The Pillars of Hercules (39 page)

“So it was blocked,” was all he said.

“It was,” confirmed Eumenes.

“Despite deploying the black powder,” said Hephaestion. “Any more, and we might have collapsed the roof.” Eumenes resisted the urge to laugh; Hephaestion had wanted to use a
lot
more, but Eumenes had managed to talk him out of it. Had he not, they’d be giving Alexander much worse news. As it was, there might still be some way past all those rocks and fallen masonry, further into the cave that lay in the crater of Avernus. They would need stronger sorcery. Which right now they didn’t have.

“The books were clear,” said Alexander. Eumenes never thought he’d heard the word
clear
used to describe the content of the Sibylline Books, but Alexander had felt sure—almost mystically so—of his interpretation of them. “There’s a way in from there.”

“Doesn’t do us any good if we can’t get through it,” said Eumenes. Part of him was still struggling to keep up with all of this. He’d always prided himself on being the arch-rationalist. But the three months since had undermined that faith. Particularly now that Alexander had let him in on the full range of his calculations—had shown him the burnt remnants of the scrolls found in Aristotle’s fireplace at Pella, as well as the papyri taken from the temple at the oasis of Siwah. The king exhaled slowly.

“We’ll just have to do this the hard way,” he said.

“You mean the long way,” said Hephaestion.

“I mean both,” said Alexander. He stared down at the Straits of Messina, the hazy outline of Sicily visible in the distance. In the wake of Rome’s submission, the Athenian position in southern Italy had collapsed rapidly. The city of Tarentum had lynched most of the Athenian officials there, and the garrison had subsequently put to sea rather than fight. Meanwhile Macedonian gold was flowing into Roman coffers, in return for the drafting of virtually the entire labor force of central and southern Italy to chop down every tree they could find. Italy would be virtually deforested by the time they were done.

And a bridge would stretch from Italy to Sicily.

It would span a distance of two miles, but it was the only solution the three men had been able to come up with to the problem of the Athenian navy. Eumenes suspected that Alexander had had it in mind all along; then again, if they’d been able to break through to what supposedly lay beneath Avernus, the war might have been won without ever going to Sicily. But it was certain that once the Macedonians got across, the Athenians would have no choice but to fall back into Syracuse and brace for the mother of all sieges. Should the city fall, that would essentially be the end of the Athenian Empire.

And the beginning of so much else. The tellers of tales regarded the island of Ortygia as the birthplace of the divine twins Apollo and Artemis. The god of the Sun and the goddess of the Moon—but what did such myths
really
mean?

“It’s not the primary site,” said Alexander, still not taking his eyes off the Sicilian coast. “It’s a secondary. Same with Avernus. Same with Siwah.”

Eumenes nodded tactfully. For Alexander, myths were as literal as his destiny. Hephaestion, on the other hand, had been growing ever more alarmed as Alexander grew ever more distant, ever more in sync with something that only he could hear. If the king wasn’t going insane, he had told Eumenes during the trip to Avernus, then
something had been communicating with him
ever since Siwah—some kind of intelligence that spoke very distinctly and very precisely to Alexander and
that had kept speaking to him since inside his head,
and that clearly knew a lot more about him then he did about it. It had promised him dominion over the earth, known and unknown. It had assured him of his divine birthright. And it had given him certain powers—had allowed him to activate previously-untapped portions of his mind….

“It’s a function of the bloodline,” Hephaestion had said, though that just begged the real question. Eumenes had just nodded. “That’s what it must be keying on,” added the king’s lover. “Why it told him so much more than it ever told any of those backward desert priests who’d been getting rich off it. And it’s why we have to get our hands on
her
.”

“How far along is she?” asked Eumenes.

“Four months going on five,” said Hephaestion as though he wanted to vomit. Eumenes could only guess what he and Alexander said about the matter behind closed doors. It wasn’t that Hephaestion minded Alexander’s dalliances with women. And this particular one had been intended to generate a very particular result.

Problem was, Alexander no longer had control of it.

“We should have headed straight for Gibraltar,” said Hephaestion.

“We’d never have made it in time,” said Eumenes. “An army isn’t what’s going to catch her.”

