The Pillars of Hercules (5 page)

“So what’s it to be?” boomed Craterus. “Are we to march on Carthage?”

“Zeus,” said the pacing man, “why are you even
saying
such things?”

“Perdiccas here is so damn
cautious,
” said Craterus, warming to his audience. “All that hesitation, it’s a wonder we made it to Egypt.”

“Well, we
did
seize it without permission,” said Ptolemy, taking his seat.

Craterus laughed sarcastically. “Permission? From the Athenians?”

“From Philip,” said Eumenes. “We have yet to receive any word from him.”

“What
can
he say?” asked Craterus. “Alexander’s presented his father with a fait accompli.”

“And war with Athens,” muttered Harpalus.

“A war both of them wanted,” said Ptolemy.

“But I suspect the old man would have preferred to choose the timing,” said Perdiccas.

There was a moment’s silence.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Hephaestion. “If Alexander had failed to take Egypt on the first try, it might be a different story. But Philip’s not one to be disappointed with victory.”

“Nor am I,” said a voice.

They all rose as Alexander stepped into the room. He’d exchanged his armor for a purple cloak. Bodyguards hovered in the archway behind him.

“Leave us,” he said.

They did so, closing the doors as they went. Alexander took his seat at the table’s head, his voice almost a purr.

“Where’s Meleager?” he asked.

“He couldn’t make it,” said Craterus, seating himself with the rest of them. “Still south of the city, dealing with some Athenian stragglers.”

“He should be here,” said Alexander softly.

Craterus shrugged. “That’s what I told him.”

“No matter,” said the prince. “You can pass on our decisions to him from now on.”

Craterus nodded, faint satisfaction on his face. Alexander looked around the room, meeting each of their gazes in turn. His eyes lingered on Eumenes last. Those eyes were
dikoros
—“of two pupils”; one so brown as to verge on black, the other clear blue. That was supposed to be testament to his divine origins, but Eumenes had seen others with the same condition. Though he had to admit none had been so striking.

“Report,” said Alexander.

Eumenes blinked. He was used to Alexander asking him to start meetings with a summary of events, but there was something new and dangerous in the prince’s expression. Perhaps the result of so many thousands falling on their knees before him on the temple steps outside. Eumenes held Alexander’s stare while he replied.

“The Delta’s ours. What’s left of Athenian resistance is falling back on Thebes, but we’ve cut all their communications and they’re coming apart even as they retreat. We estimate at least two hundred Athenian ships have been destroyed by the incendiary that Hephaestion’s alchemists compounded back East—”

“We should call it Greek fire,” said Craterus. “Given it did such a good job turning their asses into cinder.”

Everyone laughed, but Eumenes just smiled wanly. Yet another reminder of his own Greekness—though he noted that Alexander wasn’t sharing in the mirth either.

“That’s enough,” said the prince, and the laughter stopped instantly. “Hephaestion, how much of the incendiary is left?”

“Several vats,” said Hephaestion. “But my alchemists are working around the clock to make more.”

“What about the black powder?”

“There were several instances where it detonated prematurely. A number of my men were killed. But it brought down their Pharos. A little more refinement, and I’m sure we’ll be able to use it more precisely.”

Alexander nodded, turned to the man sitting next to Hephaestion. “Harpalus.”

“My prince.”

“What of the temple treasury?”

“Secure,” replied Harpalus. “The Athenians fled too quickly to take it with them. It remains in the custody of the priests—”

“Not for long,” said Alexander. “They’ve agreed to reimburse our expenses.”

“Which are considerable,” said Harpalus. “And likely to climb higher as the full cost of this new war comes due.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” said Ptolemy. “Athens has far more to lose than we do. They survive on commerce. The loss of Egypt probably bankrupted half their merchants. I’d give a lot to see the hand-wringing that must be going on in that debate-club they call their Assembly.”

“They still have plenty of resources to draw on,” said Hephaestion.

“Like what?” asked Ptolemy.

“The rest of the Mediterranean,” said Perdiccas dryly.

“Which is why we need to push on Carthage,” said Craterus. Eumenes abruptly realized that what had looked like a joke earlier had actually masked serious intent. He said nothing though, waiting on the reaction of others.

