I’d still be there if not for Polystratus, who followed me, or led me, barefoot – handing me up my spears, and pushing my arse when I couldn’t find a handhold.
An hour, and the sun was going down and most of the dogs were dead, or beaten. I got up the last big rock, and I could smell the bear, and I could see why the old monster was still there.
One of the first dogs had got through the bear’s guard and mangled a paw – a back paw. The bear was bleeding out, and couldn’t run.
He was a giant, and he was noble, like some barbaric war chief clad in fur, with a ring of his dead enemies around his feet.
I put my horn to my lips and blew.
The bear turned and looked at me. Out shot a paw – if I hadn’t been in armour I’d have died, and even as it was, scales flew as if the bear was a cook in Athens and I was a new-caught fish. I still have the scars – three claws went right through the scales and cut me.
I was taken completely by surprise. I thought that the old bear was at bay – exhausted and done for.
There’s a laugh. And a lesson.
Polystratus put his shoulder into my back and held me against the bear. That may sound like a poor decision, but it was a two-hundred-foot fall to the rocks below.
I got my sword into the bear – two-handed. Polystratus was shouting – I mostly remember the bear’s teeth snapping at my helmet and the hot, stinking breath. The bear reared back, and then stepped away.
I managed to keep my feet, although there was a lot of blood coming out of me. But the bear grew a spear – Hephaestion, somewhere beyond my tunnelling vision, had made a fine throw. The bear turned towards him, and Polystratus threw – another good throw, and the head buried itself to the shaft, and dust flew from the monster’s hide.
I didn’t have the strength to throw mine – not hard enough to penetrate its hide – so I knelt and angled my spear at the bear. The bear swiped at the spearhead – I dipped the head and stabbed – and Alexander was there, and Black Cleitus, and Philip, their spears went into the beast, and then Alexander went right in between the claws with his sword – fore cut, back cut to the throat and the beast was dead.
Achilles himself was in at the kill, spear in the beast.
He nodded at us.
‘That was well done,’ he said. He measured the bear and pronounced us to be mighty.
Alexander watched the bear die. ‘He was noble,’ the prince said. ‘We were many – he stood against us all, like one of the heroes of old.’
Then he turned to me. ‘But you went toe to toe with him alone,’ he said. Polystratus was stripping my thorax to get at my wounds.
I was on my back. ‘And he bested me. Polystratus did all the work.’
Alexander shook his head. ‘Isn’t this your ivory-hilted sword stuck in him to the hilt?’ he said.
My vision was tunnelling tighter and tighter. There was so much blood . . .
It was full spring when I regained consciousness, and it was warm in the sun. I had had dreams – dreams of Nike where she called on me to avenge her, and dreams of Thais that were rather different, and dreams of Alexander and monsters.
A great deal had happened since the bear hunt.
A bear’s claws are filthy, and my wounds – really no worse than what a man might take sparring in armour – became infected. The deadly archer shot me
I was still weak, but awake and alive in the sun, when we crossed the muddy passes – the highest were still full of snow – to Agriania in Illyria, a place so barbaric that Epirus seemed civilised. But the king here – Longarus – was a guest friend of Alexander’s, and despite the defeat we’d inflicted on him, or perhaps because of it, he hosted us.
I get ahead of myself, though.
On the road there – a road I remember as colder than anything I’d ever experienced, I guess because of my illness and wounds – Alexander filled me in on a winter of news.
Cleopatra was pregnant. Very pregnant. Had obviously been pregnant when married. And Philip had won the agreement of the League of Corinth – the new league of Greek allies – to the sacred war with Persia. He’d made them swear to support
In Asia, the King of Kings was dead – murdered by his vizier, Bagoaz. Arses, the new King of Kings, was Bagoaz’s puppet, and Persia looked like a ripe fruit ready to fall into Philip’s mouth.
Philip had spent the winter training the army, and moving the heavy baggage and much of the artillery train to the Chersonese.
The troops were on the verge of mutiny because they were unpaid. This was hardly news, but took on a different meaning when we were exiles.
My money was almost gone. I’d fed my people for the winter and put armour on all the grooms, and that was the limit of my purse. And there was nothing from Heron. Easy to see evil in that, but the passes were mostly closed with weather and Attalus was absolute master in Macedon when Philip was in Corinth.
Antipater lay low, but he was our source for most of these events. His letters came in with the first caravan. No letters for me, and no money, but news for Alexander. He counselled patience, and reminded Alexander that he was the only adult contender for the throne and that, despite the loud talk at the wedding feast, there was no official word. None of us was outlawed.
But I learned from Hephaestion that we’d left Epirus because Attalus had threatened war if we weren’t handed over.
Attalus meant to finish the job himself, it appeared.
The royal fortress in Agriania was built entirely of logs, and everyone wore furs and no one could read. I got a hint of how Athenians must feel at Pella – my first night, I slept in the great hall and listened to men having sex with women – noisily – while two other men gutted each other drunkenly with knives. No worse than Pella, in some ways – but worse, somehow. I didn’t sleep – I was still touched with fever, and the two sets of noises combined to give me a hideous nightmare. And Nike came to me again and demanded that I avenge her murder.
But spring came and, with it, some hope, as she always brings. First, a letter from Heron, with several gold bars. And news of Attalus – who at least appeared to have accepted Heron as the lord of my former estates.
Attalus was not having an easy time, as the highland kingdoms were on the edge of rebellion and he was trying to tax them anyway. He sent troops, and there was fighting. And men – highlanders – came and joined us in Illyria, and made us feel less cut off from home. Before the midsummer solstice, a major religious festival even in the barbaric north, Laodon and Erygius came up the passes and laughed at the furs and the meals of meat alone. They’d been sent away from the army. Indeed, all of Alexander’s friends were in exile – the actors, the philosophers, even men who’d been paid by Philip to be his war tutors. The two Lesbians brought life and light with them.
And brought me a letter from Athens. Two letters, really – one inside the other. The bigger was from Kineas, who wrote me a passionate letter decrying the perfidy of Philip and asking of news of Alexander. As Kineas was the first Athenian to write – almost the first foreigner – his place in Alexander’s estimation climbed like the sun.
And folded inside his letter was a small twist of paper for me. It said, ‘Son of Lagus, preserve yourself. Athena, goddess of wisdom, be with you, and Tyche.’ It was unsigned, but had a tiny picture of an owl and a smiling face.
Thais.
I have it right here, in this amulet around my neck. Don’t imagine that I was dreaming quietly of her, that summer, and living like an ascetic. Slave girls were plentiful and cheap, and willing enough, and pretty enough. But the sight of her writing sent a thrill through me, and the happiness stayed with me for days.
The letter from Kineas came just before midsummer, and lifted Alexander’s mood. We had quite a little court by then, and we drilled – Laodon knew more cavalry drills than I ever did and he took over, and I let him. We read the
