A Murder in Thebes (Alexander the Great 2) Read Online Free PDF

to all who come. You have nothing to fear!”
    Miriam followed Alexander and his entourage up through the Electra Gate and along the highway into the center of Thebes. A
     gray, dull day. Miriam stared around in horror. She had never visited Thebes but she had heard the stories about this great
     city. Now it looked as if it had been consumedby fire from heaven. Houses, shops, council chambers, barracks stables, taverns, and storehouses had all been reduced to feathery
     black ash. Wooden buildings had disappeared. Alexander’s soldiers were now finishing off those built of stone, dragging down
     walls. The air was thick with dust, smoke, the smell of burning, and the stench of cooked flesh.
    “Not one stone left upon another.” Alexander had sworn the ancient oath of destruction against the city. The only people they
     passed were the occasional priest and priestess, the rest were Macedonian solders combing the ruins for any plunder or for
     Thebans who may have hidden away in the cellars. Six days had passed since the destruction had ended. The Theban cavalry had
     fled. The foot soldiers had fought to the last man; then the city had been given over to wholesale destruction. Only the temples
     and the house of the poet Pindar had been spared, as well as the occasional sacred cypress and olive grove. The survivors
     had been rounded up. Men, women, and children were marched off to the slave markets. Even Alexander’s hardened commanders,
     now that their blood had cooled, were quiet in the face of such savage destruction. The king himself looked stricken: his
     face white, his eyes constantly flickering about. Hephaestion, his close companion and lover, started to speak but Alexander
     made a cutting movement with his hand. Miriam looked at Simeon; his face was so pallid and sweat-soaked, he would surely vomit.
     They passed a crossroad, Miriam pulled the cloak up over her nose and mouth. Here the corpses had been collected and burned
     in a great funeral pyre, and the air still stank from the horrid smoke. In places, the ash was ankle deep on the cobblestones;
     Miriam was pleased she had worn leather riding boots beneath her tunic. She felt a little nauseous, giddy and she grasped
     her walking cane more firmly. She bowed her head. She felt ashamed—of Alexander, hisarmy, of what had happened here. It brought back memories of her father’s description of the destruction of Jerusalem.
    They crossed a square, past the ruined mansions of the wealthy, and began the climb toward the broken palisades that had once
     surrounded the Cadmea. The silence was broken only by the sound of their footsteps crunching the ash and the clink of armor
     from Alexander’s bodyguard. No one dared bring horses here. Fires still burned, sparks shot up, and the stiff hot breeze pricked
     the flesh. At the top of the hill Alexander stopped and turned.
    “Thebes has been destroyed! Leveled to ash! It is my decree.” His face was harsh, reminding Miriam of his father, Philip.
    “It is my wish,” he repeated, “that it never be rebuilt. It rose in rebellion against my father and was defeated at Chaeronea.
     It played a hand in my father’s murder. It rose in rebellion when I was elsewhere. They called me an assassin, a patricide.
     I did not destroy Thebes. The gods did!”
    He glared at Timeon, the Athenian delegate, and beside him at Aristarchus, the representative from Corinth.
    “Let the word go out,” Alexander said quietly. “All of Greece is to be united under Macedon. All the world is to see the glory
     and power of our might. Yea,” he stared at the skies, “even to the ends of the earth.”
    “If the gods destroyed Thebes,” Hephaestion spoke quickly, “then all of Greece was party to it.” He glanced out of the corner
     of his eye at the Athenian delegate.
    Timeon—a small, thickset man with a balding pate, a luxuriant mustache and beard, watery eyes, and a bulbous nose—blinked
     and forced a smile. Hephaestion was