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right. But she settled for Philip."
    I recalled that Nikkos had called Olympias a witch, and the other men had argued about her supernatural powers. And her reputation as a poisoner.
    For my part, Alexandros seemed like a typical teen-age lad—albeit a teen-age boy whose father was king of Macedonia; a teenager who had already led cavalry in battle a half-dozen times. To me he seemed eager to show the men around him that he too was a man and no longer a boy. And even more desperate to prove himself in his father's eyes, I thought. He was heir to the kingdom, but his accession to the throne was apparently not all that certain: the Macedonians elected their kings, and if anything happened to Philip, young Alexandros might have a difficult time convincing the elders that he was ready for the throne.
    He had his Companions, though: the lads he had grown up with, mostly the sons of Macedonian noble families. He was their natural leader, and they seemed almost to worship him. Four of them seemed especially close to him: smiling Ptolemaios, gangling Harpalos, the Cretan Nearkos, and especially the handsome Hephaistion vied with one another to shine in Alexandros' eyes. In battle they rode together, each trying to outdo the other. They even shaved their chins clean, as Alexandros did, although the word among the guards was that Alexandros hardly needed to shave at all.
    "He's effeminate that way," Pausanias told me, more than once. He seemed to take pleasure in saying it. I wondered if he realized that my own beard grew so slowly that I shaved only rarely.
    There was something in Alexandros' eyes, though, that disturbed me. More than ambition, more than an avid quest for glory. His eyes seemed to me far older than eighteen. Something glittered in those golden eyes that seemed ageless, timeless. Something that seemed faintly mocking whenever the Little King looked my way.
    As the days passed, my memory did not improve. It was as if I had been born, fully grown and dressed in a mercenary hoplite's armor, just a few days earlier. The men around me took me for a Scythian, since I was tall and broad of shoulder, and had gray eyes. Yet I understood their language—the various dialects and even the outright foreign tongues that some of the men spoke.
    I tried to remember who I was and why I was here. I could not avoid the feeling that I had been sent here purposely, dispatched to this time and place for a reason that I could not fathom.
    The dagger strapped to my thigh was a clue. It had been there for so long that even when I removed it the straps and sheath left their imprint against my flesh. I had not shown it to anyone since the night the Argives had tried to assassinate Philip.
    But on the trail back to Pella one night I removed it from beneath my skirt and one of the other guardsmen noticed its polished onyx hilt glint in the firelight.
    "Where did you get that?" he asked, eyeing the beautifully crafted dagger appreciatively.
    From Odysseus ,I started to say. But I held my tongue. No one would believe that. I was not certain that I believed it myself.
    "I don't know," I said, letting him take it from my hand and examine it closely. "I have no memory beyond a week or so ago."
    Soon the other members of the guard were admiring it. They began to argue over its origin.
    "That's a Cretan dagger," said one of the men. "See the way the hilt is curved. Cretan."
    "Pah! You don't know what you're talking about. Take a good look at the design on the hilt. You ever see a Cretan design that used flying cranes? Never!"
    "All right, hawkeye, where's it from, then?"
    "Egypt."
    "Egypt? You've had too much wine!"
    "It's an Egyptian piece, I tell you."
    "So's your mother."
    The men nearly came to blows. Pausanias and I had to push them apart and change the subject.
    But the following night the armorer of the guardsmen asked to see my dagger. It was becoming famous, which worried me. I had always kept it hidden so that I could use it in an emergency