A procession. That is what it felt like. After the child-Sultan Nafi's death near Damascus, the gruelling and terrible Egyptian campaign had seemingly come to an end and had been replaced by a leisurely stroll through the sun kissed oases of lower Syria. Formally, the Emirs of Egypt still opposed Alkaios’s conquest, but it seemed as if though their armies had vanished into the sands. Close to half of the survivors from the great battles in northern Palestine had effectively done so, following some half-mad wizard preacher into the depths of Arabia, tracing back the steps of their religion’s great founder. That much Phil had heard of the intelligence reports that now daily poured into his cousin’s tent. That much, and little else, given that he had been all but formally discharged.
There had never been any talk of punishment, of course, for his involvement in Alexandra’s little scheme. How could there have been? That would have forced Alkaios to admit that he had not been as wise to it as he had pretended. And the King did seem to genuinely enjoy his daughter’s presence in the field. Still, his command had been taken away, under the guise promotion. He was now to lead a squadron of Companions, near as distinguished a commission as the command of his own Phalanx, and one far better suited to a vassal King and prince of the Royal blood than the command of a taxis. And yet, it meant that his troop shrunk from fifteen to three hundred men. Three hundred who, by some curious coincidence, were never assigned to cover the marching army’s flanks, meaning that their commander had no need to be privy to any significant amount of intelligence.
All of which, in truth, suited Phil just fine. He was still invited to any of the banquets Alkaios might organise, still commanded the loyalty of the Sogdian taxis and a large part of the two Bactrian ones, and was now also free to inspect and question any of the companions with near impunity. And now, most importantly, Phil could do these things, but was never expected or required to. He was, all things considered, just as powerful and twice as free. If that meant having lost access to some of the staff meetings and the military spies, it was a cost that Philandros paid willingly. And besides, he now had the ear and appreciation of the Agema’s newest rider.
“Uncle!” this last one called out, her hair still wound into a tight tress and wrapped around her head like a crown. Phil had to smile: now that she rode openly with the Royal Companions, no more hidden than the sun in a cloudless sky, Alexandra looked far more like a man than she had when first he had noticed her fighting in the phalanx, those long months before. He had restored her the silvery lamellar breastplate that she had worn under her elephantine helm, and now she wore it atop a tunic of layered linen and mail that made her graceful physique seem as strong as any athlete’s. Truly, had she now introduced herself as Alexander, Phil might have almost believed her.
“Yes, my dear princess?”
“You were missed at the officer’s meeting this morning,” Alexandra offered, with too heavy a tone of reproach for it to be sincere. Then she broke into a smile: “Well, perhaps not by the King, or by the squabbling generals who envy you your crown… but I have missed you, uncle. There was no one of wit to make light of father’s speeches with.”
That got a chuckle out of Phil: “Oh, Lexa, am I not already enough of a pariah, without adding to my charges the mockery of the Great King’s mighty words and deeds?” he asked, perhaps not wholly in jest. Then, doing his best to sound disinterested and unaffected by the fact, Phil added: “And besides, I have not been invited to any officer’s meeting.”
At that, it was Alexandra’s turn to smile, though her laugh sounded far more akin to a scoff. At first, she shook her head, then she let it hang and, when her gaze turned back up to meet her uncle’s, Phil saw fire in the emerald of her eyes. He all but took a step back as she spoke to him, so surprised was he by her quite ire. “I thought I would be the young golden Achilles to this army of Achaeans… and yet here you are, the best hero at his worst, sulking in his tent at a minor imagined slight.” Phil tried to voice his indignation with a small cry but was silenced by his niece: “You are friend to the King, guard to his body, and the only man in this army that can call himself his equal. And atop that, you are an ilarch to a squadron of Royal Companions. You, uncle, may be the one person that needs no invitation to attend a briefing. But you’re also not a freshly commissioned officer, so it’s expected that you won’t need a reminder about the morning briefings that you so often ran but, because of all those honours of yours, you are free to skip them if you so wish. But if mighty Achilles so prefers, I can tell the Great King that our hero needs a nurse to show him the way to the royal pavilion,” she finished her speech with a mocking grin, her voice softening ever so slightly.
Philandros remained speechless for a time. Anger and indignation washed over him quickly, and soon he was simply surprised. “Don’t pretend that Alkaios was not angered with me…” he begun, half-heartedly, arguing out of formality rather than any real will. Alexandra could clearly tell, and she let out an honest laugh: “Of course my father was angry with you, uncle. Just as he was angry with me, battlefield posturing aside. I disobeyed his orders, we conspired in secret, and put the life of his eldest daughter in unfathomable danger,” she listed with a mocking wink and a near tangible sense of pride. Then her tone softened. “But he also loves us both, dearly, and would be wise enough not to hold onto such anger anyway. If anything, I might have spoken too harshly, and he may indeed be missing his favourite cousin. Perhaps enough that, were that cousin to ask instead of mope, he might be given any command he asked for. Not that it would mean much… we don’t expect to see any fighting in the foreseeable future.”
