The boy's eyes widened. He raised both hands to the sky, his shining face uplifted. He had committed himself to Herakles, and the god had answered. Not leaving him to find the battle, he had sent the battle to him.

In the light of the gibbous moon, he stood printing on his mind the shape of the place, the vantage points and the hazards. There was nowhere down there to ambush them. Archelaos, a good road-builder, had no doubt planned against ambushes. They would have to be ambushed here; for the Skopians were outnumbered. They must be roused at once, before the enemy got near enough to hear the stir. If he ran about shaking them up, they would forget him in the scramble; they must be made to listen. Outside the headman's hut hung the horn which had called the villagers. He tested it softly, and blew.

Doors opened, men ran out with clouts clutched round them, women squealed to each other, sheep and goats bleated. The boy, standing up on a high boulder against the glimmering sky, called, 'War! It is war!'

The gabble hushed. His clear voice cut in. Ever since he left Pella, he had been thinking in Macedonian.

'I am Alexander, King Philip's son. Gyras knows who I am. I have come to fight in your war for you, because the god has warned me. The Kimolians are there on the valley road, twenty-three riders. Listen to me, and before sun-up we'll make an end of them.' He called up, by name, the headman and his sons.

They came forward in stunned silence, their eyes starting in the gloom. This was the witch's child, the son of the Epirote.

He sat on the boulder, not wishing to part with the height it lent him, and spoke earnestly, aware all the while of Herakles at his shoulder.

When he had done, the headman sent the women indoors, and told the men to do as the boy had said.

They argued at first; it went against the grain to strike no blow at the accursed Kimolians till they were in the stockade among the cattle they had come to steal. But Gyras came out too for it. So in the loom of the false dawn the Skopians armed themselves and caught their ponies, and clustered the far side of the houses. It was clear the Kimolians reckoned on attacking when the men had gone out about their work.

The bar of thorn-brush which closed the gateway had been thinned enough to let them in, but not to make them think. The shepherd boys and goat-herds were sent up on the hill, to make it look like a common morning.

The peaks stood dark against the sky, in whose deeps the stars were paling. The boy, holding his bridle and his javelins, watched for the first rose of dawn; he might be seeing it once for all. This he had known; for the first time, now, he felt it. All his life he had been hearing news of violent death; now his body told back the tale to him; the grinding of the iron into one's vitals, the mortal pain, the dark shades waiting as one was torn forth to leave the light, for ever, for ever. His guardian had left his side.

In his silent heart he turned to Herakles, saying, 'Why have you forsaken me?'

Dawn touched the highest peak in a glow like flame. He had been perfectly alone; so the voice of Herakles, still as it was, reached him unhindered. It said, 'I left you to make you understand my mystery.

Do not believe that others will die, not you; it is not for that I am your friend. By laying myself on the pyre I became divine. I have wrestled with Thanatos knee to knee, and I know how death is vanquished.

Man's immortality is not to live for ever; for that wish is born of fear. Each moment free from fear makes a man immortal.'

The rose-red on the hill-tops changed to gold. He stood between death and life as between night and morning, and thought with a soaring rapture, 'I am not afraid.' It was better than music or his mother's love; it was the life of the gods. No grief could touch him, no hatred harm him. Things looked bright and clear, as to the stooping eagle. He felt sharp as an arrow, and full of light.

The Kimolians' horses sounded on the hard earth of the road.

They paused outside the stockade. A goat-herd piped on the hill. In the houses children talked, innocent of guile; a guileful woman was singing. They kicked the thorn-brush aside, and rode in laughing. The cattle they had come for were still within the pound. They would have the women first.

Suddenly came a yell so loud and high that they thought some wild girl had seen them. Then came the shouts of men.

Horse and foot, the Skopians burst out on them. Some were already making for the houses; these were dealt with quickly. Soon numbers were almost even.

For a while there was only chaos, as men dived and stumbled about among the bawling cattle. Then one of the raiders made a bolt for the gate, and was off. Cheers of triumph rose from the Skopians. The boy perceived that this was the beginning of flight; and that the Skopians were going to allow it, content that the day was theirs, not looking to another day when the enemy would come back, sore from defeat and bent on vengeance. Did they take this for victory? With a shout he rode towards the gate, calling fiercely 'Head them off!'; and, drawn by his certainty, the Skopians followed. The gate was blocked. Cattle still milled about; but men were facing men; there had formed, in miniature, opposing battle-lines.

'Now!' thought the boy. He looked at the man across from him.

