Stealing Fire (21 page)

I'd missed that story, being in Memphis on leave and with Ptolemy rather than in the hotbed of army gossip. “That helped morale a lot, I expect.”

Glaukos laughed. “It shut them up, anyway! He's a hard man to serve under. Always was.”

“That's not how you bind men to you,” I said. “Alexander never did it.”

“Oh, Alexander,” Glaukos said. “Alexander never had to.”

Three years, I thought. It had been three years since Glaukos and I had ridden from Babylon, from Alexander's bier. Had we changed so much in so short a time? Now we faced one another, Companion against Companion.

A
GREAT ARMY
cannot conceal its passing, and Perdiccas did not try to. From the time they passed Gaza we knew exactly where they were, and how many miles they were making with each day's march. We could guess to a day when they would appear at the opening out of the wadis, looking across the great floodplain of the river delta to Pelousion.

“They'd have more trouble if the river were up,” Glaukos said gloomily.

“The river won't rise for a couple of weeks,” I said. We waited while they came ever closer, but I knew that road all too well. They would come to us long before the Nile could swell. “Besides, they still can't ford it here.” The Nile might be broken into several main branches in the Delta, but the great eastward branch that flowed into the sea at Pelousion was never shallower than a man's height, even at the peak of the dry season. It could not be forded except at Pelousion, where the pharaohs of old had built causeways and bridges. And the fortress guarded those passes.

In that day the walls of Pelousion were thirty feet high, and though they were built in an antique style they were stout. They were not quite vertical, but had a slight beetling, each course of stone set slightly out from the one beneath it, so that if a man attempted to scale it he would be overtopped by the wall above. It also made things much trickier for scaling ladders, as the bases must then be set some distance out from the walls and would have no stability at the bottom, as they would only touch the wall at the top. These were by no means inconsequential obstacles.

The weak point was the gates, which were exceptionally wide and held with bronze doors bound with iron. But there was only one set of them. There were no inner courtyards or series of walls and gates—just the main gate that gave into Pelousion. It was there that we must concentrate our men defending it, just as that must be the point where Perdiccas would seek an advantage.

Fortunately, there were strong flanking towers, and we had some Egyptian bowmen who, while not the speedy Persian horse archers Perdiccas had, were very competent soldiers though they could not possibly withstand a charge or a marching phalanx, clad as they were in linen and armed only with bows. From the walls of a fortress they could still do considerable damage. It was for that reason that Ptolemy had sent some of them south with Artashir to the fort at Camel's Fort, as that was the next fordable place along the river. We had to guard our backs as well.

We waited and we waited. Each day my scouts reported in. Perdiccas was closer. I knew it in my bones the day he passed the boundary stones, the day he entered Egypt. I thought, from the edgy way he seemed at dinner, that Ptolemy knew too. The gods had offered him a bargain. Was it now too late? Had he decided to reject it?

I thought not. I thought that Ptolemy was cautious, and he would try this first by his own strength of arms, resorting to any other power only if that failed him.

Some of our scouts, the cleverest men, were given special instructions to slip into Perdiccas’ camp at night and pass among the fires listening to rumors and spreading some of their own. It was true, they said, that Ptolemy had offered a bonus to any of Alexander's men who would leave Perdiccas and come to him—a year's pay and a house of their own in Alexandria, the same terms his men had been offered. No hard feelings. If they came to Ptolemy they would be welcomed as brothers with no questions asked.

One of our scouts mistakenly tried this among the Silver Shields, Alexander's oldest veterans, and was killed for his pains, but another came back with twenty men.

They had a great deal of news. I sat at Ptolemy's council when they told it out. Perdiccas had brought Roxane and the child with him.

“He is afraid to leave them in Babylon,” the man said. “They are the focus of so many plots and upheavals. He didn't dare to leave them while he marched on Egypt, so he has brought them with him, the King's mother and the baby king.”

Ptolemy nodded gravely, but I saw his jaw clench. He must be two and a half now, this baby boy Alexander had never seen, Ptolemy's nephew, cousin to Chloe and Lagos and Leontiscus. The most valuable blood prize in the world.

And his mother, who had murdered Queen Stateira before Alexander's body was cold.

“No one is to touch them,” Ptolemy said. “Is that clear?”

I nodded. “Surely Perdiccas will keep them well back from the fighting. They are too important to him.”

“If we had the boy and his mother…” one of the men began.

“Then we would have what?” I asked. “A deadly woman we must keep prisoner while she plots?”

