The Sacred War

by H A CULLEY

  It was Georgios and Enyo who came up with the plan to breach the walls. Rations were not a problem but Enyo liked hunting and she was an extremely good shot with her bow. Most days she went out seeking game with her brother as escort and came back with everything from plump pigeons and pheasants to the occasional fallow deer slung over her horse. Both Callimarcos and Timandros were reasonable cooks so the five of them ate well, especially as meat didn’t usually feature that much in their normal diet.

  It was during one of her hunting trips that Enyo noticed that at one point the wall ran above a sandstone cliff. The cliff face wasn’t very high but it had obviously been eroded over the years since the wall was built and the top of the cliff overhung the base. As she and Georgios edged as near as they dared whilst keeping out of arrow range, they could see that the base of the wall had started to sag slightly and a crack had appeared where the massive stones had moved apart at the foot of the wall.

  When she told Iphitos about it he wondered why Endemion, who was meant to have surveyed that part of the wall, hadn’t noticed it. Iphitos took him, Chronos, Kleandros and Enyo with him to have a look. The other engineers all agreed that undermining the cliff would bring the wall down. It was something they hadn’t tried before and Iphitos worried that the whole thing might collapse on top of the men digging.

  ‘Not if we prop the ceiling up as we excavate under the wall,’ suggested Chronos.

  ‘What will that achieve?’ Endemion sneered, still smarting from having missed the vulnerable part of wall when he had ridden around it. ‘How can we remove the props?’

  ‘That’s easy,’ Chronos told him, angry at his fellow engineer’s deriding tone. ‘We smother them in oil and pitch and set fire to them.’

  ‘Well done, Chronos,’ Iphitos praised him, giving Endemion a warning look. Perhaps the antagonism between Parmenion and Attalus had rubbed off on their respective chief engineers.

  Fortunately the base of the cliff and the immediate approach to it were hidden from the archers on the wall above by the overhang. There was dead ground in the form of a dry gully running towards the area but there was a gap of fifty yards where men would have to leave the safety of the gully and dash to the area under the overhang. It was Kleandros who came up with the solution.

  ‘Why don’t we dig a trench to link the gulley with the base of the overhang?’

  ‘Because they could still fire down into it, however deep we dig it,’ Endemion replied snidely.

  Iphitos was surprised that he hadn’t noticed before this what an unpleasant young man Endemion had become.

  ‘Not if we dig it as a zig zag,’ he said, rather more sharply than he had intended. ‘Really Endemion I would rather you came up with solutions yourself instead of always deriding the ideas of others. Even if they are idiotic, which they haven’t been so far, there are tactful ways of saying so without making people feel useless. Is this how you treat your subordinates when I’m not around?’

  When he returned to camp he sought out Kleandros and asked him about Endemion.

  ‘Yes. I’ve been meaning to have a word with you but I kept hoping that he’d improve; instead he seems to be getting more and more bitter .’

  ‘What’s happened to make him into such an acrimonious young man? He never used to be like that.’

  ‘Basically I think he’s fallen in love with Narkissos , the phylearch in command of his katapeltikons, but the young man isn’t interested. It makes it a difficult relationship and seeing the man who spurned his advances everyday has turned an uncomfortable situation into a rancorous one. Now Endemion hits out verbally at whoever’s handy.’

  ‘I see. I’ll talk to Chronos about exchanging Narkissos for Heirax . He’s so ugly I can’t imagine even his own mother loving him. They both command katapeltikon sections so I don’t suppose he’ll mind.’

  ‘What Endemion needs is a young man who’ll return his affections.’

  ‘That’s not our job,’ Iphitos told him sharply. ‘It’s to get the best out of our soldiers, otherwise I wouldn’t even think about interfering.’

  ‘No, of course not. I was only trying to,’ he broke off seeing the look in Iphitos’ eye. ‘Never mind; I know what you’re saying. I’ll take charge of the works tonight. With any luck we’ll have the trench dug by daybreak.’

