"It is Chares, son of Jason," Clearchus said. "How comes he here?"
Alexander quietly signed to the guard, and the Theban strode into the room, clad in armor that clashed noisily as he walked. He looked neither to the right nor left, but went straight to Alexander.
"I am come to remind the King of Macedon of the ties of hospitality," he said boldly, in a voice more fitted to a demand than a petition.
Alexander measured his great stature with admiration in his glance, noting that the armor, gold-inlaid, was crusted with mud and grime like his own.
"Thy name might be Hector," he said.
The Theban, ignorant of the young king's train of thought and of what had gone before, imagined that he saw mockery in this remark. His face flushed darkly.
"My name is Chares!" he said haughtily. "Jason, my father, was the friend of Epaminondas, who furnished thy father with the weapons that thou hast used against us this day. I come not to thee on my own behalf, but on that of my mother and sisters, who were shut in here when the attack came."
"You are too late!" the young king said composedly.
Chares staggered and his face blanched. "Too late!" he exclaimed hoarsely. "Does Alexander, then, make war upon women?"
"I say you came too late," Alexander replied, "and doubly so; for your friends, here, were more prompt than you, and yet even they were tardy."