“You really are a bore, Eumenes,” Hephaistion said tensely.
Eumenes bit back his irritation. Despite his endless rivalry with Hephaistion, he thought he understood the Macedonian’s mood. “And you miss the King. I take it there has been no word.”
“Half our scouts don’t even return.”
“Does it comfort you to lose yourself between the thighs of a page?”
“You know me too well, Secretary.” Hephaistion dropped the skewer back on the plate. “Perhaps you’re right about these spices. Still, they cut a passage through the gut like the Companion Cavalry through Persian lines . . .” He clambered off his couch, stripped off his nightshirt and pulled on a clean tunic.
This Macedonian was a contradiction, Eumenes had always thought. He was taller than most, with regular features, though a rather long nose, startling blue eyes, and close-cropped black hair. He held himself well. But there was no doubt he was a warrior, as the many scars on his body attested.
Everybody knew that Hephaistion had been the King’s closest companion since they were boys, and his lover since adolescence. Though the King had since taken wives, mistresses and other lovers, the latest being the wormlike Persian eunuch Bagoas, he had once, drunk, confided in Eumenes that he always regarded Hephaistion as the only true companion, the only true love of his life. The King, no fool even when it came to his friends, had put Hephaistion in command of this army group, and before that made him his Chiliarch—that is, his Vizier, in the Persian style. And as for Hephaistion there were no others, none but the King; his pages and other concubines were no more than ciphers to warm him when the King was away.
Hephaistion said now as he dressed, “Does it give you satisfaction to see me suffer over the King?”
“No,” Eumenes said. “I fear for him too, Hephaistion. And not just because he is my King—not because of the devastation his loss would cause in all our lives—but for him. You can believe that or not, but it’s nevertheless true.”
Hephaistion eyed him. He went to his bath, took a flannel and dabbed at his face. “I don’t doubt you, Eumenes. After all we have been through a great deal together, following the King on his great adventure.”
“To the ends of the Earth,” Eumenes said softly.
“The ends of the Earth—yes. And now, who knows, perhaps even beyond . . . Give me a moment more. Please, sit, have some water, wine, fruit . . .”
Eumenes sat and took some dried figs. It had indeed been a long journey, he thought. And how strange, how—disappointing—if it was all to end here, in this desolate place, so far from home.
With Iron Age soldiers pointing spears at their back, Bisesa, Cecil de Morgan, Corporal Batson and their three sepoy companions climbed over a final ridge. The delta of the Indus opened up before them, a plain striped by the glimmering surface of the broad, sluggish river. On the western horizon Bisesa could make out the profiles of ships on the sea, made indistinct by the dense, misty air.
The ships looked like triremes, she thought, wondering.
Before her an army camp was laid out. Tents had been set up along the riverbanks, and the smoke of countless fires coiled up into the morning air. Some of the tents were huge, and had open fronts like shops. Everywhere there was movement, a steady churning. There weren’t just soldiers: women walked slowly, many heavily laden, children ran over the muddy ground, and dogs, chickens and even pigs scampered through the churned-up lanes. Farther out, big enclosures held horses, camels and mules, and flocks of sheep and goats fanned out over the marshy land. Everybody and everything was muddy, from the loftiest camel to the smallest child.
De Morgan, despite mud and weariness, seemed exhilarated. Thanks to his “wasted education,” he knew a lot more than she did about what was going on here. He pointed to the open tents. “See that? The soldiers were expected to buy their provisions, and so you have these traders—many of them Phoenicians, if I remember correctly—following after the marching troops. There are all sorts of emporia, traveling theaters, even courts to administer justice . . . And remember this army has been in the field for years. Many of the men have acquired mistresses, wives, even children on the way. This is truly a traveling city . . .”
Bisesa was prodded in the back by a Macedonian’s long iron-tipped spear: his sarissa, as de Morgan had called it. Time to move on. They began to plod down the ridge toward the camp.
