only close enough to watch. Most of the original Greek warriors who'd crossed with him into Asia were either dead or retired. Persian recruits, conscripted into fighting after he'd conquered their world, now made up the bulk of his force. Good men, every one of them.
"You're my physician," he said in a whisper. "My life is in your hands. The lives of all those I hold dear are in your hands. Yet you failed me." Self-control succumbed to grief and he fought the urge to again weep. "With an accident."
He laid the sword flat across the taut ropes.
"Please, my king. I beg you. It was not my fault. I do not deserve this."
He stared at the man. "Not your fault?" His grief immediately evolved into anger. "How could you say such a thing?" He raised the sword. "It was your duty to help."
"My king. You need me. I am the only one, besides yourself, who knows of the liquid. If it is needed and you are incapable, how would you receive it?" The man was talking fast. Trying whatever might work.
"Others can be taught."
"But it requires skill. Knowledge."
"Your skill was useless for Hephaestion. He did not benefit from your great knowledge." The words formed, but he found them hard to speak. Finally, he summoned his courage and said, more to himself than his victim, "He died."
The time last fall at Ecbatana was to be one of great spectacle-a festival in honor of Dionysius with athletics, music, and three thousand actors and artists, newly arrived from Greece, to entertain the troops. The drinking and merriment should have continued for weeks, but the revelry ended when Hephaestion fell sick.
"I told him not to eat," Glaucias said. "But he ignored me. He ate fowl and drank wine. I told him not to."
"And where were you?" He did not wait for an answer. "At the theater. Watching a performance. While my Hephaestion lay dying."
But Alexander had been in the stadium viewing a race and that guilt amplified his anger.
"The fever, my king. You know its force. It comes quickly and overpowers. No food. You cannot have food. We knew that from last time. Refraining would have provided the time needed for the draught to arrive."
"You should have been there," he screamed, and he saw that his troops heard him. He calmed and said in a near whisper, "The draught should have been available."
He noticed a restlessness among his men. He needed to regain control. What had Aristotle said? A king speaks only through deeds. Which was why he'd broken with tradition and ordered Hephaestion's body embalmed. Following more of Homer's prose, as Achilles had done for his fallen Patroclus, he'd commanded the manes and tails of all horses to be severed. He forbade the playing of any musical instrument and sent emissaries to the oracle of Ammon for guidance on how best to remember his beloved. Then, to alleviate his grief, he fell upon the Cossaeans and put the entire nation to the sword-his offering to the evaporating shade of his beloved Hephaestion.
Anger had ruled him.
And still did.
He swung the sword through the air and stopped it close to Glaucias' bearded face. "The fever has again taken me," he whispered.
"Then, my king, you will need me. I can help."
"As you helped Hephaestion?"
He could still see, from three days ago, Hephaestion's funeral pyre. Five stories high, a furlong square at its base, decorated with gilded eagles, ships' prows, lions, bulls, and centaurs. Envoys had come from throughout the Mediterranean world to watch it burn.
And all because of this man's incompetence.
He whirled the sword behind the physician. "I won't require your help."
"No. Please," Glaucias screamed.
Alexander sawed the tight strands of rope with the sharp blade. Each stroke seemed to purge his rage. He plunged the edge into the bundle. Strands released with pops, like bones breaking. One more blow and the sword bit through the remaining restraints. The two palms, freed from their hold, rushed skyward, one left, the other right, Glaucias tied in between.
The man shrieked as his body momentarily stopped the trees' retreat, then his arms ripped from their sockets and his chest exploded in a cascade of crimson.
Palm branches rattled like falling water, and the trunks groaned from their journey back upright.
Glaucias' body thudded to the wet earth, his arms and part of his chest dangling in the branches. Quiet returned as the trees again stood straight. No soldier uttered a sound.
Alexander faced his men and shrieked, "Alalalalai."