“That’s a thousand miles west of here.” Perdiccas was practically spluttering. “Maintaining our supply lines in the face of the Athenian navy—”

“With the Greek fire, we can annihilate that navy if it ventures too close to the shore.” Craterus looked straight at his prince. “Alexander, how
else
are we to finish Athens? We can’t strike at her heart directly. Her walls remain impregnable.”

“Don’t be so defeatist,” said Ptolemy.

“I’m being realistic,” said Craterus. “We have to chop off the pieces of Athens’ empire like so many limbs, and we have to content ourselves with those portions we can get at without ships.”

“We’ll have ships soon enough,” said Hephaestion. “And we already burnt two hundred of theirs in a single night.”

“But they have
two thousand
more,” said Craterus. “Greek fire or no Greek fire, we can’t hope to match them on the ocean.”

“Precisely why it would be rash to aim at Carthage,” said Alexander. Eumenes exhaled slowly, not realizing till that moment he’d been holding his breath. “Ptolemy’s right. Without ships, your supply line would on the knife-edge between ocean and desert.”

“But the Greek fire—”

“Doesn’t make us invincible. The Athenians could land marines in force at any point they like and long before we reached Libya, our whole army would be guarding its own supply-line. The risk of utter annihilation—”

“So what would you have us do instead?” asked Craterus, and to Eumenes it sounded almost like a challenge. But Alexander, ever unpredictable, didn’t seem to take it as such. He simply looked around the room—looked almost like he was puzzled.

“Are there
no
other ideas on the table, then?”

“Keep building up our navy,” said Hephaestion. “We’ll be ready within a few years.”

“Madness,” said Ptolemy. “You overestimate the difficulty of building and crewing a fleet that’s worth the name. And in a few years—”

“We may not have that long anyway,” said Craterus.

“Now
that
may be true, regardless,” said Harpalus.

“Exactly,” said Alexander. “Say Athens learns how to replicate the fire? Say they have other secret weapons? Their Guilds must be working around the clock to devise them. Besides”—and here he smiled a smile of pure insouciance—“we’re still young. Fame and glory are fleeting. Why wait to destroy Athens when we’re old? Why not find a way to defeat them now?”

Eumenes mulled this over. It was starting to sound like the move into Egypt wasn’t part of some larger plan. Alexander was a born opportunist, but this was taking opportunism to levels that bordered on hubris. Either that, or Alexander really
did
have something in mind. Eumenes hated to think of the expression on Philip’s face if his son didn’t.

“We’re heading west,” pronounced Alexander.

Everyone looked at each other. Perdiccas was the first to give voice to the resultant confusion. “Didn’t you just say that we weren’t—”

“There’s more to the west of here than Carthage.”

“Such as?” asked Ptolemy.

“Siwah.”

“The oasis?” asked Harpalus.

“The Oracle,” said Alexander. “Of Zeus-Ammon.”

“You’re going to ask
Zeus
what to do?” asked Craterus.

“I’m going to
consult
with Him. On a wide range of matters.” Alexander’s voice was steel. “That’s the real reason I came to Egypt, after all.”

The group absorbed this. Eumenes suspected he wasn’t the only one getting a sinking feeling. Not so much because an oracle couldn’t speak truth—indeed, the one at Siwah was particularly famous for combining both the Greek and Egyptian aspects of the All-Father—but because he suspected he knew what was really going on here. He locked eyes with Harpalus across the room, knew they were both thinking the same thing. Olympias. Alexander’s deceased bitch-queen of a mother. Who’d despised his father. Who’d filled his head with fantasies about how his father wasn’t really Philip—who’d hinted to him that it was Zeus instead. The victories in the East and Egypt had apparently left Alexander on the verge of believing it was true.

Now a trip to Siwah would settle the matter.

Ptolemy made a bid for sanity. “That’s a three day journey through trekless desert,” he said. “A Persian king lost an entire
army
trying to get there a couple centuries back—”

“I’m not
taking
an entire army,” replied Alexander evenly. “Some bodyguards. Some cavalry. Hephaestion, of course.” He looked around the table. “And you, Eumenes.”