She tried to hide her fatigue. At Captain Grove’s request she had set off with a scouting party to try to make contact with this Macedonian army. After several days’ hike down the valley of the Indus, at dawn that morning they had given themselves up to a Macedonian patrol, hoping to be taken to the commanders. Since then they had been marched maybe ten klicks.
Soon they were in among the tents, and Bisesa found herself picking her way over churned-up mud and dung; the animal stink was overwhelming. It was more like a farmyard than a military camp.
They were soon surrounded by people, who stared at Bisesa’s flight suit, de Morgan’s morning suit, and the glaring red serge jackets of the British troops. Most of the people were short, shorter even than the nineteenth-century sepoys, but the men were broad, stocky, obviously powerfully strong. The soldiers’ tunics had been recut and patched, and even the leather tents showed signs of wear and repair—but the soldiers’ shields shone, gilded, and even the horses had silver bits in their mouths. It was a peculiar mixture of shabbiness and wealth. Bisesa could see that this army had been a long time away from home, but it had been successful, acquiring wealth beyond its soldiers’ dreams.
De Morgan seemed more interested in Bisesa’s reaction than in the Macedonians themselves. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m telling myself that I’m really here,” she said slowly. “I am really seeing this—that twenty-three centuries have somehow been peeled back. And I’m thinking of all the people back home who would have loved to be here, to see this.”
“Yes. But at least we are here, and that’s something.”
Bisesa stumbled, and was rewarded with another prod from the sarissa. She said softly, “You know, I have a pistol in my belt.” The Macedonians, as they had anticipated, had not recognized the party’s firearms and had let them keep them, while confiscating knives and bayonets. “And I am very tempted to take off the safety and make my escort here shove that pointy tip up his own Iron Age arse.”
“I wouldn’t advise it,” de Morgan said equably.
When Hephaistion was ready to face the day, Eumenes had his chamberlain bring forward the muster rolls and conduct sheets. This paperwork was spread out over a low table. As they spent most mornings, Eumenes and Hephaistion began to work through the endless details of administering an army of tens of thousands of men—the strengths of the army’s various units, the distribution of pay, reinforcements, arms, armor, clothing, baggage animals—work that went on even when an army had been static for so many weeks, like this one. In fact the task was made more complicated than usual by the demands of the fleet that stood idle in the mouth of the delta.
As always the report of the Secretary of Cavalry was especially troublesome. Horses died in huge numbers, and it was the duty of provincial governors across the empire to procure replacements and dispatch them to the various remount centers from where they would be sent to the field. But with the continuing lack of communication, there had been no resupply for some time, and the Cavalry Secretary, growing worried, recommended a sequestration from the local population—“If any fit horses can be found outside the cooking pot,” Hephaistion joked grimly.
Hephaistion was commander of this army group. But Eumenes, as Royal Secretary, had his own hierarchy that ran in parallel to the army’s command structure. He had subsidiary Secretaries attached to each of the main army units—the infantry, the cavalry, the mercenaries and others—each assisted by Inspectors who did much of the detailed information-gathering. Eumenes prided himself on the accuracy and currency of his information: quite an achievement in the service of Macedonians, most of wh
om, even the nobility, were illiterate and innumerate.
But Eumenes was well equipped for the task. Older than most of the King’s close companions, he had served the King’s father Philip, as well as the son.
Philip had seized Macedon three years before the birth of his heir. In those days the kingdom had been a loose coalition of feuding principalities, under threat from the barbarian tribes to the north and the devious Greek city-states to the south. Under Philip the northern tribes had soon been subdued. A confrontation with the Greeks had been inevitable—and when it had come Philip’s crucial military innovation, a highly trained, highly mobile cavalry division called the Companions, had sliced through the Greeks’ slow-moving hoplite infantry.
Eumenes, himself a city-state Greek from Cardia, knew that resentment against the Greeks’ barbarian conquerors was unlikely ever to fade. But in a time when civilization was limited to a few pockets surrounded by great seas of barbarism and the unknown, the more politically aware of the Greeks knew that a strong Macedon shielded them from worse dangers. They lauded Philip’s wider ambition to invade the immense empire of Persia, ostensibly in order to revenge earlier Persian atrocities against Greek cities. And the education of the King’s son at the hands of Greek tutors, including the famous Aristotle, pupil of Plato, had served to reinforce an impression of Philip’s Hellenism.
