Stealing Fire

by Jo Graham

  “We serve Ptolemy of Egypt,” I said. “And the terms are this. Lay down your weapons and you are free to go with your baggage and your provisions. We keep the King.”

  He shook his head, sweat running down his face, and looked back toward the head of the pass where the baggage train had stopped just short of the slope. I could see the lead wagons, the white flash of a woman's veil. They were returning to Macedon. Of course they had brought their families with them.

  I dropped my voice. “Come on, man,” I said. “Be reasonable. You keep your women and your earnings, your wagons and your food for the road. All we want is the hearse. Which you can't stop us from taking.” I saw him hesitate. “Is it worth dying for at the end like this?”

  He looked back at me again, and his eyes were very blue. “For the King.”

  “The King will lie in honor in Alexandria, the city of his founding,” I said. “I give you my word on that. You know General Ptolemy. You know he's a man of honor and means no desecration.”

  “And your name, Companion?” he asked. “Are you a man of honor?”

  “I am,” I said. “I am Lydias of Miletus, Hipparch of Ptolemy's Ile, and you may count my deeds to my name.”

  He looked at the glittering hearse again, as though to fix it in his memory, and sighed. “I accept your terms.”

  AFTER THAT IT was simple. We had lost only three men, so thoroughly had the rush succeeded, and forty-five wounded. Most of the wounds were slight, and I thought that only six of them were truly serious, enough to lay a man up for weeks at a time. Their losses were heavier, and they camped to make a pyre for the dead near the field of Issos where so many had been slain before.

  The sun was falling into the sea as we saw the last of them, kindling flame while the women and the servants put up camp, the bright fires licking at the cedar gathered from the wood.

  We did not stop. We turned south, the hearse rolling along in the midst of our column. We would not stop, now. It was a long, long way to Egypt.

  Victory glittered gold in the last rays of the sun.

  Issos, I thought. My King, here is your great field. And here we are on the march again, as you would not have minded. What tomb could ever hold you, who spread your wings above all the world?

  I HAD STILL been General Hephaistion's horseboy when the Battle of Issos was fought, and I had no part in it. Better men than I have told that story, including Ptolemy, who served upon the field. For my part, there was little to the battle itself except the long, tedious wait, and then the mad rush at the end when the wounded started coming in, after the Persian lines had collapsed.

  Issos was the first time that Alexander faced Darius, the first time that Darius fled. He left behind his entire camp and all of his treasury that he had brought with him, talents and talents of coin and all the goods the Great King travels with. But far more importantly, in his fear at our victory he left behind his wife, his old mother, his two young daughters, and his son, a baby not yet walking. It may scarcely be credited that he did so, though it is true as I was there, that he was so poor a king and a man, as their fates were plainly written. His son should die on our swords, and his mother and wife should be playthings for our men. The fates of the two princesses, then aged ten and twelve, did not even bear contemplating. That any man should flee and leave his family thus, king or not, seemed incredible to me at the time.

  When the word went round the baggage train that we had captured the camp of Darius and all his family, I could hardly believe it. And like any boy of sixteen I hurried to see.

  We traveled light, and while the King had a tent and things of his own, it was nothing like the tent of Darius. The tent of Darius could have been a palace itself, with eight rooms hung with silks and floored with gorgeous patterned rugs that each must take two years on the loom. There was a bathing room with an enormous bronze bathtub chased with silver and tens of little glass bottles full of oils, hanging lamps with colored glass panes burning sweet-scented oil, and a massive bedchamber with furniture of ivory, including an ingenious folding toilet chair. I had never seen the like, and the other boys and I examined it with many crude jokes until the Royal Pages threw us out.

  “Look here,” they said. “This all belongs to the King now, and he won't want your grubby hands all over it! This isn't an exhibit at the fair for a bunch of stable boys! This isn't Darius’ anymore. It's Alexander's.”

  At that we all shuffled our way to the entrance, into the falling night outside. It was the prize of our betters, but we had at least gotten a good look at it.