Hephaestion had nodded. They’d said nothing more of the matter. Eumenes had no doubt that Hephaestion felt uneasy for confiding in him. But the two of them had been forced to cooperate by virtue of sharing responsibility for all the special weapons—and by the necessity of keeping the ship of state on track in what were increasingly surreal waters. What was at the heart of all this? What lay in the far west? How could they stop Barsine from getting there first? With a start, Eumenes found himself once again staring into Alexander’s variegated eyes. They bored into him as though they were taking full measure of his worth.

“How soon can you leave?” asked the king.

“I’m ready now,” replied Eumenes.

“There’s something I need to give you before you go,” said Alexander. He drew his sword. “I regret having to do this.”

That turned out to be an understatement.

Chapter Sixteen

A
t last they were back on the water.

The storm had eventually died out, though not for want of trying. Euryice said she suspected it was simply a matter of range—that Alexander was unable to reach them that far west. But the water near the Pillars was rough enough anyway. The deck was pitching up and down like the time he’d held on to win his village’s bull-riding contest. But at least that had stopped. This time he couldn’t get off the bull, and it kept on charging in a direction he didn’t want to go, toward the edge of the world. Eurydice had told him that was nonsense—there was no
edge
—but he trusted his common sense over her long-winded explanations.

“Look at that,” hissed Matthias.

Gripping onto the rails, Lugorix forced himself to look. All he could see were just more waves. “Where?” he asked.

“There,
” hissed Matthias, pointing. Lugorix followed the direction in which he was gesturing—through the swell of waves, out to where the haze of sky met that of sea.

And then he saw it.

Up ahead, two mountains protruded from the ocean, their tops lost in the low-hanging clouds. The coastline stretched away on both sides, leaving a gap between those peaks—a gap toward which they were sailing.

“Here we go,” said Matthias. He stepped over to the hatch and called down to the women.

“We see it,” said Eurydice rather curtly. Matthias rejoined Lugorix, a wan smile on his face.

“Everything still okay with you two?” asked the Gaul.

“Nothing’s ever been
okay
with us,” said Matthias.

“Because she wears the pants?”

It took Matthias a moment to realize that was a Gaulish expression—Greeks didn’t use pants. His face darkened as he got the joke.

“Very funny,” he said.

“But true?”

“I get the feeling she thinks I’m just her plaything.”

“Perhaps you are.”

Matthias nodded. “Near as I can make out, there’s only one person she ever cared about.”

“Her father.”

“And she’s the first to admit he wasn’t exactly a great dad.”

“So she’s not ready for something serious,” said Lugorix. “So you take what you can get.”

“It’s not enough.”

It never is,
thought Lugorix. But he said nothing—instead just stared at those oncoming mountains. Now they were getting nearer, they looked more like pillars, reaching up toward the roof of some unseen temple. The closer they got, the stranger they seemed. They didn’t appear natural at all. He stared through the spray flying off the waves—

“By Taranis,” he said.

“I see it,” said Matthias.

The peaks were natural enough, but the figures carved into them weren’t. On the left was a single gigantic stone warrior. He held a club ten times the size of the
Xerxes
and his face was enclosed by the snarling jaws of a lionskin. Opposite him was a monstrosity: three human heads sprouting from the body of a serpent. The warrior and the monster gazed at each other across the straits, locked in eternal antagonism, forever separated by the narrow body of water that was the gateway to the outer ocean.

“Hercules and Geryon,” said Matthias.

“But who the hell carved them?” asked Lugorix.

“Someone who’s dead. I hope.”

Lugorix started to answer—but his voice trailed away as he suddenly caught sight of something else. Something far more mundane than those rocks.

But far more of a problem.

“Ships,” he said.

There were two squadrons of them, each one vectoring from behind one of the Pillars. Their size marked them as five-decker penteremes. Their colors marked them as Carthaginian. It looked like they’d been expecting the
Xerxes
.

“Crap,” hissed Matthias. He turned to the hatch just as Eurydice started bellowing at them to get below. Lugorix was right behind his friend as they clambered down to where Eurydice and Barsine were already pulling levers and hauling away on dials—

“Shut the hatch and start rowing,” said Barsine.

