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And aimed his arrow at Alexander.

The world slowed even as I slashed with my sword and smashed the skull of a shrieking Mallian with my shield. But that lone Mallian arrow flew forward just as Alexander opened his shield arm to strike another man with his blade.

The arrow pierced cleanly through his unprotected cuirass, just as Pausanius’ dagger had done to Philip more than a decade ago. Alexander’s eyes bulged, one knee bending so he came to the ground as if bowing before the shrine of some foreign god.

Or the altar of Hades.

Then the Mallian archer ran forward, his scimitar drawn over his head to steal Alexander’s life.

I’d be damned to the farthest depths of Tartarus if I’d let him succeed.

Peucestes too had seen and together we pushed forward, striking the Mallian so hard that the blow into bone and flesh reverberated up my sword arm.

But from the melee and dust to our left lunged another snarling Mallian, this one wielding a wooden club. And this time, there was nothing we could do to stop him.

That club came down on the back of Alexander’s neck with a sickening thud and I reached out in vain to clutch his
chlamys
and keep him from careening over the wall’s edge into Hades’ waiting arms. The stones caught him just as our men streamed over the rampart from a new ladder.

“Surround him!” I screamed, and the blessed Macedonians moved to form a protective barrier around their wounded king. “Lift him and cover us!” I commanded, for now that the ladders were in place, we would quickly outnumber the Mallians. Shield bearers and Companions spread their gleaming round shields around us as we carried Alexander from the fray.

If Alexander died, I’d see every last Mallian put to the sword, their town torched and their fields salted.

Alexander would not die. He
could not
die.

•   •   •

T
he wooden shaft of the Mallian arrow had to be sawed off, so embedded was it in the boiled leather of Alexander’s cuirass and his pale flesh that no amount of cajoling by the surgeons could loosen it. All the while, Alexander lay insensate on the cot, his face the shade of a long-dead corpse. Bagoas had entered once, but I’d sent him away, unwilling to share what might be Alexander’s last moments with anyone else.

It wasn’t until the surgeons in their bloodstained
chitons
unstrapped Alexander’s leather breastplate and sought to remove the arrowhead from his ribs that he roused with an animal groan of pain that made his eyes flutter. His pupils were dilated in agony, obscuring the blue irises so that both of his eyes matched for the first time I’d ever seen.

I willed him to speak, to rage against the Mallians, but he only gurgled and gasped in pain as the butchers dug into his wound with their iron tools, his hands like fetters around my wrists. The arrowhead was three fingers thick and nearly four long, and it took all my willpower not to bash the physicians’ heads together as they debated how best to remove the cursed thing.

Worthless men masquerading as Asclepius’ disciples. I threatened to have them all impaled on sharpened stakes if they didn’t remove the rest of the arrow. That seemed to get them moving instead of bickering.

Midway through a procedure that involved opening the wound with scalpels and prying the shaft loose with a long-necked spoon, Roxana arrived. She was dressed in orange silk, her dark hair piled high on her head and a wasp pendant secured between the mounds of her breasts, creating a pull between the silk there that I might have found alluring had I not been drenched in Alexander’s blood. She took one look at Alexander stretched out on the table and swayed on her feet. “By the holy flame of Ahura Mazda,” she said. “Will he live?”

The physicians ignored her as they poked and prodded at the hole in Alexander’s barely rising chest. “He will if I have any say in the matter,” I said.

“You,” she said, as if she hadn’t noticed my presence before. “You were with him when he was injured?”

“I helped kill the bastard who thought his ribs could make good use of this adornment, yes,” I said. “And my sword took a liking to the man who clubbed him over the head.”

If I’d expected any gratitude, it was only because I’d forgotten to whom I spoke.

“You imbecile,” she screeched. “It’s your responsibility to
protect
Alexander! Instead, you may as well have gored him and offered him to Ahriman yourself!”

I had her arm twisted behind her back before she could blink, smearing her pristine silks with Alexander’s blood. “You will return to your tent until Alexander summons you,” I growled.

“And if he doesn’t recover to summon me?”

“Then you’ll stay there and rot.”

She didn’t flinch as I shoved her away. I waited only until she’d retreated in a swirl of orange to clasp Alexander’s hand, even as the surgeons gently eased the head of the arrow and the remainder of its shaft from his torso.

“Give it to me,” I said, reaching out my free hand for the ruined weapon.

They looked at me as if my mind was garbled, which perhaps it was, but turned over the arrow. I watched in silence as they sewed Alexander’s wound with tight stitches of white silk, like spiders weaving a macabre web in human flesh.

“You may wish to avert your eyes,” one said, and I saw then that he held a knife over the dancing flame of an oil lamp.

But I forced myself to watch as he pressed the heated blade to the wound, cauterizing it with a hiss of steam so painful that Alexander roused himself to consciousness long enough to scream before falling into blessed oblivion once again.

Then the surgeons’ deft hands packed the injury with a honey poultice even as they applied a bloody chunk of meat onto his swollen neck.

“From a freshly butchered ox,” one of the surgeons assured me. “To draw out the ill humors.”

“Will he survive?” I asked, echoing Roxana’s earlier question.

The surgeon finished wrapping the meat around Alexander’s neck. “We should all pray to the twelve gods that the wound in his ribs doesn’t turn rancid.” He gave me a neat bow. “Is there anything else you require,
chiliarch
?”

