Stealing Fire (13 page)

After a moment he nodded. “I will help you,” Bagoas said. “It's heavy.”

Together we moved the lid back. It slid on invisible tracks, not nearly as difficult as it seemed it would be.

In the dim light Alexander looked as though he were sleeping. The embalmers had not wrapped him in linen as they do in Egypt. Instead, he looked entirely lifelike, his pale hair on his shoulders and his eyes closed, his golden breastplate over a bordered chiton of Tyrian purple. I would not have thought him dead. I would have thought he might wake at any moment, might suddenly speak.

“They did their finest work,” Bagoas said, looking down expressionlessly, and I thought he must have looked many times. Perhaps he had pressed his lips to those cold ones, hoping for a breath of life.

I nodded. I could not speak. I did not know what I should say to him. Should I ask his pardon or his blessing? Instead I just inclined my head, as though waiting for orders.

After a moment, when of course they did not come, I looked up and gestured to Bagoas. We slid the lid back into position.

I said nothing. What can one say? I had never known what to say to family at a funeral. All words are hollow.

Bagoas had spent nearly two years tending the dead. He did not need my words. Instead he led me to the back stoop. “We go to Egypt?”

“We do,” I said. “We will stop in Damascus and leave our wounded there, the men who are in no shape to ride. And then we will stop for nothing until we reach Pelousion.”

His eyebrows rose over those startling green Median eyes. “We will make Pelousion?”

“Not without a fight,” I said with a tight smile. “But we will reach it. I will give you my oath on that.”

He nodded, a courtly gesture that reminded me of Artashir. “I believe we will, Lydias of Miletus.”

I swung back on my horse and headed back to the front of the column. Dusk was falling. Behind me, Victory was plunged into night.

LADY OF THE
DESERT

T
hey caught us just beyond Gaza. It was not a surprise, of course. I had scouts out from the time we left Tyre. Each morning when we started on the march at sunrise, I sent scouts riding back from our position with orders to go half a day's ride to the rear. At noon they would turn and catch up with us. We would have moved, of course, but their pace was so much faster that they would arrive a few hours after we made camp. It was a long day for them, and I used fresh riders each day, rotating through the duty roster, but it was not dangerously taxing, even in the heat of the summer. Every other day we would leave a pair of riders where we were, with orders to wait either six days or until they saw Perdiccas’ troops and then return to us. Thus we had constant intelligence to our rear.

We were nearly at Gaza when the first of those brought us word. They had left Ashdod just as the first of Perdiccas’ men straggled in, exhausted and seeking supply. They had an Ile and a half of men, about twelve hundred all counted, commanded by two Companions I knew, Attalos and Polemon. They had arrived almost without halt from Babylon, and their horses were exhausted. Attalos had ordered that they rest one day in Ashdod to resupply and attempt to find remounts to replace the horses that had gone off.

I nodded, thanked the scouts, and sent them off to rest. Then I walked out to the perimeter of our nightly camp, away from the fires and the gilded hearse.

Bagoas found me there. He came and stood a short distance away and did not speak.

I looked up at the stars, moving too slowly to see, but nonetheless wheeling through the night. A trooper I could have ignored, but it would be rude to ignore Bagoas. Of course he wanted to know what would happen.

“Three days, maybe four,” I said.

“Do we stay in Gaza?” he asked.

That was the heart of the matter. We would be in Gaza in one more day. I could try to hold the town, send a rider to Pelousion for infantry reinforcements. Two days down to Pelousion, with no remount but riding as hard as the horse would stand. Four or five days back for the infantry. I should have to hold Gaza for three or four days. With damaged fortifications and cavalry only. Still, Attalos and Polemon would have only cavalry too, and would certainly not have any siege equipment.

Maybe. Maybe it could be done. Or maybe not. Common sense said it might be the safest course.

And yet.
Egypt
, the night wind whispered to me.
Egypt. Gaza is beyond the bounds of the Black Land. You must bring the King to Egypt.

And yet. Perhaps it was just a cavalryman's hatred of walls. I did not want to be besieged in Gaza. Farther along, on the road, there might be opportunities. At least it would keep it open, keep it moving. Even if they did succeed in taking back the hearse from us, the closer we were to Egypt the farther they should have to take it back. And then they would be hampered by the speed of the hearse. Then they would have to worry about a sortie from Ptolemy at their rear. As far as they now had to go, even Ptolemy's infantry would catch them still south of Ashdod.

