The Pillars of Hercules (12 page)

“Sire,” he said. “We need you to surrender your weapons.”

That
got Alexander’s attention. But his voice remained calm: “Since when was that a Macedonian custom?”

“You’ve been away a long time, sire.” The chamberlain looked more than a little uncomfortable. Eumenes almost felt sorry for him. But he recognized the predicament they were all in now. He had his own sword at his side, but he didn’t surrender it. None of them did. They were all waiting for a sign from Alexander—who was in a delicate position. It was unthinkable that a Macedonian should be asked to surrender his weapons. To go before his father without a sword under those circumstances was tempting fate to its very edge. But the alternative was even worse. Civil war was one thing. But right now Alexander was hundreds of miles from any soldiers loyal to him save the few men back in that courtyard—who were probably being disarmed right now. All this must have flashed through Alexander’s mind in an instant, because that was all the time he needed to decide what to do.

“Keep these safe for us,” he said, unstrapping the blade with which he had carved his way across Persia. He doffed his ram’s-head helmet too, took off his breastplate. Eumenes, Hephaestion, and Ptolemy followed suit. And then the doors opened, and they were led into the throne room.

Which was even larger than Eumenes remembered it. Apparently more walls had been knocked down in order to expand the room still further. It was as though the invalid master of Macedonia could only keep pace with his son’s conquests by expanding the domain of his private chambers. Granite pillars held up the mosaic-encrusted ceiling. Banners on which were emblazoned the royal lion of Macedonia hung from mammoth cantilevered arches that loomed overhead. Alexander and his three companions walked silently toward a massive throne set on a dais against the far wall. Guards stood to either side of that chair. The figure who sat on it was lost in shadow.

Though his voice was not.

“I understand you have a new father now,” he said.

Alexander said nothing. Just kept approaching that throne—which was another new addition. It looked like it was carved from a single giant tree, its arms spreading out like gnarled branches. Alexander walked toward it, trailed by his ever-more-nervous comrades. The guards around the throne were on edge too. They stepped forward to bar his way.

“That won’t be necessary,” said the voice. Its owner shifted in his chair, his face catching the light of the nearest torch. Eumenes drew in his breath even as Alexander halted on the very edge of the dais. He knew Philip had changed, he just hadn’t realized how much. The man who sat in that throne was a mountain of muscle gone to fat, his body mute testimony to a lifetime of battle-wounds. Ten years ago, the arrow of a Thracian archer had taken out one eye, shattering the cheekbone and giving the king the look of a demented cyclops. Five years after that, two fingers had been lost to a Theban cavalryman whose head was severed from his body in the very next moment. But the crowning injury was that which Philip had sustained beside the river Granicus, in Asia Minor—only six months into his Persian foray, fighting the combined forces of the western satraps. The blow of one of those satraps had knocked him to the ground; the blow of another had cut through his spinal column and left him paralyzed from the waist down. But the Macedonian phalanx had swept all before them anyway. Two hours later, Philip was carried off the field of his greatest victory—in no small part thanks to the heroics of his son, who personally killed one of the satraps and stood over his father’s prostrate body while the battle raged on about them. That had been the pinnacle of their partnership. After that, Alexander had been tasked with continuing the war against Persia while his crippled father returned to Macedonia. In retrospect, it was a no-win situation. If Alexander lost, so did Macedonia. But if he won, then he would surpass his father, even while his father still sat on his throne.

Yet now the prince went down on one knee before the king.

“Rise,” said Philip tonelessly. “Come closer.” Wordlessly, Alexander did so. Eumenes and the others remained kneeling, watching as Philip reached out for his son, who leaned down and embraced him. Was this all for show? Eumenes had no idea whether one of them was about to try to strangle or stab the other.

But then Alexander stood up and took a few steps backward. Philip looked over his son’s shoulder at the three men he’d brought with him. He greeted each of them by name. Each of them knelt, addressed him as lord and king. For a moment, the years swept away—for just a moment, Eumenes was a child again, being introduced by his long-dead father to Philip at a banquet filled with Macedonian nobles. Philip had been in his twenties then—a bull of a man more impressive than anyone Eumenes had ever met. He remembered that almost palpable sense that this was a being for whom anything was possible.

