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did have something in mind. Eumenes hated to think of the expression on Philip’s face if his son didn’t.
    “We’re heading west,” pronounced Alexander.
    Everyone looked at each other. Perdiccas was the first to give voice to the resultant confusion. “Didn’t you just say that we weren’t—”
    “There’s more to the west of here than Carthage.”
    “Such as?” asked Ptolemy.
    “Siwah.”
    “The oasis?” asked Harpalus.
    “The Oracle,” said Alexander. “Of Zeus-Ammon.”
    “You’re going to ask Zeus what to do?” asked Craterus.
    “I’m going to consult with Him. On a wide range of matters.” Alexander’s voice was steel. “That’s the real reason I came to Egypt, after all.”
    The group absorbed this. Eumenes suspected he wasn’t the only one getting a sinking feeling. Not so much because an oracle couldn’t speak truth—indeed, the one at Siwah was particularly famous for combining both the Greek and Egyptian aspects of the All-Father—but because he suspected he knew what was really going on here. He locked eyes with Harpalus across the room, knew they were both thinking the same thing. Olympias. Alexander’s deceased bitch-queen of a mother. Who’d despised his father. Who’d filled his head with fantasies about how his father wasn’t really Philip—who’d hinted to him that it was Zeus instead. The victories in the East and Egypt had apparently left Alexander on the verge of believing it was true.
    Now a trip to Siwah would settle the matter.
    Ptolemy made a bid for sanity. “That’s a three day journey through trekless desert,” he said. “A Persian king lost an entire army trying to get there a couple centuries back—”
    “I’m not taking an entire army,” replied Alexander evenly. “Some bodyguards. Some cavalry. Hephaestion, of course.” He looked around the table. “And you, Eumenes.”
    Eumenes tried to dodge it. “Shouldn’t I be staying in Memphis to administer the business of empire—”
    “The business of empire comes with me.”
    It took all Eumenes’ skill to keep his face expressionless.
     

Chapter Three
    S ummer in the Mediterranean made for smooth sailing. But nothing was smooth aboard the fleet. The ships had gotten word of the fall of Egypt while they were still fifty miles out and had turned around immediately. That sat well with neither the crews nor the marines aboard those boats. They wanted to take the fight to the Macedonians. All the more so as the reports out of Alcibidia spoke of utter carnage. Surely at the very least they should be proceeding to the Egyptian coast to pick up survivors? After all, two hundred ships had been burnt to the waterline.
    Which was precisely why Leosthenes had no intention of doing anything other than heading back to Athens. It wasn’t just that he was responsible for the safety of the hundred ships he commanded. He had the bigger picture in mind as well. This was no time to take unnecessary risks; Athens needed every boat now. Besides which, the reports out of Egypt (from all sources… rafts packed with plaintive refugees, fishing-skiffs whose crews were running for their lives, even the occasional river pleasure-barge that had taken to the open ocean in desperation) said that new weapons had been used. Witnesses spoke of gushing fire and detonating powder, facts which made Leosthenes all the more determined to get those witnesses back to Athens where they could be debriefed by the city’s sorcerors.
    He knew he’d take shit for it, of course. He could sense the mood among his crews—not just of the eight-decker flagship in which he rode but in the other dreadnaughts well. He was an experienced enough commander to know when his men weren’t on his side. Had it been a longer campaign, he’d have had time to prove himself. Truth was he was always having to prove himself; it went with the territory of being the youngest of Athens’ archons and a direct descendant of the famous Alcibiades. He was