I finished the wine. ‘I need to change horses,’ I said.
Philip nodded. A slave ran for the horse lines.
‘Nice sword,’ Philip said.
‘Laodon did all the work,’ I managed. Suddenly we were men, talking about men’s things, and I was damned if I would boast like a boy.
Philip nodded. ‘I’ve got archers in the woods,’ he said.
‘I got in the north way without being challenged,’ I said as my second-string horse, a big mare that I called Medea, was brought in.
Philip gave me a hand up on to Medea’s broad back – as if I were his peer. ‘I’ll look at it,’ he said.
I took a different angle this time, and the shadows were long. In half an hour or less the red orb would be lost behind the flank of the mountain. Already it was cold – and time for the prince and his hunting mentor to be back.
I missed Poseidon immediately. I’d named the mare Medea for a reason – she was all love one minute and death on hooves the next, and she was in a mood. She made heavier work of climbing the ridges than Poseidon had done, and I had to spend more time dismounted, leading her. But before the sun was down a finger’s breadth, I was across the stream and marsh where I’d first left Polystratus, into new territory.
Medea was a noisier horse, too, and she gave a sharp whinny as I crested the second ridge. I put a hand on her neck, but she raised her head and let go a trumpet call, and I heard a horse answer.
I drew my new sword. There were several horses, all coming up the ridge at me. Running for camp was out of the question – we were drilled relentlessly about becoming the means by which an enemy might discover the camp, when we were scouting. In fact, we might have been training for this moment all our lives.
I tucked Medea in behind a stunted, bushy spruce and threw my chlamys over her head to shut her up. I could hear my own panicked breathing, and I assumed that every Illyrian in the woods could hear me, too.
I’d picked a poor hiding place, though. Always pick a place of ambush from which you can see.If you can’t see the enemy, chances are he can’t see you – but you can panic too, while you don’t know whether he’s outflanking you or wandering into your trap. I crouched there on Medea’s back, a hand well out over her head, keeping my cloak in place so she’d be quiet, and I had no idea where in Tartarus the Illyrians were.
But to move now – they had to be a few horse-lengths away.
The next few heartbeats were the longest of the day. And then the gods took a hand, and nothing was as I expected.
I waited. I could hear them moving, and I could hear them talking. They were quiet and careful and they knew that they were being watched. And I became aware that they’d sent men around the other side of my spruce thicket – so I was a dead man.
Best to charge, I decided. For the record, this is a form of fear that probably kills more men than running from an enemy. The need to get it over withis absurd.
I pulled my cloak off Medea’s head and got her under me, and we were at them.
Fighting on horseback is very different to fighting on foot, mostly because you are not on your own feet, but on someone else’s. It’s hard to wrong-foot a man in a fight – at least, in the open. But it’s not so hard to wrong-foot another man on horseback – if he’s got his spear on the wrong side of the horse, say. The first Illyrian had his spear in his right hand, held at mid-haft, slanted slightly down, and I burst from cover and he caught the spearhead in his pony’s neck strap.
I missed my overhand stab, but my spearhead slammed sideways into his head and he toppled.
Then Medea took a spear in the chest, and while I tried to slow her, another in the rump, and down we went. It was so fast I didn’t have time to hurt, but rolled free and got to my feet.
Got my back against a big tree.
The rest of the Illyrians were already relaxing – they’d thought it was a great ambush sprung on them, and now they were realising that they had one boy, not a Macedonian army.
A pair of them kneed their horses around the spruce thicket, but the rest turned into me.
I got my spear.
A boy my own age laughed, pulled a bow from a long scabbard under his knee and strung it.
So I threw the spear.
It was something we practised every day – if I hadn’t been able to hit him at that distance, I’d have had marks on my back like a bad slave.
That took the smiles off their faces. The boy with the bow died with a gurgle.
I drew my sword.
Let’s make this quick – they shot my horse, and then they beat me to the ground with spear staves. I don’t think I marked any of them. They were good. And thorough. They broke both my arms.
They bound me to a sapling like a deer carcass, and I screamed. It hurt a great deal.
Several of them spoke Greek, and the chieftain – at least, I assumed he was the chief, although he looked like a brigand with some gold pins – came and squatted by me.
‘So,’ he said. ‘You killed Tarxes’ boy. He wants to skin you.’ The brigand chief grinned. He was missing a great many teeth, and others were broken, blackened stumps. I was somewhere in a haze of pain between consciousness and unconsciousness. ‘You look like a noble brat to me, boy. And you have one of my swords on you. Tell me. Who are you?’
I’d like to say I was brave, but all I could do was mewl, spit and scream. The rawhide straps cut off all circulation to my legs but left plenty of feeling in my unset broken arms.
Broken Teeth watched me for a while. Then he took my eating knife out of his belt and rammed it through my bicep. ‘Talk, boy,’ he said.
I fainted. Thank the gods.
They unstrapped me and threw me into the icy stream at the foot of the ridge. So much for fainting. I couldn’t swim. I couldn’t even float. It occurred to me that the best thing I could do was fill my lungs with water and go down, but they hauled me clear, and anyway, I’m not sure I had the nerve.
It is a funny thing, but when you are tortured, you are a different person. Weaker, with no pride and no self.And yet you want to live. That’s the hold they have over you. The desire to live.
They knew quite a bit. They made the mistake of talking about it. They knew it was Alexander with the hunting party.
As soon as I heard that, I knew that one of the lowland lords was playing at regicide. Alexander was the king’s only heir.
That thought gave me power. Gave me back my self. Instead of being human garbage ready for sacrifice, I went back to being a royal page who had a master to protect.
See this, lad? That’s where they cut my right nipple off my breast. Oh, yes. That’s all scar tissue.
They enjoyed themselves. But they weren’t as good as, say, a Persian torturer.
I screamed out my name. Several hundred times. It was the only thing I’d say, but I must have said it quite a bit, because I can actually remember when no sound came out at all – just the shrill sound of vocal cords wrecked by overuse.
It would have been nice if I’d passed out again, but I didn’t and they tied me to a tree. Blood is sticky and cold.I was in shock, of course, and I shook so badly it hurt my arms. Shall I go on? Men came and beat me – quite casually. A fist in the face, a couple of kicks – they must have cracked every rib.
I’m trying to shock you, boy, and that’s unkind. On the other hand, you have the satisfaction of knowing that since I’m here wearing the crown of Aegypt, I must have survived, eh?
As darkness fell, half of them rode away west under Broken Teeth. The other half bedded down, with two alert and well-concealed sentries. Tarxes came and put his eating spike into my left hand and pulled it out a couple of times. See the scars?
Then he went off to check the sentries. I was far too aware of everything around me. I wanted to faint or die, but instead I was hyper-aware.
So I watched Laodon slit a sentry’s throat. I wasn’t sure it was real, because by then the night seemed to be full of ghosts and shadows. The moon was full. The Illyrian ponies began to fuss, and ghosts walked. When Laodon slit the man’s throat, taking him from behind with his hand as he’d grabbed me at the stream, I saw the ghosts lap at the fountain of black blood that flashed like a sword in the moonlight.