Dark Prince (2 page)

“I would not hurt you, Father,” whispered the prince, staring up at the black-bearded face with its blind right eye like a huge opal beneath the savagely scarred brow.

“I came to say good-bye,” muttered Philip, “and to tell you to be good. Learn your lessons well.”

“Will you win?” the child asked.

“Win or die, boy,” answered the king, kneeling to face his son. He smiled and appeared to relax, though his expression remained stern. “There are those who think I cannot win. They remember Onomarchus defeated me when last we met.
But …”—his voice dropped to a whisper,—“when the arrow tore into my eye at the siege of Methone, they said I would die. When the fever struck me down in Thrace, men swore my heart stopped beating. But I am Macedon, Alexander, and I do not die easily.”

“I don’t want you to die. I love you,” said the child.

For a moment only Philip’s face softened, his arm rising as if to reach out to his son. But the moment passed, and the king stood. “Be good,” he said. “I will … think of you.”

The sound of children’s laughter brought Alexander’s thoughts back to the present. Beyond the garden walls he could hear the palace children playing. Sighing, he wondered what game they were enjoying. Hunt the turtle perhaps, or Hecate’s touch. He watched them sometimes from the window of his room. One child would be chosen as Hecate, goddess of death, and would chase the others, seeking out their hiding places, to touch them and make them slaves. The game would go on until all the children had been found and enslaved by death.

Alexander shivered in the sunshine. No one would ask him to play such a game. He looked down at his small hands.

He had not meant the hound to die; he had loved the pup. And he had tried so hard, concentrating always, so that whenever he stroked the dog, his mind was calm. But one day the playful hound had leapt at him, knocking him from his feet. In that moment Alexander’s hand had snaked out, lightly slapping the beast on the neck. The hound had collapsed instantly, eyes glazing, legs twitching. It had died within seconds, but what was worse, it had decomposed within minutes, the stench filling the garden.

“It was not my fault,” the child wanted to say. But he knew that it was, knew that he was cursed.

Birds began to sing in the tall trees, and Alexander smiled as he looked up at them. Closing his green eyes, the boy allowed the birdsong to flow into him, filling his mind, merging with his own thoughts. The songs began to have meanings then that he could just decipher. No words but feelings, fears,
tiny angers. The birds were screeching warnings to one another.

Alexander looked up and sang: “My tree! My tree! Get away! Get away! My tree! My tree! I will kill you if you stay!”

“Children should not sing of killing,” said his nurse sternly, approaching where he sat but halting, as ever, out of reach.

“That is what the birds are singing,” he told her.

“You should come inside now; the sun is very hot.”

“The children are still playing beyond the wall,” he argued. “And I like to sit here.”

“You will do as you are told, young prince!” she snapped. His eyes blazed, and he could almost hear the dark voice within himself whispering: “Hurt her! Kill her!” He swallowed hard, quelling the rising tide of anger.

“I will come,” he said softly. Rising to his feet, he walked toward her, but she stepped quickly aside to let him pass, following him slowly as he returned to his own rooms. Waiting until she had gone, Alexander slipped out into the corridor and ran to his mother’s apartments, pushing open the door to peek inside.

Olympias was alone, and she smiled as he entered, opening her arms to him. He ran forward and embraced her, pushing his face against the soft flesh of her bosom. There was never anyone, he knew, as beautiful as his mother, and he clung to her fiercely.

“You are very hot,” said Olympias, pushing back his golden hair and stroking his brow. Filling a cup with cool water, she passed it to him, watching as he drank greedily.

“Did your lessons go well today?” she asked.

“There were no lessons, Mother. Stagra is ill. If I had a pony, would it die?”

He saw the pain on her face as, pulling him to her, she patted his back. “You are not a demon, Alexander. You have great gifts; you will be a great man.”

“But would the pony die!”

“I think that it might,” she admitted. “But when you are older, you will know how to control … the talent. Be patient.”

