The soldiers approved. They thought of the bloodless victory in the west.
“Good,” she said. “In two days I shall move the court to Pydna.”
The soldiers stared. This was another thing entirely. It meant a horde of women, servants and noncombatants taking up room, getting under the feet of the garrison, having to be fed. After a pause in which everyone waited for someone else to speak first, they told her so.
She said, unmoved, “Our allies can join us by sea, without losses from fighting on the march. When we are in full strength, when Polyperchon has joined us, we will meet Kassandros.”
Agenor, a veteran of the east who had been given the chief command, cleared his throat and said, “No one questions the honor of Polyperchon. But it is said he has had desertions.” He paused; everyone wondered if he would dare go on. “And, as you know, we can expect nothing now from Epiros.”
She stiffened in her ivory-inlaid chair. The Epirotes who had followed her to the border had mutinied when ordered to fight in Macedon, and gone home. Only a handful of Molossians was left. She had shut herself up for two days to nurse her pride, and Kassandros’ secret partisans had made the most of them. The councilors looked angrily at Agenor; they had seen her face harden. She fixed on him her inflexible dangerous eyes, looking out from her mask of will. She said, “The court will move to Pydna. This session is closed.”
The men left, looking at one another, not speaking till they were in the open. Agenor said, “Let her have her way. But she must be out before the winter.”
Kassandros had had good news from the officer he had sent to deal with Polyperchon. Avoiding battle, he had infiltrated the straggling camp with men who had a clansman or kinsman there. They spread the news that Olympias had shed the royal blood of Macedon, herself a foreigner and a usurper; and offered a bounty of fifty drachmas to any good Macedonian who would join Kassandros’ force. Every morning the numbers in Polyperchon’s camp were fewer; soon he and his faithful remnant were too few to consider more than their own defense. They dug themselves into the best of the local hill-forts, mended its walls, provisioned it, and waited upon events.
The corn and the olives ripened, the grapes were trodden, the women took to the mountains to honor Dionysos; in the dark before dawn the shrill Bacchic cry answered the first cockcrow. In Pydna, the watchers on the harbor walls scanned the sea, which the first autumn winds were ruffling. No sails appeared but those of the fisher-boats, already running for home.
Before the first gales began, Kassandros appeared from the passes he now commanded, and surrounded Pydna with a palisade.
316 B.C.
IT WAS SPRING IN THE VALLEYS. The peaks of Olympos still dazzled with winter snow under a clear pale sky. A single wreath of cloud hid the Throne of Zeus. His eagles had forsaken its lifeless purity to fend for themselves on the lower crags. Around the summits, only sheer cliffs that would not hold a snowflake slashed the white cloak with black.
In the foothills, the waters of the thaw scoured ravines and gullies in torrents that ground the boulders like thunder. Below, under the walls of Pydna, a mild sun warmed the corpses which the cold had stiffened, releasing their carrion reek, and the kites returned to them.
Olympias, pacing the walls, looked out beyond the siege-lines to the wild mountain ranges where the lynxes and wolves ran free, where the pines were shrugging the snow from their furry shoulders like awakening bears.
Her gaunt face looked out from a shapeless mass of clothing, layer upon layer. She had come in mild autumn weather, resolved that the war would be over in a month and Kassandros dead. Alexander had always done what he resolved, that she knew. He had seldom discussed with her the complex calculations which had preceded action. There was a sharp wind today; she was wearing even her state robe heaped over her shoulders like a wrap. With hunger one felt the cold.
The other women were huddled indoors over their tiny fire. The men upon the ramparts, skull-faced, glanced dully at her as she passed, their vitality too low to nourish a hot hate. All through the winter there had been no assault upon the walls; the corpses in the ditch were all dead of starvation. They had been flung there not from callousness but necessity; there was no room left in the fort to dig more graves.
Scattered among them were the huge bones of the elephants. The horses and mules had soon been eaten; but elephants were instruments of war, and, besides, no one had dared to slaughter them. They had tried to keep them alive on sawdust; for a time their complaining moans and forlorn trumpetings had disturbed the night, then one by one they had sunk down in their stalls, and what meat was left on them, all sinew, had been something to chew on for a while. The mahouts, who were useless now, had been taken off the ration list; they too were below the walls.
Somewhere in the fort a camp-woman’s child was crying; new born, soon gone. The young Alexander was too old to cry. She had seen to it that he still had enough; he was a king and must not have the strength of his manhood crippled in his youth. Though the food was wretched he-had been unexpectedly good, telling her that his father had gone hungry with his men. But often she would find herself looking through him, seeing the tall grandson she could have had if her son had obeyed her, and married before he rode to war. Why, she asked herself; why?
On the rampart that faced the sea the air was cleaner, with a sharp scent of spring. The Olympian massif with its snowy crests called to her like the trees to a captive bird. Last autumn’s Dionysia was the first for forty years that she had not spent with her maenads in the mountains. Never again, said the caw from the kite-haunted bones. She refused it angrily. Soon, when it was sailing weather, Eumenes, whose loyalty had never failed, would cross with his troops from Asia.
There was a stirring along the ramparts. A little crowd was gathering and growing, coming towards her. She drew back from the brink and waited.
The band of emaciated men approached without sign of violence. Few looked to have strength for it. Their clothes hung on them like half-empty sacks; several leaned on a comrade’s shoulder to keep their feet. Men of thirty could have been sixty. Their skin was blotched with scurvy and many had toothless gums. Their hair was falling. One, to whom still clung vestiges of command, came forward and spoke, lisping a little because his front teeth had gone.
“Madam. We request permission to leave.”
She looked at them, speechless. Anger surfaced in her eyes and fell away into their depths. The old, thin voice seemed not a man’s but a Fate’s.
Answering her silence, he said, “If the enemy attacked he could lay us out barehanded. All we can do here now is share the last of the stores, and then go there.” He made a tired, economical gesture towards the ditch. “Without us, what’s left will last a little longer. Permission, madam?”
“But,” she said at last, “Kassandros’ men will butcher you.”
“As God wills, lady. Today or tomorrow, what’s the odds?”
“You may go,” she said. He stood a few moments looking at her mutely as the rest began shambling away. She added, “Thank you for your good service.”
She went in then, because of the cold; but a little later she went up again to watch them depart.
They had broken off branches from some scrawny pines that grew in the cracks of the stone, and as the gates creaked open they waved them in sign of peace. Slowly they eased themselves down the scarp, and plodded across no-man’s-land towards the siege-works. The rough timber gate in the stockade was lifted open; they trickled through and stood in a clump inside. A single, helmeted figure came out to them, seemed to address them, and went away. Presently soldiers came among them with baskets and tall jars. She watched the bread and wine distributed, the stick-like arms reached out in eager gratitude.