Alexander (Vol. 3) (Alexander Trilogy) (43 page)

Leonnatus rushed to help his friends, but Alexander managed to free one hand and grab his sword and start another suicide attempt. They disarmed him and bodily carried him away.

Eumenes had not been able to do anything because he was sitting far away on the other side of the room, next to Callisthenes, and now, immobile, he surveyed the scene while the room, which just a moment before had resounded to the noise of an orgy of wine and blood, had suddenly precipitated into an absurd, unreal silence. The squires standing upright against the wall in their dress uniforms looked at one another, all pale in their astonishment. Callisthenes turned to them and quoted a saying of Aristotle: ‘He who commits a crime in a state of drunkenness is doubly guilty for he has become drunk and he has committed a crime.’

Eumenes stared at him, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘What sort of man are you?’ he asked. One of the pages, however, a boy by the name of Hermolaus, looked at him, his face full of admiration.

*

Alexander cried in desperation for three days and four nights, calling out the name of his murdered friend. He refused all food and water and was a shadow of his former self.

In the end his Companions, worried that he would lose his sanity and eventually his life, asked Aristander to intervene. The seer entered and spoke to him for a long time, reminding him of the dream he had had and the evil omen of the sheep that had left the sacrificial altar – an event already written by fate. Ineluctable. In the end he managed to call Alexander back to life, but the shadow of Cleitus the Black was to torment his existence with pain and remorse for the rest of his days and nights.

Alexander began drinking heavily again and the squires, who by tradition had the honour of taking turns in watching over the King’s sleep, began to develop a certain contempt for him. On several occasions they saw him come back drunk, dragged into his room unable to stand on his own feet, after which he would fall into a deep sleep, snoring and passing wind like an animal.

Only Leptine continued to serve him with the same affection as before, as always, without asking anything in return, praying in silence to her gods to bring some tranquillity back to his life.

At the beginning of autumn the two sections of the army were reunited at Samarkand and Craterus was much shocked by the news of the frightful events. In order to avoid the embarrassment of meeting the King, he set off on a march into the desert to give a final lesson to the Massagetae who supported Spitamenes’ revolt. However, the tribe, realizing that the Satrap had no hope of leading a successful uprising against Alexander in Bactriana and Sogdiana, and still terrorized by events on the River Artakoenes, had also learned from Dravas that the King who had come from the west was an invincible demigod who was able to appear suddenly wherever he wanted and to strike with devastating violence. They called a council of all their leaders and agreed that they had to establish good relations with the new conqueror so as not to provoke his wrath. They cunningly captured Spitamenes, taking him by surprise in his sleep, decapitated him and gave his head to Craterus as a token of their good faith.

With the cold weather, the two parts of the Macedonian army, united once again at Samarkand, set off on the march to Bactra, to winter there.

D
URING THE FOLLOWING SPRING
Alexander set off on his march again towards Sogdiana to wipe out the last pockets of resistance, in particular a fortress up in the mountains known as the Sogdian Rock. This was a completely inaccessible eagles’ nest of a fortress, held by a lord of these lands by the name of Oxyartes, valiant and fearless, and unbeatable. The only way to reach the fortress was up a narrow, difficult pathway cut into the rock and leading to the only gate in the high walls, directly above the precipice. The rear area of the walls was built on a rocky peak that was covered in ice for almost all the year and which towered at least one thousand feet above the fortress.

Alexander sent a herald with an interpreter up the pathway and asked for the keepers of the rock to surrender, but Oxyartes himself shouted from the heights of the battlements: ‘We will never surrender! We have enough foodstuffs to last for years while you all die of cold and hunger. Tell your King that the only soldiers capable of taking this rock of mine are soldiers with wings.’

‘Soldiers with wings!’ repeated Alexander as soon as the reply was reported to him. ‘Soldiers with wings . . .’ Diades of Larissa looked up, shielding his eyes from the dazzling snow with his hand. ‘If you’re thinking of Daedalus and Icarus, I have to remind you right now that their story, unfortunately, is just a legend. Man will never be able to fly, not even by making wings. Believe me, it’s impossible.’