“I don’t want to kill anything. Yesterday I made a bird fly to my hand. It sat for a long time before flying away. It didn’t die. Truly!”

“When your father returns to Pella, we will all go to the sea and sail on boats. You will like that. The breeze is cool, and we will swim.”

“Is he coming back?” Alexander asked. “Some people say he will die against the Phocians. They say his luck is finished, that the gods have deserted him.”

“Hush!” she whispered. “It is not wise to voice such thoughts. Philip is a great warrior—and he has Parmenion.”

“The Phocians beat him before, two years ago,” said the boy. “Two thousand Macedonians dead. And now the Athenians raid our coastline, and the Thracians have turned against us.”

She nodded and sighed. “You hear too much, Alexander.”

“I don’t want him to die … even though he doesn’t like me.”

“You must not say that! Ever!” she cried, seizing his shoulders and shaking him hard. “Never! He loves you. You are his son. His heir.”

“You are hurting me,” he whispered, tears in his eyes.

“I am sorry,” she told him, drawing him into her arms. “There is so much I wish I could tell you, explain to you. But you are very young.”

“I would understand,” he assured her.

“I know. That is why I cannot tell you.”

For a while they sat in silence, Alexander warm and sleepy in his mother’s arms. “I can see them now,” he said dreamily. “There is a plain covered with flowers of purple and yellow. And there is Father in his golden armor. He is standing beside the gray gelding, Achea. And there are the enemy. Oh, Mother, there are thousands of them. I can see their shields. Look! There is the sign of Sparta, and there the owl of Athens and … I don’t know that one, but I can see the emblems of Pherai and Corinth … so many. How can Father beat them all?”

“I don’t know,” whispered Olympias. “What is happening now?”

“The battle begins,” answered the child.

THE CROCUS FIELD, SUMMER

Philip of Macedon rubbed at the scar above his blinded right eye and stared out over the Phocian battle lines half a mile ahead. More than twenty thousand infantry were massed on the plain, one thousand cavalry behind and to the right of the main force. He transferred his gaze to the Macedonian lines, where fifteen thousand foot soldiers waited in formation at the center, his three thousand cavalry to the left and right.

Everywhere there were flowers growing, some purple and yellow, others white and pink, and in that moment it seemed to the king almost inconceivable that within minutes hundreds—perhaps thousands—of men would lay down their lives, their blood soaking into the earth. And he felt, with sudden regret, that it was almost as great a crime against the gods of beauty that these flowers would soon be trampled into the dust beneath the pale grass of the Crocian plain. “Don’t be foolish,” he told himself. “You chose this battleground.” It was flat and made for cavalry, and Philip now commanded the Thessalian lancers, the finest horse soldiers in Greece.

Two days earlier, during a lightning march across the shallows of the River Penios, the Macedonian army had surprised the defenders of the port city of Pagasai. The city had fallen within three hours. By sunset the Macedonians manning the ramparts had seen a fleet of Athenian battle triremes sailing serenely across the gulf. But with Pagasai taken, the triremes had nowhere to dock, and the soldiers they carried were lost to the enemy cause. The nearest shallow bay was a day’s sailing
and four days’ march distant, and by the time the Athenian soldiers had come ashore the battle would be over.

Now, with the rear secured against an Athenian attack, Philip felt more confident about the coming battle. There was nowhere this time for Onomarchus to hide his giant catapults, no steep, tree-shrouded mountains from which he could send death from the skies. No, this battle would be fought man against man, army against army. Philip still remembered with sick horror the huge boulders raining down on the Macedonians, could still hear the awful cries of the crushed and dying.

But today it would be different. Today the odds were more even.

And he had Parmenion …

Glancing to his left, Philip sought out the Spartan, watching him ride along the flank, talking to the riders, calming the younger men and lifting the spirits of the veterans.

A momentary anger touched Philip. The Spartan had come to Macedonia’s aid seven years ago, when the nation was beset by enemies on all sides. His strategic skills had been vital then, and he had trained Philip’s fledgling army, turning them from farmers and peasants into the most feared fighting force in the civilized world.

