The New Alexandros

Well, here I am. I've been a longtime lurker on these boards, mostly in the RTW sections, but now I've got the guts to post. I'd like to start by saying I've been a big fan of the "Adventures of Princess Eleanor," and I've gotten the writing bug to do something a little like it. Its taken from my Rome: Total Realism campaign as the Ptolemies...

Introductions

234 B.C. – Alexandria

“Euergenetes!”

I turned around, the bright Alexandrian sun bathing my face with light and warmth. Here in the Imperial Palaces, the smell of lilacs and other beautiful flowers caressed my nose. My big, Auletes nose, which set me apart from the more graceful looks of the locals, or even those of the ‘true Ptolemy blood.’ It certified I would likely never be in line for the Alexandrine throne...

...but it still did me proud.

It has been almost 100 years since the great Alexandros fell ill and died at his tender young age in distant Babylon, and for a dark period, it looked as if all of his work would be undone by petty squabbles and violent wars amongst his successors. Antigonus, Kassander, Seleucus, and others, as my tutors would say.

Yet one of Alexandros’ generals remained loyal to him. It was Ptolemy who properly buried Alexadnros’ body, and kept alive his great dream and thirst for learning in the greatest library in the world, appropriately located in the greatest city in the world, Alexandria, once again, as my tutors would say.

For some 50 years, fighting raged back and forth between the various potenates, until the sons of Ptolemy launched their fateful series of advances, the advances that toppled the Greeks and Macedonians, and now spread the Ptolemy eagle from Utica in the West, to Pasargadae in the East, from the borders of Thrace and Armenia in the North, to the deepest depths of Nubia in the South. All under one King... the Ptolemies of Egypt.

Meyre Ptolemy, named Ptolemy IV, now rules over this vast realm. He is an aged man, in his 54th year of life, ruling from the splendid courts and gardens of Alexandria. How did the Empire expand so quickly, crushing the Antigonids, driving the Seleucids to the farthest corners of Asia, and humbling the upstarts from Carthage?

It spread, it breathed, it grew, on the blood of my fathers, a fact that my dearest mother Satsobek, daughter of Auletes Ptolemy, knows all too well.

“Euergenetes!” she called again, and I smiled. She was a wizened woman, but not yet a crone. She’d spent a little over fifty winters in either balmy Alexandria, or balmy Antioch, the northern capital. Before I could even greet her, her arms were wrapped around me, in a tight hug.

“You take care of yourself! You be careful!” she whispered in my ear, the sound as fierce as a lioness brooding over her cub. Her grip was fierce, and part of me wanted to tell her that she wouldn’t lose me like she lost my father, almost sixteen years before. “And then come back to me!” She pulled back, gripping the side of my head as she looked deep into my eyes, hoping, searching, praying that I wasn’t leaving. “I’ll have a fine marriage arranged for you, Euergentes! A fine one, a beautiful girl with well-placed parents!”

“Mother,” I said, laughing. “You ramble on as if this is the last time you’ll ever see me!” I gently took her hands from my face. “I’m only riding out with father’s old Thessalians to drive off those bandits that Antiochos has had so much trouble catching! Its not as if I’m marching against the great Demetrios of Herat!”

The moment I mentioned that name, I wished I hadn’t. Few sons want to see their mother’s face collapse and break into a thousand pieces. I know I wasn’t one of them. This time, she held herself together rather well... by which I mean she didn’t break into tears like she normally did. Instead, she bit her lower lip, and nodded her head, before gripping me again in another tight hug.

And like all sixteen year olds, I laughed off her concern.

I was born in Antioch sixteen years ago, during the time of our greatest battles and commands, as the Ptolemies fought war on four fronts: to the north, versus the remnants of the Antigonids and the haphazard Greeks, to the east, against the mighty Seleucids, and to the west, against the upstart Phoenicians of Carthage. The time when sarissas held strong, and our cavalry was our hammer.

And to speak the truth, I wished for those days. I wished I had been able to ride at Tarsus at my father’s side, or see the great siege of Babylon. Before he left to take his command at Seleucia, old Parmenios had fondly told me of my father’s deeds.

Deeds that I knew I could outdo.

Then again, I was only sixteen.



“Well, young Euergentes, your father’s armor looks becoming on you!”

“Thank you, Lysandros,” I smiled in reply. The big, burly man aside the horse next to mine flashed a huge grin, one of his immense paws reaching over and slapping me on the back. I like to think of myself as a strong lad, but the blow sent me reeling forward a bit. If I had been back in the palaces, I might have hissed at the sudden blow. But now, at the head of ten squadrons of cavalry, nearly three hundred altogether, I grinned as fiercely as I could.

“I talked with your tutors,” he said in that trumpeting basso of his, “and they said that you were masterful at geometry and rhetoric! I was beginning to think that your father left me to care for a bookworm!” He let out a loud, bawdy laugh, the laugh of someone who was raised in a far different classroom than those of the philosophers and teachers of the great cities; but the blood, sweat, and dust of the battlefield. He looked the part too... he wore a Phygrian cap, dusted leather and bronze cuirass that looked to have come from a museum, save all the dents, nicks, and cuts it sported. He swore it brought him luck. I say it brought him a great deal of intimidation.

