Lord of the Two Lands Read online

  It could have been worse. A wound ran down the length of it, thin and not remarkably deep. Sword-cut, and a glancing one at that. It was little enough. The worst was what it ended in. The bone was broken at the wrist, the hand dangling like a dead thing. It seemed a clean break, no shards or splinters to foul the wound. But whatever had done it had crushed the flesh and ground the muscle into the tortured bone. A little more, and he would have lost the hand.

  She could save it. Maybe. Care now, prayer, time and the gods’ protection against fever—he would not be a one-armed man. Whether he could win back full use of arm and hand, only the gods knew.

  Her eyes found a man hovering—no, boy, though he was bigger than most men in Khemet: wide curious eyes, idle hands. “Splints,” she said. “Bandages, thread, needles. Water, as hot as you can get it. Herbs to wash a wound.”

  The boy was obedient, and quick about it. Maybe it was the weight of her shadow with its gleam of eyes.

  When she had done all she might for the wounded man, she looked up. The tent stretched away in front of her.

  She blinked hard. It shrank somewhat. It was mostly a roof and poles, and sides that rolled up or down at need—all down now, closing in the sight and scent and sound of pain. Too much pain.

  She turned to the nearest man, awareness narrowing again, to focus on this one, endurable center. Little as she might know beside a healer-priest, she knew enough for this; more maybe than the Greek surgeons did. She could tell what needed stitching, what was broken and what was strained, when a limb could stay and when it had to come off; how to draw an arrow from a wound.

  People tried to speak to her once or twice. They might be asking what a woman was doing in the surgeons’ tent. She did not answer. They had eyes. They could see what she did.

  None of them interfered. Her shadow took care of that.

  News came in with new waves of wounded: remnants of the fight, men returned from the pursuit, others who had taken wounds and only now troubled to notice them. The enemy was driven far away. The Persian camp was taken, and the king had taken the Great King’s tent.

  “And the Great King’s women,” said a man who had lost a hand. He had dropped his shield and used the strap to bind the stump and gone on fighting, crazy-mad as men could be when their blood was up. He was numbed now, part with wine, part with shock; and dizzy with victory. He grinned. He had excellent teeth, Meriamon noticed.

  “Would you believe it? They take their wives to war. And their concubines. And all their slaves, and their brats, too. And a whole squalling pack of eunuchs.” He glanced at Meriamon and started, and fell suddenly silent.

  She almost laughed aloud. She had forgotten the coat and trousers under her mantle. Parsa makeshifts, despicably barbarian, but warm. Was that why no one had named her female and cast her out?

  The poor man was blushing. So was the one she was tending, who had a sword-cut the length of his side, shallow but bloody. She bound off the bandage and patted his shoulder. “Go on,” she said, “and keep it clean. Come back here in a day or two. I’ll give you a salve to help it heal.”

  He muttered what might have been thanks, and escaped into the night. All of them did who could; the ones who stayed were the helpless, the dying or the unconscious.

  They were all being looked after. There was order in it, a rhythm born of long practice, a precision that should not have startled her: she had seen how this army fought. No magic here, no chanting of spells that had been old when the gods were young, but they did not do so ill without it, for barbarians.

  She turned toward the door. She needed food and sleep; and Sekhmet was gone. Too much noise and stink here for a cat. Too much for a woman, too, worn as she was from the long road.

  Something—maybe only the way the bodies lay, maybe the need to evade a knot of surgeons struggling with a writhing, screaming victim—sent her round the long way, back to where she had begun.

  The giant was unconscious, but his breathing was steady and deep. The other was awake. Golden cat-eyes opened in the hollow of his side. Sekhmet yawned and sat up and began to wash her tail.

  Somehow the Macedonian had got himself clean. From the tautness about his lips, it had cost him more than he expected.

  After all the men she had tended, he did not look quite so huge. He was taller than some but lighter in the bone, lean and rangy rather than bull-solid. Like most of the young ones she had seen, he wore no beard; the stubble on his cheeks was the color of barley straw, a shade or two lighter than his hair. His eyes even in the dimness were light, a clear pale grey like the sky in earliest morning.

