Part 3: The Warrior and the Sage
Chapter 18
The horizon: Was it you I loved, perhaps more than Hephaestion and Mother, more than life itself?
We could’ve—would’ve gladly—stayed longer in Babylon. But an army at rest is worse than an army with none. It is a sword that can only be tempered by fire and use. We would soon find plenty of both in the Zagros Mountains as we faced the fearsome Uxian tribesmen in the dead of winter. It is hard to say which was the tougher foe, but I have always thought nature the real enemy and civilization man’s heroic, Promethean response to it.
I hated the snow and ice, hated the mountains, hated anything that curtailed my freedom and impeded my dreams. I refused to be conquered by such. So, we pressed hard east, chasing both Darius and earth’s smoky rim.
F
