"Yes, I had a letter from Eumenes but the other day. The Alexander has quite recovered and is now nearing the land of Patala, in the delta of the Indus River." Antigonos stared piercingly at me with his one eye. "Now that you have given me the official explanation of your journey, suppose you give me the real reason."
My jaw dropped with surprise. "This is the real reason, O Viceroy! What thought you?"
"Come, come, Hipparch, tell me not that the king let a score of good Thessalian cavalrymen go while they still could fight?"
"That he did. After all, I have been eight years from home, and some of the lads nine."
"That is your tale, is it?"
"Aye, good sir."
"What message did the king give you for Antipatros?"
"The Alexander never mentioned the regent's name to me." I became angry. "If you doubt me, write the king yourself. You should have an answer ere we sail from Ephesos. By Herakles, I had my orders from the king himself, as my documents prove, and I know not what call there is to question me like a criminal!"
"Documents can be forged," said Antigonos. He fondled the sheets of papyrus I had handed him, then suddenly made a motion as if to tear them up.
"Ea!" I shouted, laying hand to hilt.
Antigonos held out the documents to me with a small grim smile. "You see, my boy, you are not so free and independent as you seem to think. I could confiscate or destroy these documents, and then where would you be? Or I could have you crucified for threatening me." He paused, looking through me with that one terrible eye. "Come."
He led me to a room in the citadel where several other Macedonians sat over a wine jug, though the wine did not seem to have cheered them.
"My fellow commanders of western Anatolia," said Antigonos. "Kalas, viceroy of Mysia and Hellespontine Phrygia; Asandros, viceroy of Karia; Pausanias, commandant of the forces at Sardeis." To the others he said: "This fierce-looking young fellow is Leon of Atrax, of King Alexander's mercenary Greek horse. Or so he claims."
"Leon!" cried Kalas. "Are you not one of those who joined the Thessalians at Gordion?"
"Aye. Thank you for remembering me, O Kalas." When I first joined Alexander's army, Kalas commanded the Thessalian Division. I had not seen him for seven years.
"What is your rank now?" he asked.
"Troop leader, in command of a special hipparchia on detached duty."
"Not even a brigadier? Hermes attend us! You disappoint me. You were always bold in battle and crafty in council, as I remember."
"But then I'm no Macedonian, let alone an old companion of the king. So I'm lucky to have risen as far as I have."
Antigonos said: "Then you are he who you say you are, after all."
I passed over the remark and said: "What brings all you gentlemen together?"
Antigonos spoke with a smile that was half sneer. "This you might call a recrimination party. We had an admirable plan—oh, a masterly plan—for a three-pronged attack on the Anatolian foreigners. But the gods saw matters otherwise. I have been beaten by Ariarathes of Kappadokia." (He gave the king's name the Hellenized form.) "Kalas has been beaten by Bas of Bithynia, and Asandros has spent the month in a fruitless chase through the Pisidian hills after the wild mountaineers. Now each of us seeks a way to blame the others for his failure. I, for example, lay the whole collapse to their insistence on attacking when we lacked enough men to face the barbarian hordes. For pointing this out, my dear comrades here impugned my courage."
"I said we should never have enough men, and by Zeus I still say it!" cried Kalas. "How can we, when as soon as we get a company of dung-footed peasants whipped into shape, the king orders them to march off eastward to join him in some foolhardy scheme like raping the queen of the Amazons?"
Asandros said: "You people may carry on your quarrels, but I had rather find a remedy for our woes. For one thing, let us not talk of failures and collapses. Let us rather say the enemies' dispositions made it desirable for us to execute strategic withdrawals according to plan."
"Bugger that fancy talk!" said Pausanias. "Antigonos is right. You were trounced, and you know it."
Antigonos said to me: "Pausanias spent the time sitting here on his fat arse, so he is in a position to contemn all the rest of us."
"Furies take you, Antigonos!" cried Pausanias. "Those were my orders. If you spent more time on the army and less on trying to make a second Athens out of Smyrna—"
"Hold your tongue, you dog-faced sodomite!" roared Antigonos.
The generals all sprang to their feet, shouting and shaking fists. They even forgot their Greek and began cursing each other in Macedonian, which I could barely understand. Ere it came to blows, Antigonos held up his hands and bellowed for silence.
"What impression must we make on our young visitor?" he said. "He has the king's confidence—or so he claims—and will undoubtedly write our divine master an account of this meeting. That is, if no—ah —sad accident befall him first." He leered at me. "Lucky for you, stripling, that you arrived when we were all together. Thus none dares do you ill, lest the others know. Ah, a band of brothers, a band of brothers!"
Asandros said: "We should get on together better if you were not always kicking our rumps, Antigonos."
"Maybe, but some people's rumps cry out to be booted. And now to business. Leon has just come through Kappadokia, with Ariarathes' blessing. He can therefore tell us about that land. Question him, fellow bunglers."
They questioned me for two hours. I answered with fair candor. However, as I had a kindly feeling for the two Arivaratai, I puffed up the Kappadokian forces to twice or thrice their real strength, to discourage the Macedonians from another attack.
When they ran out of questions on Kappadokia, they sounded me out on a plan to send the elephant to Athens with the Indians and join their armies with my Thessalians for their next campaign. I politely refused, and presently they dismissed me with authority to draw fodder. As I left the chamber, their voices rose in anger behind me.
We spent a day in Sardeis resting and repairing. I went with Pyrron and Vardanas to look at the tomb of King Alyattes of Lydia, and at the gardens which Artaxerxes the Resolute planted with his own hands. It is said this Persian king had a passion for gardening that surpassed his interest in the duties of kingship.
I saw no more of Antigonos and am not sorry for it. He terrified me. He was a strange man. Towards Alexander he was loyal whilst the king lived, but after that he played his own game in the most ruthless and crafty manner. Those who served under him swore by his kindness and justice, but his rivals among the Successors found him a bitter and malignant foe. It took the combined forces of most of the other Successors to finish him off. Old One-eye fell at last at the battle of Ipsos a few years ago, being more than eighty years old.
We rode on to Ephesos. Here a broad and beautiful avenue leads down from the theater on a hillside, through the city to the quays, where the Kaystros makes a sharp turn and empties into the sea. Vardanas remarked:
"One can tell one is in a Greek city with eyes shut, from the way the people reek of onions and olive oil!"
I stopped in the market place to ask after Philoxenos, the admiral, and got a dozen contradictory directions. I finally found my man walking along the quays and looking at the shipping. He was a good-looking brown-bearded Macedonian, not much older than I. When I told him of my mission and showed him my documents, his eyes lit up with interest.
"I will do it on two conditions, Hipparch," he said with a grin.
"And what are they, O Admiral?"
"One: that if ever you write a book about your journey, you will give me credit for helping you, thus making my name immortal."