As he rides his frothing warhorse through the marble gates of Babylon, and surveys the cloth-of-gold streets, he thinks only, with a distant pang of sadness, of Pella, of his home. That vast crag of rock staring broodily southward over the desert waste of farmer's fields, and northward the glittering jade of the sea. Crowned with walls of pale yellow stone, and within, rising atop the central hill, the shadow of the palace. Yellow stone, too, almost blinding in the sun. Pain pierces his heart suddenly. He closes his eyes, remembers the sound of soft water against the fountain bowl, sees again the streets limned in the pink light of a soft dusk. How young he felt then, how free – how alive. Days and days running with Hephaestion away from the cold decadence of the palace and emerging, spluttering with the laughter of youth, into the very depths of the city and knowing, if only for a moment, what it is to be ordinary, even when you are destined to become something far greater than a god.

How life has been kind to him. Victory upon triumph; the steeped piles of Persian dead following him like shadows to the afterlife. And yet this life has led him so far from all he once treasured. Away from Pella, away from Greece, far from his mother, and with death between him and his father. King Philip, the second of his name. A magnificent king, a good king, one-eyed yet always winking. A hand gripping iron with a heart to match. And Charmeia. Charmeia. What was it she warned him of once? The day they had stood on the stone causeway watching Tyre burn in silence, and he'd boasted of himself as Achilles, Tyre as Troy, of his life as the Iliad. How stupid he had been. And there he stood, ringing curses of his own brilliance, when those blue eyes had levelled his and she'd said . . . what was it she said? That velvet tone of hers, wrapping words ripe as hemlock into its silken caress. He remembers now, pictures her soft lips as she whispered: "Even gods can fall."

Can they? He remembers ignoring it then. But of late her voice claims his mind. Even gods can fall. Anger seizes him suddenly and he tightens his grip on the reins, nodding all the while at the mass of crowded noise as the people of Babylon empty onto the streets. He surveys the glittering ranks of his army behind him, and his friends and generals beside him and wonders what it has all been for. All the blood and blade and horse and grief. Has it been all for triumph? All for victory? And what triumph? What victory – and over whom? The Persian whore who runs into his desert and hides behind his castle's walls? All this . . . this work, this energy, this effort, this life . . . Tramping deserts and mountains and snow and ice. Bloodying the feet of his soldiers with his ideas, his quest. Clouding their hearts, their minds, with the memory of beseeching almond eyes as blood fills where air once stood. Burning city after city – for what? The anger in his heart?

He rides now beneath another grand archway, decorated richly with gold-flecked ruby and the heads of Persian soldiers. He looks up as he rides and stares at the tarred faces: eyes stitched shut, mouths open as if they died screaming. Even gods can fall. Teeth glinting in the macabre parody of a smile, an outraged laugh from a ghoul. A laugh the crowds are mirroring, as they watch the Conqueror ride through their city, perhaps wondering if their king is the next to fall. Because it will not be golden Alexander. No. He rides past the severed Persian heads without another glance. No, it will not be him. Damn Charm and her whispered prophecies. He is immortal, he is Achilles, striding forth like a lion to snatch Greece back from the Shadow in the East. The stallion beneath starts and rears as the king awakens suddenly and the people whoop and squeal at the sight of this golden king and horse of night as they make to mount the world.