by Mary Renault
In the month of the Lion, when the first of the grapes were harvested, they had their birthdays and turned fifteen. In the week of the first frosts the courier brought a letter, not from the Queen but from the King. He greeted his son; expected he would like a change from sitting down with the philosophers; and invited him to visit his headquarters. It was none too soon, since he was forward in such matters, for him to see the face of war.
Their road led by the shore, skirting the mountains when marsh or river-mouth drove it inland. The armies of Xerxes had first leveled it, moving westward; the armies of Philip had repaired it, moving east.
Ptolemy came, because Alexander thought it due to him; Philotas, because his father was with the King; Kassandros because if the son of Parmenion came, Antipatros’ could not be left behind; and Hephaistion as a matter of course.
The escort was commanded by Kleitos, Hellanike’s younger brother. The King had detailed him for it, because Alexander had known him so long. This was indeed one of the first beings he could remember, as a dark thickset young man who would walk into the nursery and talk to Lanike across him, or come roaring across the floor playing bears. He was now Black Kleitos, a bearded captain of the Companion Cavalry; highly reliable, and with an archaic forthrightness. Macedon had many such survivals from a Homeric past, when the High King had to take, if his chieftains chose to give it, a wholesome piece of their minds. Now, escorting the King’s son, he was hardly aware of harking back to the rough teasing of the nursery; Alexander scarcely knew what it was he half-remembered; but there was an edge to their sparring, and though he laughed, he took care to give as good as he got.
They forded streams which, it was said, had been drunk dry by the Persian hordes; crossed the Strymon by King Philip’s bridge, and climbed Pangaios’ shoulder to the terraced city of Amphipolis. There at the Nine Ways, Xerxes had buried nine boys and nine girls alive, to please his gods. Now between mountain and river stood a great fortress shining with new squared ashlar; gold-smelters’ furnaces smoked within its walls; it was a strongpoint Philip did not mean to lose, the first of his conquests beyond the river which had once been Macedon’s furthest boundary. Above them towered Pangaios, dark with forests and scarred with the workings of the mines, its white marble outcrops gleaming in the sun; the rich womb of the royal armies. Wherever they went, Kleitos pointed out to them the spoor of the King’s wars; weed-covered siege works, ramps where his towers and his catapults had been reared against city walls still laid in ruins. There was always a fort of his along the way, to take them in for the night.
“What’s to become of us, boys,” said Alexander laughing, “if he leaves us nothing to do?”
When the coastal plain was firm, the boys would wheel off at a gallop, and charge back with streaming hair, splashing along the seashore, shouting to each other above the crying of the gulls. Once, when they were singing, some passing peasants took them for a wedding party, bringing the bridegroom to the house of the bride.
Oxhead was in high spirits. Hephaistion had a fine new horse, red with a blond mane and tail. They were always giving each other things, on impulse, or at the feasts, but they had been boys’ small keepsakes; this was the first costly and conspicuous gift he had had from Alexander. The gods had only made one Oxhead; but Hephaistion’s mount must excel all others. It handled well. Kassandros admired it pointedly. After all, then, Hephaistion was making a good thing out of his sycophancy. Hephaistion felt the meaning, and would have given much for the chance of vengeance; but nothing had been said in words. Before Kleitos and the escort, it was unthinkable to make a scene.
The road ran inland to skirt a brackish swamp. Perched on a spur of hill to command the passage, towering proudly above the plain, was the citadel rock of Philippi. Philip had taken it, and sealed it with his name, in a famous year.
“My first campaign,” Kleitos said. “I was there when the courier brought the news. Your father, Philotas, had pushed back the Illyrians and run them halfway to the western sea; the King’s horse had won at Olympia; and you, Alexander, had come into the world—with a great yell as we were told. We were issued a double wine-ration. Why he didn’t make it a treble one, I don’t know.”
“I do. He knew how much you could hold.” Alexander trotted ahead, and murmured to Hephaistion, “Since I was three I’ve been hearing that story.”
