The Pillars of Hercules (32 page)

Perdiccas tore his gaze away from the lights in the sky, returned his attention to the lights around him. It was cold in the desert at night, and there were nowhere near enough fires to keep the army warm, for the simple reason that there were no trees out here. The dung of the pack-animals was the only fuel the army had available, but those animals had been dying off in alarming quantities.

As had everyone else. Even the Macedonians were suffering. Nearly all of the camels had been slaughtered, their water and blood guzzled, their meat eaten to keep the army moving, staggering forward, westward along the Mediterranean coast toward Carthage. The maps said they weren’t that far from the green plains of Tunisia, but the terrain they were in remained as barren and inhospitable as it had been since they left the Nile delta, trudging along the tractless coast. The endless expanse upon which the coast bordered had given way to the heaped rocks of mountains—no longer flat, but still unrelenting desert.

At least the Berbers were no longer a factor. They’d been left behind; the problem was they’d been replaced by a new threat that was all the more menacing for going largely unseen: the mountains were infested by small creatures called troglodytes who lived in caves and rolled down stones upon any Macedonian so foolish as to venture into the heights that overlooked the coast. But the blocking of the mountain heights made it almost impossible to get any perspective on the army’s position. Was greenery in sight? Was there ever going to be an end to this? Or would the trogolodytes venture down into the coastal lowlands and attack the Macedonian army directly? During the day, that wouldn’t be a problem. Even an enervated army could deal with them handily.

But night might be a different story. That was why Perdiccas was now standing on the edge of the army’s encampment, inspecting the sentry positions personally, staring out into the black. The army had fallen a long way that it should be scared of midgets, but Perdiccas knew that one more disaster might just drive them all into the sea. He paced along the trench that marked the edge of the camp line, before slowly retracing his footsteps back toward the command tent, past the pockets of men gambling what remained of their water rations. No one was getting enough water, so the temptation to chance what one had in the hope of getting more was considerable. Of course in the morning some wouldn’t have water to make it through the day, and their bodies would contribute to the trail now littering the wake of the Macedonian army. Turning a blind eye to the gambling was a small price to pay to minimize the butchery that had already started to occur. Every day when the army rose and dismantled its tents, a few of them were left standing—and those who entered found only lifeless husks inside, drained of much of their blood. Such tents were nearly always those of the auxiliaries and allies. The conclusion as to what was happening was as obvious as what to do about it: nothing. Appalled as he was by what was taking place, Perdiccas realized that in truth he should be grateful that his Macedonians had discovered a simple expedient that would allow them to march further. His army was adopting the habits of nocturnal demons in its quest to stay above the ground. He lifted the flap of the command tent and entered, ignoring the smell of sickness that assailed his nostrils.

He walked through into the main room where Craterus lay on piles of pillows. Every time he saw him he couldn’t believe how much weight the man had lost. The man who had once been a giant was rapidly becoming a wizened husk. It was as though Craterus had aged years in the space of days. Perdiccas thanked the gods above that the illness that had laid his commander low hadn’t turned out to be a plague capable of spreading like wildfire among the ranks. Not yet anyway. The fever had settled on Craterus’ lungs, gradually tightening its grip. The end couldn’t be that far away now. Perdiccas was the acting commander, and very soon he would be the actual one. But until that happened, he continued to observe the formalities, consulting with his senior officer every evening. Craterus raised his head, opened a pair of bloodshot eyes.

“I told you to come back tomorrow,” he muttered.

Perdiccas felt uncomfortable. “It
is
tomorrow,” he said.

Craterus closed his eyes. “So what happened today?”

“We marched.”

“How many died?”

“Close to a hundred.”

“How many were Macedonians?”

“Eleven. But that number is going to increase if we don’t find water soon.”

Saliva dribbled down Craterus’ chin. “There’s water in the mountains.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“So find it,” ordered Craterus.