“Why keep her?” Glaukos asked, scratching his chin. “It's the boy that matters.”

“And would we win the loyalty of a child by killing his mother or keeping her from him? Would that not result in raising a sovereign who would hate us, and who eventually would wield power in his own right against his jailers?” I snapped back.

Ptolemy held up a hand. “Peace,” he said. “Gentlemen, this debate is fruitless. Perdiccas is the Regent, not I. And Roxane is his ally, not his prisoner. There is no point in beating this about.” Yet I saw he was troubled.

As we left the meeting Glaukos walked next to me. “If we win he's got to kill the boy,” Glaukos whispered. “Anything else is too dangerous.”

“Ptolemy will not do that,” I said. I was certain of that, but of little else.

A
FEW MORE
deserters trickled in. We knew where they were. And by now they knew where we were. The fortress at Pelousion must weigh heavily on Perdiccas. Ptolemy issued warnings for all the farmers of the plain nearby to evacuate or come into the fortress, and to bring their seed grain with them. If they left it, it would be food for Perdiccas’ elephants, and they would have nothing to plant with when the flood receded.

We watched and drilled and waited.

My hand improved some little measure. I could hold something in it if it were still and not heavy. But I knew I could not control a horse in battle. Not yet. Perhaps never.

And then they were there.

We watched from the walls of Pelousion as they came down out of the wadis, spreading across the plain in a great crowd, Companion Cavalry at a bright trot ahead, a full Ile scouting before the main body. I thought I knew Polemon, mounted on the same black horse.

The numbers we had received were right. Two thousand cavalry, a thousand horse archers. Ten thousand infantry. In the center, like mighty islands topped with platforms manned by archers, were forty proud elephants come with their handlers from Raja Puru in the plain of the Indus as allies of the Great King.

“I hate elephants,” Glaukos said.

“I know,” I said. “You think I enjoyed the Battle of the Hydaspes any more than you did?” I was not looking forward to cavalry on elephants ever again.

That night they camped before the walls of Pelousion. In evening Perdiccas himself was seen riding around, trying to get a look at the defenses. Our archers shot at him when he got too close, and he withdrew to his camp.

In the morning they started digging. It took us several days to see what they were doing, as they were too far from our walls to have any chance of sapping them. Instead they were trying to reopen an old canal from the Nile, hoping to divert part of the river and hence drop the water level in the main channel to a fordable level. If they could ford the Nile without passing under the walls of Pelousion, there would be no need to take the fortress at all.

“Cavalry,” Ptolemy said.

Of course it would have to be. A night sortie of three hundred men could fall upon their scaffolding and burn their supports and sluice gates, break through their embankments and destroy their work. They might even get back to the fortress before they were surrounded, if they were lucky.

I nodded. “I'll lead it myself.”

“You won't,” Ptolemy said. He saw my stubborn look and went on in a low voice, looking out over the camp where it lay. “Lydias, you know it will be hot work and every man must fight. You can't. You'll slow your men down, and if you are killed or wounded again you will deprive me of a man I need.”

“I cannot be such a coward as to stay here on the walls while my men fight!” I said.

“You are a general, and you may not do just as you like,” Ptolemy said, and I saw the white lines around his mouth. “You must do your duty instead.” He put his hand on my arm. “You will have your time, Lydias, before this is done. Do not waste yourself on the first engagement.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

I
WATCHED FROM
the walls while half of my men, under Glaukos, made the sortie. We opened the gates of Pelousion in the hour before dawn, and the men rushed upon the siege works with torches streaming. It was impossible to tell what was happening, and I paced back and forth along the wall, knocking my hand against the stones.

“Now you know what I was when you were stealing the hearse,” Ptolemy said. He sounded amused.

“You were worried?”

“Of course I was. With the fate of everything resting on you, far away with no idea what you were doing or whether or not you would succeed? Of course I was nervous. Do you think I wouldn't rather have gone myself ?”

“Why didn't you?”

Ptolemy shook his head, looking out into the darkness where the bright flare of torches marked our men. “Because I had to govern Egypt. I couldn't afford to spend months riding up and down the coast with the hearse, with no other plans if that failed, out of communication from Alexandria and Memphis both. There was far too much to do.”

I nodded. I could understand that, I supposed. Alexander had governed from the field, but who else was Alexander? And perhaps, I thought, he would have governed better if he hadn't, and we would not now face a disintegrating empire.

“Look there!” Ptolemy said, pointing. “I think they are coming back.”