Philotas said, “All this used to be Thracian tribal land.”
“Yes, Alexander,” said Kassandros. “You’ll need watch your blue-painted friend, young Lambaros. The Agrianoi”—he waved his hand northwards—“must be hoping to make something of this war.”
“Oh?” Alexander raised his brows. “They’ve kept their pledges. Not like King Kersobleptes, who made war as soon as we’d given his hostage back.” It was known that Philip had had enough of this chief’s false promises and brigand raids; the aim of the war was to make his lands a province of Macedon.
“These barbarians are all alike,” Kassandros said.
“I heard from Lambaros last year. He got a merchant to write for him. He wants me to visit their city as his guest.”
“I don’t doubt it. Your head would look well on a pole at the village gate.”
“As you just now said, Kassandros, he’s my friend. Will you remember that?”
“And shut your mouth,” said Hephaistion audibly.
They were to sleep at Philippi. The tall acropolis flamed like a cresset in the red light of the westering sun. Alexander gazed long in silence.
The King, when at last they reached him, was camped before the fort of Doriskos, on the near side of the Hebros valley. Beyond the river was the Thracian city of Kypsela. Before investing that, he must take the fort.
It had been built by Xerxes, to guard his rear after he had crossed the Hellespont. On the flat sea-meadow below it, he had rough-reckoned the number of his host, too vast for counting, by marching troop after troop into a square drawn around the first ten thousand men. The fort was solid; he had had no lack of slaves. But it had grown ramshackle in its century and a half of Thracians; cracks were filled in with rubble, the battlements patched with thorn like a goat pen in the mountains. It had withstood Thracian tribal wars; till now, no more had been asked of it.
Dusk was falling as they came near. From within the walls rose the smell of cook-fires and the distant bleat of goats. Just out of arrow-shot was the camp of the Macedonians, a workmanlike shantytown of hide tents, lean-tos roughly thatched with reeds from the Hebros River, and propped upturned carts. Drawn geometric and black against the sunset sky stood a sixty-foot wooden siege tower; its guards, shielded by thick ox-hide housing against missiles from the ramparts, were cooking supper within its base. In the cavalry lines, the horses whinnied at their pickets. The platforms had been set up for the catapults; the great engines seemed to crouch like dragons about to spring, their timber necks extended, their massive bolt-firing bows outspread from their sides like wings. The outlying scrub stank of ordure; the nearer air smelled of wood-smoke, grilling fish, and the unwashed bodies of many men and women. The camp-followers were busy with supper; here and there one of their incidental children chirped or wailed. Someone was playing a lyre in need of tuning.
A little hamlet of huts, its people fled to the fort or mountains, had been cleaned out for the officers. The headman’s place, two stone rooms and a lean-to, housed the King. They saw his lamp at some distance.
Alexander moved into the lead, lest Kleitos take it on himself to deliver him like a child. His eyes and nose and ears took in the presence of war, the difference from barracks or home camp. When they reached the house, Philip’s square shape darkened the doorway. Father and son embraced, and viewed each other in the light of the watch-fire. “You’re taller,” said the King.
Alexander nodded. “My mother,” he said for the escort’s ears, “sends you greeting and hopes you are in good health.” There was a loaded pause; he went on quickly, “I’ve brought you a sack of apples from Mieza. They’re good
this year.”
Philip’s face warmed; Mieza apples were famous. He clapped his son on the shoulder, greeted his companions, directed Philotas to his father’s lodging, and said, “Well, come in, come in and eat.”
Joined presently by Parmenion, they ate at a trestle, waited on by the royal squires, youths in their mid-teens whose fathers’ rank entitled them to learn manners and warfare by acting as body-servants to the King. The sweet golden apples were brought in a silver dish. Two lamps stood on bronze standards. The King’s weapons and armor leaned in a corner. An ancient smell of humanity sweated out from the walls.
“Only a day later,” said Philip, “and we might have lodged you inside.” He gestured with his apple-core at the fort.