  They shocked her a little. Light eyes—sky-eyes—were alien in Khemet.

  He glowered at her. “I can’t get up,” he said, as if it was her fault that he had torn his arm to pieces.

  “You won’t, either,” said Meriamon, “unless you want to set the bones awry.”

  “But I have to get up,” he said with an air of sweetest reason. “I’m on guard duly.”

  “Not from here, you aren’t.”

  He sat up. His face went grey. Meriamon lowered him down again, gasping a little: he was heavy.

  And furious. “I was just bringing Ajax to the surgeons, damn it. You can’t keep me here.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “Your body is.”

  His good hand seized her coat. Sweat beaded on his brow, but he kept his grip, twisting. “Let me out of here!”

  “There now,” said a sharp voice behind Meriamon. “What’s this—Nikolaos, is it? Let the boy go.”

  “Boy?” The soldier—Nikolaos—laughed, though he choked on it. “What do you mean, ‘boy’?”

  Meriamon looked over her shoulder. She had seen the man here and there about the tent, commanding the others when they seemed to need it. He was not young, but neither was he old; his hair was grizzled, his beard cut short.

  He wore a robe, much stained but respectably rich, and a mantle that had been crimson before it faded. He peered at Meriamon, frowning.

  His frown deepened to a scowl. “Young woman, is this your idea of a prank?”

  Meriamon drew herself up. Nikolaos’ hand dropped. She straightened her coat with a sharp gesture and lifted her chin. “I come from Egypt,” she said, “to serve your king. That service, now, seems best performed here.” She paused. “Have I failed to provide satisfaction?”

  “Egypt, you say?” The physician seemed interested in spite of himself. “How did you get in? Who sent you here?”

  “I walked,” she said. “These gentlemen brought me. They seemed to think I was a servant. That,” she said, “I am not.”

  “So you say,” the physician said. He rubbed his jaw. “We can’t have you here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Does this look like a place for a woman?”

  She considered it. “It’s cleaner than a birthing, mostly. Quieter, too. Have you looked at the man with the broken thighbone yet? I set it, but I could have used another pair of hands, to make sure the bones are lined up properly.”

  “You’re the one who did that?” The physician looked her up and down. “You’re no bigger than a kitten.”

  She smiled thinly. “I’m stronger than I look.”

  “Well,” the physician said, rubbing his jaw again. “Well. If the men can keep their hands off you. and if you know what you’re doing... with Andronikos down with the flux, and Thrasikles, the blasted fool, running off with that boy from Pergamum... Well. I won’t say we can’t use you. Egyptian, you say? Trained in a temple?”

  “I was a singer in the temple of Amon in Thebes.”

  He eyed her narrowly. She did not look particularly august or terrible, she knew that, but she did not look like a Hellene, either. “I didn’t think,” he said, “that there were healer-priestesses.”

  “There aren’t,” said Meriamon. “I’m an oddity.”

  “Very odd,” said the Greek. And yet he sounded comforted. A woman in his army—that was appalling. A woman who was a prieste
ss, and probably a witch: that, it seemed, he could understand. It set her outside of normal reckoning, but it named her, too, and gave her a place in his world. Hellenes: they could endure anything, if only it submitted to their categories.

  “So then,” he said. “You’ve earned a bed for the night at least, if you don’t mind a tentful of apprentices. Have you eaten?”

  The thought made her head swim. She held herself erect by main force. “I... would be glad of a bite or two.”

  “You look it,” he said. He raised his voice a fraction. “Kleomenes!”

  A boy appeared at his elbow, owl-eyed but alert. Meriamon remembered him: he was the one who had brought her what she asked for, for Nikolaos. She admired his discipline. “Yes, sir?”

  “Take this—boy”—the Greek hardly choked on it—”and see that he’s fed. Give him a mat in the ’prentices’ tent. If anybody lays a hand on him, give the fool a thrashing. I’ll see you both in the morning.”