Despite everything, Phil couldn’t help but smile, and felt a small pang of pride as he looked to his former charge. He did not share all of Alexandra’s optimism, but he had to admit to himself that he had not even tried to extend Alkaios an olive branch. Now, as if though the idea were dawning on him for the first time, he realised that it may not be such a bad thing, to make the first step. He had, after all, done all the things which Alexandra jokingly accused him of. Not that Phil would admit that so openly, even to her, so instead he turned to questions. “We don’t expect to see any fighting, eh?”
The princess held his gaze, standing silent, long enough for the silence to become uncomfortable… and then she smiled and nodded. You’re just like your dad, Phil thought. “Indeed, uncle. Sultan Munqi’s position on the throne was precarious enough, and he was just a puppet. Last news I’ve been made privy to, some uncle of the boy’s has claimed the throne, but few among the Emirs are willing to follow him. The governor of upper Egypt, an Arabian by the name of Razim, has all but conceded defeat to my father. We are to march to the Delta and meet him and his party.” Alexandra grinned, either at her own vast knowledge about the matter, or at the fact that it was even vaster than she let on, then continued: “The Great King considers Egypt conquered. He has already begun planning to sail upriver, to the ruins of ancient Memphis. And then a pilgrimage to Siwa, to set up old Bion as the new oracle of Zeus Ammon, before returning to Alexandria.”
Already, Phil had a barb prepared about the Great King vacationing on the Nile whilst the realm already waged war upon the great Empire of the Romans, but Alexandra was faster: “Don’t joke too much, when you’ll go see him. You might care little for the gods and their priests, but these are places of ancient and divine royalty, where he wishes to bring me.”
Faster than his thoughts, a promise fled Philandros’s lips, alongside a short chuckle. After all, there was little he could refuse the princess. And then the full weight of what Alexandra’s words implied bore upon him, and he simply stared at her, in silence. And she simply laughed, her father’s old crystalline and inhuman laugh.
“I know what you’re doing, Lu, don’t think me blind.”
Lu-Ling merely shrugged, pretending to be far too absorbed by her readings to pay her childhood friend any mind. “If you’re referring to the incident with Alexandra, I was barely involved. All I did was give your niece a little nudge towards the right direction,” she eventually said, absentmindedly, as Isokrates ordered Lu’s ladies out of her rooms. Silently, she took mental note of those that had looked at her for approval, and those who had, instead, meekly followed the Regent’s commands.
“The right direction, Lu, would have been here!” Isokrates thundered, his voice having grown louder and more irate at every word. He stood, towering over her, shoulders spread out, like a wild animal trying to make itself look larger. Lu sneered: she saw no great beast, no noble lion, only the child she used to play in the sand with, and it made her realise just how scrawny Isokrates had become, in his years as ruler, away from both battlefield and gymnasium. For a moment her mind waivered, and she wondered if he were sick. “Here, with the court, away from the armies and away from deadly dangers,” he bellowed again, bringing her mind back to its place.
“Oh, settle down, will you, Iso?” Lu shot back, and savoured her victory as the words hit the regent like a slap in the face. He stared in shock, all but stumbling back. Already she could see him prepare some counterattack and knew it could very well be a masterful one but – like a half-decent wrestler fighting a master of the art – she pressed her measely advantage and forced Isokrates to swallow his words. “Lexa is your brother’s daughter, Iso. What, did you think that she would have relented, had I refused to help her? Instead, I made sure that she was well equipped, well prepared, and had two of Nha’s agents keep an eye on her. Your niece was never in any grave danger, that much I can promise you.”
Lu had him. She knew she did. He would now scoff, and mutter something about how she still should not have risked it, or about how she could have warned him beforehand, appealing to their old friendship. But she had forced him to fight on her own ground, and Isokrates lacked the strength and the will to drag her back onto his battlefield, even though it would assure him victory. Or so she thought.
“You know full well that Alexandra’s safety is not the reason for my anger,” he seethed, demonstrating herculean strength as he ignored her attempts at manipulating the heart of the worried uncle. “As I know full well that it was not on a childish whim that you allowed her to ride back to the phalanx,” Isokrates continued, and it chilled Lu-Ling to hear him speak so bluntly. “You’ve gotten what you hoped for, Lu, she’s killed the Egyptian emirs’ puppet Sultan. The armies saw her a hero, not as a Princess. And now it’ll be too late for them to believe her otherwise. But don’t think you’ve done her any favours.”
