hide-covered shields, erected two tall towers and built a wooden wall across the end of the mole. During the night we put heavy bolt-shooters into the towers, and by day the low wall was lined with Diades’ own specialists, the bowmen carrying gastraphetes and oxybeles, two-man crossbows.
The next time the Tyrians came out in their boats, we shot them out of the water. It was very satisfying, but it didn’t get the mole built, and now we had to push the towers forward every time we advanced the top of the mole any distance. That was harder than it sounds, and the towers had to be taken down in the dark and rebuilt, and Diades, who had the painful honesty of the professional engineer, reminded us that in a month we’d be in the range of their most powerful engines on the walls, and then they would be able to hit us while we worked and to cover their boats – and perhaps even batter down our towers.
Before that, however, the Tyrians tried their first serious sortie. They came at us in the dark. I wasn’t on the wall – I was sound asleep in the arms of exhaustion. Thais was in her eighth month and slept in a separate tent with slaves fanning her all night.
There was a rumour that Banugul put on armour and served in the ranks.
The Tyrians sacrificed a pair of ancient triremes, filling them with flammables and ramming them ashore against the mole before setting them alight. Then they bombarded the mole with showers of hot sand and gravel – red hot, glowing hot – so that we couldn’t fight the resulting fires.
I was awakened to light in the sky and screams. I slipped my sword belt over my head and ran for the head of the mole, with Isokles and Polystratus behind me. I ordered the taxeis to stand to, with phylarchs in armour and everyone else ready to work.
By the time I reached the mole, the end was an inferno. The Tyrians had packed those ships with oil and resin and old cloth and cedar. They burned so hot that they set the timber frame of the mole on fire, and it burned, and suddenly, about an hour before dawn, four weeks’ work collapsed. The end of the mole simply fell away into the sea with a massive cloud of steam that cut off the stars and then an explosion as the superheated rocks of what had been the surface of the mole fell into the water and shattered.
There was
In the morning, we looked out and the mole wasn’t there any more. There were blackened timbers and occasional glimpses of rock. But we’d lost the work of two months in as many hours.
Alexander vanished into his tent. I didn’t see him for a week, and during that week, I heard discouraging rumours. Then, as the clean-up was under way and Diades was replanning the framework of his mole, I was summoned to the king’s side.
‘Ptolemy!’ Alexander said, as I entered. ‘How well muscled you are. I see too little of you!’
False bonhomie was never a good sign, with Alexander.
‘The mole takes all my time, lord,’ I said.
‘When we ride, I insist you ride with me so that we can catch up,’ Alexander said, as if I didn’t serve in his army. About what could we catch up? The minutiae of my taxeis?
‘Are we to go hunting?’ I asked.
Alexander bit his lip for a moment – then smiled. ‘No – I’ve decided to give up the siege. It’s dull, and it won’t get us anywhere. Tyre is not that important a city – and if we build even a small fort here on the mainland, we can deny them the ability to forage on the mainland, and they won’t be able to keep their fleet here, which is all I need.’
Well, I hated the siege, and I was considering just letting go, but I’ve never been good at keeping my mouth shut. ‘They can keep their fleet supplied in Tyre,’ I said. ‘They’re doing it right now. They just sail around us. Merchant shipping can keep them supplied.’
Alexander looked at me, and his mouth worked like a fish’s.
Hephaestion glared at me. ‘The king has made up his mind,’ he announced.
I shrugged. ‘Well, I could make an argument that we’re screwed either way. If we march away, Darius can say we’re beaten, and if we stay, we let Tyre soak up our efforts while Darius rebuilds his army.’ I gave the king a mocking, lopsided smile. ‘I know that I’d rather march away. Even if the siege is good for my physique.’
Alexander was looking at Hephaestion. Hephaestion was giving me his angry drama-queen look.
‘They will use ships to resupply their ships,’ Alexander said. ‘And be astride my rear when I march into Aegypt.’ He slumped. ‘Curses on this place. If I take it, I’m going to kill every person in it, free or slave.’
I didn’t like the sound of that – Alexander prided himself on being merciful.
We played dice for a while. And then we played Polis, and I entertained them with the tale of Marsyas and Cleomenes.
Hephaestion glowered. ‘Women only bring trouble. There should be
That sounded personal.
Alexander made a face. ‘Now, Hephaestion,’ he said, gently reproving.
‘If you spent less time between certain thighs, you’d be doing a better job prosecuting this siege.’ Hephaestion was all but pouting.
I chuckled, because it was funny, and the two of them turned to me as if their heads were controlled by one string.
‘It’s true!’ Hephaestion said, between anger and whining. ‘Ask him where he was the night the mole burned? Eh? Ask him.’
There’re times when it is best to think of another errand, but I was with the king, and I couldn’t think of an excuse to leave.
Alexander turned to me. ‘Do you think I’m avoiding my duties, Ptolemy?’ he asked, his voice as mild as a mother’s to a newborn.
What is the old joke? Have you beaten your wife, lately? Much the same.
‘That is too serious an accusation, lord,’ I said. ‘And I wouldn’t know. In fact, of the three of us, only
When I left the tent, there was a very pretty boy in perfumes and powders waiting in the anteroom. I gathered from a chance-heard comment that he was a pet of Barsines, come to beg the king to attend her for music.
There was, too, a eunuch from the Queen Mother of Persia, also waiting.
When I emerged into the full heat of day, I noted that there were at least a hundred men and women waiting outside the command compound for audiences with the king, and not one of them was anyone I knew – or anyone to do with the army. Most of them were vultures.
We must be winning, I remember thinking. We must be winning, because all these useless mouths are following us.
I related the whole scene to Thais, to pass the time, because she was in the eighth month and distinctly unhappy. I don’t think any woman, no matter how well beloved, loves her heaviest month, and for Thais, one of the world’s beauties, to have to face Barsines every morning over sherbet – Banugul on her way out to riding with the king . . .
Thais was only human.
But that morning, I remember that she heard me out and sent for Barsines. I had no inkling of what she was after, so I went about my work.
It became clear in an hour that we needed a new source of timber and a great deal more rock. Helios showed me the numbers, and begged me to get Diades an audience with the king. Or even with Hephaestion.
Diades was afraid it was over. Everyone was.
I took both of them with me, picked up Perdiccas and Craterus for support, and marched the lot of them to Alexander’s pavilions, where the hypaspitoi admitted us without delay.
Astibus caught up with me as we crossed the Aegema’s parade square. ‘He has the Persian slut with him,’ he said. ‘One of them. The Greek one.’ He shrugged.
In fact, I’d have sworn that Astibus was jealous.
I brushed him off and we went to the door of Alexander’s pavilion. Hephaestion was standing