  “What do you suppose it's like,” one of the other boys asked, “to take a crap in an ivory pot?”

  “About the same as anywhere else,” I said. I was distracted by the tent next door, almost as big and sumptuous, but heavily guarded. There were Silver Shields infantry cordoned around it, and the officer in charge was General Perdiccas. “What do you suppose…” I began.

  From within rose the sounds of women's voices raised in lamentation, and I knew what it must be. Here was the family of Darius, a prize reserved for the King to dispose of, along with his scented oil and his toilet chair.

  Several horsemen were approaching, and I immediately recognized Hephaistion's warhorse Zephyr, as I spent a great deal of time with him. I hurried forward to hold the reins as he dismounted. One of the Royal Pages took the King's reins.

  Alexander got down awkwardly. While he had obviously washed since the battle, he was limping from a wound to the right leg. It had been stitched and bandaged neatly, but he stumbled when he tried to put all his weight on it.

  “You need to go lie down,” Hephaistion said, catching his arm. “You've lost enough blood, and if you tear the stitches open you'll have to go back to the doctor again.”

  “I'm fine,” the King said testily, shaking his hair back out of his face. It was damp and clung to his brow. “Don't hover.”

  Hephaistion took a step back, though he seemed unbothered by the rebuke. “If you think it will look better for the King to fall over in front of Darius’ tent.”

  Alexander raised his head, like a dog pricking its ears. “What is all that wailing?”

  Perdiccas stepped forward from where he stood in front of the tent belonging to the royal ladies. “Darius’ women, Alexander. They're mourning him. They think he must be dead to have left them.”

  Hephaistion snorted. “Darius is alive and well and riding for Babylon on the fastest horse he can find.” What he thought of that kind of cowardice was plain to see.

  “Darius’ women?” the King asked. “Who, besides his wife?”

  “His two daughters,” Perdiccas said. “Stateira, age twelve, and Drypetis, age ten. And his elderly mother, Sisygambis. They say his wife's a beauty. The most beautiful woman in Asia. I haven't seen her myself yet, so I don't know. Their eunuchs are around them and say that we'll have to kill them to get them to step aside, so we're guarding the outside of the tent and they're guarding the inside. I thought we'd wait until you came to clear out the eunuchs.”

  And to give the royal ladies time for suicide, I thought. A ripple of approval ran through me for Perdiccas. That was well done, to give them time to die without rape. Though it would take a strong woman to kill her own daughters and infant son.

  The same thought obviously occurred to Alexander, and he traded glances with Hephaistion. “I should tell them they have nothing to fear,” he said.

  Hephaistion made a gesture of assent. “The sooner the better. And then you can go lie down.”

  “I've been telling people she's yours,” Perdiccas said cheerfully. “It's a fine thing, isn't it? The Great King's wife for your concubine? And the daughters too of course. Only Alexander could do that!”

  “Could he?” he said dryly.

  “She'd probably come around to it if she's a sensible woman,” Perdiccas said. “In exchange for her daughters’ lives. Persia at your feet, the Great King's wife on her knees, begging for mercy! Your father would be proud of you.�
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  Alexander put his head to the side, and I thought there was a current there that Perdiccas was missing. “He would be, wouldn't he?” he said, and went to the entrance of the tent.

  Hephaistion brushed in front of him. “Let me,” he said. “Those guards are sure to be nervous, and the last thing we need is you stabbed by a eunuch.” He swept aside the tent door, followed by the King, Perdiccas, three guards, and me. Why not follow? No one had specifically told me not to, and I wanted to know what would happen.

  “King Alexander is here to see the royal ladies,” Perdiccas announced loudly.

  The tent was much the same as Darius’, with silk hangings and thick carpets. Four eunuchs armed with knives stood just inside, the older man nearest the door with his mouth set in firm determination. A cluster of women stood at the opposite end, the royal ladies and their attendants presumably, their faces decently veiled.

  Only one was not. She must have been sixty-five, with keen sharp features unblurred by time, her dark blue gown embroidered with silver thread in endless stars and whorls. She stood between Alexander and the rest.