He had on a war-cap of greasy black old leather, stitched with crudely-forged plates of iron, and a corselet of goat's hide with the hair on, worn bald here and there. His red beard was young, his face freckled and peeled with sunburn. He was frowning deeply, not in anger but like a man charged with some work he is not skilled in, who has time for no one's concerns except his own. Nonetheless, thought the boy, that is an old war-cap, often used; and he's a grown man, quite tall. One must take the first comer, that is the proper thing.

He had his two javelins, the first to throw, the second to fight with. Spears were flying, and one Skopian had jumped on a house-roof with a bow. A horse neighed and reared, a shaft sticking in its neck; the rider fell, and scrambled off hopping on one leg; the horse bolted round the houses. Much time seemed to pass in these beginnings. Most of the spears had missed, through impatience, distance or lack of skill.

The red-haired man's eyes shifted, waiting for the melee to throw up the opponent he must fight. Before long, someone else would have him.

The boy poised his throwing spear as he kicked his pony forward. An easy mark; there was a black patch on the goat-skin over the heart. No; this was his first man, it must be hand to hand. Alongside was a dark, stocky, swarthy man with a black beard; the boy jerked back his arm, and threw almost without looking; his fingers reaching for the second shaft the moment the first was gone, his eyes seeking the red-haired man's. The man had seen him, their eyes met. The boy shouted a wordless battle-yell, and urged on his horse with his spear-butt. It leaped forward jerkily over the broken ground.

The man levelled his spear, a longer one, peering about. His eyes passed over the boy, shifting and seeking. He was waiting for someone; for a grown man, whom he must heed.

The boy threw up his head, and shouted at his lungs' full pitch. The man must be roused, made to believe in him, or it would not be a proper killing; it would be like taking him in the back, or half asleep. It must be perfect, there must be nothing that could ever be said against it. He yelled again.

The raiders were a big-made tribe. To the red-haired man, it seemed a child who came riding. He gazed in unease, disliking the need to keep an eye on him, fearing that while he beat him off some man would rush in and take him off guard. His eyesight was only middling; though the boy had seen him clearly, he took some moments to make out the approaching face. It was not a child's. It raised the hair on his neck.

The boy set his face into a warrior's, that he might be believed in and challenge death. In a perfect singleness, free from hatred, anger, or doubt, pure in dedication, exultant in victory over fear, he swooped towards the red-haired man. With this face of inhuman radiance; with this being, whatever it was, eerie, numinous, uttering its high hawklike cries, the man wanted no more to do. He swerved his horse; a burly Skopian was nearing, perhaps to single him out; someone else should deal with the matter.

His eye had strayed too long. With a shrill 'Ahii-i!' the shining man-child was on him. He thrust with his spear; the creature swung past it; he saw deep sky-filled eyes, a mouth of ecstasy. A blow struck his breast, which at once was more than a blow, was ruin and darkness. As sight faded from his eyes, it seemed to him that the smiling lips had parted to drink his life.

The Skopians cheered the boy, clearly a luckbringer; it had been the quickest kill of the fight. The raiders were shaken; this was the favourite son of their headman, who was old and would get no more. They struggled in bad order to the gate-gap, forcing their horses through the cattle and the men; not all the Skopians were resolute. Horses squealed, cows bawled and trampled the fallen; there was a stink of fresh-dropped dung, crushed herbage, sweat and blood.

As the flight cohered, it was seen to head for the road. The boy, steering his horse through goats, remembered the lie of the land, seen from the lookout. He burst out of the press, with an ear-piercing yell of 'Stop them! The pass! Head them for the pass!' He never looked back; had the spellbound Skopians not streamed after him, he would have confronted the Kimolians all alone.

They were in time; the raiders were contained, all ways but the one. In full panic now, unfit for a wise choice of evils, scared of the precipices, but ignorant of the goat-ways on the rocky hill, they crowded on to the narrow track above the gorge.

At the back of the rout, a single man wheeled round to face the pursuers. Straw-haired, darkly tanned, hawk-nosed, he had been first in attack and last to fly; last, too, to give up struggling to reach the road.

Knowing the choice of evils had been wrong, he waited where the mouth of the pass grew narrow. He had planned and led the raid; his youngest brother had fallen, at the hand of a boy who should still have been herding goats; he would have to face their father with it. Better redeem shame in death; the odds were on death in any case; a few might escape, if he could hold the pass awhile. He drew the old iron sword which had been his grandfather's, and, dismounting, straddled the rough way.