It did look as though some of the shadows moving against the fires were larger, though no flames were closer. Of course not. They would have thrown down their torches when they turned for home, the better to minimize the targets in the dark. Glaukos was no green boy either.

I ran down to the courtyard to watch them come in on blown horses, a few clinging to the backs of their mounts despite arrow wounds. One lovely Nisean chestnut came in with his rider, all game and heart, a huge arrow lodged in the shoulder of his right foreleg. I didn't know how he could run, but he had. His rider was dismounted and beside him in a moment, his body pressed to the horse's side, shouting for the grooms and the horse doctor.

Glaukos pulled up next to me, blowing hard. “We got it, I think. Hard to tell in the dark, but we burned all the wooden pilings and I don't know where they'll get more in this country. Wrecked their diggings as much as we could. I had to get out of there fast, though. Before the infantry could get between us and Pelousion.” He slid down from his horse.

“You did right,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Your job was to wreck the works, not engage the infantry.”

Ptolemy had come up beside me. “Any idea what your losses were?”

“Not yet,” Glaukos said. “I couldn't see a fucking thing.”

“Let's form up and get a count,” I said.

In the end I was pleasantly surprised. We'd only lost three men outright, though we had twenty who wouldn't be fit for a fight anytime soon, and thirty-six horses lamed or injured.

When the sun rose we got a look at the results. The fire had spread from the works to the stored timber, and as Glaukos had said, I didn't see how they would replace it in Egypt. Large trees do not really grow here, and they had brought their bridging timbers from Lebanon.

From the walls Ptolemy and I saw Perdiccas inspecting the damage as well, his gilded breastplate unmistakable even from a distance. We watched from above, untouchable on the walls of Pelousion.

“That's bought us some time,” I said with satisfaction.

Ptolemy nodded, but his eyes did not leave Perdiccas. “Yes. But it hasn't bought us victory. We have to defeat him, not just hold even. And I don't see how to do that yet.”

“Neither do I,” I said.

ALEXANDER'S
LEGACY

T
he next morning I was awakened abruptly before dawn by a boy I didn't recognize, but I gathered by his manner that he was one of the new squires. “Sir? Hipparch Lydias? General Ptolemy wants you immediately.”

I sat up, shaking the sleep from my head. A glance at the window showed me that the sky had just begun to lighten. “Where's Ptolemy? Has he called to arms?” If he had I had not heard it, nor any of the bustle that should accompany the whole garrison turning out.

“On the walls, sir. And he's not called to arms, just sent me to get you.”

That was better, I thought, throwing my chiton over my head but not stopping for harness and helmet.

The last stars were still showing as I mounted the stairs to the wall, but the east showed flushes of pink. Ptolemy was standing at a parapet, looking toward Perdiccas’ camp. He said nothing, just waited for me to see.

They were gone. The last of their campfires were dying to ashes, while around them the camp stood empty except for the inevitable rubbish and garbage left behind by an army.

“Gone,” I said.

Ptolemy shook his head, a gesture both respectful and annoyed. “Perdiccas is good, Lydias. I'd forgotten how good. If he couldn't crack Pelousion he has better sense than to sit here.”

“Up the Nile,” I said.

Ptolemy took a breath. “Up the Nile, looking for the next fordable place. And the river is still low.”

“Camel's Fort,” I said, thinking quickly. “Just above Phakussa. As he well knows. He and some of his men were here with Alexander too.”

“He's held back to his infantry's pace, and the elephants won't be fast.” Ptolemy turned, running his hand through the thinning hair on his forehead. “They'll be traveling up the eastern bank. I want you out of here by midmorning with all the cavalry. Go straight up the western bank to Camel's Fort and reinforce Artashir. I'll be right behind you with the infantry. You'll get there ahead of him, and the gods willing so will we. You know where he's going, don't you?”

“Memphis,” I said, and I knew it in my bones. He had to recover the King's body, and Memphis was the key to Egypt. Perdiccas would not waste time taking border towns when the real prize lay before him. He had learned from Alexander too.

“Memphis,” Ptolemy said. “So get going, Lydias. Leave your wounded and dismounted men in Pelousion. They'll be fine here. I'll see you at Camel's Fort tomorrow.”

I ran for steel and harness, calling for someone to fetch me Glaukos. Tomorrow. Only if Ptolemy attached wings to the infantry, I thought. It was a day's ride or more down to Camel's Fort and the town of Phakussa, and the road was not the best, which was why everyone went by boat if they could. There was a good road immediately south of Pelousion, but halfway along it turned west to Tanis and Bubastis, on the next easternmost branch of the Nile. Those were much larger cities than Phakussa, which largely served as a shipping center for river traffic from Pelousion to Memphis, and as a market for local farmers.

