Legends of Persia by Jennifer Macaire

Author:Jennifer Macaire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Legends of Persia
ISBN: 9781786154811
Publisher: Accent Press
Published: 2017-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Pharnuces came to the tent, was received by Alexander, and became one of his most trusted interpreters. I gave the charm to Alexander and made sure he carried it everywhere.

His leg healed and left him with a permanent limp. He never said a word about it, and neither did anyone else, but the man who traversed the Himalayas in January and bounced across the Oxus River was changed.

Before breaking his leg, he had never seemed to take any notice of his body. He was perfectly made, beautifully balanced, and finely drawn. He had always been able to run, leap, and swim well. His reflexes were quick and sure. He still moved like a cat, but now his leg hampered him. Its perfection was altered, his action inhibited. Perhaps he thought that with a little exercise the stiffness would go away and his leg would suddenly get better. Never very patient, he was shocked when his body betrayed him. After a month he was up and about on crutches, and two months later he was walking, though with a terrible limp.

His leg pained him. Sometimes, after a day moving around, it would swell, then Alexander would pretend that he was fine, while sweat stood out on his brow and his face grew pale. He asked Usse to make him a potion to ease the pain, and though he said it in a joking manner, his eyes were pleading.

Usse was worried. He made him some poppy syrup, and when the pain grew too strong, Alexander would sip the stuff from a small wineskin. Sometimes at night he would reach down and touch his leg, and I would feel his shoulders shaking, just shaking, as he lay there and tried not to cry.

Onesicrite wrote volumes back to Athens about the war. According to him, Alexander was slaughtering all the surrounding cities, laying waste to the countryside, and avenging the Greeks for their defeat at the hands of Xerxes. He drove us crazy, but Alexander didn’t have the energy left to protest. With Onesicrite it was generally easier to simply let him rattle on. He was like a tidal wave, crashing over reason and crushing it.

‘Will you lay to waste the surrounding countryside?’ he asked eagerly one night.

‘Why should I do that?’ asked Alexander, annoyed. ‘What would we eat afterwards? You don’t think the soldiers and the townspeople would let me do a silly thing like that, do you?’

‘And what about the group of Ionic Greeks in the mountains, the ones who despoiled the temple of Apollo? Will you punish them?’

‘Yes,’ moaned Alexander, massaging his leg. ‘I’ll send you to interview them.’

Onesicrite bristled, but he inscribed joyfully to Athens that Alexander would avenge the temple of Apollo. ‘He said so himself,’ he wrote.

I wondered what the Athenians would think of all this, but Alexander didn’t seem to care. He was involved in discussions morning, noon, and night with his generals for the war against Spitamenes. The first skirmish had given us a bitter taste of what was ahead.

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