The boy, riding up from his place in the drag-net, saw him hold his own against three, take a head-blow, give at the knees. The chase broke over him. Ahead, the raiders were strung along the ledge. Yelling with joy, the Skopians hurled rocks at them, the archer loosed his bow. Horses fell screaming down the cliff, men followed the horses. They had lost half their strength, before the remnant turned out of range.

It was over. The boy reined in his pony. Its neck had been cut, it began to feel the pain and be plagued by flies. He caressed and reassured it. He had only come to take his man, and he had won a battle. This the god had given him from the sky.

The Skopians crowded round him, those who had not climbed down to strip the bodies in the gorge.

Their heavy hands were on his back and shoulders, the air round him steamed with their strong breath.

He was their captain, their fighting quail, their little lion, their luck-piece. Gyras walked by him with the air of a man whose status is changed for ever.

Someone shouted, 'This whore's son is moving still.' The boy, not to miss anything, shoved in. The straw-haired man lay where he had been beaten down, bleeding from his torn scalp, trying to struggle up on one arm. A Skopian grasped him by the hair, so that he cried out with pain, and pulled back his head to cut his throat. The others gave scarcely a second glance to this natural action.

'No!' said the boy. They all turned, surprised and puzzled. He ran up and knelt by the man, pushing aside the knife. 'He was brave. He did it for the others. He was like Ajax at the ships.'

The Skopians broke into lively argument. What did he mean? Something about some sacred hero, about an omen, that it would be bad luck to kill the man? No, said another, it was just some fancy of the boy's, but war was war. Laughing, pushing aside the first comer, he came knife in hand to the man upon the ground.

'If you kill him,' said the boy, 'I will make you sorry. I swear it by my father's head.'

The knife-bearer looked round with a start. A moment ago, the lad had been all sunshine. Gyras muttered, 'You had better do as he says.'

He stood up, saying, 'You must let this man go. I claim him as my battle-prize. He is to have his horse; I'll give you the horse of the man I killed, to make good.' They listened open-mouthed; but, he thought looking round, they were reckoning he would soon forget and they could finish the man off later. 'Get him mounted now, at once, and put him on the road. Gyras, help them.'

The Skopians escaped into laughter. They bundled the man along to his horse, amusing themselves till the sharp young voice behind them called, 'Stop doing that.' They slashed the horse's rump and it went walloping off along the road, its limp rider clinging to its mane. The boy turned back, the frown-line smoothed from his brow. 'Now,' he said. 'I must find my man.'

No living wounded were left upon the field. The Skopians had been carried home by their women, the raiders butchered, mostly by the women too. Now they had come to their dead, flinging themselves across the bodies, beating their breasts, clawing at their faces, wrenching their loosened hair. Their keening hung in the air like the voices of wild things native to the place, young wolves or crying birds or goats at yeaning-time. White clouds sailed the sky, calmly, sending dark wings over the mountains, touching far forest-tops with black.

The boy thought, This is a battle-field. This is what it is like. The enemy dead lay littered and bundled about, forsaken, ungainly, sprawling. The women, clustered like crows, hid the fallen victors. Already, balanced swaying on high air, by one and one vultures appeared.

The red-haired man lay on his back, one knee bent up, his young beard cocked at the sky. The iron-patched war cap, two generations older than he, had been taken already; it would serve many other men. He was not bleeding much. There had been a moment, while he was falling, when the javelin had stuck in him, and the boy had thought he would have to let go or be dragged off too. But he had tugged once more and it had pulled free, just in time.

He looked at the white face, already growing livid, the gaping mouth, and thought again, This is a battlefield, a soldier must learn to know it. He had taken his man, and must show a trophy. There was no dagger, not even a belt; the goatskin corselet had gone. The women had been quickly over the field. The boy was angry in himself, but knew that complaint would bring no redress and would lose him face. He must have a trophy. Nothing was left, now, except...

'Here, little warrior.' A Skopian youth with black tangled hair stood over him, showing broken teeth in a friendly smile. In his hand was a cleaver with half-dry blood all over it. 'Let me take off the head for you.

I know the knack.'

Between the grinning and the gaping face, the boy paused silent. The cleaver, light in the youth's big hand, looked heavy for his own. Gyras said quickly, 'They only do that in the back-country now, Alexander.'