But then he rose and beheld the ruined king before him.

Philip turned toward his son. “I understand Harpalus is no longer in our service,” he said.

“He was a traitor,” said Alexander. “In league with Carthage.”

“In league with me, you mean.”

Alexander said nothing.

“That’s what you thought, isn’t it? That’s why you killed him.”

“He was in league with Carthage,” repeated Alexander.

“I hope
somebody
is,” said Philip. “Because unless we reach a deal with them, it’s going to be very difficult to finish what you started down in Egypt.”

“I’ve given you a great victory,” said Alexander.

“You’ve given
yourself
a great victory.”

“All I’ve conquered is in your name.”

“I summoned you so we could talk frankly and this is the prattle you spout?”

“What would you have me say?” asked Alexander.

Philip’s hands shook. Spittle dribbled down his beard, and he wiped it away. His eyes gleamed. “I’d have you admit that there’s such a thing as winning a battle but losing a war.”

“I don’t intend to lose a war with Athens.”

“Executing your competent subordinates is an excellent way to ensure you do. First Meleager, then Harpalus—who’s next?”

“I was thinking you had in mind me.”

Philip smiled grimly. “In truth, it
had
crossed my mind.”

“Although then you’d have no general able to command your armies.”

The two men stared at each other for a long moment. Eumenes knew what both were thinking. Parmenio: Philip’s best friend and most trusted general. Eumenes recalled the king’s words—“the Athenians elect ten generals every year, but in all my life, I only ever found one.” Parmenio had been the king’s right-hand man across his consolidation of greater Macedonia—but he’d died in a skirmish mere days before Granicus. Had he lived, the rest of the Persian expedition would almost certainly have been entrusted to him, and Philip wouldn’t have had to rely so exclusively on his son. Then again, the secret to Parmenio’s success had been his caution—something that Alexander had thrown to the winds in his conquest of Persia. Parmenio might never have achieved so much. Certainly Parmenio would never have struck at Egypt and triggered a war with Athens without Philip’s leave.

Which was, of course, the whole point.

“Harpalus wasn’t my spy,” said Philip.

“Then who was?”

“You’re assuming I had one.”

“Of course you did.”

Philip nodded. “Look at the man standing next to you,” he said.

“What?” Alexander looked at Eumenes for a brief moment—Eumenes frantically shook his head, but Alexander was already looking past him at—

“Ptolemy,” said Philip.

What happened next was almost too fast for Eumenes’s eyes to follow: Alexander whirled toward Ptolemy and felled him with a punch to the jaw that sent him sprawling. He was about to leap on the fallen man when—

“Enough,”
said Philip. And such was the force of his voice that Alexander stopped, looked at his father with an expression of smoldering rage. The guards on either side of the king gripped their spears, but Philip seemed to find the whole thing amusing. “It’s almost refreshing to see that you’ve still got weaknesses,” he said. “And yet: how many times have I told you that your emotions are akin to the reins of a chariot? You either hold them tight or else you’ll be undone. Perhaps by being blind to truths beneath your very nose.”

Ptolemy hauled himself to his feet, keeping a wide berth of the furious prince. “Alexander,” he said, “I can explain—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” said Alexander.

“You already know it,” said Philip. “He’s been reporting back to me. Good information, too—”

“You bastard,” said Alexander.

“Well, that’s exactly what your lifelong friend is. My bastard son.”

Now Alexander looked like
he
was the one who had been punched. “What?”

“Do I have to spell it out for you? My son via someone other than your dead and rotting mother. You remember her, don’t you? The one who had a dream the night before I married her that a lightning-bolt penetrated her and then flame shot out from between her legs to engulf the world? And who then became convinced that it wasn’t me who had conceived you, it was Zeus? An interesting theory, one guaranteed to attract the attention of fools and peasants the world over.”