“Not this again,” said Matthias.

Eurydice almost looked amused. “You’d rather stay on the surface?”

Even Lugorix had to admit that wasn’t an option. He and Matthias started hauling on the oars while gears cranked around them and the
Xerxes
dove beneath the surface.

And kept diving.

“Uh… what the fuck?” said Lugorix.

“Shut up and keep rowing,” said Eurydice as Barsine retracted that strange instrument called a
periscope
. They plunged down while Barsine and Eurydice argued with each other over angles and distances and depths. Lugorix wondered why they hadn’t done this during the storm. Perhaps the fact that it was no normal storm meant it created disturbances beneath the water. Or perhaps it was because submerging was just so damn dangerous anyway—all the more so as it was clear that Eurydice and Barsine weren’t in agreement on the optimal way to thread the craft through the space between the surface and the seabed that connected Europe with Africa. The central point of contention seemed to revolve around the question of how far out the Pillars jutted beneath the surface.

But it turned out they all had more immediate problems.

A muffled boom resounded in the
Xerxes,
hard enough to make the metal hull clang—and then the whole ship twisted from side to side as though it was a rat being shaken by a dog. Even as that shaking died away, they could hear other explosions out there, though none came anywhere near as close as the first had.

“They’re bombing us,” said Eurydice.

“How are they doing
that?”
yelled Matthias.

“Black-powder charges, weighted and timed”—but even as Eurydice said the words another explosion washed across them. This one was almost on top of them; Lugorix was knocked forward, hitting his head against the oar and Eurydice was sent sprawling across the cabin. The other two managed to cling to their seats. Lugorix wiped blood from his forehead as Eurydice staggered to her feet—only to be hurled from them again by the jets of water pouring into the cabin.

“Oh crap,” said Matthias.

“Air-tank’s punctured,” muttered Eurydice as she crawled back to where Barsine sat at the controls. “Jettison it.” Barsine pulled on the controls; there was a vibration and then a clang as an iron plate slid across the perforated wall. “You two
keep rowing,
” she hissed. “Like your life depended on it.” Lugorix didn’t have any doubts on that score; he and Matthias hauled on the oars while Barsine and Eurydice worked the tiller and let the
Xerxes
drift still deeper. It was terrifying to be in a vehicle that was sinking in such a way, that couldn’t see where it was going—even more so when that vehicle was getting shelled by unseen attackers above it. The only consolation was that those attackers couldn’t see their quarry either.

But they were about to feel it.

“Suck on this,” said Eurydice as she pulled on a switch; the craft shook once more—releasing something else. Had Lugorix been able to follow its trajectory, he would have seen it shoot up through the water like a cork bobbing to the surface, impacting against the underside of one of the warships right above—and tearing that warship in two with a gigantic explosion that sent pieces of it flying almost all the way to shore. No sooner had Eurydice released the weapon then she grabbed the tiller; the
Xerxes
started turning. Barsine looked concerned.

“You sure we’re past the Pillars?” she asked.

“We’re about to find out.”

They kept on turning and they were still alive. The rumbling of the explosions began to fade. But the sea was buffeting the ship from side to side ever harder.

“Ocean,” said Eurydice.

“We’ve made it,” said Barsine.

But Lugorix knew damn well it was really just beginning.

The atmosphere aboard the Carthaginian flagship was sufficiently grim that no one dared go near the squadron’s commander. Hanno stood alone on the rear-deck, his leopard-skin warding off the wind while the Pillars faded behind them. Not only had the Persian vessel slipped past them, but they’d lost one ship already. That didn’t bode well for what lay ahead. All the more so as the stakes were as high as it was possible to get. If Carthage wanted to keep the liberty she’d just won, she wasn’t just going to have to fight for it, she was going to have to stay one step ahead of the competition. For now, she was allied with Macedonia, but Hanno was under no illusions as to what that nation really wanted. He’d looked into the eyes of Perdiccas back at Carthage, had known immediately that this was a man not to be trusted. The Macedonians wanted nothing less than total dominion. And if they gained what was reputed to be at the ends of the earth, such dominion would be within their reach…