his head back, and the long tan line of his throat exposed. “Trust you to worry about what's important first! Ghost Dancer is entirely well, having stood over us until the King came. Zephyr's got broken teeth, and he's lost the sight in one eye. I'm afraid his days of war are ended. It's his time to go out to stud.”

  “I'm so sorry, sir,” I said, knowing he had put his horses in my care. I knew the blow that had hurt Zephyr. It had been taking that shield in the face. “It is my fault.”

  “Your fault that you helped save the camp, and that you may have saved my life as well?” Hephaistion looked amused. “I gave Ptolemy his sword back, by the way. He thanks you for defending Thais.”

  I gulped. I suppose I had kind of stolen a general's sword.

  Hephaistion shifted. “The King would have words for you, but I told him I'd rather have them myself.”

  “Please,” I began, ready to offer some sort of excuse, I knew not what.

  His brown eyes were grave. “Lydias, you are unsuited to be a groom in my service. I know that you have done your best, but it cannot continue. From now on you are a soldier, not a servant. I raise you to the ranks of Companion Cavalry, to fight in my Ile beside the best men I know.”

  My blurry eyes filled with tears and I could not speak.

  “We will have to find a horse of your own for you when you can ride, Lydias of Miletus. And a sword. We are going after Darius, who once again fled the field, leaving his wounded behind, and I will need you at my back.” He clasped my hand wrist to wrist, one man to another. “Welcome to a valiant company, and know you have earned your place.”

  I should have raised his hand to my lips and kissed it in thanksgiving, only that was the sort of thing a servant did. I was a soldier now. “I shall never disappoint you, sir,” I said instead.

  “I know,” he said, as though he were certain of it.

  THE HEART OF THE

  BLACK LAND

  There was a great deal of work to do in Memphis in the wake of Cleomenes’ execution. The finances of Egypt were chaos, and it was anyone's guess what had been paid and what hadn't. It made matters worse that there had been two sets of records of everything—Cleomenes’ own records, and the official ones, which the Egyptians kept in their own tongue, written in Demotic, which Ptolemy did not read.

  It was a month and a half later or so that Ptolemy sent me to Upper Egypt. He wanted opinions, he said. Documents he had, hundreds of petitions for the satrap about this and that, tax rolls and lawsuits, facts and facts and facts. What he didn't have was any real sense of the place or the temper of the people. None of us had gone farther up the Nile than Memphis when we were here with Alexander, and now it was too dangerous for Ptolemy to go so far from the coast, when there was such uncertainty with Perdiccas and the political situation.

  Instead, he sent me to be his eyes and ears.

  “Lydias,” he said, “you do not give offense, you keep your own counsel, and you're cleverer than anyone expects a plain soldier to be. I need opinions as well as facts. Go and form some.”

  And so in the dry season before the Inundation I sailed south, up the Nile and into the past.

  For me, in memory, thinking of those days is like remembering falling in love. I rose at dawn and watched the sun rise over where life and death met, the stark line where the fields of Egypt ended and desert began. In the clear morning air the scent of bread baking came over the water, smoke rising from village ovens. In the fields the gleaners were taking up the last of the harvest.

  The first day up from Memphis I watched a little boy six or seven years old, a gaggle of geese around him, his stick in his hand. When he saw our brightly painted ship he waved, a brown-and-white hound jumping up and down beside him. I lifted my hand to him in return, and as he waved again, following us a little way along the shore with his unruly dog, I felt something loosen in my chest.

  The second morning we saw the hippopotamuses. We slowed and went through them carefully, a great herd of twenty or thirty beasts with absolutely no fear of us, swimming as though it were nothing. I could not stop grinning. I had thought surely there were not such strange beasts so close to the homes of men, but there were villages all about, and the hippopotamuses seemed undisturbed. They were not as large as the elephants I had seen in India, but they reminded me of them somewhat. I could not stop grinning, even as we left them behind us and went on to Herakleopolis.

  I stopped there, and then at Oxyrhynchos, and again at Hermopolis, talking to nobles and priests, talking to those Persian officials that the King or Cleomenes had confirmed in their posts. Hermopolis was the last place going south that there were Persian officials, and they talked of Upper Egypt as though it were a distant and barbarian land. “Be sure,” they told me, “to always have sufficient bodyguards. Especially in Thebes. One of the Great King's men was killed in broad daylight in the markets of Thebes, and no one would say anything, even when witnesses were put to torture.”