I could beat Perdiccas to Phakussa. I was sure of that. An all-cavalry force could move, even on bad roads. Artashir had archers there. What we would lack was the heavy infantry, the very thing you need to defend a fort.

And Camel's Fort was not Pelousion.

The old pharaohs had built mighty walls at Avaris and Tanis, and even Bubastis had some serious defenses. Those had been the bulwarks of the Black Land. Camel's Fort had been built by Nectanebo II when he resisted the Persians, and was little more than a guardpost on the western bank of the river just above the country town of Phakussa. The outer wall was nothing but a palisade of wood with sharp ends stuck out of the ground surrounding a small fort of mud brick on stone foundations. It was not a place one would pick for a battle.

We rode. At noon we passed through the town of Sile, at the base of the lake the easternmost branch of the Nile makes as it comes toward the sea. Yes, the townsmen said, a great army had passed in the early hours of the morning on the opposite bank. Two ferrymen had been detained by them, their little boat on the other side of the river. The commander had wanted to send scouts across, but the boat was not big enough for horses.

I shook my head, not even dismounting. That was what I would do—put a few scouts across on horseback to ride ahead and see what we had at Camel's Fort. “I thank the Lady of the Nile that your boat was too small,” I said.

The ferryman's eyes widened, and he said something to his fellow in rapid Egyptian that I did not catch. But I could guess what it was.

“I honor Her too,” I said. “Aset, Isis the Lady of Egypt. Now we must ride.”

With the thunder of six hundred and fifty horses we swept out of Sile, on the road south.

A
FTERNOON BROUGHT US
to Daphnae, which stood on the eastern bank. I called a halt and shouted out to a man fishing in a little reed boat hardly big enough for one. He turned fearfully and paddled in the opposite direction, looking over his shoulder nervously.

“They've already been,” Glaukos said. “Look there. Those fields near the river.”

On the other shore were empty fields, the last of the harvest long since cleaned up, waiting for the Inundation. Just below Daphnae they were littered with dead fires of dung, the smooth fields dug and hummocked where an army had been. This was their camp. They had rested here a few hours, since they had marched all night. We were less than six hours behind them.

“Ride!” I said.

N
OW THE ROAD
curved away from the river, bending westward to Tanis and then south to Bubastis. There was a track along the river of course, but it was muddy and rutted, with tall palms shading it and crowding toward the water. We could not go at a trot, but had to walk in single file.

My horse stepped in a hole and came up lame, so I had to trade with a trooper who would lead her behind.

I chafed at the delay.

Still, before sunset we came up with them and from across the broad water I could see them at last. This was what we had looked like when we marched into India. This was what we had been. The dying sun glinted off the tips of each long sarissa, the infantry phalanxes marching in perfect order. The elephants swayed along, ten between each phalanx, caparisoned with crimson and gold, drivers on their necks watchful. The Persian infantry marched in good order, spears at the ready. Before them came the horse archers, wearing silk and leather, their bows slung at their backs, their beautiful horses dancing. And in front, away from the elephants, Companion Cavalry, the exact match of us. There was Polemon and Attalos, there Seleucus and Appolion.

And they saw us, of course. I knew Polemon was saying, “There is Lydias and Glaukos too.”

I wished there might be peace between us. But peace is harder to make than war.

They could see we were not the main body, just a little more than six hundred men. They did not stop or break ranks, shout or jeer. They kept to their business. And so did we.

“Do we camp tonight?” Glaukos asked, shouldering forward in the line on his big horse.

“No,” I said. “As soon as we get out of sight of them we'll stop for three hours and rest the horses and eat. Then we'll ride through the night. That should put us there in the early morning and then the horses can rest all they like inside the fort.”

Another night, another night ride. This time it was not the bare red walls of the wadis that looked down upon us, the dark of the Red Land. We rode through the Delta at night, a full moon rising golden above us, large as an apple, looking near enough to touch. Palm trees blew in the wind, their leaves making a soft sound. We rode through little villages, dogs and sleepy children starting up as we came, their parents pulling them back inside as we passed through like spirits. Beside us, the river ran northward, hungry for the sea and Pelousion, the last few miles of a journey that had spanned who knew how far, from distant jungles no man had mapped. Above us, the moon rose high at last, cool and clear at its zenith.