“We go on,” I said.

Two days and a half later the sun stood high in the sky. The road had turned away from the sea. It ran now between steep cliffs, red and ochre, where stunted bushes clung to ledges and grew in the shelter of overhangs. I saw it, and I knew where we were.

The stone sphinx watched from the left hand side of the road, the shattered pedestal on the other side showing where its mate had been.

Egypt
, something whispered.

As I walked between them I felt it as though I had broken an invisible thread, dashing past the judges to win the race. The boundaries of Egypt. Here some pharaoh of long ago had set up the sphinxes as a border guard. Last time I had passed this way I had known that, but this time I felt it like a vibration beneath the ground, the ancient magic of the Black Land roused and waiting.

I stopped the column and we poured out a libation of the best wine and I offered prayers. Then I stood back respectfully beside the sphinx while the column began moving again. If I had had my eyes closed I would still have known the moment the hearse passed the border.

It was like distant thunder, like rain in far-off mountains, like the sounding of the sea. The gods welcomed Alexander to Egypt.

My palms prickled with the power and I shook them out. If I were a priest, I thought, I should know what to do with this. I should know how to control this power, to raise the very land itself against pursuit. But I was a soldier, and I did not know.

Instead, I mounted up and we moved on again, taking my place at the head of the column.

W
E HAD ONLY
gone on a little ways when I heard a lion roar. My horse's head went up, her ears swiveling toward the sound. I looked around.

On a ledge halfway up the cliff a tawny lioness was reclining, her golden head raised. As I looked up, her green eyes met mine. She did not leap up or appear startled by the appearance of the long column of armed men, nor did she challenge us. She simply looked.

I reined in, pulling to the side of the column. Her eyes did not leave me.

I did not look away. “Lady of the Desert,” I said. “Please pardon our trespass on your place. We are only passing through and will soon be gone.”

She blinked lazily, her eyes bright, her front paws before her in exactly the same posture as the sphinx.

As the sphinx.

Bagoas had come up beside me on foot. “Is it an omen?” he asked.

“Or a goddess incarnate,” I said. She was truly a magnificent animal, the largest lioness I had ever seen, well fed and sleek, her hide almost glowing with good health.

Bagoas glanced about. “How did she get up there?” The walls of the wadi were very steep, and did not give footholds even for a lion.

“She must have come from another side,” I said. I looked around, pushing myself up on my horse's back to look.

Her eyes never leaving me, the lioness got up, stretching purposefully. Slowly she ambled a few paces, then stopped and looked at me. Deliberately, she walked up a gentle incline behind her, and then walked along a track I could not see, passing behind fallen boulders. After a moment I saw her again. She halted, looking down at me from the track.

“There's a way up there,” I said. “A way along the side of the cliff. I wonder where it comes out.”

I followed the lioness back along the road, passing the hearse and the men who rode behind. Now and again she paused. The track she followed was almost invisible, dipping now and again behind outcroppings. For a while I thought I had lost it and her entirely. Half a mile or more I did not see her. The path she followed had gone behind rocks.

I came around a turn in the road, and there she was, sitting in the middle of the road behind where our procession had passed. Beside her a gentle slope led up and then curved around a red boulder.

The lioness blinked and lay down, her paws before her.

And suddenly I saw all I needed to.

“Thank you, Lady of the Desert,” I said. “Thank you.”

The lioness got up, and with a swift leap dashed away among the rocks on the opposite side.

I dismounted. Bagoas had followed me on foot, saying nothing, and now he watched the lioness leave without flinching. Lions will not generally attack an armed man on horseback, but an unarmed man on foot is another thing. My estimation of his courage went up, though I should have expected it. Alexander would not suffer cowards.

My horse sweated and rolled her eyes nervously at the scent of lions, but she obeyed. “Come on, Bagoas,” I said, and led my horse toward the gentle slope that led to the track.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Seeing where it comes out and if you can lead a horse along it.” I led my mare uphill and around the boulder.

It was possible. I should not want to try it in darkness, or at anything other than a careful walk, but it was certainly possible to lead a horse along it. We passed the spot where I had first seen her, then passed the hearse itself.

