The Pillars of Hercules (41 page)

So when Alexander struck him in that chamber, everything fell into place. Love became hatred before Ptolemy had even hit the floor: a shift that Philip was quick to turn to his advantage. In the wake of Alexander’s departure from Pella, he’d explained it all to Ptolemy—told him why he needed eyes and ears and hands in the far west, told him that what was at stake was far more than the fate of the Athenian Empire. This time there were no hints—it was altogether explicit. As was the reward for success—the chance to supplant Alexander as the heir to Macedonia. Sure, Alexander was invincible. Impossible to defeat. Unbeatable.

Until he was beaten.

Fate was a funny thing. When Alexander had returned to Babylon after withdrawing his army from Afghanistan, he’d been laid low with a debilitating fever. For three days he’d hovered on the verge of death. The doctors had despaired. The priests of the city’s ziggurats had wailed and offered up their prayers. The people had stopped in the middle of their labors and waited.

But to everybody’s surprise, Alexander had recovered.

Yet since that time, Ptolemy had had ample opportunity to contemplate how life and reputation were such fragile things, how the relationship between the two could be so complex. Say Alexander had died? He’d have perished at the height of his power—never having lost a battle, never having failed to conquer. He’d have gone to his grave untarnished. No, the longer Alexander lived, the more likely it was that he’d be handed his first setback. If that defeat came from magick too powerful for him to contend with… then it wouldn’t just be his defeat. It would be his death. His father would have to find another heir.

And the name of Ptolemy would live forever.

They were a cork tossed on the swell of Atlantic now, running steady before a rising sea. Lugorix had never seen waves so big. But they seemed to be par for the course out here, stretching up like green hills on all sides. The clouds overhead were so thick it felt like it was halfway to night, though it was still only morning. Still early in his shift.

“I can’t sleep,” said Matthias as he came on deck. His mood had gotten as black as the weather. This run into the unknown was affecting all of them in different ways. Eurydice most of all. Which had an all-too-predictable result on Matthias’ own temper.

“She won’t sleep with me anymore,” he said.

Lugorix shook his head. Greeks seemed to almost enjoy taking these things to heart. Gauls had a different outlook on things. If one woman refused you, find another. But that was the problem with being on a boat with only two of them. There weren’t that many choices. Leaving Lugorix with little choice but to listen to his friend.

“But you’re still sharing the same cabin,” he said.

“Doesn’t mean we’re doing anything exciting in there.”

That puzzled Lugorix. “Just flip her on her back and—”

“Get my teeth knocked out? All she does is sit in the middle of the cabin with her charts and instruments, scrawling out diagrams and equations that run off the parchment and onto the floor. I think she’s going nuts, personally.”

“She’s a sorceror,” said Lugorix. “They’re all nuts.”

“Even Barsine seems to be getting a little pissed off with her.”

“I noticed.”

It was hard not to. Barsine and Eurydice were barely talking now, and that was largely because the latter seemed to have nothing to say to or ask the former. Which made a kind of sense, Lugorix reflected. After all, she was the one who knew the science or magick or whatever the fuck it was. Whatever calculations she was making, there was only one person she was debating them with: herself. So Barsine did most of the piloting, and Eurydice occasionally took over from her, but generally just called out the occasional course-correction to her. Leaving Barsine largely in the dark, and the two men completely so.

“Did she tell you anything about those islands we saw?”

“No more than she told the rest of us—that they weren’t worth stopping for.”

Though the name made them sound otherwise. The
Fortunate Islands
—Lugorix remembered the librarian back at Carthage mentioning them. Tacking before favorable winds, the
Xerxes
had sailed between two of them, close enough to see hills and ruined buildings and… something else. With the farseeker, Lugorix had made out some details: a collection of megaliths more extensive than any he’d ever seen, great rocks arranged in some order that might have made sense to a druid. But whatever was on the Fortunate Islands, Eurydice didn’t feel it was going to assist them with their journey.

