Battle fury seized me again and the world slowed down around me. Holding the spear like a quarter-staff I smashed its weighted end into the face of the man I had taken it from. He fell like a stone. Then I stood over Philip’s body, my back to his nervously stamping horse, ready to protect the king. The circle of armed Argives looked stunned with surprise. Beyond them Nikkos and the others of my troop seemed just as shocked and frozen into immobility.
Then a fresh commotion erupted out in the darkness beyond the firelight. A man’s rough voice choked off in a bloody gargle, others shouted, and suddenly young Alexandros burst upon us, golden hair glowing, eyes wild, the sword in his hand bloodied.
“The king!” he shouted, pushing men out of his way and advancing upon me.
“I think he’s merely stunned, sir,” I said.
He stared hard at me, then turned to the ring of Argives who still held their swords. “Take them,” he snapped. “All of them.”
Nikkos and the others disarmed the Argives and led them off into the darkness.
“You saved my father’s life,” said Alexandros to me.
Parmenio and other officers came rushing up now and knelt beside Philip.
“I want those assassins hanged,” Alexandros said into the night air. “But not until they tell us who paid them.”
No one seemed to be listening to him. He fixed his blazing eyes on me. “Go with the king. I will join you presently.”
And he stalked off into the darkness. If ever a man had murder on his face, it was Alexandros at that moment. It was difficult to realize that he was scarcely eighteen years old.
Chapter 4
An hour later Philip was still woozy. I had followed the officers who carried him to his cabin, a rough log hut with horse blankets covering the dirt floor. I stood at the open doorway, the Argive spear still in my hands. The officers had carried Philip to his cot with a tenderness I had seldom seen. Several physicians and generals crowded around the king. A frightened-looking slave girl brought a flagon of wine to the cot.
Philip regained consciousness slowly. Although the physicians urged him to remain on the cot, he insisted on sitting up. His officers helped him to a folding camp chair. He gripped its arms weakly.
A scream of agony ripped through the night. Philip looked up sharply. Another scream, longer and more tortured than the first.
Philip gestured to one of the generals, who bent his ear to his king’s lips. Philip spoke, the general nodded and strode out of the hut, past me.
The physicians bustled about. One of them bathed the back of the king’s head. I saw that the cloth came away bloody. Another seemed to be preparing some kind of ointment in a shallow bowl over a candle flame. It smelled of camphor.
“Wine.” It was the first word I had heard from him since he’d been felled. “More wine.”
The girl’s eyes lit up. She smiled with relief. She could not have been more than thirteen or fourteen.
A few moments later I saw a small parade approaching the hut. I recognized the general that Philip had sent out, a big, burly, hard-faced man with a beard blacker than Philip’s own and outrageously bowed legs. Antipatros was his name, I learned later. Beside him strode Alexandros, his face white with anger or something else, his eyes still ablaze. And behind Alexandros marched a half-dozen other young men from his chosen Companions, all of them clean-shaven as Alexandros himself was. It made them look even younger than they were.
The Companions stopped at the doorway. Alexandros went through, followed by Antipatros.
Alexandros went straight to his father. “Thank the gods you’re all right!”
Philip grinned crookedly. “I have a thicker skull than they thought, eh?”
If they were father and son they did not look it. Philip was dark of hair and swarthy of skin, his beard bristling, his arms thick and hairy where they were not laced with scars. Alexandros shone like gold; his hair was golden, his skin fair, his eyes gleaming. I thought of someone I had once known, a Golden One, and for some reason the hazy memory made me shudder.
“I’ll find out who’s responsible for this,” Alexandros said grimly.
But Philip waved a hand at him. “We know who’s responsible. Athens. Demosthenes or some of his friends.”
“They bought out the Argives. I’ll hang every one of them.”
“No,” said Philip. “Only the ones who had weapons in their hands. The rest of them had nothing to do with it.”
“How can you be sure? Let me get the truth out of them.”
“The truth?” Philip’s face twisted into sardonic laughter. “Hold a man’s feet in the fire and he’ll tell you whatever you want to hear. What kind of truth is that? Is that what Aristotle taught you?”
Before Alexandros could reply, Parmenio spoke up. “This man saved your life.” He pointed to me.
Philip fixed his good eye on me.
“When you were down and they were about to spear you, he broke through them and wrestled the spear away from the assassin.”
Philip frowned, trying to remember. At last he said, “Orion, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He beckoned me to him. “What troop are you with?”
“Nikkos’ phalanx, sir.”
“Nikkos, eh? Well, since you’ve done such a good job of protecting me, you’re now part of my personal guard. Tell the quartermaster to outfit you properly. Antipatros, show him where the guard is camped, eh?”
Antipatros nodded curtly. “Come with me,” he said.
He led me outside the hut. “Scythian, eh? I suppose you can ride a horse,” he said.
“I think so.”
He gave me a sour look. “Well, you’d better.”
Thus I became one of Philip’s bodyguards.
My new companions of the royal guard were almost all Macedonians, most of them sons of very ancient and noble families, although there were a few newcomers and foreigners, such as I. I quickly learned that a true Macedonian nobleman learns to ride a horse before he learns to walk. At least, that is what they told me, and it seemed true enough. They were born riders. My first morning as a guardsman I spent watching the others mount their powerful steeds and ride galloping along the bare earth where they exercised the horses.
Before the sun was at zenith I had learned what I needed to know. With neither saddle nor stirrups, a man had to clamp his knees tight against the horse’s flanks and grip the reins in his left hand to keep the right free to hold a lance or sword. That seemed simple enough. I told the wrangler in charge of the corral that I was ready to ride. He trotted out a dun-colored stallion while several of the other guardsmen stopped what they were doing to watch me.
I swung myself onto the back of the stallion and, gripping with my knees, off I went. The horse had ideas of his own. It broke into a frenzied bucking, kicking and twisting, trying to throw me off its back. The men back by the corral were slapping their thighs with laughter. Obviously they had given me the nastiest beast in the corral, to initiate me into their company.
I leaned forward against the stallion’s neck and, gripping his mane, said aloud, “You can’t shake loose of me, wild one. You and I are a pair from now on.”
I clung with every ounce of strength in me and, after several very rough minutes, the stallion settled down and trotted to a stop, snorting and blowing, flanks heaving. I let it rest a few moments, then urged it forward with a nudge of my heels. We flew like the wind, off toward the distant hills. I turned it around and we cantered back to the corral where the other men stood open mouthed.
“Good horse,” I said. “What do you call him?”
“Thunderbolt,” one of the men said, almost sullen with disappointment, as I slid to the ground.