It had been just as Philip was preparing for his great Persian adventure that he had been assassinated.
The new King was just twenty, but he had shown no hesitation in continuing where his father had left off. A series of rapid campaigns had consolidated his position in Macedonia and Greece. Then he had turned his attention to the prize that had been almost in Philip’s grasp. The Persian empire sprawled from Turkey to Egypt and Pakistan, and its Great King could field forces that could number a million. But after six years of a short, brutal and brilliant campaign, a King of Macedon had mounted the throne of Persepolis itself.
This King had not wanted simply to conquer, but to rule. He had sought to spread Greek culture through Asia: he had planted or rebuilt cities to the Greek model throughout his empire. And, more controversially, he had tried to weld together the disparate people who now came under his rule. He had adopted Persian dress and mannerisms, and shocked his men by kissing Bagoas the eunuch on the lips in their sight.
Meanwhile Eumenes’ own career had advanced with the King’s. His efficiency, intelligence and political subtlety had earned him the King’s undying confidence—and his responsibilities had swollen with the growing empire, until Eumenes felt as if he was carrying the burden of a world on his shoulders.
But a mere empire was not enough for this King. With Persia won he had launched his battle-hardened army, all fifty thousand of them, to the south and west, toward the rich, mysterious prize of India. They headed ever east into unexplored and unmapped country, heading for a coast that would, the King believed, be the shore of the Ocean that ran around the world. The country was strange: there were crocodiles in the rivers, and forests full of gigantic snakes, and there were rumors of empires nobody had ever heard of before. But the King would not stop.
Why did he go on? Some said he was a god in mortal flesh, and the ambitions of gods transcended those of men. Some said that he sought to ape the achievements of the great hero Achilles. There was curiosity too; a man who had been tutored by Aristotle could not help but grow up with a deep desire to know the world. But Eumenes suspected the truth was simpler. This King was his illustrious father’s creation, and it was no wonder that the new King had wanted to eclipse his father’s very ambitions, and so to prove himself the greater man.
At last, at the river Beas, the troops, exhausted from years of campaigning, had rebelled, and even the god-king could go no further. Eumenes believed that the men’s gut wisdom was sound. Enough was enough; they would do well to hold what had already been taken.
Besides, on a deep level of his sophisticated mind, Eumenes was subtly calculating his own advantage. He had always faced rivalries in the court: the Macedonian contempt for the Greek, the fighting man’s derision of mere “scribes,” and Eumenes’ very competence were enough to make him many enemies. Hephaistion particularly was notoriously jealous of anybody who had his lover’s confidence. Often the tensions among the King’s companions could be lethal. But Eumenes had survived—and he was not without his own ambitions. As the emphasis of the King’s reign turned from conquest to political and economic consolidation, Eumenes’ more subtle skills might find greater purchase, and he intended to be well placed to advance his own position beyond that of a mere Secretary.
After that reverse at the Beas, the King still had one grand ambition, though. Still deep in India, he built an immense fleet to be sailed down the Indus and then along the coast of the Persian Gulf, intending to establish a new trade route that might further unify his empire. He had split his forces: Hephaistion was to take the fleet to the mouth of the delta, followed by the baggage train and the King’s prized elephants; Eumenes and his staff had traveled with the fleet. The King himself stayed behind to campaign against rebellious tribesmen in his new Indian province.
All had gone well, until the King had taken on a people called the Malloi, and their fortress city of Multan. The King, with typical daring, had led the attack himself—but he had taken an arrow in the chest. The last dispatch Hephaistion had received had reported that the wounded King was to be placed on a ship and floated down the river to join the rest of the fleet, while his army followed later.