Either that, or she’d decided they couldn’t risk stopping. When they’d surfaced several kilometers west of the Pillars, there was no sign of the Phoenician ships. It was just them and the sea. But two days later, just as Lugorix and Matthias were exchanging watch duties on the cusp of evening, they’d caught a glimpse of two of those ships’ masts on the horizon. The
Xerxes
had submerged immediately, and when it resurfaced there was… nothing. Yet Eurydice still seemed to act as though they were being chased. Those Phoenician ships had looked like ordinary wooden warships—how she was thinking they could possibly still be tracking the
Xerxes
was beyond Lugorix. But perhaps they had their means. Perhaps they had sorcery.

And perhaps that sorcery had something to do with the hairy star.

It had appeared for the first time that very night that they’d resurfaced after seeing those masts. Hairy star was the only way to describe it—a large star with tresses of fire trailing behind it. A hairy star. But what was it? What did it signify? It had risen every night since then, ever larger, ever brighter. Eurydice said it meant that things were drawing to a close—that everything was converging. Lugorix had nodded as though she spoke wisdom.

When all she spoke was obvious.

Kometes:
the hairy star. So said the astrologers. It lit up the sky to the point where the workers on the bridge no longer needed the light of the torches to labor through the night. But they kept those torches burning anyway. It wasn’t just work they needed to coordinate. It was defense. Again and again the Athenian navy had sortied from Syracuse and had tried to approach the bridge from both north and south, only to driven back again and again by unnaturally heavy storms. Many ships had sunk. But there were still enough of them out there to keep those on the bridge on perpetual alert.

The men accompanying Agathocles kept watch around the clock too. They’d retreated further into the hills, were now watching the scene from the woodlands that covered the heights above the Straits. It was actually a surprisingly good command post for Agathocles—he could stay in touch with events back in the city, but he wasn’t going to have to rely on messengers to tell him how the Macedonians were faring. Though so far it didn’t look like the Athenian navy was going to succeed. They were being kept at bay through all manner of magick. From the looks of things, he’d bet even money that the Macedonian sorcerors had discovered a way to mess with the weather. Which made no sense, but then again, what did these days? Way too many Athenian fleets had been hit by inclement weather to think otherwise. And the Straits themselves had experienced nothing but perfect conditions. Too perfect, really.

Yet even if some of Athens’ ships managed to get through, the bridge was practically its own fortress now. Every hundred meters was a platform on which was mounted all the latest siege technology, including long-range bolt throwers the equal of anything in the Athenian fleet. Not to mention flame-throwers for close-quarters work. So far those hadn’t been necessary. There seemed no way that Athens was going to be able to stop the oncoming bridge in the Straits.

So they would just have to stop it on the beaches.

Several thousand soldiers and mercenaries had been sent north from Syracuse and were even now assembling on the hills beneath Agathocles’ lookout post. Meanwhile stone-throwers of a range far more powerful than anything that could be mounted on a bridge or ship were under construction—or rather, had been stripped from the walls of Syracuse and reassembled a short distance behind the beach to start lacerating the bridge when it got within range. It was a calculated risk, to be sure, but whoever was directing Athenian strategy wasn’t an idiot. Even now, they stood a far better chance of stopping the Macedonians on the beaches of Sicily than at the walls of Syracuse. If you were dealing with the world’s most powerful land army, your only hope was to use water. The decisive moment was approaching, and everything hung in the balance. Agathocles could see the soldiers of both sides—out on that bridge, down on that beach—pointing at the flaming star overhead, which was now visible in the daytime. A second sun: and Agathocles’ men kept asking him what it meant.

He thought about that for a while, and finally told them it heralded the coming liberation of their city. That cheered them to no end, but in his heart he knew that he was lying. He was no soothsayer, but one look at that
kometos
was enough to see its significance went beyond the fate of any one city. This was something cosmic. But if there
was
a chance amidst the maelstrom for Syracuse to seize its destiny, Agathocles intended to be the man to make it happen. The more Athens stripped its defenses in Syracuse, the better. Or so Agathocles kept telling himself—even as he kept looking at that ever-growing bridge, those swarms of men and soldiers upon it, that field of tents that covered every part of Italy he could see. Somewhere amidst those tents was the man who had become the greatest conqueror the world had ever known—the man who had never been stopped. Somehow he would have to be stopped. If the Athenians couldn’t do it, Agathocles would.

