Orion and the Conqueror Read Online Free PDF

a horse before he learns to walk. At least, that is what they told me, and it seemed true enough. They were born riders. My first morning as a guardsman I spent watching the others mount their powerful steeds and ride galloping along the bare earth where they exercised the horses.
    Before the sun was at zenith I had learned what I needed to know. With neither saddle nor stirrups, a man had to clamp his knees tight against the horse's flanks and grip the reins in his left hand to keep the right free to hold a lance or sword. That seemed simple enough. I told the wrangler in charge of the corral that I was ready to ride. He trotted out a dun-colored stallion while several of the other guardsmen stopped what they were doing to watch me.
    I swung myself onto the back of the stallion and, gripping with my knees, off I went. The horse had ideas of his own. It broke into a frenzied bucking, kicking and twisting, trying to throw me off its back. The men back by the corral were slapping their thighs with laughter. Obviously they had given me the nastiest beast in the corral, to initiate me into their company.
    I leaned forward against the stallion's neck and, gripping his mane, said aloud, "You can't shake loose of me, wild one. You and I are a pair from now on."
    I clung with every ounce of strength in me and, after several very rough minutes, the stallion settled down and trotted to a stop, snorting and blowing, flanks heaving. I let it rest a few moments, then urged it forward with a nudge of my heels. We flew like the wind, off toward the distant hills. I turned it around and we cantered back to the corral where the other men stood open mouthed.
    "Good horse," I said. "What do you call him?"
    "Thunderbolt," one of the men said, almost sullen with disappointment, as I slid to the ground.
    "I like him," I said.
    The wrangler's weatherbeaten face showed an expression halfway between disbelief and amusement. He shook his head at me. "Haven't seen anything like that since the Little King tamed old Ox-Head."
    The Little King was Alexandros, I knew.
    "Well, if you like him that much," said the captain of the guard, Pausanias, "he's yours."
    I thanked him and led Thunderbolt off to where the slave boys were rubbing down the horses after their exercise.
    The siege of Perinthos ended a few weeks later. The city still defied Philip from behind its wall, and still received supplies from the sea. Philip gave the order to break camp and head back to Pella, his capital.
    "I don't understand it," I said to Pausanias, the highborn Macedonian who headed the king's guard. "Why are I we leaving without either taking the city or being driven away?"
    Riding beside me, Pausanias gave a bitter little chuckle. The captain of the guard may have been born to the nobility, but there was something dark and festering in him. The men made jokes about him behind his back that I did not understand, jokes that had to do with stableboys and too much wine.
    "There are more ways to win a city than by storming it or starving it out," he told me as we rode. "The king has a thousand tricks, one more devious than the other."
    "Why did he want Perinthos in the first place?"
    "It's allied to Athens."
    "And why make war on Athens?"
    Pausanias had a handsome face, with a well-kept light brown beard. But that grim moodiness showed through the humorless smile he was giving me.
    "Why not ask the king? I'm only one of his distant nephews." And he pulled his horse away from mine, tired of my endless questions.
    A short time later Alexandros came dashing up on Ox-Head, his powerful midnight-black charger, almost breathless with excitement.
    "We're turning back!" he shouted to the group of us. "The king wants us to go back!"
    "Back to Perinthos?"
    "No, but to the coast. Quickly. Follow me!"
    We turned and followed. Up ahead I could see Philip with others of his guard and a clutch of officers urging their horses into a swift trot. Something was up.
    I rode with Pausanias and the rest