‘I do not know the meaning of that word,’ replied the King, ‘and there was a time when you did not know it either, my friend. I am afraid you are getting old.’ Diades was silent in his embarrassment and moved on. No matter how much thought he gave to it, no idea for attacking such a place came to mind.

Alexander, however, had already come up with a plan. He called the herald he had sent to negotiate and ordered him to go through the camp offering twenty talents to whoever volunteered to scale, under cover of darkness, the peak above the fortress – a climb of at least two thousand feet from where they were camped at that moment.

‘Twenty talents?’ asked Eumenes. ‘But that is too much money.’

‘The reward must be commensurate with the impossible nature of the undertaking,’ replied Alexander. ‘Enough to render a family rich for five generations. I am quite convinced that money can make men grow wings.’

In less than an hour three hundred volunteers had come forward – more than half of them Agrianians, the others Macedonians from the more mountainous regions.

‘We have had an idea,’ said the man who seemed to be the leader. ‘The Agrianians’ knives are of no use to us in this situation. We will use the tent spikes, which are made of tempered iron, and we’ll hammer them into the ice, tie ropes around them and then we’ll pull ourselves up one by one. I am sure we can manage it.’

‘I am sure too,’ replied the King. ‘Have Eumenes give you a flag and fly it high as soon as you reach the top. We will then sound the trumpets and at that point all you will have to do is lean out so that they can see you from the fortress below.’

As night began to fall, the incredible undertaking got under way. The men climbed up on foot as far as they could, carrying their bags over their shoulders together with ropes and spikes. Then they began hammering the spikes into the ice and pulling themselves up, one by one.

Neither the King nor his companions slept that night; they were all awake, their faces turned skywards as they watched the men climbing slowly, struggling up the ice-covered face. Around midnight the wind started blowing, an icy wind that numbed their limbs and penetrated their bones to the marrow, but the warriors continued climbing and the dark line of their single-file formation could be made out against the impeccable white of the snow.

Thirty men fell to their deaths, smashed on the rocks below, but two hundred and seventy reached the summit with the first light of dawn.

‘The flag!’ shouted Perdiccas, pointing to a small red dot moving way up there. ‘They’ve made it!’

‘Oh! Gods above!’ exclaimed Eumenes. ‘If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed it. Quickly, sound the trumpets!’

The silence down below was broken by the insistent blare, echoed and refracted and the warriors all leaned out and shouted so that the inhabitants of the rock could hear and see them. The sentries on the battlements struggled at first to understand where the voices were coming from, but then they lifted their eyes and saw Alexander’s men up on the mountaintop. They ran to wake up their leader, who rushed out on to the battlements. Shortly afterwards, Alexander’s herald again approached the fortress and shouted, ‘As you can see, we do have soldiers with wings, and we have many of them. What is your decision?’

Oxyartes looked up, then looked down and looked up once more, ‘I surrender,’ he replied. ‘Tell your King I am ready to receive him.’

Alexander, together with his Companions and the
hetairoi
of the Vanguard, went up to the fortress on the following day as darkness was falling. Formalities were exchanged and then the guest, together with his friends, was shown into the banquet hall, which had been prepared according to Sogdian custom – soft cushions in a double line on the floor with the tables in between. The King sat opposite Oxyartes, but his gaze was immediately caught by the person sitting to the right of the host – Oxyartes’ daughter, Roxane!

She was an incredibly beautiful young woman with a godly figure who was already a legend among her people who called her by the name ‘Little Star’.

She smiled at him and her teeth shone like pearls. Her face, a soft oval shape, was of a delicate but absolute perfection, her eyelashes were long and shining, her skin was as smooth as marble and was suffused with a pale amber glow. Her hair was so dark it emanated a blue sheen, framing a most finely drawn forehead, and when she moved her head it shadowed the intense, sweet light of her large, dark, purple-tinted eyes.

