No one had informed him that his school, when not required to discuss law, rhetoric, science or the good life, was busy debating whether those two did anything, or not. Hephaistion knew it well, having lately thrashed someone for asking him outright, because there was a bet on it. Was it possible for Alexander not to know? If he did, why did he never speak of it? Was it loyalty to their friendship, lest anyone should think it incomplete? Did he, even, think they were lovers already, as he understood it himself? Sometimes in the night Hephaistion wondered if he was a fool and coward, not to try his luck. But the oracle of instinct signed against it. They were being daily told that all things were open to reason; he knew better. Whatever it was that he was waiting for—a birth, a healing, the intervention of a god—he would have to wait, if he waited forever. Only with what he had, he was rich beyond his dreams; if, reaching for more, he lost it, he would as soon be dead.
In the month of the Lion, when the first of the grapes were harvested, they had their birthdays and turned fifteen. In the week of the first frosts the courier brought a letter, not from the Queen but from the King. He greeted his son; expected he would like a change from sitting down with the philosophers; and invited him to visit his headquarters. It was none too soon, since he was forward in such matters, for him to see the face of war.
Their road led by the shore, skirting the mountains when marsh or river-mouth drove it inland. The armies of Xerxes had first leveled it, moving westward; the armies of Philip had repaired it, moving east.
Ptolemy came, because Alexander thought it due to him; Philotas, because his father was with the King; Kassandros because if the son of Parmenion came, Antipatros’ could not be left behind; and Hephaistion as a matter of course.
The escort was commanded by Kleitos, Hellanike’s younger brother. The King had detailed him for it, because Alexander had known him so long. This was indeed one of the first beings he could remember, as a dark thickset young man who would walk into the nursery and talk to Lanike across him, or come roaring across the floor playing bears. He was now Black Kleitos, a bearded captain of the Companion Cavalry; highly reliable, and with an archaic forthrightness. Macedon had many such survivals from a Homeric past, when the High King had to take, if his chieftains chose to give it, a wholesome piece of their minds. Now, escorting the King’s son, he was hardly aware of harking back to the rough teasing of the nursery; Alexander scarcely knew what it was he half-remembered; but there was an edge to their sparring, and though he laughed, he took care to give as good as he got.
They forded streams which, it was said, had been drunk dry by the Persian hordes; crossed the Strymon by King Philip’s bridge, and climbed Pangaios’ shoulder to the terraced city of Amphipolis. There at the Nine Ways, Xerxes had buried nine boys and nine girls alive, to please his gods. Now between mountain and river stood a great fortress shining with new squared ashlar; gold-smelters’ furnaces smoked within its walls; it was a strongpoint Philip did not mean to lose, the first of his conquests beyond the river which had once been Macedon’s furthest boundary. Above them towered Pangaios, dark with forests and scarred with the workings of the mines, its white marble outcrops gleaming in the sun; the rich womb of the royal armies. Wherever they went, Kleitos pointed out to them the spoor of the King’s wars; weed-covered siege works, ramps where his towers and his catapults had been reared against city walls still laid in ruins. There was always a fort of his along the way, to take them in for the night.
“What’s to become of us, boys,” said Alexander laughing, “if he leaves us nothing to do?”
When the coastal plain was firm, the boys would wheel off at a gallop, and charge back with streaming hair, splashing along the seashore, shouting to each other above the crying of the gulls. Once, when they were singing, some passing peasants took them for a wedding party, bringing the bridegroom to the house of the bride.
Oxhead was in high spirits. Hephaistion had a fine new horse, red with a blond mane and tail. They were always giving each other things, on impulse, or at the feasts, but they had been boys’ small keepsakes; this was the first costly and conspicuous gift he had had from Alexander. The gods had only made one Oxhead; but Hephaistion’s mount must excel all others. It handled well. Kassandros admired it pointedly. After all, then, Hephaistion was making a good thing out of his sycophancy. Hephaistion felt the meaning, and would have given much for the chance of vengeance; but nothing had been said in words. Before Kleitos and the escort, it was unthinkable to make a scene.
The road ran inland to skirt a brackish swamp. Perched on a spur of hill to command the passage, towering proudly above the plain, was the citadel rock of Philippi. Philip had taken it, and sealed it with his name, in a famous year.
“My first campaign,” Kleitos said. “I was there when the courier brought the news. Your father, Philotas, had pushed back the Illyrians and run them halfway to the western sea; the King’s horse had won at Olympia; and you, Alexander, had come into the world—with a great yell as we were told. We were issued a double wine-ration. Why he didn’t make it a treble one, I don’t know.”
“I do. He knew how much you could hold.” Alexander trotted ahead, and murmured to Hephaistion, “Since I was three I’ve been hearing that story.”
Philotas said, “All this used to be Thracian tribal land.”
“Yes, Alexander,” said Kassandros. “You’ll need watch your blue-painted friend, young Lambaros. The Agrianoi”—he waved his hand northwards—“must be hoping to make something of this war.”
“Oh?” Alexander raised his brows. “They’ve kept their pledges. Not like King Kersobleptes, who made war as soon as we’d given his hostage back.” It was known that Philip had had enough of this chief’s false promises and brigand raids; the aim of the war was to make his lands a province of Macedon.
“These barbarians are all alike,” Kassandros said.
“I heard from Lambaros last year. He got a merchant to write for him. He wants me to visit their city as his guest.”
“I don’t doubt it. Your head would look well on a pole at the village gate.”
“As you just now said, Kassandros, he’s my friend. Will you remember that?”
“And shut your mouth,” said Hephaistion audibly.
They were to sleep at Philippi. The tall acropolis flamed like a cresset in the red light of the westering sun. Alexander gazed long in silence.
The King, when at last they reached him, was camped before the fort of Doriskos, on the near side of the Hebros valley. Beyond the river was the Thracian city of Kypsela. Before investing that, he must take the fort.
It had been built by Xerxes, to guard his rear after he had crossed the Hellespont. On the flat sea-meadow below it, he had rough-reckoned the number of his host, too vast for counting, by marching troop after troop into a square drawn around the first ten thousand men. The fort was solid; he had had no lack of slaves. But it had grown ramshackle in its century and a half of Thracians; cracks were filled in with rubble, the battlements patched with thorn like a goat pen in the mountains. It had withstood Thracian tribal wars; till now, no more had been asked of it.