  Three days later the mine under walls was nearing completion and Iphitos went out with Callimarcos, Kleandros and Endemion to inspect it. The problem was how to set fire to the props whilst allowing enough time for the fire setters to escape. They were standing at the end of the tunnel as the workmen were finishing it off and he had just turned to his officers to see if anyone had any bright ideas when Callimarcos grabbed his arm. Iphitos looked at his aide in surprise but the boy just held his finger to his lips. The taxiarch told the men to stop digging and they all listened. They could hear a faint scraping sound which kept getting louder.

  ‘What do you think it is?’ Kleandros whispered.

  ‘Sounds as if someone else is digging.’ Callimarcos replied.

  They listened for another minute and suddenly the sound got much louder. Endemion was nearest when a wooden spade broke through the side of tunnel wall five feet from where they were standing. By the time that the four officers had drawn their swords and moved to either side of the hole, it had been widened until it was big enough for a man to step through it. To Iphitos’ surprise it wasn’t a worker who emerged first but a fully armed hoplite.

  Luckily his spear was too unwieldy to use effectively in the confined space and Endemion thrust his sword into his neck before he could do anything. Callimarcos sheathed his sword and picked up the discarded spear. It was no use in the narrow tunnel but he thrust it into the breach made by the enemy, skewering the next hoplite as he tried to come through. Meanwhile the workers on the other side where frantically trying to widen the breach to allow more than one man through at a time.

  Callimarcos had speared another man but unfortunately the point of the spear got trapped between the man’s ribs and, whilst he was trying to pull it out, another hoplite thrust his spear past his dead comrade and straight into Callimarcos’ left eye just below his helmet rim. The point went on and into his brain and he sunk to his knees before toppling onto his side.

  Iphitos had seen his aide’s death just as he was yelling for some of the spearmen and peltasts who were guarding the entrance to come down the tunnel and help. He turned back to the breach just in time to meet another hoplite as he clambered over the dead and into the tunnel. Out of the corner of his eye he was vaguely conscious of Endemion fighting a hoplite officer armed with a sword who had clambered through the widened breach. Kleandros stepped behind the officer and cut deeply into his neck with one blow then, leaving Endemion to deal with the next man through the breach, moved to help Iphitos. This distracted Iphitos’ opponent just long enough for the taxiarch to deal him a fatal blow and he collapsed at his feet.

  By now several other soldiers had come to their aid and gradually they managed to force the enemy back into their own tunnel. Once they had command of the breach the peltasts soon cleared as much of the other tunnel as they could see. Iphitos had a small wound to his right arm but was otherwise unharmed, but Kleandros had been badly wounded in the leg and could hardly stand. Two of the unarmed workers helped him out of the tunnel from where he could be evacuated to the physicians’ tent.

  Iphitos looked around for Endemion but he couldn’t see him. Eventually they found him under two of the enemy dead. He had been killed by a blow to the heart which had gone straight through his linothrax. He then looked for Callimarcos. Iphitos took his aide’s lifeless body in his arms and wept.

  He got up and wandered out into the light. He knew he should get on with firing the tunnel before the enemy mounted another attack but all he could think about was how he was going to write to Callimarcos’ father, who was with Antigonus ’ army on the Thracian border, and tell him of his son’s death. Dardanos hated him and had warned him to kee
p his son safe. He had failed and he knew the man would now try and kill him in revenge.

  Chapter Sixteen – The Conquest of Thrace

  342 – 340 BC

  Philip stayed in Thessaly for two years after the fall of Ambracia . When he returned to Pella to plan his campaign in Thrace he left behind a much more unified country. Each city state had an elected council but their powers were illusory. The real authority lay in the hands of the governor of each city and they answered to the archon – Phillip. He didn’t try to interfere with each city’s laws or with their religion, but tax gathering was centralised for every aspect of expenditure, not just the army. That way he retained fiscal control and the cities were dependent on him for every stater and didrachm that they spent.

