Hephaistion took a step forward; for a moment, it had been instinct to help him up.
Alexander came round the supper couch. Hands on belt, head tilted, he looked down at the red stertorous cursing man sprawling in spilled wine and reaching about for his sword. “Look, men. Look who is getting ready to cross from Europe into Asia. And he falls flat crossing from couch to couch.”
Philip pushed himself up with both hands onto his good knee. He had cut his palm on a broken plate. Attalos and his kinsmen ran, stumbling over each other, to his aid. During the scramble, Alexander signed to his friends. They all followed him out, silently and promptly, as if in some night action at war.
From his post at the doorway, which through all this he had made no move to leave, Pausanias gazed after Alexander. So might a traveler in a thirsty desert look after the man who gave him a cool delicious drink. No one noticed. Alexander, gathering up supporters, had never given him a thought. From the beginning, he had never been an easy man to talk to.
Oxhead neighed in the courtyard; he had heard his master’s war-voice. The young men tossed their festal wreaths upon the midden furred with frost, mounted without waiting for service, and galloped off on the rutted track with its thin-iced puddles towards Pella. In the Palace courtyard, in the glow of the night-flares, Alexander looked them over, reading all their faces.
“I am taking my mother to her brother’s house in Epiros. Who will come with me?”
“I for one,” said Ptolemy. “And that for their true-born heirs.”
Harpalos, Niarchos and the others crowded up; from love, from loyalty, from ingrained faith in Alexander’s fortune, from fear that the King and Attalos had marked them down; or from shame at being seen by others to hold back.
“No, not you, Philotas; you stay.”
“I’ll come,” said Philotas quickly, looking around. “My father will forgive me, and if not what of it?”
“No, he’s a better one than I have, you shan’t offend him for me. Listen, the rest of you.” His voice took the habit-formed note of brisk command. “We must get away now, before I’m locked up and my mother poisoned. Travel light, bring spare horses; all your weapons, what money you can lay your hands on; one day’s food; any good servants fit to bear arms, I’ll mount and arm them. All of you meet me here when the horn sounds for the next guard-change.”
They dispersed, all but Hephaistion, who looked at him as someone in a sea without horizon looks at the steersman.
“He’ll be sorry for this,” Alexander said. “He counted on Alexandros of Epiros. He put him on the throne, he’s been to a deal of trouble for that alliance. Now he can go whistle for it, till Mother has her rights.”
“And you?” said Hephaistion blankly. “Where are we going?”
“To Illyria. I can do more there. I understand the Illyrians. You remember Kossos? Father’s nothing to him, he rebelled once and he would again. It’s me he knows.”
“You mean…?” said Hephaistion, wishing there were need to ask.
“They’re good fighters. They might do better, if they had a general.”
Done is done, thought Hephaistion; and what did I do to save him? “Very well, if you think that best.”
“The others need not come on beyond Epiros, unless they choose. Today’s work today. We’ll see how the Supreme Commander of all the Greeks likes to start for Asia with Epiros doubtful and Illyria arming for war.”
“I’ll pack for you. I know what to put in.”
“It’s lucky Mother can ride, we’ve no time for litters.”
He found her with her lamp still burning, sitting in her high chair staring before her. She looked at him with reproach, knowing only that he came from the house of Attalos. The room smelled of bruised herbs and burned blood.
“You were right,” he said, “and more than right. Get your jewels together; I have come to take you home.”
His campaign bag, when he found it in his room, held as Hephaistion had promised all he would need. At the top sat the leather scroll-case of the Iliad.
The high road to the west led by way of Aigai. To avoid it, Alexander led them through the passes he had learned when he was training his men in hill warfare. The oaks and chestnuts on the foothills were black and bare; the tracks above the gorges were wet and slippery with fallen leaves.
In this back country, people seldom saw a stranger. They said they were pilgrims, going to Dodona to consult the oracle. No one who had glimpsed him on maneuver knew him now, in an old traveling hat and sheepskin cloak, unshaven, looking older. Coming down to Kastoria Lake with its willows and marshes and beaver dams, they spruced themselves up, knowing they would be recognized; but their story was the same and was not questioned. That the Queen was at odds with the King was ancient history; if she wanted advice from Zeus and Mother Dione, it was her own affair. They had outstripped rumor. Whether pursuit was following; whether they were being left to stray like unwanted dogs; whether Philip was sitting back in his old way to let time work for him, they could not tell.
Olympias had made no such journey since girlhood. But she had spent that in Epiros, where all journeys were overland because of the pirates from Korkyra with whom its coastline swarmed. The first day out, she was white with fatigue and shivering in the evening chill; they camped in a shepherd’s bothy left empty when the flocks went down to the winter grazing-lands, not daring to trust a village so near home; but next day she woke fresh, and soon kept up with them like a man, eyes and cheeks glowing. Till they sighted a village she would ride astride.
Hephaistion rode behind among the others, watching the slight, cloaked figures, their heads together, conferring, planning, confiding. His enemy possessed the field. Ptolemy patronized him, meaning no harm, scarcely aware of it, bearing well the prestige of sacrifice. He had left Thais at Pella, after only a few months’ bliss. Hephaistion, on the other hand, had done the only thing that was in him; like Oxhead, he was seen as a limb of Alexander. No one noticed him. It seemed to him they would journey on forever, just like this.
They struck southeast, towards the great watershed ranges between Macedon and Epiros, struggling through swollen streams; making for the hard short way, between the heights of Grammos and Pindos. Before they had climbed to the ridge where the red earth of Macedon peters out, it had begun to snow. The tracks were treacherous, the horses labored; they debated whether to turn back to Kastoria, rather than be benighted in the open. A rider threaded down to them between the beeches, and bade them honor the house of his absent master, who, though detained by duty, had sent word that they be entertained.
“This is Orestid country,” said Alexander. “Who is your master, then?”
“Don’t be foolish, my dear,” Olympias murmured. She turned to the messenger. “We shall gladly be Pausanias’ guests. We know he is our friend.”
In the massive old fort which stuck out on a spur from the woods behind it, they were given hot baths, good food and wine, warm beds. Pausanias it seemed kept a wife here, though all other court officers brought their wives to Pella. She was a tall strapping mountain girl, born to simplicity but burdened with half-knowledge. Her husband, in some distant place before they met, had once been wronged, in a way never made clear to her; his day was yet to come; these were his friends against his enemies, and must be made welcome. But against whom would Olympias be a friend? Why was the Prince here, when he was a general of the Companions? She lapped them in comfort; but alone at bedtime, in the great room Pausanias visited for two or three weeks a year, she heard an owl hoot and a wolf howl, and round her lamp the shadows thickened. Her father had been killed in the north by Bardelys, her grandfather in the west by Perdikkas. When the guests had gone next day, in charge of a good guide as Pausanias had directed, she went down into the rock-cut cellars, counting over the arrowheads and the stores.