  That was a dismissal. Meriamon decided to accept it.

  Nikolaos was asleep or feigning it. Sekhmet had vanished. The physician bent to examine the soldier. Satisfied, Meriamon followed her guide into the startling quiet of the night.

  Somewhere in the hours of her field surgery, the camp had settled to sleep. There was a little drunken singing still, the odd wail that marked a mourner, a murmur of men coming back late from pursuit or from securing the enemy’s camp. The king was over there, they said, sleeping in the coward’s bed. They did not leer at that as the earlier man had. He was alone, they said. He was odd that way, the night after a battle.

  Her guide did not take her far. He roused a sleepy cook in one of the mess-tents, got bread and cheese and a skin of wine, and settled cheerfully to eat most of it. The bread was barley bread, fresh from the baking; it was good. The cheese was rank. The wine, even watered, gagged her with its sweetness.

  The boy chattered without regard for her silence; or maybe it was his version of tact. It freed her from the need to speak, let her slide, warm and sated, into a drowse. She started awake when the boy lifted her in his arms. “You Macedonians.” she said distinctly, “are all so big.”

  “You Egyptians are tiny,” said Kleomenes. He grinned at her. They all had such splendid teeth. How did they do it? “Go to sleep, little Egyptian. I’ll look after you.”

  She would not have trusted him. But her shadow was quiescent, and she so tired. She laid her head on his broad bony shoulder and sighed, and slid down into sleep.

  Two

  Meriamon was in the surgeons’ tent before the sun was up, with more of the good barley bread inside her, and a swallow or two of the horrible wine. She was clean, too: as clean as she could get without inviting rape. Hellenes did not wash if water was in short supply. They rubbed themselves with oil instead, rancid oil all too often, and scraped it off. She shuddered at the prospect, contemplated the grey and restless sea, shuddered again. But it was water, and she needed it, though it numbed her fingers and set her teeth to chattering.

  The tent was warm with crowded bodies. The stink was worse, but she endured it. They were burning something pungent and oddly sweet, perhaps to cleanse the air. It made her think of incense and of temples, and an endless blue vault of sky, and a sun that never wavered or went out.

  She swallowed past the ache in her throat. She had a purpose here. Had not the gods themselves ordained it? If she must suffer this alien land, these barbarous people, then that was no more than her duty.

  She thrust through the stink, found what needed doing, did it. Sekhmet, little harlot, was over by the wall again with Nikolaos. He lay and glowered and stroked the sleek tawny flanks. Sekhmet rolled coyly onto her back and wriggled.

  He took the bait. He stroked the downy softness of her belly; and yelped.

  After some considerable interval, Meriamon wandered by. The cat slept placidly beside his hip. Her purring was a distant thunder.

  “Love-pats,” said Meriamon, inspecting the wounds. “Not even halfway to the bone.”

  “Bitch of a cat,” he muttered.

  Meriamon laughed aloud. He was not at all amused. She folded back his blanket—it had the look and feel of a military cloak, and no doubt was. He was not modest, not as a Persian would be, but he was clearly unhappy that she should have appointed herself his physician.

  She took note that he was well though somewhat loosely made, with broad shoulders and big hands and feet. He did not have the whole of his growth. What would that make him? Eighteen? Twenty?

  A child; and petulant at that. He bore pain well, to be sure; the bandages did not come off easily, but he clamped his jaw and moved when she told him and only then, and the only sound that escaped him was a long slow sigh when the wrappings were gone.

  “You have a cracked rib,” she said, “along with the rest. But healing well, that I can see. I’ll strap the rib, and make you a sling for your arm.”

  “Then can I get up?”

  “No,” she said.

  His glance was blistering.

  “No,” she said again, “you may not. Not for a while. I want to be sure I’m not missing anything vital.”

  “How long?”

  She thought about it. “A day, maybe. Two. Then we’ll see.”

  “A whole day? All I’ve got is a broken wrist!”

  “You’ve got a little more than that,” she said. “And I said two. Maybe. If the rib’s not more than cracked. If the arm doesn’t mortify. What did you do to it?”