But that had been days ago. It was as if the world-conquering army upriver had utterly disappeared. And the sky had been full of unimaginably strange portents; some of the men muttered that they had seen the sun itself lurch across the sky. Such strange signs could only signify a huge and terrible event—and what could that be but the death of the god-king? Eumenes believed more in hard fact than any number of omens, but it was hard for him to decipher this information, or rather the lack of it, and unease grew steadily.
Still, the unrelenting routine of running the army was a distraction from the greater uncertainty of the situation. Eumenes and Hephaistion had to deal with contentious issues that could not be resolved at lower levels of the bureaucracy. Today they turned to the case of a commander of a division of Foot Companions who, on discovering his favorite prostitute in the bed of a fellow officer, had lopped off the man’s nose with his dagger.
“It’s a nasty little case,” said Eumenes, “which sets a bad example.”
“But it’s more complicated than that. This is a shameful act.” So it was; such disfiguring had been meted out, on the King’s orders, for example to an assassin of the defeated Darius, Great King of Persia. “And I know these men,” Hephaistion went on. “Rumor has it they were lovers too! Somehow this girl has come between them, perhaps hoping to profit by turning one against another.” He rubbed his long nose. “Who is the girl, by the by?”
It was a good question. It wasn’t impossible for members of resentful, defeated peoples to work their way into the command structure of the King’s army, to do as much damage as they could. Eumenes riffled through his scrolls.
But before he could find the answer Hephaistion’s usher came bustling in. “Sir! You must come . . . The strangest thing, the strangest people—”
Hephaistion snapped, “Is it news of the King?”
“I don’t know, sir. Oh, come, come!”
Hephaistion and Eumenes glanced at each other. Then they stood, carelessly toppling the table with its scrolls, and hurried out. Hephaistion snatched up his sword on the way.
Bisesa and de Morgan were brought to a grander collection of tents, though no less mud-spattered than the rest. Severe-looking guards armed with spears and stabbing swords stood at the entrance, glaring at them. Bisesa’s escort stepped forward and began to jabber in his fast Greek. One of the guards nodded curtly, stepped into the first tent and spoke to somebody within.
De Morgan was tense, edgy, excited—a state
he got into, Bisesa had learned, when he sensed opportunity. She tried to keep herself calm.
More guards, in subtly different uniforms, came pouring out of the tent. They surrounded Bisesa and the others, their swords pointed at the travelers’ bellies. Then out came two figures, obviously more senior; they wore military-looking tunics and cloaks, but their clothes were clean. One of these commanders, the younger, came pushing through the guards. He had a broad face, a long nose, short dark hair. He looked them up and down and peered up into their faces—like his troops he was shorter than any of the moderns. He seemed tense, gaunt, unhappy to Bisesa, but his body language was so alien it was hard to be sure.
He stood before de Morgan and yelled in his face. De Morgan quailed, flinching from the rain of spittle, and stammered a reply.
Bisesa hissed, “What does he want?”
De Morgan frowned, concentrating. “To know who we are . . . I think. His accent is thick. His name is Hephaistion. I asked him to slow down. I said my Greek was poor—and so it is; the stuff I was taught to parrot at Winchester wasn’t much like this.”
Now the other commander stepped forward. He was evidently older, bald save for a frosting of silver hair, and his face was softer, narrow—shrewd, Bisesa thought. He put his hand on Hephaistion’s shoulder, and spoke to de Morgan in more measured tones.
De Morgan’s face lit up. “Oh, thank God—a genuine Greek! His tongue is archaic but at least he can speak it properly, unlike these Macedonians . . .”
So, with a double translation through de Morgan and the older man, who was called Eumenes, Bisesa was able to make herself understood. She gave their names and pointed back up the valley of the Indus. “We are with an army detachment,” she said. “Far up the valley . . .”
“If that is true we should have encountered you before,” snapped Eumenes.
She didn’t know what to say. Nothing in her life had prepared her for an incident like this. Everything was strange, everything about these people from the depths of time. They were short, grimy, vigorous, powerfully muscled—they seemed closer to the animal than the human. She wondered how they saw her.