The Novels of Alexander the Great

by Mary Renault

  “Ah,” mused Parmenion. “Still, I wonder he got a steady man like Koinos to take it on.”

  “But before we reached the Strymon, the Maidoi had already overrun the fort at Rushing Gate, had reached the plain and begun to ravage the farms. Some had crossed the Strymon westward to the silver mine, killed the guards and slaves, and carried home the bar silver through the river-pass. This decided me that it would not be enough to beat them off the farmlands; their own settlement ought to be reduced by war.”

  “Did he know,” asked Parmenion incredulously, “where it is?”

  “When I had looked over the troops, I sacrificed to the appropriate gods, and to Herakles, and was given good auguries by the diviners. Also, one of the loyal Paionians told me that while hunting early, he had seen a wolf, as it fed upon a carcass, taken by a young lion. The soldiers were pleased with the omen, and I rewarded the man with gold.

  “He deserved it,” said Philip. “The shrewdest of the diviners.

  “Before starting my advance, I sent five hundred chosen hillmen to go under cover of the woods and surprise the fort at the Gate. Lambaros, my guest-friend, had advised me that it would be held by the worst of the enemy, since none of their foremost warriors would forgo his share of the loot to secure their rear. My men found this to be true. They found also the bodies of our garrison, and saw that our wounded had been maltreated. As I had ordered should this be so, they threw the Maidoi down the cliffs into the rapids. They then manned the fort and both flanks of the gorge. Kephalon led; an energetic officer.

  “In the valley, some of our colonists had sent off their families to safety, and stayed themselves to fight off the enemy. I commended them for their courage, issued them with arms, and promised them a year’s tax remission.

  “Young men never know where money comes from,” said the King. “You can be sure he never thought to ask what their tax was worth.

  “I now led all my forces north up the valley, with my right flank advanced to deny the high ground to the enemy. Where we came on dispersed bands looting, these we destroyed; the rest we worked northeast, worrying them like herd-dogs getting the flock together, lest they should scatter off into the hills without giving us battle. Thracians trust everything to their first headlong rush, and do not like to stand.

  “They collected where I had hoped, in a tongue of land where the river makes an elbow with the lake. They reckoned, as I thought they would, on the river securing their backs; I reckoned to push them into it. There was a ford at their rear, known for being deep and treacherous. By the time they had wet their bowstrings and lost their heavy arms, they should be ready to make for home through the pass, not knowing that my men held it.

  “This, then was the order of battle…”

  A workmanlike summary followed. Philip muttered through it, forgetting to recite aloud to Parmenion, who craned forward to hear. Lured out, rolled up, and thrown into confusion, the Maidoi had duly struggled off through the river, into the iron trap of the gorge. Alexander had returned to Amphipolis most of its borrowed garrison, in charge of his many prisoners.

  “Next day I pressed on up river beyond the pass; a number of the Maidoi had crossed the mountains by other ways, and I did not want to give them leisure to re-form. So I came to the country of the Agrianoi. Here Lambaros, my guest-friend, met me with a troop of horse, his friends and kinsmen. He had asked leave of his father to ride to war with us, in fulfillment of a vow. They showed us the easiest passes; later they did very well in battle.

  “Teres saw which way the cat was jumping,” said Philip. “Yet the boy didn’t wait. Why? A child when he was at Pella, I can’t even remember what he looked like.”

  He muttered his way through the breakneck mountain campaign that followed. Guided by his allies to the enemy’s craggy nest, Alexander had attacked its main approach, while his mountaineers crept up the sheer side left unguarded.

  “The men of the valley, wanting to revenge their wrongs, were about to kill everyone they found; but I ordered them to spare the women and the children, who had injured no one. These I sent to Amphipolis; do with them as you think best.”

  “Sensible lad,” said Parmenion. “Those strong hill-women always fetch good prices; work better than the men.”

  Philip skimmed on, through rounding-up operations and commendations (Hephaistion son of Amyntor, of Pella, fought with great distinction), his voice fading to the murmur of routine business. Suddenly, making Parmenion jump, he shouted, “What?”