“Intelligence helps on the battlefield as well,” I said calmly to him as I let loose a rather wry grin. I wasn’t about to let him mock my education free-handedly. There was sport in sparring with him. “A dullard like yourself wouldn’t have come up with the brilliance that was Gaugamela!”

My father’s best friend and my godfather shot me a grouchy look, a look only the men from Thessaly can create. “There you go again, always speaking of your namesake! Those people that Alexandros fought were numerous, true, but they were barbarians, led my the worst of men!” His face grew fiercer as he talked, the glint of battle coming in his eyes. “Those we face today, they are Hellenes, just like us! Disciplined, proud, and armed to the teeth!”

“Those we face today, dear Lysandros, are rebels that think a bow and a pointed stick make good weapons,” I smirked, to which Lysandros gave another hearty laugh.

“Bookwits might help you out-talk an old devil like me, boy,” he replied, “but let’s see how much they’ll help you when an actual fight arises!”

“If by arises, you mean my opponents run away in fear at seeing your face.” It was a rather smug reply, for Lysandros wasn’t that bad looking; for an man past fifty who had one good eye. He appreciated the swipe, however, and I earned myself another rather painful slap on the back.

Despite this, despite my training, I felt rather homesick once we left the walls of Alexandria, our horses headed into the desert west of the city...

Greetings General_BT2 and welcome to the .org!

I've started to read your story, but at the moment have not the time to finish it properly. though what i have read so far i liked. The pace is fluid and the ideas expressed well. I will finish it either tonight or tomorrow, but still nice work.

Again, welcome and enjoy the Mead Hall!

cool story, and welcome to the org. you have chosen the best place for your first post ~D

First Command

“Euergentes Alexandros! You are the spitting image of your father!”

A hand slapped me on the back, far weaker than the blows that Lysandros would have placed. The frail hand that administered the slap was tied to a frail arm, then a body that seemed to let its armor hang, instead of wearing the protection. The eyes, though... the eyes were sharp, vigilant, watching.

I looked into the old eyes of Antiochos Arrihides, and saw what I expected: the hunger of an ambitious sycophant who was far past his prime. The man was past sixty years of age. He would have been twenty, at least, when my father was born. Unlike me, a distant and far cousin to the Pharoah of Egypt, King of Asia and Macedonia, Antiochos was only a first cousin by marriage.

“And you appear to be in health as well, noble Antiochos Arrihides,” I bowed. Today was not the day to pick a fight with the old man. He might have delusions as to how much power his familial proximity to our great king gave him, but I wanted nothing to mar this day. It was supposed to be my day to shine, to rid the western desert of this problem that Antiochos had spent the better part of a year chasing.

I needed to begin from the start asserting my control, and I knew Antiochos was going to fight as much as he could. No sixty year old veteran of the wars, who had ridden against Seleucus himself, it was rumored, wanted to be shoehorned under the command of a sixteen year old brat straight from the tutor’s.

“What are the disposition of my forces?” I asked, probing to see how deep the resentment would be.

“Well, um... ah...” the old man’s voice creaked. Ah yes... the resentment was there. I could tell from the delay. “We have some local tribal forces as our foot... Beduoin barbarians mostly,” he almost spat the word out. “We have your Thessalanians, of course, as well as a tribe of Numidians that has agreed to help.” He sighed again. “Call it around 3,000 foot and five hundred horse.”

“And the strength of this...” I waved my hand about disdainfully, “’Captain Khu’ we keep hearing about in Alexandria?” For being a backwater ruffian, he’d caused enough of a fuss. Then again, anyone who loots four royal caravans in a row and, according to undoubtedly wild rumor, possesses followers in the thousands was bound to get attention.

I should have known Antiochos would not know. The old man had spent three years trying to chase down this desert bandit, with no success. Nonetheless, I was surprised when he merely shrugged his shoulders.

“He is a bandit,” the old man shrugged, “surely nothing for someone of your skills to worry over.”

I must have noticeably bristled, because Antiochos recoiled. The nerve of the man, to talk to me in such a dismissive manner!

“Bandits can have teeth,” I replied crossly. After all, the great King Darius assumed Alexandros was nothing more than a heady bandit. Since Antiochos obviously had no clue where this ruffian lay, I would have to figure this three year puzzle out on my own. I remembered back to the lessons old Parmenios had given me on war.

We’re in the desert, and what do all people, soldiers or civilian like, need?

Water.

“Lysandros, how much of the local language do you know?” I didn’t trust Antiochos to do much anything right now.

“Not a bit, sir,” he grinned at using the pronoun, “but I’m sure I can scrap up a translator or two.”

“Good. Ask them about groups of oases or watering holes clustered together. Or any single massive oasis or water hole. If we follow the water, we’ll find our Captain Khu.”

“Book-learnin’ does pay off, I guess,” Lysandros flashed me another smile as he saluted. I didn’t bother looking at Antiochos, so I missed his scowling fury.

Cool story mate
Welcome to the .org!

Welcome to the Mead Hall, General_BT2.

This is a very good story. I like your main character: talented but perhaps a little overconfident. But I think you need to be a bit more informative. Who, for instance, is Demetrios of Herat? And what exactly is Alexandros place in the royal line?

Looking forward to the next part.

Welcome! I'm quite new myself! ~:)