It was long past, overlaid with living; the dark shudder, the fiery consuming dream, the shock of waking, the words of the old wise-woman brought by night to this room in secret from her cave. How had it been? She no longer knew. She had brought forth the child of the dragon, and he asked, “Who am I?” It is I who need to ask that of him.
He was pacing, quick and light as a caged wolf, about the room. Coming to a sudden stop before her, he said, “I am Philip’s son. Isn’t it so?”
Only yesterday she had seen them together going to the drill-field; Philip had spoken grinning, Alexander thrown back his head and laughed. She grew quiet, and with a long look under her eyelids said, “Do not pretend you can believe that.”
“Well, then? I have come to hear.”
“These things cannot be scrambled at, on a whim at midnight. It is a solemn matter. There are powers one must propitiate…”
His searching, shadowed eyes seemed to pass clean through her, going too deep. “What sign,” he said softly, “did my daimon give you?”
She took both his hands, pulled him near and whispered. When she had done, she drew back to look. He was wholly within, scarcely aware of her, wrestling it out. His eyes did not tell the outcome. “And that is everything?”
“What more? Even now are you not satisfied?”
He looked into the dark beyond the lamp. “All things are known to the gods. The thing is how to question them.” He lifted her to her feet, and for a few moments held her at arms’ length, the corners of his brows pulled together. At last her eyes fell before his.
His fingers tightened; then he embraced her, quickly and closely, and let her go. When he had left, the dark crept up all around her. She kindled the other two lamps, and slept at last with all three burning.
Alexander paused at the door of Hephaistion’s room, opened it quietly and went in. He was fast asleep, one arm thrown out, in a square of moonlight. Alexander stretched out a hand, and then withdrew it. He had meant, if his mind had been satisfied, to wake him and tell him everything. But all was still dark and doubtful, she too was mortal, one must await the certain word. Why break his good sleep with that? It would be a long ride tomorrow. The moon shone straight down on his closed eyes. Softly Alexander drew the curtain half across, lest the powers of night should harm him.
In Thessaly they picked up the allied cavalry; they came streaming down over the hills, without formation, yelling and tossing their lances, showing off their horsemanship. It was a land where men rode as soon as they could walk. Alexander raised his brows; but Philip said they would do what they were told in battle, and do it well. This show was a tradition.
The army bore southwest, towards Delphi and Amphissa. Some levies from the Sacred League joined them along the way; their generals were made welcome, and swiftly briefed. Used to the confederate forces of small rival states, the edging for precedence, the long wrangles with whichever general had been given chief command, they were drawn amazed into a moving army of thirty thousand foot and two thousand horse, each man of which knew where he had to be, and went there.
There were no forces from Athens. The Athenians had a seat on the League Council; but when it commissioned Philip, no Athenian had been present to dissent. Demosthenes had persuaded them to boycott it. A vote against Amphissa would have antagonized Thebes. He had seen no further.
The army reached Thermopylai, the hot gates between the mountains and the sea. Alexander, who had not passed this way since he was twelve, went with Hephaistion to bathe in the warm springs for which the pass was named. On the grave-mound of Leonidas, with its marble lion, he laid a garland. “I don’t think,” he remarked after, “that he was really much of a general. If he’d made sure the Phokian troops understood their orders, the Persians could never have turned the pass. These southern states never work together. But one must honor a man as brave as that.”
The Thebans still had the fort above. Philip, playing their own game, sent up an envoy, politely asking them to leave so that he could relieve them. They looked down at the long snake of men filling the shore road and thickening into distance; stolidly they picked up their gear, and left for Thebes.
Now the army was on the great southeast road; they saw on their right the stark mountains of Hellas’ spine, barer and bleaker, more despoiled by man’s axes and man’s herds, then the wooded heights of Macedon. In the valleys between these tall deserts, flesh between bones, lay the earth and water that fed mankind.
“Now I see it again,” said Alexander to Hephaistion as they rode, “I can understand just why the southerners are as they are. They’re land-starved; each man covets his neighbor’s, and knows the neighbor covets his. And each state has its fringe of mountains. Have you seen two dogs by the fence where one of them lives, running up and down barking?”
“But,” said Hephaistion, “when dogs come to a gap, they don’t rush through and fight, they just look surprised and walk off. Sometimes dogs have more sense than men.”
The road towards Amphissa turned due south; an advance party under Parmenion had gone ahead, to take the strongpoint of Kytinion and secure this road, as earnest of Philip’s purpose to pursue the holy war. But the main force marched on by the highway, still going southeast, towards Thebes and Athens.
“Look,” said Alexander, pointing ahead, “there’s Elateia. Look, the masons and engineers are there already. It shouldn’t take long to raise the walls, they say all the stone’s still there.”
Elateia had been a fort of the god-robbing Phokians, pulled down at the end of the previous holy war. It commanded the road. It was two days’ fast march from Thebes, and three from Athens.
A thousand slaves, under skilled masons, soon put back the well-squared ashlar. The army occupied the fort and the heights around it. Philip set his headquarters up, and sent an envoy to Thebes.
For years, his message said, the Athenians had made war on him, first covertly, then openly; he could no longer hold his hand. To Thebes they had been hostile even longer; yet now they were trying to draw Thebes, too, into war against him. He must ask the Thebans therefore to declare themselves. Would they stand by their alliance, and give his army passage south?
The royal tent had been put up within the walls; the shepherds who had made hovels in the ruins had fled when the army came. Philip had had a supper couch carted along, to rest his game leg after the day’s work. Alexander sat on a chair beside him. The squires had set out wine, and withdrawn.
“This should settle it,” said Philip, “once for all. Time comes when one must put down the stake and throw. I think it’s long odds against war. If the Thebans are sane, they’ll declare for us; the Athenians will wake up and see where their demagogues have brought them; Phokion’s party will come in; and we can cross to Asia without a drop of blood shed in Greece.”
Alexander turned his wine cup in his hands, and bent to smell the local vintage. They made better wine in Thrace, but Thrace had been given it by Dionysos. “Well, yes…but look what happened while you were laid up and I was raising the army. We gave out we were arming against the Illyrians; and everyone believed it, the Illyrians most of all. Now, what about the Athenians? They’ve been told for years by Demosthenes to expect us; here we are. And what becomes of him, if Phokion’s party gets the vote?”
“He can do nothing, if Thebes has declared for us.”
“They’ve ten thousand trained mercenaries in Athens.”
“Ah, yes. But it’s the Thebans who will decide. You know their constitution. A moderate oligarchy they call it, but the franchise test is low; it takes in any man who can afford a hoplite panoply. There you have it. In Thebes, it’s the electorate that will fight in any war it votes for.”
He began to talk about his hostage years there, almost with nostalgia. Time had misted the hardships; it had the taste of vanished youth. He had been smuggled once by friends into action under Epaminondas. He had known Pelopidas. Alexander as he listened thought of the Sacred Band, which Pelopidas had gathered into one corps, rather than founded; for their heroic vows were ancient, going back to Herakles and Iolaos, at whose altar they were sworn. Men of the Band, having each in his charge a twofold honor, did not retreat; they advanced, or stood, or died. There was much Alexander would have liked to know of them, and tell Hephaistion, had there been anyone else to ask.