Relieved or frustrated at being left behind, in either case the men were inclined to take things easy. Before the trim well-burnished youth on his sleek black horse had ridden half down the line, they were dressing ranks with nervous care and trying, with scant success, to conceal defects. One or two were sent in disgrace straight back to barracks. The rest spent a strenuous morning. Afterwards, the veterans who beforehand had grumbled loudest jeered at raw men’s complaints; the youngster might have sweated them, but he knew how many beans make five.
“They shaped quite well,” said Alexander to Hephaistion. “The chief thing is, they know now who’s in command.”
It was not, however, the troops who first tested this.
“My darling,” said Olympias, “there is a little thing you must do for me before your father comes back; you know how he crosses me in everything. Deinias has done me so many kindnesses, looked after my friends, kept me warned of enemies. Your father has held back his son’s promotion, just out of spite. Deinias would like him to have a squadron. He is a most useful man.”
Alexander, half whose mind had been on mountain maneuvers, said, “Is he? Where is he serving?”
“Serving? It is Deinias, of course, I meant is useful.”
“Oh. What’s the son’s name, who’s his squadron commander?”
Olympias looked reproach, but referred to her notes and told him.
“Oh, Heirax. He wants Heirax to have a squadron?”
“It’s a slight to a distinguished man like Deinias; he feels it is.”
“He feels this is the time to say so. I expect Heirax asked him.”
“Why not, when your father has taken against him for my sake?”
“No, Mother. For mine.”
She swept round to face him. Her eyes seemed to explore some dangerous stranger.
“I’ve been in action,” he said, “with Heirax, and I told Father what I saw of him. That’s the reason he’s here instead of in Thrace. He’s obstinate, he resents men who are quicker-thinking than he is; and then when things go wrong he tries to shift the blame. Father transferred him to garrison duty, rather than demote him. I’d have demoted him, myself.”
“Oh! Since when is it Father this and Father that? Am I no one to you now, because he gives you the Seal to wear? Do you take his part against me?”
“I take the men’s part. They may have to be killed by the enemy; that’s no reason to have them killed by a fool like Heirax. If I gave him a squadron, they’d never trust me again.”
She struck back at the man in him, with love and hatred. Once long ago, in the torchlit cave of Samothrace, when she was fifteen, she had met the eyes of a man before she knew what men were. “You are growing absurd. What do you think it means, that thing stuck on your finger? You are only Antipatros’ pupil; it was to watch him govern, that Philip left you here. What do you know of men?”
She was ready for the battle, the tears and the bloodstained peace. For a moment he said nothing. Suddenly he grinned at her. “Very well, then, Mother. Little boys should leave affairs to the men, and not interfere.”
While she still stared, he took three quick strides across and put his arm round her waist. “Dearest Mother! You know I love you. Now leave all these things and let me deal with them. I can see to them. You’re not to be troubled with them any more.”
For a moment she stood rigid. Presently she told him he was a wicked cruel boy, and she could not think what she would say to Deinias. But she had softened in his arm; and he knew she had been glad to feel its strength.
He gave up his hunting-trips to stay near Pella. In his absence, Antipatros would feel justified in taking decisions without him. Feeling short of exercise, and rambling through the stables, he found a chariot fitted up for the dismounters’ race. Years ago he had meant to learn the trick, but then had come Mieza. The chariot was a synoris, a two-horse racer of walnut and pearwood; the bronze handgrip for the dismounter was about the right height; it was not a race for big men. He had two Venetian ponies yoked to it, called for the royal charioteer, and began to practice jumping down in mid-course, running with the car and leaping up again. Besides being good exercise, it was Homeric; the dismounter was the last heir of the chariot-borne hero, who drove to the fray in order to fight on foot. His spare hours were given to acquiring this archaic skill; he became very fast at it. Old chariot sheds were rummaged, so that friends could give him a race; this he enjoyed, but never arranged a formal one. He had disliked set contests, from as soon as he had been old enough to perceive that there were people who would let him win.
Dispatches came from Propontis, where Philip, as he had foretold, was finding Perinthos hard to crack. It stood on a headland impregnable from the sea, and strongly walled inland. The Perinthians, prospering and increasing on their steep rocks, had for years been building upward; four and five-story houses, rising in tiers like theater benches, overlooked the ramparts, and now harbored slingers and javelineers to repel assaults. Philip, to give his men covering fire, had built hundred-foot siege towers, and mounted a platform of catapults; his sappers had brought down part of the wall, only to find an inner one, made from the first row of houses packed solid with rock, rubble and earth. As he had expected, too, the Byzantines were supplying the enemy; their fast triremes, with pilots expert in local waters (Macedon had never been a strong naval power), brought in crack troops, and kept open the way for the Great King’s store-ships. He was fulfilling his pact with Athens.
King Philip, who dictated these reports, was a crisp and clear expositor. After reading one, Alexander would pace about, aware of the great campaign he was missing. Even the Seal was scant amends.
He was on the race-track one morning, when he saw Harpalos waving. A Palace messenger had passed the word to someone who could stop him without disrespect; it must be urgent. He jumped down from the car, ran with it a few steps to keep his balance, and came over, plastered with track-dust which coated his legs to the knee as thick as buskins. Through the mask of sweat-striped dirt shone his eyes, looking by contrast turquoise-blue. His friends stood well away, not from good manners but to keep him off their clothes. Harpalos murmured behind him, “It’s an odd thing; have you noticed he never stinks, when anyone else would be rank as a dog-fox?” “Ask Aristotle,” said someone. “No, I think he must burn it up.”
The messenger reported that a courier was in from the northeast border, awaiting the Prince’s leisure.
He sent a servant running to fetch him a fresh chiton; stripped and scraped down under the horse-yard fountain; and appeared in the audience room just before Antipatros, the scroll still correctly sealed, had finished questioning the courier, who had more to tell. He had barely got back with his life from the highlands up the Strymon River, where Macedon knit with Thrace in a mesh of disputed gorges, mountains, forests and grazing-grounds.
Antipatros blinked with surprise at Alexander’s uncanny promptness; the messenger blinked with exhaustion, his eyes gummed by lack of sleep. Having asked his name, Alexander said, “You look dead tired; sit down.” Clapping his hands he ordered wine for the man; while it came, he read the dispatch to Antipatros. When the man had drunk, he asked him what he knew.
The Maidoi were hillmen of a strain so ancient that Achaians, Dorians, Macedonians and Celts had all, in their southward drift, passed by the tribe’s savage homeland in hope of better things. They had survived in the mountains and the Thracian weather, tough as wild goats, keeping up customs older than the age of bronze, and, when in spite of human sacrifice their food-gods were still unkind, raiding the settled lands. Philip had conquered them long ago, and taken their oaths of fealty; but with time he had grown dim to them and faded into legend. Their numbers had increased; boys come to manhood needed to blood their spears; they had broken south like a flash flood in a river bed. Farms had been stripped and burned; Macedonian settlers and loyal Thracians had been cut up alive, their heads taken for trophies, their women carried away.