Alexander leaned forward across the table. The long ride had sunburned him; the clear color glowed in his cheeks, his hair and eyes caught the lamplight brilliantly; he was like kindling caught with the spark.
“When do we attack?”
Philip grinned across at Parmenion. “What can one do with such a boy?”
They were to go in just before dawn.
After supper, the officers came in for briefing. They were to approach the fort in darkness; then flame-arrows were to be shot at the brushwood in the walls, the catapults and siege tower would open covering fire to clear the ramparts while scaling-ladders were set up. Meantime the ram, slung in its mighty cradle, would be swung against the gates, the siege tower would thrust out its drawbridge; the assault would begin.
It was an old story to the officers, only small details imposed by the site were new. “Good,” Philip said. “Time for a little sleep, then.”
The squires had brought in a second bed to the room behind. Alexander’s eyes had followed it for a moment. Just before bedtime, when he had honed his weapons, he went out to find Hephaistion, to tell him he had arranged they should be posted together for the assault, and to explain that he himself had to share his father’s lodging. For some reason he had not thought to expect it.
When he got back, his father had just stripped, and was handing a squire his chiton. Alexander checked a moment in the doorway, then entered, saying something to seem at ease. He could not, indeed, account for the deep distaste and shame the sight of his father gave him. As far as he could remember, he had never seen him naked before.
By sunup the fort had fallen. A pure, clear golden light came lifting from behind the hills that hid the Hellespont. A fresh breeze blew from the sea. Over the fort hung the acrid smells of smoke and smolder, the stink of blood and entrails and grimy sweat.
The ladders, solid structures of undressed pine which would take two men abreast, still leaned against the fire-stained walls, with here and there a broken rung where the rush had overloaded one. Before the burst splintered gates hung the ram in its hide-roofed cradle; the gangway from the siege tower lolled on the ramparts like a great tongue.
Inside, the Thracian men who survived were being fettered for their march to the slave market at Amphipolis; the clink sounded musical, at a little distance. An example, Philip thought, might encourage the Kypselans to surrender when their turn came. All round the huts and hovels that clung like swallows’ mud nests to the inside of the walls, the soldiers were on the hunt for women.
The King stood, with Parmenion and a couple of runners by whom he was sending orders, up on the ramparts; solid, workmanlike, relaxed, like an able farmer who has plowed a big field and got it sown before the rain. Once or twice, when a shriek rose shrilling to hurt the ears, Alexander looked towards him; but he went on talking to Parmenion, undisturbed. The men had fought well, and deserved what meager spoils the place could offer. Doriskos should have surrendered; then no one would have been hurt.
Alexander and Hephaistion were by themselves in the gatehouse, talking about the battle. It was a small stone room, containing besides themselves a dead Thracian, a slab carved with the name and styles of Xerxes, King of Kings; some rough wooden stools; half a loaf of black bread; and, by itself, a man’s forefinger with a black broken nail. Hephaistion had kicked it aside; it was a trifle to what they had seen already.
He had won his sword belt. One man he had killed for certain, dead on the spot; Alexander thought it might well be three.
Alexander had taken no trophies, nor counted his men. As soon as they were on the walls, the officer who led their party had been hurled down. Alexander, giving no one else time to think, had shouted that they must take the gatehouse, whence missiles were being showered on the ram below. The appointed second-in-command, an untried man, had wavered, and in that moment had lost his men to Alexander’s certainty; they were already running after him, clambering, scrambling, stabbing and thrusting along Xerxes’ old ragged masonry, with its wild blue-stained defenders and clefts of crackling fire. The entry to the gatehouse was narrow; there had been a minute, after Alexander had hurled himself inside, when the following press had jammed in it, and he had been fighting alone.
He stood now with the blood and dust of combat on him, looking down on the other face of war. But, Hephaistion thought, he was not really seeing it. He talked quite clearly, remembered every detail where for Hephaistion things were already flowing together like a dream. For him it was fading; Alexander was living in it still. Its aura hung about him; he was in a mode of being he did not want to leave, as men linger on in a place where they saw a vision.