  I thanked him kindly for his advice, and resolved to have no bodyguards at all in Upper Egypt. I was the first thing they should see of Ptolemy, the first opinion they should form. I would not go with Persian hauteur, but try to conduct myself as they might expect a servant of Pharaoh to do. To that end I put off helmet and harness in favor of a beautifully worked white chiton over which I wore my sword belt, and had my arms and legs shaved by the servants in Hermopolis. It was truly not so odd, as I shaved my face every day, and to the Egyptians shaving the rest of one's body was considered no more than a matter of good hygiene. In Greece, of course, only fancy boys shaved entirely to look younger than they were, though shaving one's chest or back was something of a fashion, to look smooth and clean on the floor of the gymnasium. The Macedonians would have considered it effete, which is not to say that some of them wouldn't have done it! To the Egyptians, however, I simply would look well groomed.

  It was the day after that, the morning we left Hermopolis for Abydos, that the strangest thing of the journey happened.

  I stood on deck enjoying the breeze of our passage in the warmth of the day. It seemed to me that the landscape was subtly changing as we moved south. The ribbon of green along the river was narrower, and beyond on the western side it seemed rockier, more wadis and cliffs than sandy desert. I was wondering how far it was to Abydos, and wondering if I should try to ask the ship's captain. His Greek was very limited, and my Egyptian more limited still.

  Ahead, around a curve in the river, I saw a city emerging. As we drew closer I saw it was larger and more magnificent than any we had come to since Memphis, with a huge carved pylon gate ornamented with paintings and a wide avenue cutting through the city toward a palace nestled like a jewel among gardens and pools.

  Surely, I thought, this must be Abydos, though it seemed both larger and more antique than I had anticipated. Was it possible that we had passed Abydos entirely and now approached Thebes? The magnificent temples of Thebes had been much talked of.

  Yet as we drew closer I doubted it. The docks along the river were empty of barges and ships, and I saw no people walking along the s
hore. The vast avenues seemed deserted.

  A chill ran down my back. As we passed the beginning of the gardens even the trees were silent of birds. The fountains did not play. The droplets of water hung in the air, glittering like drops of glass.

  I walked astern quickly to the captain. “What is that city?” I asked him in my halting Egyptian.

  He looked away, at the tiller in his worn hands, and said something I did not understand.

  “I didn't get that,” I said.

  The captain met my eyes. “Cursed,” he said in Greek. “Cursed. Do not look, understand? Leave the Dead City alone.” He spat over the side.

  I turned back to look again.

  The city I had seen was gone. Instead, a broken pylon emerged from the sand, a few stubs of broken columns near the riverside marking where perhaps the entrance to gardens had once been. Wind whipped golden sand over brown dunes, mounded in ways that did not seem entirely natural. The city was gone, gone a thousand years ago. Above, a hawk turned on the wind. Below, the river flowed past a few pitiful ruins.

  I stared. Where were the gardens? Where were the palaces and streets I had seen? Gone, all gone beneath the sands, beneath the Red Land reclaiming this place.

  “The Dead City?” I asked the captain.

  He did not so much as glance toward it. “Leave it be,” he said. “Evil lives there. Long ago, the gods were angered by one who was their enemy, and the Black Land nearly destroyed. Leave it be, I tell you. It is a cursed place.”

  I nodded.

  The ruins were slipping away behind us. Soon they would be lost to sight again.

  “Babylon,” I whispered. That was what it reminded me of. Had those palaces echoed, the king dead and evil unleashed on the land? Did they echo still? Would Babylon echo thus, a thousand years hence?

  THAT NIGHT WE slept on the river, rocking on the currents of the Nile, and I dreamed.

  I dreamed I rode a chestnut horse in a vast baggage train, following carts full of supplies, full of wounded men. It was late summer, and about us the fields were green in the sun. I rode a chestnut horse named Lady, and I wore a curved sword at my side. It did not seem strange to me, not even the woman's body I had in that place, athletic and older than I was now.