“We will,” said Perdiccas. Though he knew they wouldn’t. Because they weren’t even going to look. The troglodytes had ensured that. It wasn’t until three scouting parties searching for water had been lost that Perdiccas had realized they were dealing with a new menace—and when survivors from the fourth party told the story of how miniature demons had sprung an ambush and dropped stones upon their heads, he had ordered no further incursions into the rocks. The bastards had probably poisoned the wells anyway. Perdiccas had tried to explain all this to Craterus, but Craterus kept asking the same questions over and over again—kept ordering a move into the mountains to find water. Now Perdiccas just nodded until Craterus got tired of the subject. And he certainly had no intention of telling him about that his beloved Macedonians were turning into a pack of blood-drinkers. There were some things that were better left unsaid. Easier to just let Craterus’ mind run in its accustomed circles. Easier—and more merciful.

“How close are we to Carthage?” asked Craterus.

“I wish we knew.” 

Craterus looked anxious. Mustering what must have been considerable effort, he raised his head. “But you know what to do when we get there,” he said.

“Yes.”

Craterus relaxed, leaned back on his pillows. “I was telling him I could rely on you.”

“Telling who?”

“The physician.”

Perdiccas drew a deep breath. A nasty feeling was creeping up his spine. “What did you tell him?”

“That you could be relied on to carry out the plan.”

“Oh.”

“When we get to Carthage.”

Perdiccas kept all emotion out of his voice. “And did you tell him what the plan was?”

“I don’t remember.”

Perdiccas stepped backward, his mind racing. Only he and Craterus knew the ultimate objective of the army. Two people in all—and Perdiccas had assumed that Craterus’ illness meant that number was about to drop to one. That assumption had been a rash one. He straightened up, looked into Craterus’ eyes.

“It’s all right,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.” And then he leaned forward and put his arms around Craterus’ neck, began strangling him. Once that bear of a man would have had responded by ripping off Perdiccas’ arms and then beating him to death with them. That man had taught Perdiccas nearly everything he knew about soldiering. They’d crossed the world together and it seemed unfair that their partnership should come to an end in this squalid little tent on the edge of nothing. When Craterus stopped thrashing, Perdiccas let go. Then he called for the captain of the guard outside the tent. The man entered and saluted.

“Our noble commander has breathed his last,” said Perdiccas.

“Sir.” The captain cast a quick sidelong glance at Craterus’ form, but that was all. If he knew either suspicion or regret, he displayed neither.

“Find the physician who attended him and have him executed for incompetence,” ordered Perdiccas.

“Sir.” The captain saluted, turned and left, leaving the new commander of the army of Africa with the body of the man he’d just killed. For long moments Perdiccas stood there, looking down at Craterus’ face. Somehow it seemed that it was he who lay there and that Craterus was the one staring down at him. Perdiccas knew that had their situations been reversed, his commander wouldn’t have hesitated to do what he’d just done. Craterus had been a hard man to deal with, but he’d been fair, and consistent. And foolish—he would have attacked Carthage even without the twist to the plan that Alexander had devised. But now he would never see the walls of that city. Perhaps none of them would. He reached out and closed Craterus’ eyes.

Abruptly, there was a commotion outside the tent. Perdiccas put one hand on his sword. Had Craterus’ death triggered a long-overdue mutiny? Were the Macedonian soldiers going to slay their new commander even before he’d had a chance to give more than one order? His mind flashed down the list of junior officers who would be most likely to try to replace him. He braced himself to do some fast talking and even faster swordwork. The flaps of the tent burst open and two soldiers stepped into the room.

“Sir,” said one, “the sentries have detained a horseman.”

That wasn’t what Perdiccas had been expecting. “Leaving the camp?” he asked. Deserters had nowhere to run, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been trying.

“No sir,” said the soldier. “Entering the camp.”

“Not a messenger either,” said the other. “Not one of ours. He wants to speak to Craterus.”

Perdiccas exhaled slowly. “Bring him to me,” he said. “Now.”

It was the first day in a long while that explosions hadn’t rung through the mountains. The detonations had become such a regular occurrence that Eumenes had gotten used to it—could scarcely believe they had stopped. In theory that meant the journey had gotten easier. But the snow was still continuing, falling downward in ever-thickening white chunks, coating the roof of heaven. They’d been winding their way across jagged peaks and twisted contours of that roof for some time now.

