God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great (34 page)

Cleon shrugged.

Perdiccas and I carried the two thugs out of the royal stables. This may surprise you, but despite plots and foreign hatred, the palace itself was almost completely unguarded – two men on the king’s chamber, two on the queen’s, a couple of pages on Alexander and sometimes a nightwatchman on the main gate. We carried the dead men out one at a time, through the picket door used to clear manure out of the stables.

We carried them through the streets – streets devoid of life or light – and left them behind Attalus’s house. I put knives in their hands, as if they’d fought each other. I doubt that a child would have been fooled.

After that, it was open war in the streets – our men against theirs. Pausanias was sometimes a tart and always a difficult friend – but he was one of us, and the outrage committed against him was a rape of every page. We were unmanned together. As we were supposed to have been.

Diomedes led the attacks – sometimes from in front, and sometimes from a safe third rank. Cleon and Perdiccas were caught in the agora by a dozen of Attalus’s relatives, challenged and beaten so badly that Cleon’s left arm never healed quite right. They were baited with Pausanias’s fate. Anything might have happened, but a dozen royal companions intervened.

The next day, I was on the way to my house – my rebuilt house – with Nearchus beside me when Diomedes appeared in front of me.

‘Anyone able to hear poor Pausanias fart?’ he said. ‘Ooh, he wasn’t as tight as Philip said he was!’

There were men – Thracians – behind me.

I ran.

There’s a trick to the escalation of violence – most men, even Macedonians, take a moment to warm themselves up. Diomedes had to posture – both because he enjoyed it, and to get himself in the mood to murder me.

I turned and ran, grabbing Nearchus’s hand as I went.

I went right through the loose ring of Thracians behind me, and took a sword-slash across my shoulders and upper back – most of it caught in the bunches of fabric under my shoulder brooches, but some of the cut went home.

But most of the Thracians were so surprised that they stumbled over each other.

We ran along the street, back towards the palace.

‘Get them, you
idiots
!’ Diomedes shouted.

But they were foreigners, didn’t know the city and had riding boots on. I was a former page wearing light sandals, and I flew. Nearchus was with me, stride for stride – street, right turn, alley, under an awning, along an alley so narrow that the householders had roofed it over, up and over a giant pile of manure – euch – into a wagon yard that I knew well and north, along the high wall of the palace, and we were clear.

Diomedes bragged of our cowardice.

Two days later, despite orders to go in groups of at least ten, a gang of Attalus’s retainers caught Orestes and Pyrrhus and Philip the Red. They were stripping Orestes to rape him when Polystratus put an arrow into one of the men, a muleteer, and the would-be rapists ran.

Alexander was exact in describing what he would do to the next man who was caught. ‘I care what happens to you,’ he said carefully. ‘But you must care what happens to us
all
. They are trying to break us. To make us the butt of humour. Humiliated boys, in a world of men.
Do you understand?
’ he asked, his voice calm and deadly, and we did. I had seldom heard him sound more like his father.

Our wing in the palace became like a small city under siege, and out in the town, our slaves and our houses burned.

One of the slaves who tasted Alexander’s food died. In agony.

The next day, Alexander took me aside. ‘I want you to strike back,’ he said. ‘I can’t be seen to act in this. I must be seen to be the oppressed party. My father is openly contemptuous of me. So be it. But if we do not strike back, our people will lose heart.’

The next day, I had Philip the Red go to the royal companions’ quarters and ask for bread.

They refused. Some suggestions were made as to what Philip could do to get bread.

Philip lost his temper and told them what he thought of grown men behaving in such a way to their cousins and sons. And the whole mess of the royal companions laughed him out of their barracks.

Then I sent Polystratus to scout. On his return, he reported that every entrance to the palace was watched, and he’d been ‘allowed’ to go out.

Sometimes the best plan is to give your enemies what they expect. That night, while I was on guard, I poured wine for Alexander.

‘It will be tomorrow,’ I told him.

He nodded. ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ he said.

Later, coming off duty, I went to Olympias’s wing and visited Pausanias. The queen was sitting on his couch, singing to him quietly – one of the bear songs of Artemis. I stopped in the doorway. She caught my eye and shook her head, and I retreated.

