The Iron Empire

They started to walk off, and Olympias called out some parting words.

“Never come back.”

They found a little alcove in an abandoned warehouse, where the smell of fish and salt and rotting meat mixed with the scent of flowers that covered the grounds nearby. It all combined into something that wasn’t altogether unpleasant, and for some reason it made Sera’s stomach rumble with hunger. They sat on old benches of stone — cracked and dirty — and tried to figure out what they should do next.

“Look on the bright side,” Dak said. “We’re no worse off than before. Actually, we’re better off in some ways. We still have to stop this Pausanius dude from killing Alexander, which was right where we started. But at least we know that Tilda is out of the picture. Right?”

Sera didn’t think that was much to get excited about. “Yeah, I guess. But now Olympias can warn her man, make sure he’s more careful.”

“But,” Riq said, “that might be good, too. She obviously doesn’t really want to kill her son. Maybe she’ll drive that through the guy’s head: Don’t kill Alexander, no matter what.”

Aristotle was shaking his head. “All excellent points, but I fear you’re missing the most important. Whether or not Pausanius means him any harm, Alexander is now out for the man’s blood. If Alexander defends his father, or avenges him, Pausanius will fight back to protect his own life.”

Dak scoffed at that. “Did you see the way he mowed down all those soldiers out there? Unless this Pausanius guy is Hercules or something, I think old boy Alex will be just fine.”

“Except he wasn’t.” Sera didn’t mean to be flippant, but it was the sad truth that Pausanius had killed Alexander, no matter how great a fighter the heir to Philip might have been. “He died, and there’s nothing to say it won’t happen just like it did in our history books.”

Dak opened his mouth for a retort, but then left it hanging there. She was right, and he knew it.

“So, what do we do?” Riq asked.

Aristotle gave the answer. “It’s quite simple, really. We use your time device to jump ahead a few days to the future, traveling to the camps of King Philip. Once there, we do everything in our power to keep Pausanius away from the hegemon and his son. I still have a lot of sway, I believe.”

Sera liked to hear him sound so confident. “Perfect. That’s about the best plan we can hope for. I just hope they believe us.”

Before anyone could respond to her, a soldier appeared from around the corner, collapsing in a heap right in front of their benches. He was ragged and bruised and bloody, gasping for each and every breath as if his lungs had been punctured. Sera recognized him as one of Tilda’s men. She jumped up in fear but then realized just how weak the man was, not a threat at all. Everyone else had stood up as well.

“Aris . . . totle,” the man wheezed.

The philosopher knelt down by the man, though keeping his distance in case it was a trap. “Yes. What is it?”

“You . . . spared . . . my life.” The man’s face pinched up in pain, and he took several long, struggling breaths. “I want to . . . repay you.” He reached out and opened his hand, where a scroll had been clutched between his fingers.

Aristotle stood up, took the scroll, unrolled it, then read through it quickly. When he was finished, he looked right at Dak.

“When you told me your story, you mentioned something about your parents possibly being in this time period, correct?”

Dak nodded uncertainly. “Yeah, what’s going on?”

“They have the name Smyth, just like yours?”

“Yes!”

The philosopher’s face creased in concern. “An unusual name for these parts, so I can’t imagine it to be a coincidence.”

This time it was Sera’s turn to yell in frustration, Aristotle or not. “Tell us!”

The man complied. “It looks like your Tilda gave us one last blow. If I understand correctly, Dak, your parents have been sent to the front line of King Philip’s upcoming battle.” He slowly shook his head back and forth, even sadder than before. “A place where almost no one survives, I’m afraid.”

A BOMB had just exploded inside Dak’s mind, and he didn’t quite know how to deal with it. He heard the greatest and the worst news ever in a single statement from Aristotle. His parents were evidently alive and well, in the same time period as him. And yet they were sent off to a war that would probably kill them.

“Wait . . . um . . . what?” he said, sure he sounded even more ridiculous than he felt.

The great philosopher looked at him with compassion and tenderness, and had him sit back down.

“Listen to me,” Aristotle said. “If this is true, then I give you my word that we’ll do everything in our power to save them. As surely as we’ll save Alexander and his father. Understand?”

Dak nodded. His chest hurt from the stress and worry. But he stayed quiet and waited for the full explanation. Aristotle continued.

“This is a magistrate’s report from the office of the hegemon.” He held up the scroll and shook it like a flag. “Two people of foreign descent were turned into authorities by a woman and her soldiers. The woman’s name is listed as Tilda, and the . . . slaves as the Smyths. Yes, slaves. Now, hear me out.”

Dak’s eyes had swollen to the size of grapefruits, but he stayed silent.

“Tilda accused them of being runaways and having poisoned their master, a thing I’m most certain that the woman did herself. That’s probably how she obtained these soldiers in the first place” — he gave a weary look to the unconscious man on the ground — “by killing their master and . . . freeing them to work for her. She’s a devious and clever woman.”

“But what does that have to do with the front line of some battle?” Sera asked. Dak was too choked up to ask it himself.

“The report has their plea and the resolution,” Aristotle answered. “At first they were imprisoned and sentenced to death by poison hemlock — the very fate that befell the great Socrates. In exchange for their lives, they were given duty on the front line of the upcoming war against Persia. Hardly a good trade, but better than outright death, I suppose. Hopefully we can get to them in time. I know King Philip will understand and pull them back. I give you my word, Dak. On Plato’s grave, my word.”

Dak looked up at the man, his long beard, his salt-and-pepper hair and eyebrows, his wrinkled skin, his wide shoulders, those eyes that said he knew everything worth knowing. Dak understood why Aristotle would go down in history as one of the great thinkers of all the humans who’d ever walked the earth. There was just something . . . majestic about him.