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in the same weather.
    I had a horse I loved – a dark yellow golden coat, with blond mane and tail, tall and handsome and fast, which one of Pater’s grooms had rather impiously called ‘Poseidon’. But Poseidon he remained, and he had the god’s own strength, and in my eyes he was a better horse than Bucephalus or any other horse who’d ever lived. He was certainly faster than the mighty bay, but like the other boys, I was not foolish enough to show it.
    We spent the first few days deer-hunting – for the meat. Boar-hunting and wolf-hunting are very noble, but they don’t feed the troops or the slaves, so a boar hunt usually starts with the massed slaughter of a deer herd. It wasn’t like sport at all, or even like war – more like a harvest, as the trained slaves and a handful of the king’s cavalry troopers wove screens of brush and set up a long alley of these hurdles, shaped like a giant funnel, between two hills. All the mounted men made a great line before dawn, and we picked our way across the hills, eyes watering with the effort of finding the next huntsman to the right and left in the rain and the dim light – I was off my horse twice on the first morning, flat on my face once and off Poseidon’s rump the other, caught looking the wrong way when he trotted under a low branch.
    But we covered a lot of ground, driving the deer – and every other living thing – into the open end of the funnel. By full daylight, we closed the net tight. The first day was sloppy, and we pages were blamed for indiscipline. But on the second morning it was well done, and we drove fifty deer down the funnel into the older men, who killed them with swords and spears. Laodon was thrilling to watch, standing coolly with a short spear – a longche, just the height of a man, and heavy in the shaft. He killed a stag that charged him – stood his ground, shifted his weight and the animal was down, and then all the older men finished it. A few deer got past, of course, and soldiers with bows shot them down – shooting carefully, because hitting one of the king’s companions was a death sentence. Perhaps they were shooting too carefully, because one enormous stag, a monster as big as my horse, beloved of Artemis, burst through the archers and raced free up the hills and vanished into the deep trees.
    Alexander cantered up. I’ve said he wasn’t the best at everything, and he wasn’t, but he was the finest horseman I’ve ever seen – years later, when we rode against the Sakje of the Sea of Grass, I remarked that he was as natural a rider as they. What always amused me is that he took this utterly for granted and would accept no praise for it – never told self-important stories about his riding prowess, never bragged about the horses he’d broken. Horses loved him, and I suspect that’s because he always knew exactly what he wanted.
    Laodon was standing there, naked, wiggling his spear back and forth in the stag’s chest, trying to draw it free where it had lodged against bone. He looked up when he heard Alexander’s hoof beats, and waved a salute.
    Alexander merely pointed at the rump and tines of the great stag galloping for the treeline. A few heartbeats later and the animal would have been gone. But Laodon saw what he had missed, and rage filled his face. He let go his spear haft and walked over to the archers. Words were exchanged, and a man struck to the ground.
    Alexander pursed his lips.
    Laodon came back and shook his head. ‘My apologies, Prince. That beast should never have slipped us.’
    ‘The will of Artemis,’ Alexander said. But the way he said it indicated that he meant the opposite. And Laodon knew it.
    Next day we went out as scouts, all the pages, looking for the boars. I was with Laodon, and we rode from sun-up until high noon through the woods. The day was beautiful, with a golden autumn sun on red leaves and the most amazing, heady scent in the air of fresh-fallen leaves – the perfume of