  He glowered, and he snarled at her, but in the snarl was an answer. “My horse took a fall and threw me. There was a chariot coming. I couldn’t roll fast enough. A wheel went over my arm.”

  “Some god loves you, then,” said Meriamon.

  He shrugged, one-sided. “It had been raining. The ground was soft. I was up and fighting as soon as it went by.”

  Not quite as soon as that, Meriamon thought. He must have been in white agony.

  It would be a red agony now, even with the dose she had given him. He was not paying attention to it. He was too busy being stubborn. “It’s only my shield arm,” he said. “I can still do guard duty. I can sling my shield over my shoulder.”

  “Not for a good while yet,” said Meriamon.

  He glared. “Tyrant.”

  She smiled. “I come by it honestly. My father was a king.”

  That stopped him. She left him with it, and with the cat, who seemed to have adopted him.

  o0o

  Meriamon was feeding gruel to a man who had got a spearbutt in the jaw, wishing that she had a barley straw and a boxful of medicaments from Imhotep’s temple in Memphis, when a stir brought her eyes to the tentflap.

  People came and went often, soldiers coming in late with minor hurts that had kept them awake, or looking for friends among the wounded, or, now and then, walking away with the jaunty step of a man reprieved from the hospital. These were more than one, and coming in: young clean-shaven men in Macedonian cloaks, gold-bordered purple, and purple tunics. They were not all big men as Macedonians went, but they walked as if they were, with a look about them like lions in a pride. Young lions coming back from the hunt, glossy and sated, holding themselves like princes.

  There was one whose cloak was different: purple unbordered. But for that, at first, she would not have noticed him. He was not as tall as the others. Not tall at all, unless in Khemet. His hair was lion-colored, cut like a lion’s mane. He said something to the man nearest him—as tall as the tallest, that one, and darker-haired than most, like ruddy bronze. The tall one’s face seemed carved in marble, so fine was it for a Macedonian face, and so quiet. Then he laughed, and he looked like a wild boy.

  The other was more than wild. Even standing still, he seemed to flicker like a flame in a windowless room. He stepped away from the tall man into the light from the open tentflap. The sun caught his hair and flamed in it.

  A murmur ran through the tent, rising to a roar. “Alexander!”

  Meriamon had known in h
er bones, even before she heard his name. His presence was a fire on her skin. It drove out the pain that filled this place, lifted the shadows on it, even as it cleared her sight and sharpened it, and showed her the man beneath the king.

  He raised a hand. The noise died down. “As you were,” he said. Light, crisp, but laughing a little. His voice was high and rather harsh. He would have to work at smoothing it, Meriamon thought, but it would carry in a battle.

  She went on with what she had been doing. The man under her hands was oblivious. His eyes were on the king. His king.

  They were all like that. Even Nikolaos. They loved him. They would die for him.

  He knew what he was doing. Meriamon was trained to see it; was born to it. But in him the knowing came after the doing. It was what he was. He was as hot as a fire in the forge, damped and gentled now, schooled to infinite patience as he held the hand of a man who would not last the day, and heard how the man had killed a Persian who would have killed his friend. He asked after another man’s lover, traded banter with a grizzled veteran, dried a boy’s too-easy tears with the hem of his cloak. He seemed to be everywhere at once, to speak to everyone at once, but each one reckoned that the king had spoken to him alone.

  “He’s something, isn’t he?”

  Kleomenes had been trailing after Meriamon for awhile, fetching and carrying and adding an extra pair of hands when she needed them. He had no illusions as to her sex, and apparently no disillusion with it. He handed her the roll of bandage that she needed, without taking his eyes from Alexander. “I remember his father,” he said. “Now that was a man! Best king Macedon ever had, or we thought ever would, till we got a look at Alexander.”

  She looked sidelong at the boy. Big as he was, he could not have been more than fourteen. “You remember Philip?”

  “Everyone remembers Philip. He was like a hero, people said. Like Herakles, and a king. Alexander... Alexander is like a god.”