The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [79]
Here’s some boisterousness, finally, some night-before bluster. Soldiers line up with their cups and flasks. The wine is bad, thin and sour; you can smell it from the back of the line. I know it won’t be strong enough. My hand shakes when I hold out my father’s flask, and the dispensing soldier has to hold my hand to steady it, a maternal gesture I understand he’s made a thousand times. He’s missing a leg below the knee, and mumbles something when the pouring’s done. Some blessing: I see his lips move over each soldier.
On my way back to the medics’ tents I give the flask away to a boy who watches the horses.
Antipater’s tent is by Philip and Alexander’s, now, under a stand of oaks ringed at all times by the royal bodyguard. I sleep with the medics, in the tent where we’ll treat the wounded tomorrow. I do sleep. The journey down was hard and I’ve never gone so long without privacy. There’s privacy in sleep. I dream of Pythias, Pythias sweet and eager as I have never known her, and wake with an erection. The medics are already moving around me, setting up their stations, and from outside I hear barked commands, the clank of metal arms, the unison stomping of feet, horses’ clop.
“No, no.” The head medic stops me at the tent flap. “You don’t go out there, not now. Too late for that. What are you looking for anyway, breakfast? You think the prince is having breakfast? You think maybe you’re invited?”
He knows who I am; knows me and doesn’t want the responsibility. Fucking dilettantes, eh? “Just to piss,” I say, quiet as Pythias, eyes down.
“Use the pot.”
I’m not the first, at least; my flow lands in a good couple inches of yellow. So that’s a rule, then: no one leaves the tent. Makes sense; everything in its place. Tidy. I don’t mind that.
I watch the others and try to copy them, turning my bedroll into my own station. I lay out some of my gear and catch the eye of the young medic from the night before. “What am I missing?” Water, pliers. I should have gone down to the river before dawn like the others and drawn my own. I don’t have a bucket, either, and will have to use my own drinking skin. Under the head’s angry eye I fill it from a barrel by the door. Pliers I’ll have to do without.
“Move over next to me,” the young medic says. “You can borrow mine when I’m not using them.”
A trumpet sounds from outside. Everyone in the tent looks up, then down again.
“Hurry,” he says.
What was that fantasy, again? Philosophers’ talk on the ride down, and then—oh, yes—a view from a high hill, Alexander too much to hope for, but Antipater, surely Antipater beside me, explaining the battle, pointing out its features, walking me through the logic of it, and then a vigorous shaking of hands when the day is won. Alexander will find his way to me then, a bit of dirt smeared across one cheek, surely no worse, and laugh and tell me how pleased he is that I came and saw his great day. And Philip behind him, Philip out of breath, a little bloodied maybe, sweatier, grubbier, more grudging, Philip saying, We didn’t fuck him up too badly, then, you and I, did we? In the tents, earlier, I’ll have saved a few lives, exhibited a few unexpected skills (knife skills?), earned respect and joking offers to join the medics’ unit should the king no longer require my services elsewhere. Good joke! Might as well go straight on to Athens, Philip will tell me, as the setting sun dallies in the treetops, gilding our hair, as together we look back over the battle plain, go straight on and begin your work there, just as we agreed.
The trumpet sounds again and the medics stop moving, like children playing a game of statues. From far, far away, a shouted command, a long silence, another shout. A sound like the surf, and the head says, “Stations.” He doesn’t need to shout. I look at the ground, have the leisure to observe the kinky walk of a beetle in the dust.
After a few minutes of listening to what sounds like a distant ocean, the young medic next to me pulls out a set of dice.