Or else he’d die trying.

Chapter Seventeen

P
erdiccas stared out at the waves.

It was the fleet’s first night out of Carthage, heading east toward Sicily, and that star was about to rise in the west like some kind of demented sun. The Macedonians were nervous enough already. They’d thought the desert was as bad as it got, but that was before they got out on the ocean. All these theories about Athenian seamanship and shipbuilding and maritime tradition were all very well, but the fact of the matter is that the Macedonians just didn’t
like
the ocean. Yet to win this war they were going to have to beat it.

Which is what they were attemping to do now, thanks to Carthage and its newly revitalized fleet. Perdiccas would have liked to take credit for the alliance with the Phoenicians, but that was really due to Alexander and Craterus. Their back-channel diplomacy been a phenomenal success—not only had it helped engineer a coup that substantially weakened Athenian power, but it had also managed to give Macedonia an ally. A
naval
ally, no less.

There was just one problem: ultimately, Macedonia didn’t want allies.

She wanted subjects.

Perdiccas stood on the prow of the transport-barge, looking out into the gathering dark. They would need to do it before the comet rose and the light grew too great. Ahead of him he could barely make out the stern of the Carthaginian galley that was towing his vessel, surging up and down as it crashed through the waves. More barges were visible off to each side, each one packed with Macedonian soldiers. Those soldiers were intended for action against Syracuse, which was where this fleet was bound.

But they were to be put to the test much sooner.

Perdiccas signalled the man beside him, who nodded—opened and closed the shutter on the lantern he held in rapid succession. Perdiccas then turned to the other soldiers around him.

“Let’s go,” he said.

A soldier saluted, handed him a wheeled device about the size of a helmet. Perdiccas slotted it onto the rope that connected the barge with that warship up ahead. Then he gritted his teeth and climbed over the side, gripping the contraption with both hands while looping his feet over the rope, clinging to it a scant few meters above the ocean. One of the soldiers leaned out and adjusted the machine that its inventor, Aristotle, had called a
pulley
.

“Not sure it’s working,” he said.

“It’s working,” said Perdiccas, releasing a catch—and suddenly he was being hauled at speed out over the roaring ocean; the last he saw of the barge was a second man climbing over the side to take the place he’d just vacated. Perdiccas could have just ordered someone to lead the assault, too, but the thought of Craterus sneering at him from the afterlife quashed any such notion. Lead by example—that was the code of the Macedonian general. Was not Alexander always in the forefront of any battle? All these thoughts flashed in an instant through Perdiccas’ head as he zipped along the rope, the sky overhead and waves all around, their spray flashing across him—and then suddenly he was slowing down, the counterspring deploying as the Carthaginian galley loomed ahead of him. He stretched out his feet and made contact, then scrambled over and onto the deck, drawing his blade as he did so.

Only two men stood at the helm, and they both stared at him as though he were a phantom emerging from the sea. Which wasn’t too far from the truth: Perdiccas decapitated the first with a single swipe and stabbed the other through the midriff, holding his mouth shut to stop him from screaming while he lowered him to the deck. Next instant the Macedonian solder who had followed him was climbing over the railing—and reaching into his satchel to pull out iron and flint, striking the one against the other to produce sparks and using those sparks to light the torch carried by the third soldier to arrive. As soon as that torch was flaring, Perdiccas led them forward to the ship’s mast, hacking two more men to bits while the torch-wielder set fire to the sails.

Which was like kicking a hornets’ nest. All of a sudden all the Carthaginian sailors who had been below deck taking their evening meal came pouring out to deal with the fire. But Perdiccas and his two soldiers weren’t waiting around. They faded back toward the stern, crouched behind one of the catapults while they gazed out into a twilight that looked almost like a meadow dotted with fireflies as the sails on warship after warship burnt merrily. And then those fires began to waver and dim. The Carthaginians were good sailors, and ready to deal with any exigency a sea voyage brought. They were getting the fires under control, but the sails were shredded and the ships were drifting dead in the water. They wouldn’t stay that way for long, of course. Spare sails could be rigged. Oars could be deployed.