Glaukos called up to me. The track was more exposed at that end. At the northern end you could not see it from the road.

“I'm trying something,” I called back. “Go on. I'll catch up.”

Around the next bend the track descended to the road again, coming out just ahead of the cortege.

Perhaps in some earlier day this had been the original path, before the broad road was built by a long-dead pharaoh so that merchants and soldiers could travel more easily. It was disused, but still passable.

I waited while the column came up. Glaukos approached me. “What's that about?”

“We're going to ambush them,” I said. “Send twenty men and the hearse on ahead. Tell them to ride through the night and put as much distance between them and us as possible. Everyone else stays here.”

“Ambush? With horses? In this?” Glaukos gestured up at the steep sides of the wadi.

Bagoas smiled, and I thought he understood.

“There's a track that goes back that way,” I said. “About three miles. That end of it can't be seen from the road. You're going to take two hundred men that way, in single file, leading their horses. You'll see where it descends again. Don't go quite that far. Keep them up the trail, where it's out of sight. Keep them quiet. When Perdiccas’ men come through here they'll be going fast. They'll be able to tell from the freshness of the dung that they're nearly on us. They won't be stopping to scout. They'll go hell for leather trying to catch us by surprise. As soon as they go past you, come down and form up on the road.”

Glaukos grinned. “Then come down on them from the rear like a wolf on the fold. Where will you be?”

“We're going to hold here,” I said. “The wadi is narrow enough, and it looks like there are some thorn bushes we could cut and make a barricade with to break the charge.”

“A barricade of thorn bushes isn't going to slow them down much,” Glaukos said.

“It will if they're on fire,” I said. “All this brush is dry. It will burn.”

“And then they'll be caught between you and our charge,” he said.

I nodded. “That's the shape of it. Now get to it! They're not more than half a day behind us!”

T
HEY CAME DOWN
upon us an hour short of nightfall. We were ready.

Our first warning was the sudden starting of birds, a hawk spiraling suddenly into the air crying indignantly. And then there was the thunder of hooves and they came round the bend.

“Now!” I shouted, flinging my torch into the brush, ten other men following suit. The dry tinder caught with a roar.

Before their cavalry's headlong dash a wall of fire sprang up, flames licking up blown by the hot wind that rose at exactly the right moment, sending flames flying like banners toward them.

I stepped my horse back. Even she shied at the flames.

It broke the charge utterly. No horse will run straight into fire. The front riders pulled up, fouling those behind them, men swearing and shouting. One horse, less nimble than the others, ran straight up on another and they both fell, thrashing about with loud, frightened cries, their riders pinned beneath them.

The second cohort ran almost on top of them. They pulled up, horses rearing and pitching. It was sheer chaos.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the barrier our men waited in good order. Our horses did not like the fire either, but they were not being asked to do anything about it, and had seen it kindled as they had seen our campfires lit each night. We waited. I wished I had Artashir and a troop of Persian archers. They would be perfect targets.

Their officers were shouting, trying to get them untangled. The last cohorts had stopped short and now milled about, attempting to stay out of the way in the narrow wadi. They were not in good order either, and with their attention on the struggle in front of them they were not watching behind. They would not hear Glaukos over the shouting until he was practically on top of them.

Already the flames were dying back, the tinder-dry brush consumed quickly. In a few minutes there would not be enough left to hinder them. It would not be long before someone tried it.

I marked Polemon, whom I knew, astride a black horse, surveying the flames and measuring the dying fires, his horse lifting his head so that the bells on his bridle shook. A big horse, I thought. A black Nisean, with strong legs and a stout heart. He could make the jump now, but they would not all follow. It would not be long.

“Form up!” I heard Polemon yell. “Form up!”

“Wait,” I said to the senior cavalryman beside me. “Wait. Let them come for us.”

How long would it take for them to form up? It seemed moments, and an eternity at the same time. But surely it hadn't been long since we lit the brush. The flames had not died entirely.

“Form up! Are you Companions or what?” I heard Polemon shouting, trying to get people back into line. One of the fallen horses seemed to have broken a leg and was thrashing about right in the middle of where they would need to be. It would divide their charge in half, splitting to go around him. “Form up!”

“Sir,” the trooper beside me began.