The Alps, they were called. Beyond them lay Italy.

The elephants were suffering particularly badly. Several had died already, and many more were ailing. Eumenes still found it difficult to believe that Alexander had elected not to strike toward Gibraltar. Not because such a move would have made military sense… but so many of the trails seemed to point in that direction, regardless of how difficult a journey along more than a thousand miles of coast might have been. Though Eumenes had to admit that the numbers of Gaulish mercenaries had swelled still further when Alexander had announced his intent to invade Italy. It turned out there were other Gaulish tribes on the far side of the Alps whose forefathers had achieved considerable success raiding central Italy. In particular, they’d sacked and burnt a city called Rome, though failed to take its citadel—and as a result Rome had risen from the ashes of defeat like a phoenix. From the intelligence Eumenes could piece together, a resurgent Rome had proceeded to conquer the Samnite peoples, thereby establishing hegemony over much of central Italy. None of it sounded like it would pose much of a challenge to Alexander though.

But the Alps had given him more than enough trouble anyway. Avalanches and falls were a daily occurrence. Sometimes the trails became so narrow that the men had to march in single file. When night fell, those who stood on those trails had no choice but to sleep leaning against the rocky wall. When morning came, many were gone. They’d shifted during sleep, woken up screaming as they dropped toward valley floors far below. There was no doubt about it, the mountains were worse then any human enemy.

Though, to be sure, there were plenty of human enemies in these peaks. The tribes that inhabited the Alps had dwelt up here for eons, and they didn’t take kindly to intruders. They rained arrows and rocks down on the heads of the Macedonians, and ultimately were only thwarted when Alexander offered a talent apiece to each man that could get above them. It was a group of mercenaries from the rugged peaks of Anatolia that claimed the prize, climbing up ice-covered cliff-faces at night to get above the positions of the tribesmen, then catching them in the rear as the Macedonians launched diversionary feints from below.

But no such solution was available for the parts of each trail that were blocked by landslides and rocks. The Macedonian high command rapidly came to understand the real value of guides in these mountains—not because they
knew
the way, but because they could
find
the way. The landscape was mutable, shifting constantly as moving rocks and snowfall blocked some paths and opened others. But all too often there was no path available. Rocks had blocked the way entirely.

So they used explosives.

Specifically, the black powder that Hephaestion’s alchemists had devised: powder that (now he was in on the secret) Eumenes knew to be a combination of saltpeter, sulphur and charcoal. It was effective, blasting the way forward again and again. It was also dangerous as hell, going off prematurely more than once, each time utterly consuming the hapless engineers in charge of it. But across the last few weeks the army had gotten used to stopping for hours at a time, only to start moving again following the boom of explosions. Eumenes had taken to spending much of that time engaged in discussion with one of the sorcerors Alexander had brought back from the east, a wizened sage by the name of Kalyana. He hailed from the lands that lay to the east of Afghanistan and had agreed to accompany Alexander back to the West in order to spread the word of
Nirvana
.

Not that Eumenes understood what that meant. Truth to tell, he wasn’t sure Kalyana understood it either. Hours and hours of conversation, amphora after amphora of wine, and it seemed to mean less and less the more they talked. Maybe that was the point. But conversations with Kalyana were never boring, and they weren’t confined to philosophy either. The man was interested in everything, from ways to improve the black powder to devising remedies against swamp fevers to measuring the true dimensions of the world.

But today there had been no conversation: no stopping and no explosives; just constant marching through the falling snow, which had Eumenes wondering what else was about to go wrong. It didn’t surprise him in the least when he heard rumbling from the front of the line—rumbling that sounded like a continual landslide of considerable proportions.

Yet landslides were supposed to subside. This didn’t. It kept going, building and building. And the fact that Alexander was up near the vanguard today made it particularly alarming. He forced his way forward, over the slippery rocks, almost losing his footing more than once, moving past Macedonians, then Persians, then more Macedonians, then hordes of Gauls, then some barbarians from a tribe whose name he couldn’t pronounce. All the while the rumbling grew louder. Finally he rounded a corner.