“I’ll ask about, then. Why don’t we drink to it?”
“Why not?” He called for wine, and began rolling up the letter. “What’s this, wait, what’s this? I never finished it.
“Since I have been in the north, I hear everywhere of the Triballoi who live on the heights of Haimon, how they are unruly and warlike and a threat to the settled lands. It seems to me that while I am at Alexandropolis, I could carry the war up there, and bring them into order. I would like to ask your leave before drawing the troops I would need from Macedon. I propose…”
The wine came and was poured. Parmenion took a great gulp, forgetting to wait for the King, who forgot to notice it. “The Triballoi! What does the boy want, does he want to push on up to the Ister?”
Philip, skipping the requisitions, read, “These barbarians might annoy us, if they came on our rear when we cross to Asia; and if they were subdued, we could push our frontiers as far north as the Ister, which is a natural defense wall; being, as men say, the greatest river on earth after the Nile and the Encircling Ocean.”
The two weathered men searched one another’s faces, as if consulting omens. Philip broke the pause, throwing back his head in a great laugh full of broken teeth, and slapping his knee. Parmenion joined in with the loudness of relief.
“Simmias!” called the King at length. “Look after the Prince’s courier. A fresh horse tomorrow.” He threw back his wine. “I must get off his recall at once, before he starts to mobilize; I don’t want to disappoint the lad. Ah, I know. I’ll propose he consults with Aristotle over the constitution of his city. What a boy, eh? What a boy!”
“What a boy!” echoed Parmenion. He gazed into his cup, seeing his own image in the dark face of the wine.
The long train of men marched south, by phalanxes and squadrons, along the Strymon plain. Alexander led, at the head of his personal squadron. Hephaistion rode beside him.
The air was loud with sound; thin harsh crying and keening, deep creaks as of strained wood. It was the call of kites, hovering and stooping and fighting for choice shreds, mixed with the croak of ravens.
The settlers had buried their dead, the soldiers burned theirs on ceremonial pyres. At the rear of the column, behind the straw-bedded hospital wagons, a cart trundled along with straw-packed urns of local pottery, each painted with a name.
Losses had been light, for victory had come quickly. The soldiers talked of it as they marched, gazing at the enemy’s scattered thousands, lying where they had fallen to receive the rites of nature. By night the wolves and jackals had gorged on them; with daylight the village pi-dogs, and the birds which clustered in a moving pall. When the column passed near, they rose in a screaming cloud and hovered angrily over their meal; only then could one see the raw bones, and the rags torn by wolves in haste to reach the entrails. The stench, like the noise, shifted with the breeze.
In a few days they would be picked clean. Whoever owned the land, the worst of the work done for him, would burn the bones in a heap, or shovel them into a pit.
Over a dead horse danced vultures, bouncing up and down with half-opened wings, scrawking at one another. Oxhead gave a smothered squeal, and shied away. Alexander signed to the column to proceed, dismounted, and led the horse gently towards the mound of reeking flesh; stroking his muzzle, going ahead to scare off the vultures, and, when they scolded and flapped, returning with soothing words. Oxhead stamped and blew, disgusted but reassured. When they had stood there a few moments, Alexander mounted and cantered back to his place. “Xenophon says,” he told Hephaistion, “one should always do that with whatever scares a horse.”
“I didn’t know there were so many kites in Thrace. What do they live on when there’s no war?” Hephaistion, who felt sick, was talking to keep his mind off it.
“There’s never no war in Thrace. But we’ll ask Aristotle.”
“Are you still sorry,” said Hephaistion dropping his voice, “that we didn’t fight the Triballoi?”
“Why, of course,” said Alexander, surprised. “We were halfway there. They’ll have to be dealt with in the end; and we’d have seen the Ister.”
A small cavalry detail on the flank cantered ahead at his signal; there were some bodies blocking the road. They were raked into a hunting net, and dragged out of the way.
“Ride on ahead,” Alexander ordered, “and see it’s clear…Yes, I’m sorry still, of course; but I’m not angry. It’s true, as he says, his forces are stretched just now. He sent me a very handsome letter; I read it too quickly, when I saw it was a recall.”
“Alexander,” said Hephaistion, “I think that man there’s alive.”
A council of vultures was considering something out of sight; bouncing forward, then recoiling as if offended or shocked. There came into view a feebly flailing arm.
“So long?” said Alexander wondering.
“It rained,” Hephaistion said.
Alexander turned and beckoned the first rider whose eye he met. The man cantered up smartly, and gazed at the wonderful boy with fervent affection.
“Polemon. If that man’s not past help, have him picked up. They fought well, hereabouts. Or else finish him quickly.”
“Yes, Alexander,” said the man adoringly. Alexander gave him a slight approving smile; he went radiant off on his mission. Presently he remounted; the vultures, with satisfied croaks, closed in together.
Far on ahead of them shone the blue sea; soon, thought Hephaistion with relief, they would be past the battlefield. Alexander’s eyes wandered over the bird-haunted plain, and beyond it skywards. He said,
“Many brave men’s souls it flung down to the house of Hades,
While their flesh made a feast for dogs, and all the birds of the air.
And the will of Zeus was fulfilled.”
The rhythm of the hexameters matched itself smoothly to Ox-head’s pacing. Hephaistion gazed at him silent. He rode on, at peace with his unseen companion.
The Seal of Macedon stayed some time with Antipatros. Alexander had been met by a second courier, bidding him come to his father’s siege-lines, to be commended. He turned east to Propontis, taking his companions with him.
In the King’s lodging before Perinthos, a well-lived-in home by now, father and son would sit at the pinewood trestle, over a tray of sea-sand and stones; heaping up mountains, digging out defiles with their fingers, drawing with writing-sticks the disposition of cavalry, skirmishers, phalanxes and archers. Here no one disturbed their game, except sometimes the enemy. Philip’s handsome young squires were decorous; bearded Pausanias with his ruined beauty, now promoted to Somatophylax, Commander of the Guard, watched impassively, never interrupting except for an alarm. Then they would buckle on their armor, Philip with veteran curses, Alexander eagerly. The troops whose section he joined would raise a cheer. Since his campaign he had a nickname: Basiliskos, the Little King.
His legend had run before him. Leading a scouting party against the Maidoi, he had walked round a crag straight into two of them, and dispatched them both while the men behind him were still catching their breath; neither had had time to shout a warning. He had kept a twelve-year-old Thracian girl in his tent all night, because she had run to him when the men were after her; had never laid a finger on her, and had given her a marriage dower. He had run between four big Macedonians brawling with their swords already out, and shoved them apart with his bare hands. In a mountain storm which had rained thunderbolts, so that it seemed the gods had resolved to destroy them all, he had read luck into it, kept them moving, made them laugh. Someone had had his wound stanched with the Basiliskos’ own cloak, and been told his blood was a dye more honorable than purple; someone had died in his arms. Someone else, who had thought him raw enough to try old soldiers’ tricks on, was sorry and sore. You would need to watch out, if he took against you. But put a fair case to him straight, he would see you right.