  “Well, what, then?” asked Parmenion presently.

  Philip, looking up from the roll, said in a measured voice, “He has stayed on there to found a city.”

  “It must be the clerk’s writing.”

  “The clerk writes like a book. The Maidoi had some good grazing-lands, and the footslopes will grow vines. So he is refounding their city, in counsel with Lambaros, his guest-friend. I reckon they can notch up thirty-three years between them.”

  “If as much,” Parmenion grunted.

  “He has considered suitable colonists. Agrianoi of course; loyal Paionians; some landless Macedonians he knows of, and…Yes, wait. An afterthought, this. Have I any good men I would like to reward with a gift of land? He thinks he could take twenty.”

  Parmenion, deciding that only a fool would open his mouth, cleared the back of his throat to fill the pause.

  “Of course he has named the city. Alexandropolis.”

  He stared down at the parchment. Parmenion looked at the shrewd, scarred, ageing face, the grizzled black brows and beard; the old bull snuffing the new spring air, tilting his battle-frayed old horns. I’m getting on too, Parmenion thought. They had shared the Thracian winters, stood together through the Illyrian battle-rush; they had shared muddy water in drought, wine after the battle; they had shared a woman, when they were young; she had never known for sure which had fathered her child; they had shared the joke. Parmenion cleared the back of his throat again.

  “The boy’s forever saying,” he brought out brusquely, “that you’ll leave him nothing to do, to make his name on. He’s taking what chance he can.”

  Philip brought down his fist on the table. “I’m proud of him,” he said decisively. “Proud of him.” He pulled a blank tablet towards him, and with deep quick strokes sketched the battle. “That’s a pretty plan, nice dispositions. But let them get out of touch; let a gap open, now, say, here; and where would he have been then, eh? Or if the cavalry pressed on out of hand? But no, he kept his hand on everything, there in the front line. And when they broke the wrong way, he changed his movement like that.” He snapped his fingers. “We shall see things, Parmenion, with this boy of mine. I’ll find him those twenty settlers for his Alexandropolis, by God I will.”

  “I’ll ask about, then. Why don’t we drink to it?”

  “Why not?” He called for wine, and began rolling up the letter. “What’s this, wait, what’s this? I never finished it.

  “Since I have been in the north, I hear everywhere of the Triballoi who live on the heights of Haimon, how they are unruly and warlike and a threat to the settled lands. It seems to me that while I am at Alexandropolis, I could carry the war up there, and bring them into order. I would like to ask your leave before drawing the troops I would need from Macedon. I propose…”

  The wine came and was poured. Parmenion took a great gulp, forgetting to wait for the King, who forgot to notice it. “The Triballoi! What does the boy want, does he want to push on up to the Ister?”

  Philip, skipping the requisitions, read, “These barbarians might annoy us, if they came on our rear when we cross to Asia; and if they were subdued, we could push our frontiers as far north as the Ister, which is a natural defense wall; being, as men say, the greatest river on earth after the Nile and the Encircling Ocean.”

  The two weathered men searched one another’s faces, as if consulting omens. Philip broke the pause, throwing back his head in a great laugh full of broken teeth, and slapping his knee. Parmenion join
ed in with the loudness of relief.

  “Simmias!” called the King at length. “Look after the Prince’s courier. A fresh horse tomorrow.” He threw back his wine. “I must get off his recall at once, before he starts to mobilize; I don’t want to disappoint the lad. Ah, I know. I’ll propose he consults with Aristotle over the constitution of his city. What a boy, eh? What a boy!”

  “What a boy!” echoed Parmenion. He gazed into his cup, seeing his own image in the dark face of the wine.

  The long train of men marched south, by phalanxes and squadrons, along the Strymon plain. Alexander led, at the head of his personal squadron. Hephaistion rode beside him.

  The air was loud with sound; thin harsh crying and keening, deep creaks as of strained wood. It was the call of kites, hovering and stooping and fighting for choice shreds, mixed with the croak of ravens.

