The Novels of Alexander the Great by Mary Renault

Author:Mary Renault [Renault, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480433373
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2013-08-14T22:03:00+00:00

15

ALONG WITH PHILOTAS, THERE died by the javelins Alexandros of Lynkestis, next heir, by side descent, to the throne of Macedon. His brothers had conspired in King Philip’s murder; nothing being proved against the eldest, Alexander had taken him with the army. Now it seemed that Dymnos and the rest had meant to make him King; a decent Macedonian, who would keep barbarians in the place the Greek gods meant for them.

He had been warned of his trial, and prepared a speech of defense; but, before the Assembly, could only utter a senseless stammer. He had looked, they said, like a croaking frog; and they condemned him out of contempt, saying they were well shot of such a king. One or two of the accused made good their case and were set free. We were on the march again, by the time the news came in of Parmenion’s death.

The men took it quietly. They had themselves condemned Philotas; they were ready to suppose there was evidence against his father. It was the veteran officers, the old school of King Philip’s training, who remembered Parmenion had won him a victory the day Alexander was born; it was these who brooded. Philip, it seemed, had been a proper Macedonian. Having freed the Greek cities of Asia, he would have been content to go home, and be master of Greece, which was what he had always wanted.

Our moving city dragged on over barren moors scorched brown with summer, now chilled with autumn winds that sang through the broken crags. It was harsh country; among the camp-followers the sickly died; someone from their home place would scratch them a grave in the hard ground. Nobody starved; the wagon trains came from the west, and droves of cattle lean with traveling. We labored along, mostly without Alexander; he was scouring the wastes for Bessos, who was reported moving east.

After days or a half-month, they would come back, thin men upon thin horses, having outrun their supplies. Or now and again some stubborn hill-fort would hold out, and he would make a siege-train; catapults taken apart to load on mules, wood for ladders if the land was treeless; if he could bring one up, a jolting siege-tower, drawn by ten yoke of oxen; litters for the wounded, if it was too rough for wagons. He would ride up and down the line, seeing everything for himself. It was almost beyond belief, out of so many thousand men, how many he knew. Often they laughed; the soldier with the King, or the King with the soldier.

The soldiers knew their part in him well enough. Most had not even seen him in Persian dress; they knew him in hard-worn Greek clothes, and armor of old leather with the bits of iron plating working through at the edges. They wanted no properer Macedonian than their young unbeaten general, who sweated or froze or starved with them, never sitting down till he had seen them fed and their wounded cared for; never sleeping drier than they; snatching victory out of peril.

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