Their gazes met and they were caught up in a whirlwind – a magical, shimmering aura, liquid and rarefied, like a morning dream. Nothing else existed for them now, the voices of the others faded far away and it was as if the room was empty – only the melody of an Indian harp, wavering now through the dilated, vibrating space, entered their souls and their bodies and even their voices, voices with different languages and yet equal in the music of an ineffable sentiment, a sublime transport.

Then Alexander understood that he had never really loved anyone up to that point, that he had lived through affairs of deep and intense passion, of burning desire, of affection, of admiration, but never love. This was love, the sensation he was feeling at that moment, this unquenchable thirst for her, that deep peace in his soul, accompanied at the same time by an uncontrollable perturbation, sheer happiness and undiluted fear. This was the love of which the poets wrote – an invincible, merciless god, an ineluctable force, a delirium of the mind and the senses, the only possible happiness. He forgot the bloody spectres of the past, the anguish and the terror, his anxious desire for infinity was appeased now and consumed in the light of those dark purple eyes, in that divine smile.

When he came out of his reverie he realized that everyone was looking at them and everyone had understood. So he stood up before the noble Oxyartes and said, his voice firm, but his eyes liquid with emotion:

‘I know that we have been enemies up to just a few hours ago, but I now offer you a long and solid friendship and in exchange for this friendship and out of the sincere and deep love I feel in this moment, I ask you for the hand of your daughter in marriage,’ and as soon as the interpreter had finished translating, he turned to Roxane and added, ‘If she so wishes.’

Roxane stood up and replied in her language, a tongue that was both so very strange and so very melodious at the same time, but she did pronounce his name just as she had heard it pronounced by his friends. She said, ‘I want you,
Alexandre,
for ever.’

*

The wedding took place in great style just three days later and Alexander asked for the Persian rite of the bread, but in the Macedonian manner, cutting it with his sword. The bride and the groom then ate of the bread, looking into each other’s eyes and feeling that they would love each other to the very end. And even beyond. Roxane was dressed in her ceremonial clothes – a red tunic with a blue overdress, and around her waist a belt in discs of gold, and on her head a veil from which hung a drop-shaped pendant of pure gold, decorated with lapis lazuli.

During the supper that followed the rite, the King drank almost nothing and did very little apart from holding his bride by the hand and speaking to her quietly. He spoke words she could not understand – verses from great poets, images from his dreams, supplications, words of love. Alexander’s tormented soul sought some relief in the eyes of this young virgin, in the feelings of love that emanated from her hands while she caressed him, in her eyes when she looked at him with ingenuous and shameless desire, fiery and decorous at one and the same time. At each breath her blooming breasts rose and a slight blush spread over her cheeks, and in that breathing the King sought the meaning of this sudden and for the most part unknown feeling that he ardently hoped would live within him, immutable and eternal.

When they were finally alone and Roxane began to undress, her eyes lowered as she slowly revealed her divine body, filling their earthly nuptial bed with the godlike fragrance of her skin and her hair, Alexander found himself in the grip of the strongest and deepest emotion. It was like sliding into a warm bath after having walked for ages through a cutting blizzard and numbing ice. It was like drinking clear spring water after having wandered through the desert. He felt himself to be a man once again after having lived through depravation, violence, and brutality.

His eyes were moist with emotion when he pulled her to him and felt the touch of her naked skin, when he sought her inexpert lips, when he kissed her breasts, her belly, the inside of her thighs. He loved her with such intensity, with a total abandon he had never felt in his life before, and as their bodies writhed in the supreme spasm, he felt that he was pouring into her the life, the secret of that wild energy which had overwhelmed entire cities and armies, which had borne the pain of the most frightful wounds, which had crushed the most sacred sentiments, killed all pity and compassion. When he collapsed alongside her and abandoned himself to sleep, he dreamed of setting off along a long, difficult road under a black sun until he came to the shore of a flat, cold and motionless ocean, like a sheet of polished steel. But he had no fear because Roxane’s warmth enveloped him like a soft gown, like the mysterious happiness in a childhood memory.