  The settlers had buried their dead, the soldiers burned theirs on ceremonial pyres. At the rear of the column, behind the straw-bedded hospital wagons, a cart trundled along with straw-packed urns of local pottery, each painted with a name.

  Losses had been light, for victory had come quickly. The soldiers talked of it as they marched, gazing at the enemy’s scattered thousands, lying where they had fallen to receive the rites of nature. By night the wolves and jackals had gorged on them; with daylight the village pi-dogs, and the birds which clustered in a moving pall. When the column passed near, they rose in a screaming cloud and hovered angrily over their meal; only then could one see the raw bones, and the rags torn by wolves in haste to reach the entrails. The stench, like the noise, shifted with the breeze.

  In a few days they would be picked clean. Whoever owned the land, the worst of the work done for him, would burn the bones in a heap, or shovel them into a pit.

  Over a dead horse danced vultures, bouncing up and down with half-opened wings, scrawking at one another. Oxhead gave a smothered squeal, and shied away. Alexander signed to the column to proceed, dismounted, and led the horse gently towards the mound of reeking flesh; stroking his muzzle, going ahead to scare off the vultures, and, when they scolded and flapped, returning with soothing words. Oxhead stamped and blew, disgusted but reassured. When they had stood there a few moments, Alexander mounted and cantered back to his place. “Xenophon says,” he told Hephaistion, “one should always do that with whatever scares a horse.”

  “I didn’t know there were so many kites in Thrace. What do they live on when there’s no war?” Hephaistion, who felt sick, was talking to keep his mind off it.

  “There’s never no war in Thrace. But we’ll ask Aristotle.”

  “Are you still sorry,” said Hephaistion dropping his voice, “that we didn’t fight the Triballoi?”

  “Why, of course,” said Alexander, surprised. “We were halfway there. They’ll have to be dealt with in the end; and we’d have seen the Ister.”

  A small cavalry detail on the flank cantered ahead at his signal; there were some bodies blocking the road. They were raked into a hunting net, and dragged out of the way.

  “Ride on ahead,” Alexander ordered, “and see it’s clear…Yes, I’m sorry still, of course; but I’m not angry. It’s true, as he says, his forces are stretched just now. He sent me a very handsome letter; I read it too quickly, when I saw it was a recall.”

  “Alexander,” said Hephaistion, “I think that man there’s alive.”

  A council of vultures was considering something out of sight; bouncing forward, then recoiling as if offended or shocked. There came into view a feebly flailing arm.

  “So long?” said Alexander wondering.

  “It rained,” Hephaistion said.

  Alexander turned and beckoned the first rider whose eye he met. The man cantered up smartly, and gazed at the wonderful boy with fervent affection.

  “Polemon. If that man’s not past help, have him picked up. They fought well, hereabouts. Or else finish him quickly.”

  “Yes, Alexander,” said the man adoringly. Alexander gave him a slight approving smile; he went radiant off on his mission. Presently he remounted; the vultures, with satisfied croaks, closed in together.

  Far on ahead of them shone the blue sea; soon, thought Hephaistion with relief, they would be past the battlefield. Alexander’s eyes wandered over the bird-haunted plain, and beyond it skywards. He said,

  “Many brave men’s souls it flung down to the house of Hades,

  While their flesh made a feast for dogs, and all the birds of the air.

  And the will of Zeus was fulfilled.”

  The rhythm of the hexameters matched itself smoothly to Ox-head’s pacing. Hephaistion gazed at him silent. He rode on, at peace with his unseen companion.

  The Seal of Macedon stayed some time with Antipatros. Alexander had been met by a second courier, bidding him come to his father’s siege-lines, to be commended. He turned east to Propontis, taking his companions with him.

  In the King’s lodging before Perinthos, a well-lived-in home by now, father and son would sit at the pinewood trestle, over a tray of sea-sand and stones; heaping up mountains, digging out defiles with their fingers, drawing with writing-sticks the disposition of cavalry, skirmishers, phalanxes and archers. Here no one disturbed their game, except sometimes the enemy. Philip’s handsome young squires were decorous; bearded Pausanias with his ruined beauty, now promoted to Somatophylax, Commander of the Guard, watched impassively, never interrupting except for an alarm. Then they would buckle on their armor, Philip with veteran curses, Alexander eagerly. The troops whose section he joined would raise a cheer. Since his campaign he had a nickname: Basiliskos, the Little King.