  The eunuchs looked to her, and at her nod stepped back from the door, their knives at their side.

  The queen mother, I thought. There was something in her face that reminded me of some other, or perhaps it was simply that she was impressive in her grief and pride.

  Hephaistion looked at the eunuchs. “Do any of you speak Greek?”

  “I do,” the older one said. “It is my privilege to translate for my queen.”

  Her chin rose and she took four steps. The Great King's mother sank to her knees in front of Hephaistion, her hands upraised in pleading like a carving on a temple wall, the translator's words an echo behind her. “Hear, Alexander of Macedon, the pleas of an old woman! Hear the words of one who is lost!”

  Hephaistion looked confused. “What? I'm not…”

  The eunuch blanched, and spoke to the woman in swift Persian.

  Her shoulders tightened, and her eyes flared, and she turned on her knees to begin again.

  Alexander stepped forward and took her upraised hand. “Never mind, mother,” he said. “He is Alexander too.” He raised her to her feet, smiling. “I came to tell you that you and the other women are under the guard of my Silver Shields, and it is death for any man who molests you. You have nothing to fear. I will not even see the queen until Darius presents himself to me and I may return his family to him. Then I will receive him as a subject, and you will be united unharmed with him.”

  Her eyes roved over his face, and she asked one word in Persian. The translator rendered it as, “Why?”

  “Because I'm Alexander,” he said, and turned to leave.

  We all scrambled out before him, me fastest of all, so that I would not look like a gawker who had not been about his work. I wasn't fast enough. His eye fell on me. “You, boy,” he said. “Lydias, is it?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, gulping.

  “Do you know why?”

  I pulled myself up, conscious of Hephaistion's curious expression. If I were going to make a fool of myself to the King, I should not do it by half. “Yes,” I said. “Anyone can kill.”

  He smiled, a quicksilver expression that laid me open to the bone, and clapped me on the shoulder. “Good lad,” he said, and, leaning a little on Hephaistion's arm, went into the tent of the Great King.

  NOW HE LAY in a golden hearse, a prize himself for which men died.

  A thought struck me and I rode alongside the hearse, slipping my leg over my mare and transferring to the back stoop without a stride lost. No one had yet been inside.

  A net of gold screened the door, and I lifted it with a hand still stained with blood from the fight.

  A gilded lantern hung from the ceiling, throwing patterns of light and shadow over the walls. The paintings seemed to move in the dim light, galleys sailing on an endless sea, pennants bravely waving.

  “Bagoas?” I said.

  He rose up in one smooth motion from where he had been sitting on the floor at the sarcophagus’ head. “Here,” he said.

  “I see that you are well,” I said. The lantern light made planes of his face, casting a shadow like a flower on his cheek.

  “I kept down, as you said,” he replied. “It was neatly done.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I looked down at the golden lid of the sarcophagus. “I must look,” I said quietly. “To be sure.”

  After a moment he nodded. “I will help you,” Bagoas said. “It's heavy.”

  Together we moved the lid back. It slid on invisible tracks, not nearly as difficult as it seemed it would be.

  In the dim light Alexander looked as though he were sleeping. The embalmers had not wrapped him in linen as they do in Egypt. Instead, he looked entirely lifelike, his pale hair on his shoulders and his eyes closed, his golden breastplate over a bordered chiton of Tyrian purple. I would not have thought him dead. I would have thought he might wake at any moment, might suddenly speak.

  “They did their finest work,” Bagoas said, looking down expressionlessly, and I thought he must have looked many times. Perhaps he had pressed his lips to those cold ones, hoping for a breath of life.

  I nodded. I could not speak. I did not know what I should say to him. Should I ask his pardon or his blessing? Instead I just inclined my head, as though waiting for orders.

  After a moment, when of course they did not come, I looked up and gestured to Bagoas. We slid the lid back into position.

  I said nothing. What can one say? I had never known what to say to family at a funeral. All words are hollow.

  Bagoas had spent nearly two years tending the dead. He did not need my words. Instead he led me to the back stoop. “We go to Egypt?”