  Iphitos mourned the loss of Callimarcos and even regretted Endemion’s death. It saved exchanging Narkissos and Heirax but he hadn’t deserved to die. Normally the lives of engineers and even artillerymen were a lot safer than those of the infantry and cavalry so the loss of two within minutes of each other was unusual. It wasn’t until he was back in Pella and in the arms of his beloved Chloe that he began to think about their replacements.

  Philip hadn’t needed him after the campaign was over and so he could look forward to some time at home for a change. Georgios returned to the academy as an ephebe and would still be there when the army left again for Thrace. Enyo fretted at the boredom of her life now and went hunting as often as Iphitos and Chloe would allow her to. Linos had taken over as Endemion’s temporary replacement as Parmenion’s head of artillery and engineering but he knew little about the latter.

  Finding someone who knew about both engineering and artillery had always been difficult but, when one army became three, finding enough senior officers who were expert in both fields proved something of a challenge. Iphitos began to think that the time had come for each army to have a separate chief engineer and a head of artillery. The more he thought about it and discussed it with Chloe, the more convinced he became that a re-organisation was sensible; so he decided to go and talk to Philip about it.

  He asked Attalus, who was in charge of the army in Pella in the king’s absence, for an escort and he readily gave him a tetrachium of cavalry. He would take Timandros but he still hadn’t appointed a new aide. Enyo was well aware of this and kept importuning him to take her so eventually he gave in and agreed. As a girl she couldn’t be his aide officially but he would be glad of her company and she could do everything an aide would normally do for him.

  To say that Chloe wasn’t happy with this arrangement would be an understatement. She trusted her husband but he was a man and she certainly didn’t trust Enyo. The girl was now seventeen and had developed into a svelte young woman. The fact that she dressed and behaved like a boy didn’t hide the fact that she was anything but a boy physically, and she was well aware of the effect that her appearance had on men. So she announced the day before he was due to depart that she would like to go with her husband.

  Iphitos was delighted. His wife could ride nearly as well as he could and, as he wasn’t going to war this time, he was really pleased not be parted from her. Enyo was less pleased. She had been looking forward to having Iphitos to herself. She had been nursing a secret crush on him ever since they had first met at the Gates of Fire. She had a slight conscience about this since he and Chloe had made her a member of the family and she was betraying them, at least in thought, but she tried to put this at the back of her mind. Now she was frustrated and angry.

  She hated it when her idol and his wife paraded their affection for one another in front of her and the thought of sleeping in the same tent as them for several weeks, even if it was behind a cloth screen, made her feel physically sick, so she pleaded illness and said she thought she had better remain behind. They were both concerned for her and Chloe even said she ought to stay with her, which made the girl feel guilty. However, the physician said that there was nothing seriously wrong with her and so they left her behind in Pella and set off.

  The journey to Thessaly and their return was uneventful and Iphitos came back with Philip’s blessing for the division of artillery and military engineering onto two separate wings in each army. He was to remain in overall charge of both disciplines and he had already discussed his ideas with Parmenion, who had agreed. However, he was enjoined to consult Attalus and Antigonus before making any final decision. Only then could he make the necessary appointments and that would mean seeing each strategos again. With Parmenion in Thessaly, Attalus at Pella and Antigonus at Amphipolis it looked as if he would be spending the summer in the saddle.

  Chloe had enjoyed her trip to Thessaly with her husband but, towards the end had started being sick. She was also three weeks late so she was pretty sure she knew the reason. She didn’t say anything to Iphitos yet, just it case she was wrong, but she wouldn’t risk losing this baby. So she stayed at home, insisting that Enyo stayed to keep her company, much to the girl’s frustration.