The queen came out of the room into the corridor and I bowed.

‘He is not ready for visitors,’ she said. ‘Especially not men in armour.’

I wanted to ask her –
Is he broken? Ruined?
But I could not. She shook her head.

‘He is better. I will restore his wits. Women know more than men about this.’ She smiled, and her smile was terrifying. ‘Oh, if only men could be raped by women – the world would be more just.’

I had to reconsider my views on Alexander’s mother – because her care for Pausanias was genuine. All her women said she was with him every moment of her day. And this for a boy who had been her husband’s lover.

Then she caught my eye. ‘Be careful tomorrow,’ she said.

That sent ice down my spine.

She laughed. ‘Half my maids are missing chitons. I can guess.’ She nodded. ‘And if I can guess, so can Attalus.’

‘Since you know, would my lady condescend to give us some kohl?’ I asked.

Eight of us went out of the palace in the first light, dressed as female slaves, with a pair of carts. We left through the slave entrance and we had the same carts that they used every day to fetch bread. I had Orestes and Pyrrhus and Perdiccas, but not Black Cleitus or Philip the Red or any of the blooded men. Polystratus drove one of the carts, but in the first narrow street, he switched with me, pulled himself from the top of the cart on to the tiled rooftops and ran off into the darkness, no doubt cursed by every man and woman sleeping under the tiles.

Our little procession of carts and slaves rolled up the alleys and into the main market, then along the northern edge of the agora to the great ovens where bread was baked. If they were on to us, they gave no sign.

We loaded the bread. And the baker’s apprentices behaved so oddly that even if I hadn’t already been suspicious, I’d have been suspicious. I didn’t let any of my ‘girls’ get close to the baker’s boys, and I kept my distance and spoke low.

The lead apprentice watched the last round loaves loaded into the carts. ‘Hurry up,’ I said impatiently.

He gave me an insolent stare. ‘Fuck off,
maiden
.’ He laughed. ‘By the time you walk back to the palace, you’ll walk more like matrons, I wager!’

The other apprentices tittered.

We moved off with a noisy squeal of wheels. The sun was well up, the temples were opening their bronze gates and there were enough people in the streets that I wondered if Attalus would dare come at us, even if he knew who we were.

We took a different route back to the palace – farther west, through the wealthier neighbourhoods where the nobility had their town houses. They were big houses, two or three storeys, with tile roofs and balconies and exedra – Athens boasted thousands of such houses, and Pella had about two hundred.

We passed within two blocks of Attalus’s compound. Our strategy was to hide in plain sight, and baffle ambush by passing too close to Attalus for him to dare attack us.

Actually, that wasn’t our strategy at all. That was our
apparent
strategy.

In a street lined with high walls, the squealing wheel gave way, and our convoy had to stop.

Eight slave girls and a broken-down cart full of bread.

We worked on the wheel as slowly as real slave girls. The sun rose, and as far as I was concerned, our enemies had proved themselves too incompetent to live. I was just at the point of moving on – the wheel was fine – when Orestes froze at my side.

‘Now what have we here?’ Diomedes swaggered. He was on horseback. ‘Palace slaves?’ He laughed. ‘If you aren’t girls now, sweetings, you will be soon.’

He had a dozen retainers. Not Thracians, but men sworn to his family. When I looked back, there were at least as many at the other end of the block.

Far more than I had counted on.

Orestes made a pretty girl. He bowed deeply. ‘Lord, if you and your men would favour us . . .?’

He indicated the wretched wheel.

Diomedes rode in, laughing, and his fist knocked Orestes to the ground.

I wanted him, so I ran forward, bare legs flashing, almost under his horse’s hooves.

It is amazing how a woman’s dress blinds a man, even when the man suspects that he’s dealing with other men. Diomedes should never have let me in so close. On the other hand, he was too stupid to live.

I didn’t throw myself on poor Orestes, who had a broken jaw.

I sliced Diomedes’ horse from forelegs to penis with a very sharp knife and kept going under, grabbed one dangling foot and pulled him from the dying horse’s back.