I was Alexander’s second-in-command. If he died, I would become the lone commander of his massive armies. Yet I had no taste left for conquering and would trade every soldier beyond the infirmary’s goatskin walls to keep Alexander alive. I shook my head and the surgeons departed, leaving the King of Kings, the conqueror of the world, on a stained military cot, balanced precariously between life and death.

I know not how much time passed, only that the stench of sweat and blood hadn’t dissipated when I heard a sound sweeter than the clearest honey.

“I’ve bested them again, haven’t I?”

His voice was a mere croak, better suited to a crone’s mouth than to a golden lion, but it might have been mistaken for the trill of Apollo’s lyre to my ears.

“You’re an utter fool,” I said, trying to snarl even as my voice cracked with relief. “Scaling the wall first and giving the Mallians the whole of you for target practice. The next time you want to die, I’ll save everyone the trouble and kill you myself.”

“A god cannot be killed by mere men,” Alexander said.

I recalled Alexander’s head wound at Granicus, his thigh wound at Issus, and a stone strike to his head just before Sogdian Rock. It was a wonder the man was still alive at all.

Still, he needed to learn a lesson, right here and right now.

I wormed my thumb beneath the bandages at Alexander’s chest so hard that he cried out, then shoved my thumb under his nose.

“This is the blood of men,” I said. “Not golden
ichor
. And this,” I added, revealing the spear shank stained with his blood, “is the arrow that almost killed you.”

He stared at it a moment, then grimaced. “We should add it to my collection,” he whispered, closing his eyes and brushing the scar on my arm. “For I still have the arrow that gave you this.”

“You almost died,” I whispered.

He grimaced. “That explains why I feel less than godly. Where is Bagoas? And Roxana?”

“I sent them away,” I said. “You’ll have to make do with me.”

His eyes fluttered and his lips curled up in the hint of a smile. “Good,” he whispered. “It shall be just like old times.”

And just like old times, I kissed him, although his lips were pale and dry instead of wine-spiced and demanding, then maneuvered myself around him until we fit together on the cot, provided neither of us moved too suddenly and toppled the other onto the ground. And I sang to him then, songs of our boyhood that would usher him to sleep and away from the dark allure of Hades and the Fields of Elysium.

There would be time for death later. For now, Alexander would live.

And that was all that mattered.

CHAPTER 18

325 BCE

Cassope, Greece

Thessalonike

The myths all claimed that the gods came down to earth, but I’d never seen one. Unless you counted Olympias in her sapphire
peplos
with its golden snake shoulder clasps and her hair studded with tiny seed pearls—and she possessed an incinerating glare worse than any goddess’ as she stalked into the potter’s yard. I eyed the kiln, but it was too cramped for me to crawl inside and escape Olympias’ inevitable rage.

Her eyes flicked disdainfully over me, at my hair in a straw-colored braid, at the dog hair that covered my dark
chiton
, and at my hands streaked with the rose madder dye I’d used to paint a clay soldier for Adea. “You look like a shepherd’s daughter,” she said.

My skin tingled at the insult even as the heat of Olympias’ temper receded into her typical icy demeanor. I’d brought eleven-year-old Adea to the local potter this morning, and been bored to tears until I’d watched her gasp with pleasure as the ruddy-faced potter released clay figurines from the terra-cotta molds. The dolls held no allure for me, but the visit was a reward for having sparred with Adea at Cynnane’s behest. I’d felt no small rush of pride at the suggestion, as if
I
possessed skills worthy of teaching Cynnane’s daughter. Now Adea clutched a finished soldier figurine. A quick nod from me sent her scuttling inside.

Olympias snapped her fingers and a waiting slave came forward with a letter. “This just arrived from Alexander,” she said, jutting her chin toward the rumpled scroll. “You should read it, for it concerns your future.”

I hesitated, for we’d received so much bad news of late, first word of Alexander’s Mallian injury and then the loss of many of his soldiers to disease and famine on the terrible retreat back to Persia. We’d had rumors of Alexander’s growing Persian affectations and how he had kissed his eunuch Bagoas after a dancing contest in view of the entire army, then how my brother had demanded his Persian and Greek friends perform the
proskynesis
, bowing and kissing the tips of their fingers as if in reverence to a god.

I scanned past the salutations written in Alexander’s pristine hand to the bottom of the missive. My brother described feasting for seven days on a platform drawn by eight horses through Gedrosia, the parade of purple-canopied chariots that followed behind to carry the harpists and singers, and the dancing girls celebrating the rites of Dionysus. His men wore no helmets and held no weapons during that week, he claimed, and were instead crowned with flowered garlands while they raised golden goblets to their own glory.

My throat grew tight as I read about his lack of precautions. Alexander believed no harm could come to him, but that was pure hubris, the same that had slain our father.

“He commends you for your swift action against Antipater,” I said, shaking my head as I came to the end. “And asks that you do whatever necessary to ensure Antipater’s power remains in check.” I folded up the letter and placed it in her open palm.

“Alexander is in need of fresh men after his disastrous journey from India,” she said, gazing toward the east, where, somewhere, her son sought still more lands to conquer. “Antipater and his son will rendezvous with him in Persia with extra Macedonian forces. With any luck, Antipater will die on the way and save us all the trouble of killing him.”