Now Alexander was angrier than Eumenes had ever seen him—and also more confused. “But Ptolemy’s father—I thought Lagos—”

“—was given Arsinoe by me when I’d finished with her. She was a peach, I tell you—excuse me, Ptolemy. So she received her reward—I raised her from concubine to the wife of one of my barons—not such a bad deal, really. But raising the seed I’d left within her was part of the bargain.”

Which wasn’t an atypical arrangement for Macedonian nobility, Eumenes reflected. But usually the bastard in question was identified as such, rather than being left under the legitimate son’s nose. It was no wonder that Alexander was still breathing hard, still struggling to control his temper—no wonder that Philip was enjoying himself so much.

“So if you don’t wish to be my son,” he said languidly, “I can hardly regard myself wholly deprived.”

“That leaves you with a bastard
and
an idiot,” snarled Alexander—this last a reference to Arrhidaeus, Philip’s other legitimate son, who was mentally retarded and incapable of any kind of command. “Such impressive progeny.”

“Well, we can’t
all
be gods,” said Philip. “I suppose I’ll have to content myself with being just a king.”

“You put your statue amidst the Olympians,” said Alexander. “If that’s not the seeking of divine honors, then what else would you call it?”

“I call it propaganda,” said Philip. “In preparation for the march into Persia. I figured that if you’re going to go to war with a king that half the world thinks is blessed by heaven, then it might help to have a little sacred mystique up your sleeve. Whereas you… you seem to actually
believe
this shit. You heard exactly what you wanted to at Siwah—”

“What I saw at Siwah would be blasphemy to repeat,” said Alexander.

“Everyone
heard you addressed outside the temple as son of Zeus,” said Philip. “I’m sure it only got more interesting once you got inside. Did the priests suck you off? Or did they get the temple whore to do it?”

He’s goading him,
thought Eumenes—wondered if Philip wanted Alexander to spring at him like he’d done at Ptolemy. In which case he’d promptly be cut down by the guards. Perhaps Philip really
had
decided Alexander was too unreliable. Perhaps he wanted to make Ptolemy his heir and general. Perhaps there was no reason behind it other than blind rage. Or maybe (it abruptly occurred to Eumenes) Philip intended to make peace with Athens. In which case the sacrifice of Alexander would be an excellent way to kick off the negotiations.

But suddenly—as though Eumenes was reading his mind—Alexander’s face became as calm as a statue.

“It would be blasphemy,” he repeated softly. “Which may come easy to you, but not to me. Regardless: you are the father that gave me life and I’m still your heir.”

“So nice to hear,” said Philip. “Though I suspect the latter means far more to you than the former. And I can’t help but notice you’re still evading my question.”

“I won’t talk about what was broached to me in trust at Siwah—”

“So don’t. Just tell me straight up: beside myself, do you or do you not believe yourself to have any
other
fathers?”

The ghost of a smile fluttered across Alexander’s face. “Zeus is the father of us all,” he said.

Philip laughed outright. “I forgot how well Aristotle instructed you in sophistry.”

“Are the rumors about him true?” asked Alexander.

Philip stared at his son as though deciding whether to let him get away with changing the subject. “They are,” he said at last.

“So he really left.”

“He really did.”

“Did he give you a reason?”

“Only a letter he left behind.”

“Which said?”

“That you had betrayed the Greeks by going to war with Athens.”

“You should have stopped him from leaving.”

“He’s a resourceful man,” said Philip. “Escaped from the palace by a boat of his own devising. And he must have had accomplices waiting for him on the shore with horses. My agents tell me he reached Athens within the week.”

“And where he is now?” asked Alexander.

“We have reason to believe he went to Syracuse.”

“Why didn’t he stay in Athens?”

“Presumably because he knows the place is crawling with agents on my payroll.”

“And Syracuse isn’t?”

“I’d ask you to give me time.” Philip picked up a goblet at his side, drank from it. Wine dribbled onto his tunic. “Which, of course, you didn’t.”

“I did what you always taught me,” said Alexander. “I saw an opportunity and took it.”

There was a long pause. The two men stared each other down to the point where Eumenes became convinced neither would blink. It felt like the next words could prove explosive—like anything could happen.

And then suddenly Eumenes heard his own voice filling in the silence.