One of his men was awake, and close at his master’s side. He cut at me, and I never saw the blow.

It fell on the shoulder of my scale corselet. We were all in armour, under our dresses.

I screamed something – the blow hurt, the opening of a bloom in spring exploding colour into the world, except faster, because it fell right on my wound of two days before. But the scales held, and my scream had the desired effect.

All my boys had swords, and they turned on anyone near at hand.

Our surprise was far from complete – Diomedes’ men must have expected it, because they were trying to keep their distance. Spears were thrown, and we were about to have a vicious street fight. A fight wherein my side was young, inexperienced and had no missile weapons.

Diomedes got his feet under him, and rage overcame any attempt at sense.

He drew, whirled his chlamys over his arm and came at me.

‘You seem to like the mud,’ I said. I got my woman’s chiton over my head in one pull – I’d practised – and around my arm. It was fine Aegyptian linen, and somewhere in the palace the owner was going to be none too happy with me.

They were two to one against us, and yet they hung back. That was human nature – they were freemen and thugs against nobles, and they feared both our superior training
and
the consequences even if they triumphed. I wanted to curse them. I wanted them to come in. But no plan is ever perfect.

As it was, the half-dozen who came at us from the north had no real notion of fighting mounted, and my pages were able to overcome them with simple adolescent ferocity.

I was aware of none of this, except as a distant set of blows and howls, because for all his failings, Diomedes was fast and mean and bigger than me. He was large enough that most of my superior skills were negated.

He hacked overhanded at me, and I had to step quickly to avoid getting my chlamys arm broken. His reach was the same as mine.

I needed to get inside his reach.

I crouched in my guard, flashed a glance behind me to see how the pages were doing – I was worried, by then – and Diomedes took advantage of my distraction to strike.

He went for a grapple. He was big, but he was not trained the way I had been trained. The moment he was in range, I punched my xiphos pommel into his teeth, passed my left foot over my right and threw my left hand into the needle’s eye between his sword-arm elbow and armpit. My weight slammed into him as I got my arm up – the gods were with me, and by pure sweet chance my little finger went deep into his nostril and he stumbled – and I had him.

Arm up, elbow locked, turned into the ground.

The simplest control hold in pankration, and I had him kneeling at my feet, my sword at his cheek.

His retainers froze.

And that’s when Polystratus and Philip the Red appeared over the walls on either side of the alley with a dozen more men, all armed with bows.

‘Lay down your arms,’ Philip shouted.

One of Diomedes’ thugs turned to run and Polystratus shot him dead.

They dropped their swords and clubs with a series of clatters and a soft
thwop
as the weapons went into the mud.

Diomedes grunted, and I put more pressure on his arm and he gave a little scream. I had his right arm just at the edge of dislocation. As it was, his arm would hurt for a week.

I didn’t hesitate to hurt him. In fact, I dragged Diomedes the length of the agora by his right arm, ruthlessly dislocating the shoulder.

To tell the truth, there was nothing
ruthless
about it. I enjoyed it. He screamed quite a bit.

The retainers were stripped naked and tied together by Philip’s men. In what we might call ‘revealing postures’. If this makes you feel queasy, try to remember that these were the men who had raped our friend.

My sword made a bloody little furrow in Diomedes’ cheek. I remember that best of all – the blood running down his cheek as he begged me to let him go.

I didn’t. I dragged him into the agora and up to the rostrum where merchants announced their wares and sometimes men accused other men of using false weights or selling bad horses.

In the middle of the agora, surrounded by Athenian merchants and Thessalian horse dealers, I stopped. It was possible that Attalus had grown powerful enough to kill me in broad daylight with fifty witnesses, but I doubted it.

I waited. Diomedes screamed. I thought of Pausanias, lying on a couch in the queen’s chambers, his face to the wall, and I twisted the bastard’s dislocated shoulder again. And again.

‘This man who is screaming like a woman dishonoured my friend,’ I shouted from the rostrum. ‘His name is Diomedes. He is the nephew of the king’s friend Attalus, and he is a faithless coward, a whore and a hermaphrodite. Aren’t you, Diomedes?’