Gods rode with us, not almost made flesh and shadow as they had been in that last mad ride with the hearse, but as a presence scarcely felt, a wind at my back, a whisper behind me.

Are you afraid, Lydias?
the lioness whispered.
Do not be
.

“I am not afraid, Lady,” I said. “Perdiccas has brought a Persian army onto Egyptian soil. It is your cause as well as our own we serve.”

Son of Egypt, you are home
, She whispered, and I knew it was true. I had dreamed this place, yearned for it though I never knew its name. Avaris and Tanis, Bubastis and Sais, Heliopolis and Memphis, I could call the Delta home. Alexandria.

As the eastern sky flushed with dawn Orion the Hunter slipped over the horizon, but the Dogs were not quite clear. Sothis stayed just out of sight.

It is not quite time
, She whispered.
Nine days. You must give us nine days
. And for a moment, dozing on my horse, I saw the world from above, the sharp line of the Nile cutting like a rich green serpent through the Red Land, leaping down from the cataracts, twining back on itself as it twisted through the deserts of Nubia far to the south. I saw it as though I stood aloft on the wind, higher than hawk ever flew. Green lands, emerald beneath a hot sun, waterfalls plunging down in cascades of spume. Clouds gathering above the green lands, the first plump drops of rain falling, shivering on long green leaves.
Nine days
, She whispered,
nine days for the river to rise
.

“Nine days.”

You must give us nine days, my son
, She whispered.
And you will have your miracle
.

The sun rose golden in the east, the indigo sky rolling back before its mighty passage. And we rode.

W
E CLATTERED INTO
Camel's Fort in the first hour of the day.

“Walk your horses, damn it!” Glaukos was yelling as we dismounted. “Don't you turn them at those troughs yet! They'll be sick, every fucking one! Walk them, you witless wonders!”

I smiled and left him at it, going to find Artashir.

Who was as tremendously pleased to find that Perdiccas’ entire army was coming down upon him as one might expect.

Artashir came up with some Persian curses that were completely new to me. “And Ptolemy's on the road?”

“He's on the road with the infantry,” I confirmed. “He started just behind me, but there's no way he can be here until day after tomorrow.”

“And you think we'll have Perdiccas tomorrow.”

I nodded. “They were at Daphnae yesterday. I think they'll be here late tomorrow.”

Artashir steepled his hands, resting his fingers on his short, trimmed beard. “If they keep a good pace,” he said. “I don't think Perdiccas will send his men into an attack straight off a full day's march, do you?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “I wouldn't. I especially wouldn't once I saw how lousy the fortifications were here.”

“I know they are,” Artashir snapped. “But what do you think I can do about it? Build a stone curtain wall in a week? I've repaired the palisades and put up cavalry traps around the sides, and laid in food for five thousand for a month.”

“Or ten thousand for half a month,” I said.

“How big do you think this place is?” Artashir demanded. “Look around you, Lydias. It's a squeeze to get ten thousand in here, and we're going to have a serious sanitation problem if we're all in here even half so long. This is not Pelousion!”

I put my hand to my brow. “Forgive me, Artashir,” I said. “I did not mean to belittle your work. I have been riding all night and am not at my best. You have done all that can be done in a short time, and I thank you for it.”

“We can't hold Perdiccas here,” Artashir said. “It's not built for it. We might withstand one good attack. We can make him bleed some. But we can't win it here.”

“I see that,” I said.

“When Ptolemy gets here, you and I need to get out,” Artashir said. “Horse archers are no use in a siege, and neither is cavalry. We need to leave the infantry and Egyptian archers in the fort and get out on the east bank, where we can harry Perdiccas’ army.”

“The problem with that is that he's got more horse archers and cavalry than we have,” I said.

“Yes, well.” Artashir grinned. “Who wants to live forever?”

“We only need to delay them nine days,” I said, and Her words sounded like a bell in my mind.

“What happens in nine days?” Artashir looked perplexed.

I shook my head. “Nothing in particular. But I think your plan sounds good. As soon as Ptolemy gets here we'll lay it out.”

“Agreed,” Artashir said.

P
TOLEMY ARRIVED AT
the same time as Perdiccas, having force-marched his infantry through two nights with only four-hour halts each night. The last ten hours they had seen Perdiccas’ army on the other side of the river, and both armies had marched in sight of the other.

Ptolemy looked exhausted, but he sat down with me, Artashir, and the infantry commanders while his men found quarters in the fort and turned in. On the other side of the river Perdiccas’ men were making camp.