'I had better have it,' he said. 'There's nothing else.' The youth came forward eagerly. Gyras might be citified, but for the King's son old customs were good enough; that was the way of quality. He tried the edge on his thumb. But the boy had found himself too glad to have this work done for him. 'No. I must cut it off myself.' While the Skopians laughed and swore admiringly, the cleaver, warm, sticky, slimy, raw-smelling, was put in his hand. He knelt by the corpse, forcing himself to keep his eyes open, doggedly chopping at the neckbone, spattering himself with bloody shreds, till the head rolled free.

Grasping a handful of dead hair - for there must be nothing he could know after in his most secret soul that he had feared to do - he stood upright. 'Fetch me my game-bag, Gyras.'

Gyras unstrapped it from the saddle-cloth. The boy dropped the head in, and rubbed his palms on the bag. There was still blood between his fingers, sticking them together. The stream was a hundred feet down, he would wash them going home. He turned to bid his hosts farewell.

'Wait!' shouted someone. Two or three men, carrying something, were running and waving. 'Don't let the little lord go. Here, we have his other trophy for him. Two, yes, look, he killed two.'

The boy frowned. He wanted to go home now. He had only fought one combat. What did they mean?

The foremost man ran up panting. 'It's true. This one here' -he pointed to the raw-necked trunk - 'that was his second man. He took the first with a javelin-throw, before ever we closed with them. I saw it myself; he pitched straight down stuck like a pig. He was creeping about awhile, but he was finished before the women got to him. Here you are, little lord. Something to show your father.'

The second man displayed the head, holding it up by its black hair. The strong bushy beard hid the shorn neck. It Was the head of the man he had thrown his first javelin at, before he fought hand to hand. There had been an eye-blink moment, when he had seen this was the man to have it. He had forgotten, his mind had shut on it as if it had never been. Held by the forelock, it had an arrogant upward tilt; rigor had set a gap-toothed grin on it; the skin was swarthy, one of the eyes was half closed, showing only the white.

The boy looked at the face confronting his. A coldness spread in his belly; he felt a great heave of nausea, a clammy sweat in his palms. He swallowed, and fought to keep from vomiting.

'I didn't kill him,' he said. 'I never killed that man.'

They began all three at once to reassure him, describing the body, swearing it had no other wound, offering to take him there, thrusting the head towards him. Two men at his first blooding! He could tell his grandsons. They appealed to Gyras; the little lord was overdone, and no wonder; if he left his prize behind, when he was himself again he would be sorry; Gyras must keep it for him.

'No!' The boy's voice had risen. 'I don't want it. I didn't see him die. You can't bring him to me if the women killed him. You can't tell what happened. Take it away.'

They clicked their tongues, sorry to obey him to his later loss. Gyras took aside the headman, and whispered in his ear. His face changed; he took the boy kindly round the shoulders, and said he must be warmed with a drop of wine before the long ride home. The boy walked with him quietly, his face with its clear pallor remote and gentle, a faint blueness under his eyes. Presently with the wine the colour came back into his skin; he began to smile, and before long joined in the laughter.

Outside there was a buzz of praise. What a fine boy! Such pluck, such a head on his shoulders; and now such proper feeling. Not much of a likeness, yet it had moved his heart. What father would not be proud of such a son?

'Look well at the horn of the hoof. A thick horn makes for much sounder feet than a thin one. Take care, too, to see the hoofs are high front and back, not flattened; a high hoof keeps the frog clear of the ground.'

'Is there any of that book,' asked Philotas, Parmenion's son, ' that you don't know by heart?'

'One can't know too much of Xenophon,' Alexander said, 'when it comes to horses. I want to read his books about Persia, too. Are you buying anything today?'

'Not this year. My brother's buying one.'

'Xenophon says a good hoof ought to make a ringing noise like a cymbal. That one there looks splay to me. My father wants a new battle-charger. He had one killed under him, fighting the Illyrians last year.'

He looked at the dais beside them, run up as usual for the spring horse-fair; the King had not yet arrived.

It was a sharp brilliant day; the lake and the lagoon were ruffled and darkly gleaming; the white clouds that skimmed across to the distant mountains had edges honed blue, like swords. The bruised turf of the meadow was green from the winter rains. All morning the soldiers had been buying; officers for themselves, tribal chiefs for the vassals who made up their squadrons (in Macedon, the feudal and the regimental always overlapped) tough stocky thick-maned beasts, lively and sleek from the winter grazing.

By noon, this common business was done; now the bloodstock was coming out, racers and parade show-horses and chargers, curried and dressed up to the eyes.