He had a sword-cut across his forearm. Hephaistion had stopped the bleeding with a strip of his kilt. He looked out at the pale clean sea, saying, “Let’s go down and bathe, to wash off the muck.”
“Yes,” said Alexander. “I ought to see Peithon first. He put out his shield to cover me when two of them were at me, and that man with the forked beard caught him under it. But for you he’d have been killed outright.” He took off his helmet (they were both armed, at short notice, from the common stock of the Pella armory) and ran his hand through his damp hair.
“You ought to have waited, before you dashed in alone, to see if we’d come up with you. You know you run faster than anyone else. I could have killed you for it, when we were milling in the doorway.”
“They were going to drop that rock there, look at the size of it. I knew you weren’t far off.”
Hephaistion was feeling the reaction, not only to his fears for Alexander, but to all he had seen and done. “Rock or no rock, you’d have gone in. It was written all over you. It’s only luck you’re alive.”
“It was the help of Herakles,” said Alexander calmly. “And hitting them quickly, before they could hit me.”
He had found this easier than he had foreseen. The best he had hoped from his constant weapon-practice had been some lessening of disadvantage, against seasoned men. Hephaistion, reading his thought, said, “These Thracians are peasants. They fight two or three times a year, in a cattle-raid or a brawl. Most of them are stupid, none of them are trained. Real soldiers, like your father’s men, would have cut you down before you were well inside.”
“Wait till they do it,” said Alexander sharply, “and tell me about it then.”
“You went in without me. You didn’t even look.”
Suddenly transformed, Alexander gave him a loving smile. “What’s the matter with you? Patroklos reproached Achilles for not fighting.”
“He was listened to,” said Hephaistion in a different voice.
From below in the fort, the wail of a woman keening rhythmically over some dead man broke off in a shriek of terror.
“He should call the men in,” Alexander said. “It’s enough. I know there was nothing else worth taking, but—”
They looked along the wall; but Philip had gone off on some other business.
“Alexander. Listen. It’s no use to be angry. When you’re a general, you’ll not be able to expose yourself like that. The King’s a brave man, but he doesn’t do it. If you’d been killed, it would have been like a battle won for Kersobleptes. And later, when you’re King…”
Alexander turned round, and
riveted on him that gaze of peculiar intensity with which he told a secret. Dropping his voice, a needless caution in so much noise, he said, “I can never not do it. I know it, I’ve felt it, it’s the truth of the god. It’s then that I—”
A sound of panting breath, catching in shrill sobs, broke in on them. A young Thracian woman rushed in from the ramparts and, without looking right or left, dashed towards the wide parapet above the gate. It was some thirty feet from the ground. As she got her knee on the sill, Alexander jumped after and grasped her arm. She screamed, and clawed at him with her free hand, till Hephaistion caught it back. She stared into Alexander’s face with the fixity of a cornered animal, writhed suddenly free, crouched down and clutched his knees.
“Get up, we won’t harm you.” Alexander’s Thracian had been improved by his talks with Lambaros. “Don’t fear, get up. Let go.”
The woman gripped harder, pouring out a stream of half-smothered words as she pressed her face with its running eyes and nose against his bare leg.
“Get up,” he said again. “We won’t…” He had never learned the essential word. Hephaistion supplied a gesture of universal meaning, followed by a strongly negative sign.
The woman let go and sat back on her heels, rocking and wailing. She had red matted hair, and a dress of some coarse raw wool, torn at the shoulder. The front was splashed with blood; there were damp patches of leaked milk over the heavy breasts. She wrenched at her hair, and began to wail again. Suddenly she started, leaped to her feet, and flattened herself against the wall behind them. Footsteps approached; a thick breathless voice called, “I saw you, you bitch. Come here. I saw you.” Kassandros entered. His face was crimson, his freckled brow beaded with sweat. He charged blindly in, and stopped dead.
