Kynna’s caravan was within a day’s journey from Sardis. They were not hurrying; they meant to arrive there next morning before the heat began. Its fame had reached even Macedon for wealth and luxury; the bride of a king must not be outshone by his subjects. Overnight they would prepare their entry.
Along the road, the stony heights were topped with old forts, newly repaired by Alexander to command the passes. They passed rock-slabs carved with symbols, and inscriptions in unknown writing. The travelers who passed them making for the port were all barbarians, strange to sight and smell; Phoenicians with blue-dyed beards, Karians with heavy earrings dragging down their lobes; a train of Negro carriers bare to the waist, their blackness strange and terrible to a northern eye used only to the red-haired slaves from Thrace; sometimes a trousered Persian, the legendary ogre of Greek children, with embroidered hat and curved sword.
To Eurydike all was adventure and delight. She thought with envy of world-wandering Alexander and his men. Kynna, beside her under the striped awning, kept a cheerful countenance, but felt her spirits flag. The alien speech of the passers-by, the inscrutable monuments, the unknown landscape, the vanishing of all she had pictured in advance, were draining her of certainty. Those black-veiled women, carrying burdens beside the donkeys their menfolk rode, if they knew her purpose would think her mad. The two-wheeled cart jolted over stones, her head was aching. She had known that the world was vast, that Alexander in ten years had never reached the end of it; but at home in her native hills it had no meaning. Now, on the mere threshold of the illimitable east, she felt like a desolation its indifferent strangeness.
Eurydike, who had been admiring the defenses of the forts and pointing out their chain of beacons, said, “Is it true, do you think, that Sardis is three times as big as Pella?”
“I daresay. Pella is only two generations old; Sardis ten maybe, or even more.” The thought oppressed her. She looked at the girl in her careless confidence, and thought, I brought her here from home, where she could have lived out her life in quiet. She has no one but me to turn to. Well, I am healthy and still young.
Night would soon fall. An outrider brought news that they were within ten miles of Sardis. Soon they must find a camping-place. A rocky turn shut off the westering sun, and the road grew dusky. The slope above them, dark against a reddening sky, was scattered with great boulders. Somewhere among them a man’s voice called, “Now!”
Stones and shale fell rattling on the road, dislodged by scrambling men. Thoas at the escort’s head shouted out, “Ware thieves!”
The men reached the road, thirty or forty or them, on foot, with spears. Among them the escort looked what it was, a troop of willing, confused old men. Those who had ever fought had done it in Philip’s wars. But they were true Macedonians, with the archaic virtues of the liegeman. They shouted defiance, and thrust at the bandits with their spears.
The squeal of a wounded horse echoed against the rocks. Old Thoas fell with his mount; a huddle of men closed stabbing over him.
There was a high shout, a wordless “Hi-yi!” of challenge. Kynna leaped down from the cart, Eurydike beside her. Their spears had been at hand; with practiced speed they had kilted their skirts into their girdles. With their backs to the cart, which rocked with the shifting of the frightened mules, they stood to face the enemy.
Eurydike felt a shiver of exultation. Here at last was war, real war. Though she could guess the consequence of defeat if they were taken alive, it was mainly a good reason for fighting well. A man reached out at her, fair-skinned, with a week’s red stubble on his chin. He had on a hide cuirass, so she went for his arm. The spear sunk in; he leaped back crying out, “You hell-cat!” grasping the wound. She laughed at him; then realized with a sudden shock that here, in Lydia, a bandit had spoken Macedonian.
One of the lead mules, hurt by a spear, suddenly squealed and leaped forward. The whole team bolted, the cart bucking and bouncing behind. It struck her, but she just kept her feet. There was a cry beside her. Kynna had fallen; she had been braced against the cart when it moved off. A soldier was leaning over her with a spear.
A man came forward with upheld hand. The men around her withdrew. It grew quiet, except for the struggling mules which had been pulled up by the soldiers, and the groans of three of the escort on the ground. The rest had been overpowered, save for old Thoas, who was dead.
Kynna moaned; the almost animal sound of a warmblooded creature struggling in pain to breathe. Her breast was stained with red.
Eurydike’s first impulse was to run to her, take her in her arms, entreat the bandits for mercy. But Kynna had trained her well. This too was war; there would be no mercy for asking, only for winning. She looked at the chief who had been at once obeyed, a tall dark man with a lean cold face. Knowledge was instant: not bandits, soldiers.
Kynna groaned again; the sound was fainter now. Pity and rage and grief lit like one flame in Eurydike, as they did in Achilles, shouting for dead Patroklos on the wall. She leaped to her mother’s body and stood across it.
“You traitors! Are you men of Macedon? This is Kynna, King Philip’s daughter, the sister of Alexander.”
There was a startled pause. The men all turned towards the officer. He looked angry and disconcerted. He had not told them.
A thought came to her. She spoke this time in the language of the soldiers, the peasant dialect of the countryside she had known before she was taught court Greek. “I am Philip’s grandchild, look at me! I am Amyntas’ daughter, the grandchild of King Philip and King Perdikkas.” She pointed at the lowering officer. “Ask him. He knows!”
The oldest soldier, a man in his fifties, walked across to him. “Alketas.” He used the name without honorific, as a freeman of Macedon could do to kings. “Is what she says true?”
“No! Obey your orders.”
The soldier looked from him to the girl, and from her to the other men. “I reckon it’s true,” he said.
The men drew together; one of them said, “They’re no Sarmatians, like he said. They’re as Macedonian as I am.”
“My mother …” Eurydike looked down. Kynna stirred, but blood was running from her mouth. “She brought me here from Macedon. I am betrothed to Philip, your King, the brother of Alexander.”
Kynna stirred. She rose a little on one arm. Chokingly she said, “It is true. I swear by …” She coughed. A rush of blood came out, and she fell back. Eurydike dropped her spear and knelt beside her. Her eyes fixed, showing the whites.
The old soldier who had faced Alketas came over and stood before her, confronting the rest. “Let them alone!” he said. Another and another joined him; the rest leaned on their spears in a confused and sullen shame. Eurydike flung herself on her mother’s body and wept aloud.
Presently, through the sound of her own crying, she heard voices raised. It was the sound of mutiny. Had she known, it was one with which Macedonian generals were growing over-familiar. Ptolemy had confided to close friends in Egypt that he was glad to hand-pick his men, and be rid of the standing army. It put one in mind of Alexander’s old horse Boukephalas, liable to kick anyone else who tried to mount him. Like the horse, it had been too long used to a rider with clever hands.
More urgently now, Eurydike thought of throwing herself upon their mercy, begging them to burn her mother’s body decently, give her the ashes to bury in the homeland, and take her back to the sea. But, as she wiped the blood from Kynna’s face, she knew it for the face of a warrior steadfast to the death. Her shade must not find that she had borne a coward.