  His legend had run before him. Leading a scouting party against the Maidoi, he had walked round a crag straight into two of them, and dispatched them both while the men behind him were still catching their breath; neither had had time to shout a warning. He had kept a twelve-year-old Thracian girl in his tent all night, because she had run to him when the men were after her; had never laid a finger on her, and had given her a marriage dower. He had run between four big Macedonians brawling with their swords already out, and shoved them apart with his bare hands. In a mountain storm which had rained thunderbolts, so that it seemed the gods had resolved to destroy them all, he had read luck into it, kept them moving, made them laugh. Someone had had his wound stanched with the Basiliskos’ own cloak, and been told his blood was a dye more honorable than purple; someone had died in his arms. Someone else, who had thought him raw enough to try old soldiers’ tricks on, was sorry and sore. You would need to watch out, if he took against you. But put a fair case to him straight, he would see you right.

  So, when in the light of the falling fires they saw him running towards the ladders, burnished like a dragonfly, greeting them as if they had all been bidden to a feast, they would call to him, and race for places near him. It was well to keep your eye on him; he would think quicker than you.

  For all this, the siege went badly. Making an example of Olynthos had cut two ways; the Perinthians had decided that at the pinch they would rather die. And the pinch was still far off. The defenders, well supplied by sea, met assaults in strength and often went over to attack. They were setting their own example. From the Chersonesos, just south of the Great East Road, word came that the subject cities were taking heart. The Athenians had long urged revolt on them; but they would not take in Athenian troops, who were seldom paid and forced to live off the country. Now the cities had been emboldened. Macedonian outposts had been seized, and strongpoints threatened. War had begun.

  “I swept one side of the road for you, Father,” Alexander said as soon as the news arrived. “Now let me sweep the other.”

  “So I will, as soon as the new troops come. I’ll use them here; you’ll need men who know the country.”

  He was planning a surprise assault upon Byzantion, to stop their aid to Perinthos; as well deal with them now as later. He was committed, more deeply than he liked, to this costly war, and had needed to hire more mercena
ries. They were coming up from Argos and Arkadia, states friendly to his power because for generations they had lived under the threat of Sparta; they did not share the anger and dread of Athens. But they cost money; which had been swallowed by the siege like water poured in sand.

  At length they came, square stocky men of Philip’s own build; his Argive descent still showed in him, bridging the generations. He reviewed them and conferred with their officers, from whom for better or worse hired troops would never be divided; it made a weak link in the chain of command. However, they were trained men who would earn their pay. Alexander and his troops marched west; already the men who had served with him in Thrace were patronizing the others.

  His campaign was rapid. Revolt was still in the bud; several towns took fright, exiled their rash insurgents and pledged their loyalty. Those already committed, however, rejoiced to hear that Philip, the gods having sent him mad, had trusted his forces to a boy of sixteen years. They sent defiances. Alexander rode to their citadels, sat down before them one by one, looked for the flaws in their defenses, or, if there were none, created them with saps or ramps or breaches. He had learned his lessons at Perinthos, and improved on some of them. Resistance soon died out; the remaining towns opened their gates on his terms.

  Riding out from Akanthos he viewed Xerxes’ Ditch, the ship canal through the isthmus neck of Athos, cut for the Persian fleet to bypass its mountain storms. Its great snowy peak reared up from its shaggy buttresses. The army turned north, along the curve of a pleasant bay. Perched on the footslopes below the wooded hills stood a long-ruined town. Brambles grew on its fallen walls; the terracing of its vineyards was collapsing from the winter rains; its weed-grown olive groves were forsaken, but for a herd of goats nibbling the bark, and some naked little boys tearing off low branches. Alexander asked, “What place was this?”