The horse-fair at Pella was a rite not less honoured than the sacred feasts. Dealers came from the horse-lands of Thessaly, from Thrace, from Epiros, even across Hellespont; these would always claim their stock was crossed with the fabled Nisaian strain of the Persian kings.

Important buyers were only now arriving. Alexander had been there most of the day. Following him about, not yet at ease with him or with one another, were half a dozen boys whom Philip had lately collected from fathers he wished to honour.

It was long since a Prince's Guard had been formed in Macedon for an heir just come of age. The King himself had never been heir-apparent. In the wars of succession before that, no heir for generations had had time to come of age before he was murdered or dispossessed. Records revealed that the last Prince of Macedon to have his Companions chosen for him in proper form had been Perdikkas the First, some fifty years before. One ancient man survived of them; he had tales as long as Nestor's about border wars and cattle raids, and could name the grandchildren of Perdikkas' bastards; but he had forgotten everything about procedure.

The Companions should have been youths of about the Prince's age, who had also passed the test of manhood. No such boy was now to be found in the royal lands. Fathers put forward eagerly the claims of sons sixteen or seventeen years old, who already looked and talked like men. They argued that most of Alexander's current friends were even older. It was natural, they added tactfully, with so brave and forward a boy.

Philip endured the compliments with a good grace, while he lived with the remembered eyes which had met his when the head, already stinking from its journey, was laid before him. During the days of waiting and seeking news, it had been clear to him that if the boy never came back, he would have to have Olympias killed before she could kill him. All this was tough meat to feast on. Epikrates, too, had left, telling him the Prince had decided to give up music, and not meeting his eyes. Philip bestowed lavish guest-gifts, but could see an unpleasant tale going round the odeons of Hellas; these men went everywhere.

In the upshot, no real attempt had been made to muster a formal Prince's Guard. Alexander took no interest in this dead institution; he had picked up for himself the group of youths and grown men who were already known everywhere as Alexander's Friends. They themselves were apt to forget that he was only thirteen last summer.

The morning, however, of the Horse Fair, he had been spending with the boys attached to him by the King. He had been pleased to have their company; if he treated them all as his juniors, it was not to assert himself or put them down, but because he never felt it otherwise. He had talked horses untiringly and they had done their best to keep up. His sword-belt, his fame, and the fact that with all this he was the smallest of them, bewildered them and made them awkward. They were relieved that now, for the showing of the blood-stock, his friends were gathering, Ptolemy and Harpalos and Philotas and the rest.

Left on one side, they clumped together and, with their pack-leader gone, started edging for precedence like a chance-met group of dogs.

'My father couldn't come in today. It's not worth it; he imports his horses straight from Thessaly. All the breeders know him.'

'I shall need a bigger horse soon; but my father's leaving it till next year, when I've grown taller.'

'Alexander's a hand shorter than you, and he rides men's horses.'

'Oh, well, I expect they trained them specially.'

The tallest of the boys said, 'He took his boar. I suppose you think they trained a boar for him.'

'That was set up, it always is,' said the boy with the richest father, who could count on having it set up for him.

'It was not set up!' said the tall boy angrily. The others exchanged looks; he reddened. His voice, which was breaking, gave a sudden startling growl. 'My father heard about it. Ptolemy tried to set it up without his knowing, because he was set on doing it, and Ptolemy didn't want him killed. They cleared the wood except for a small one. Then when they brought him there in the morning, overnight a big one had got in.

Ptolemy went as white as a fleece, they said, and tried to make him go home. But he saw through it then; he said this was the boar the god had sent him, and the god knew best. They couldn't budge him. They were in a sweat with fright, they knew he was too light to hold it, and the net wouldn't hold it long. But he went straight for the big vein in the neck; no one had to help him. Everyone knows that's so.'

'No one would dare spoil the story, you mean. Just look at him now. My father would belt me if I stood in the horse-field letting men make up to me. Which of them does he go with?'

One of the others put in, 'No one, my brother says.'

'Oh? Did he try?'

'His friend did. Alexander seemed to like him, he even kissed him once. But then when he wanted the rest, he seemed surprised and quite put out. He's young for his age, my brother says.'

'And how old was your brother when he took his man?' asked the tallest boy. 'And his boar?'

'That's different. My brother says he'll come to it all of a sudden, and be mad for girls. His father did.'

'Oh, but the King likes '

'Be quiet, you fool!' They all looked over their shoulders; but the men were watching two race-horses whose dealer had set them to run round the field. The boys ceased squabbling, till the Royal Bodyguard began to form up around the dais, in readiness for the King.