“Have I not?” Lu asked, sneaking in the question as Isokrates paused to grimace, whether at the harshness of his own words or at some pain unknown to her. “I know what you fear, regent of Asia, for it is what I too fear. How many times have I been reminded that your brother never properly married me? Even had I not studies your histories, I’ve met your people: the moment Alkaios dies, half of his generals will want me dead, and the other half will want my hand. Alexandra would suffer the same fate, though perhaps more will want to marry than murder her. We would have been puppets,” she claimed, oddly calm and smiling at the thought. “But if the armies love her… if they see her as Alkaios’s child, and not his daughter… then she would be a player, not a pawn.”
“Do not mock me, Lu. Do not pretend that you did this for Lexa. There’d be a new player in these funeral games you propose, that is certain, but it would be the old dowager Queen, not the proud warrior child,” Isokrates grinned, but Lu knew that there was no merriment behind those bared teeth, nothing more than a mere convulsion. “And, somehow, I doubt that she’d be that reliable an ally to the ageing regent, more interested in her own glories than in keeping the realm at peace.”
“Ahh…” Lu-Ling exhaled; and the smiling mask of placidity was still comfortably placed on her face, though sustaining it was becoming more and more of a chore. Where had her friend disappeared to, and who was this man? “Ahh, indeed!” Isokrates mocked her, but the next words died on his lips. “Ahh…” he moaned, grasping at his stomach. Little Iso of her childhood, Lu-Ling would have rushed to help. The regent? He had to raise himself up, as she pinched her nose to avoid the smell that had just left his body.
“This conversation is not over,” he stammered, red-faced and embarrassed, turning to leave her rooms. Had her private rooms, in palace of Ctesiphon, been closed with doors and not heavy curtains, he certainly would have slammed them.
No. No it is not, Lu thought. But she spoke no words. Instead, she ceased pinching her nose, and dug it deep into her readings again, feigning disinterest for the ladies that, one by one, snuck back into her gynaecium.
Author's Notes: a bit of a more character-focused chapter, even compared to my usual ones... I planned on starting it off with a map of the (now split) Munqi Sultanate of Egypt-Syria and the Salimid Sultanate of Arabia, but I saved the wrong screenshot so that was not to be. Not that it matters much, since the Munqi Sultanate would have been at around 98% surrender at this point, and the Salimid Sultanate is not at war with me and will remain independent in the map I'm planning for the next chapter. Technically the two realms have been slip since the death of the last Al-Ikhsidi Sultan, but that whole inheritance is a story of its own. One I wouldn't mind telling, truth be told, but I'll see if I have the space and characters. Speaking of the inheritance, and the Salimid Sultanate, if you're reading this on a Sunday, Alexandra's picture is still up. Given how well we all know her by now, and given that we've had her portrait in the last chapter, I'll replace it with a screenshot of the "half-mad wizard preacher" once I have my main computer in hand.
There is little to comment on, history wise, except perhaps on the organisation of the Royal Companions, but these changed so much during the centuries that it makes little sense. Game wise, I have started recruiting some heavy cavalry retinues, and Phil is in command of one of them. An Ile was around 200 men, and the retinues are 250, so it works out well enough. I picture the Bactrian Companions armed in the fashion of the Diadochan ones (with shields and maybe even cataphract armour for their horses), rather than the classic Alexandrine ones, but both would probably fit as heavy cavalry in CK2, given their usage.
All in all, as teased to
@Specialist290, this chapter was about introducing the issue of inheritance more concretely. As we've discussed, Macedonian successions were anything but a simple matter. Though showing a clear (at least in my opinion) preference towards primogeniture, exactly which son was the crown prince often depended less on whether he had been born first, and more on whether he had managed to kill his older brothers quickly enough. This was even further complicated during the Hellenistic period, as the Macedonian traditions of the conquerors mixed and merged with foreign customs. Our pocket of Sogdian Greeks would have first been subjects to the Seleucid dynasty, and then further have been subjugated by both Indian and Scythian polities. Beyond this, at the start of our tale, Aphrodisia is not a Queen at all, and Alkaios just up and revived a Kingdom that had been dead for some nine hundred years when he claims the crown of Bactria. What would solution to this mess be? As Isokrates so politely puts it... funeral games!
P.S. I had forgotten about Siwa, the Egyptian Oasis in "Ammonion", where Alkaios
intends (
) to set up "old Bion" (whom I also forgot to screenshot, but is the latest court hierophant for Alkaios) as an oracle. Maybe familiar to Assassin's Creed players, the Siwa Oasis (in modern Libya) was home to an Oracle extremely well respected in the ancient Greek world (and is one of the Holy Sites for the Hellenic religion in game). Alexander famously visited the Oracle after having been proclaimed Pharaoh of Egypt, with speculations being made over which questions he asked the Oracle and whether or not the Priest of Ammon announced him as a son of Zeus. This last part would have been significant since Ammon (already amply cited by me as the bearer of the regal Horns) was identified by the Ancient Greeks as an Egyptian name for Zeus, and worshipped as Zeus Ammon.
