Part 4: The Ferryman and the Star
Chapter 25
I had crossed the Indus to find the ends of the earth, only to confront the end of my dreams and illusions.
It is only now that I realize what I should’ve known then—that death was there at every turn. I had, of course, been intimately acquainted with death since I was a child. But now it haunted me, like the shade of an unmourned wife.
In the spring of my twenty-ninth year, we crossed the fanning Indus at one of its narrowest points, using the bridge, barges, and rafts that Hephaestion and Perdiccas had prepared in advance. Hephaestion had always been a marvel at scouting and supply. It’s why I named him Grand Vizier—that and the fact that he was, after all, my second self. Once across the river, Taxiles, the ruler there, and later his son,