I loved you then, thought Philip, remembering the heady days of victory over the Illyrians to the west, the Paionians to the north. City after city had fallen to Macedonia as her strength grew. But always the victories belonged to Parmenion, the
strategos
, the man whose battle plans had won victories for a quarter of a century, in Thebes, in Phrygia, in Cappadocia and Egypt.

Philip shaded his good eye and strained to see the Phocian center, where Onomarchus would be standing with his bodyguard. But the distance was too great, the sun gleaming from too many breastplates, shields, and helms for him to pick out his enemy.

“What I would not give to have your neck under my blade,” he whispered.

“Did you speak, sire?” asked Attalus, the king’s champion. Philip turned to the cold-eyed man beside him.

“Yes—but only to myself. It is time. Order the advance!”

Philip strode to the gray gelding, taking hold of the mane and vaulting to the beast’s back. The gelding whinnied and reared, but Philip’s powerful legs were locked to the barrel of its belly. “Steady!” said the king, his voice soothing. A young soldier ran forward carrying Philip’s high-crested helm of iron. It was polished until it shone like silver, and the king took it in his hands, gazing down at the burnished face of the goddess Athena that decorated the forehead. “Be with me today, lady,” he said, placing the helmet upon his head. Another man lifted Philip’s round shield, and the king slid his left arm through the leather straps, settling it in place on his forearm.

The first four regiments, eleven thousand men, began the slow march toward the enemy.

Philip glanced to where Parmenion waited on the left with two thousand cavalry and two regiments of reserves. The Spartan waved to his king, then transferred his gaze to the battlefield.

Philip’s heart was hammering now. He could still taste the bitterness of defeat when last he had met Onomarchus. It was a day like this one—brilliant sunshine, a cloudless sky—when the Macedonians had marched against the enemy. Only then there were mountains on either side, and they had contained hidden siege engines that hurled huge boulders down upon the Macedonians, smashing their formation, crushing bones, and destroying lives. Then the enemy cavalry had charged, and the Macedonians had fled the field.

Long would Philip remember that day. For six years he had seemed invincible, victory following victory as if divinely ordained. And one terrible hour had changed everything. Macedonian discipline had reasserted itself by the evening, and the army had re-formed in time for a fighting retreat. But for the first time in his life Philip had failed.

What was more galling even than defeat was the fact that Parmenion was not present at the battle. He was leading a force into the northwest to put down an Illyrian insurrection.

For six years the king had been forced to share his victories with his general, but the one defeat was his—and his alone.

Now Philip shook himself clear of the memories. “Send out the Cretan archers,” he shouted to Attalus. The king’s champion turned his horse and galloped down to where the five hundred archers were awaiting orders. Lightly armored in baked leather chest guards, the Cretans set off at a run to line up behind the advancing regiments.

Two hundred paces to the right of Philip’s position the second general, Antipater, was waiting with one thousand cavalrymen. Philip tugged on the gelding’s reins and rode to take his position alongside him in the front line. The horsemen, mostly Macedonian noblemen, cheered as he approached, and he rewarded them with a wave.

Drawing his sword, he led the cavalry forward at a walk, angling to the right of the advancing Macedonian infantry.

“Now they come!” yelled Antipater, pointing to the Phocian cavalry. The enemy horsemen, spears leveled, were charging toward them.

“Macedon!” bellowed Philip, kicking the gelding into a gallop, all his fears vanishing as the Macedonians thundered across the plain.

Parmenion’s pale blue eyes narrowed as he scanned the battlefield. He could see Philip and his companion cavalry charging on the right, coming abreast now of the marching regiments of Macedonian infantry, with their shields locked, their eighteen-foot iron-pointed
sarissas
aimed at the enemy ranks, the Cretan archers behind them sending volley after volley of shafts into the sky to rain down on the Phocian center.