Eumenes tried to dodge it. “Shouldn’t I be staying in Memphis to administer the business of empire—”

“The business of empire comes with me.”

It took all Eumenes’ skill to keep his face expressionless.

Chapter Three

S
ummer in the Mediterranean made for smooth sailing. But nothing was smooth aboard the fleet. The ships had gotten word of the fall of Egypt while they were still fifty miles out and had turned around immediately. That sat well with neither the crews nor the marines aboard those boats. They wanted to take the fight to the Macedonians. All the more so as the reports out of Alcibidia spoke of utter carnage. Surely at the very least they should be proceeding to the Egyptian coast to pick up survivors? After all,
two hundred ships
had been burnt to the waterline.

Which was precisely why Leosthenes had no intention of doing anything other than heading back to Athens. It wasn’t just that he was responsible for the safety of the hundred ships he commanded. He had the bigger picture in mind as well. This was no time to take unnecessary risks; Athens needed every boat now. Besides which, the reports out of Egypt (from all sources… rafts packed with plaintive refugees, fishing-skiffs whose crews were running for their lives, even the occasional river pleasure-barge that had taken to the open ocean in desperation) said that new weapons had been used. Witnesses spoke of gushing fire and detonating powder, facts which made Leosthenes all the more determined to get those witnesses back to Athens where they could be debriefed by the city’s sorcerors.

He knew he’d take shit for it, of course. He could sense the mood among his crews—not just of the eight-decker flagship in which he rode but in the other dreadnaughts well. He was an experienced enough commander to know when his men weren’t on his side. Had it been a longer campaign, he’d have had time to prove himself. Truth was he was always having to prove himself; it went with the territory of being the youngest of Athens’ archons and a direct descendant of the famous Alcibiades. He was popular with the mob, less so with his fellow archons, and every army or fleet he commanded was always skeptical until they’d seen him in battle. So to turn back before combat flew in the face of all his instincts. He knew he wouldn’t be winning any popularity contests now. In fact—

“Next session of the archons might be your last,” said a voice.

“Thanks for nothing,” said Leosthenes, continuing to stare out at the other ships in his fleet. They were sailing in two long columns, fifty ships a column, each ship a symbol of Athenian power, that power emblazoned upon each sail: griffins and dragons and owls and tridents stretching back as far as the eye could see. The men aboard those ships stuck together on and off those boats. They frequented the same dives, the same cathouses. And nine times out of ten, they voted together in the Assembly too.
The rule of the rowers
—that’s what Aristotle had once called Athenian government. The man who’d just spoken joined Leosthenes at the rail.

“Just saying.”

“That’s all you ever do.”

Which wasn’t quite true. His faithful-if-sarcastic servant Memnon did a lot more than just talk. But it was the talk which Leosthenes found the most valuable. The white-haired Memnon had been born a slave to Leosthenes’ father, bequeathed by him to his son, and freed by Leosthenes when he was elected to the position of archon. But really, Memnon’s status had never changed—he was Leosthenes’ trusted confidant, the one who told him what no one else would, the only one who (even as his master rose through the jungle of Athenian politics) could always be relied upon for candid advice.

Especially when it wasn’t welcome.

“You got the sharp end of the stick on this one,” he said. “And if you’re
extra
lucky, they might even make you a scapegoat for all of Egypt.”

“Despite the fact that I never set foot there?”

“All the better.”

Leosthenes smiled wryly, brushed a hand through a wave of his hair. It hung in brown locks down to his shoulders; between that and his hazel eyes, the joke in Athens was that it was too bad for him that women couldn’t vote, otherwise he’d be guaranteed a lifetime appointment among the archons. But personally, Leosthenes doubted that if women had the vote, they’d use it any different then men. They’d reward success (or what could be made to look like it) and punish fuck-ups. And the real question was who’d fucked this one up.

“The Macks had inside help,” he said.

“Of course they did,” said Memnon. “One more reason you need to watch your back on the council.”

“You really think the rot goes that high?”

“I think it’d be dangerous to assume it doesn’t.”

Leosthenes nodded slowly. “What about these damn weapons?”

“What about them?”