and "It is the spring of 334 B.C. and the young Alexander has led his troops to the banks of the Hellespont, poised to make his invasion into the empire of the great Persian king, Darius III. He knows he must win the approval of the gods for his enterprise and makes sacrifice after sacrifice, yet the smoke does not rise, the sacrifices are tainted. Worse, the guides he has hired to lead him through Persian territory are being brutally murdered. Persian spies are active in the camp, the men are becoming demoralized and Alexander's own generals have their secret ambitions. and " and "Into the whirlpool of mistrust comes Telamon, an old friend of Alexander's boyhood, who has been sought out and cajoled into joining the Macedonian king by Olympias, Alexander's mother. She charges him with protecting her son from the dangers that surround him. From then on events move swiftly. More murders take place and a party of assassins enters the camp. Alexander himself is threatened with mysterious messages, quotations from his favorite works, including The Iliad, which depict him as a patricide, the true murderer of his own father, Philip. and " and "As the climax builds, Alexander displays his true heroic stature, throwing off the fears and nervous panics he is prey to, and as he achieves a brilliant and bloody triumph over the Persian king, Telamon at last succeeds in revealing the secret enemies within the camp. and " - BOOK JACKET.