  Demetrius, the last of Parmenion’s boyhood friends, was still the head of logistics, though he looked a lot older than the strategos these days and was certainly a lot fatter. However his youngest son had made friends with Georgios at the academy and he had brought him home for dinner a few times. Like Georgios he was sixteen and, unlike his friend, he was interested in engineering. Georgios wanted to join the cavalry when he turned eighteen and so, tempted as Iphitos was to make his son his aide, he knew that it would be the wrong decision. His friend, Galen, was a different matter though.

  He went to see Demetrius and the man sighed. His eldest son, Chronos, had become Iphitos’ aide twelve years ago and now he was the hipparchos in command of the artillery and the engineers in Attalus’ army. His son had done well for himself but Demetrius hardly ever saw him after Iphitos had taken him away. Now he wanted to deprive him of Galen as well. Unlike Chronos, he and his wife still saw quite a lot of their younger son but he knew that, once he became an aide, they would rarely see him. Then he would only have one child at home, a girl of ten. He temporised by saying that he wanted to talk to his wife and to Galen about it.

  Galen had just under two years left at the academy and then he would be joining either the hoplites or, with any luck, the Companion cavalry. In either case he would be in a lot more danger than if he was Iphitos’ aide. It wasn’t as if Demetrius could make him his own aide. He never left Pella these days. His job was to organise re-supply from the depot at the capital to the armies in the field. He had a subordinate with each army who saw to the requisitioning and the distribution of food and equipment to where it was needed. None of them had aides, their assistants were all clerks and scribes. In any case, Galen had no desire to follow in his father’s footsteps.

  He came to the reluctant conclusion that he should accede to Iphitos’ request. He never thought to consult his wife and she would have been very surprised had he done so. They had the sort of marriage where he made all the decisions and she gave him children and looked after his needs. It suited them, Iphitos supposed, but it certainly wouldn’t have suited Chloe, or Enyo when she married, if she ever did. He did wonder from time to time who might be prepared to take on such a feisty girl as his wife.

  In fact Enyo was beginning to wonder the same thing. However, she certainly wasn’t interested in being a good Macedonian wife, not even to Iphitos, had he been available; nor did she want to become a hetaera. She was still a virgin and felt no great compulsion to change that unless the rewards were worthwhile. The only males she had ever desired had been Timandros and Iphitos, but she told herself she was now over both of them. As time went on that became true. Now the only times she had felt really alive was when she was out hunting. But that wasn’t enough; she craved more excitement and eventually she went to Uzava and told him what she wanted.

  Uzava ran Philip’s espionage network in reality but he was careful always to make it appear that Iphitos was in charge. He was the faithful deputy and that was the way he liked it. They always discussed the
general situation and where to obtain the information that was necessary, though this was usually merely a formality as Uzava had already decided what he needed and why. Uzava then obtained the intelligence required and Iphitos briefed Philip and his senior officers. It worked well and Uzava never felt that he did all the work just for Iphitos to take the credit. In fact, he admired his chief’s ability as an agent in the field on those rare occasions when it was needed and he would have been extremely uncomfortable if he had ever had to move from the shadows where he operated into the light.

  He sighed when Enyo explained what she wanted and told the girl that, whilst he would be very happy to use her as an agent, it could only be with the agreement of her adoptive father. She stamped her feet and pouted but that had no effect on Uzava the eunuch whatsoever. She was left with no option but to go and put her request to Iphitos.

  The taxiarch had come to love the girl as a daughter and the fact that he now knew that Chloe was near to giving birth to their own child didn’t alter the way that he regarded either her or her brother. He told her he would think about it, but there wasn’t much to think about. She would never settle down as a Greek matron and she said that having sex for a living didn’t appeal either. She might have become a dancer or a musician had she not been raised out of the class into which she had been born, but she had little musical ability and less interest in any case. There were no other lifestyles open to Macedonian women. So he agreed.

  Philip’s plan was to cross the Thracian border in three columns. Parmenion’s in the south had the more difficult task as the coastal region was the most populated. Philip and Attalus would head for the mountains of central Thrace and Antigonus would invade the river valleys of northern Thrace south of the range of mountains that marked the border with Dacia.