Episode 06: Vanguard's Shield
A Great Argead Saga ALEXEIN, Alexander the Great Volume I: Telesias: The War Dance By Makāula Nakae Episode 06: Vanguard's Shield A biting, unseasonal wind howled through the high marble corridors of the palace—a mournful, whistling echo of the sudden carnage that had just devoured the Argead line. King Alexander II lay cold, his body rushed to a tomb still fresh with the raw scent of turned earth and damp stone dust. The crown, now a cursed weight of gold and dried blood, rested upon the brow of Perdiccas III. At barely seventeen, Perdiccas wore the title, but the real power lay in the massive, steady hands of Ptolemy of Aloros. Across the galleries, every tongue wagged in secret. Without a shred of physical evidence, the default assumption among the courtiers was that Ptolemy had engineered the strike. “He did it to breathe,” men whispered behind their hands. They believed it was an act of pure, clinical survival—a pre-emptive strike to seize the regency before the late king’s ...