  “We do,” I said. “We will stop in Damascus and leave our wounded there, the men who are in no shape to ride. And then we will stop for nothing until we reach Pelousion.”

  His eyebrows rose over those startling green Median eyes. “We will make Pelousion?”

  “Not without a fight,” I said with a tight smile. “But we will reach it. I will give you my oath on that.”

  He nodded, a courtly gesture that reminded me of Artashir. “I believe we will, Lydias of Miletus.”

  I swung back on my horse and headed back to the front of the column. Dusk was falling. Behind me, Victory was plunged into night.

  LADY OF THE

  DESERT

  They caught us just beyond Gaza. It was not a surprise, of course. I had scouts out from the time we left Tyre. Each morning when we started on the march at sunrise, I sent scouts riding back from our position with orders to go half a day's ride to the rear. At noon they would turn and catch up with us. We would have moved, of course, but their pace was so much faster that they would arrive a few hours after we made camp. It was a long day for them, and I used fresh riders each day, rotating through the duty roster, but it was not dangerously taxing, even in the heat of the summer. Every other day we would leave a pair of riders where we were, with orders to wait either six days or until they saw Perdiccas’ troops and then return to us. Thus we had constant intelligence to our rear.

  We were nearly at Gaza when the first of those brought us word. They had left Ashdod just as the first of Perdiccas’ men straggled in, exhausted and seeking supply. They had an Ile and a half of men, about twelve hundred all counted, commanded by two Companions I knew, Attalos and Polemon. They had arrived almost without halt from Babylon, and their horses were exhausted. Attalos had ordered that they rest one day in Ashdod to resupply and attempt to find remounts to replace the horses that had gone off.

  I nodded, thanked the scouts, and sent them off to rest. Then I walked out to the perimeter of our nightly camp, away from the fires and the gilded hearse.

  Bagoas found me there. He came and stood a short distance away and did not speak.

  I looked up at the stars, moving too slowly to see, but nonetheless wheeling through the night. A trooper I could have ignor
ed, but it would be rude to ignore Bagoas. Of course he wanted to know what would happen.

  “Three days, maybe four,” I said.

  “Do we stay in Gaza?” he asked.

  That was the heart of the matter. We would be in Gaza in one more day. I could try to hold the town, send a rider to Pelousion for infantry reinforcements. Two days down to Pelousion, with no remount but riding as hard as the horse would stand. Four or five days back for the infantry. I should have to hold Gaza for three or four days. With damaged fortifications and cavalry only. Still, Attalos and Polemon would have only cavalry too, and would certainly not have any siege equipment.

  Maybe. Maybe it could be done. Or maybe not. Common sense said it might be the safest course.

  And yet. Egypt, the night wind whispered to me. Egypt. Gaza is beyond the bounds of the Black Land. You must bring the King to Egypt.

  And yet. Perhaps it was just a cavalryman's hatred of walls. I did not want to be besieged in Gaza. Farther along, on the road, there might be opportunities. At least it would keep it open, keep it moving. Even if they did succeed in taking back the hearse from us, the closer we were to Egypt the farther they should have to take it back. And then they would be hampered by the speed of the hearse. Then they would have to worry about a sortie from Ptolemy at their rear. As far as they now had to go, even Ptolemy's infantry would catch them still south of Ashdod.

  “We go on,” I said.

  Two days and a half later the sun stood high in the sky. The road had turned away from the sea. It ran now between steep cliffs, red and ochre, where stunted bushes clung to ledges and grew in the shelter of overhangs. I saw it, and I knew where we were.

  The stone sphinx watched from the left hand side of the road, the shattered pedestal on the other side showing where its mate had been.

  Egypt, something whispered.

  As I walked between them I felt it as though I had broken an invisible thread, dashing past the judges to win the race. The boundaries of Egypt. Here some pharaoh of long ago had set up the sphinxes as a border guard. Last time I had passed this way I had known that, but this time I felt it like a vibration beneath the ground, the ancient magic of the Black Land roused and waiting.