God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

by Christian Cameron

  He came in, a scroll rolled in his fist. ‘Ptolemy,’ he said, in that way of his that made you feel like you were his only friend, the centre of his world. He embraced me.

  By Zeus, I loved him.

  At any rate, he unrolled the scroll – even in a crisis, he couldn’t ever stop explaining his latest enthusiasm, and this was no crisis. ‘Have you read Isocrates?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said cautiously. It wasn’t always good to admit ignorance with Alexander.

  ‘Another Athenian – but oh, he has some beautiful ideas. He says it is time for a crusade of all the Hellenes against Persia.’ Alexander held up the scroll and read. He read well – he had a good voice.

  Isocrates.

  I had a soft spot for Isocrates, because he was a Plataean, and the Plataeans were, to me, the real heroes of Marathon and of all the subsequent campaigns against Persia. Aristotle used some of Isocrates’s speeches in training us. So I was, like any good friend, prepared to be pleased and to support Alexander’s latest passion.

  And I have to say that, at that time, every side and every voice in the Hellenic world was advocating a crusade against Persia. First, the Persian court and Persian army and every satrapy in Asia were now full of Hellenes, growing rich, writing letters home to describe in detail the riches of Asia and the relative ease with which it could all be conquered. Every boy in the world – the Greek-speaking world – read Xenophon’s Anabasis at school, and every one of us saw Persia as the empire we would conquer. If our thoughts had carried physical manifestation (something Pythagoras apparently advocated at one time) then Persepolis would have had a bull’s-eye painted across its walls like a Cretan archery target a hundred feet tall.

  In addition, every faction in Greece saw a universal crusade against the Mede as the salvation of the endless infighting – Athens against Sparta, Sparta against Thebes, Thebes against Thessaly against Macedon against Athens. Even Philip advocated such a war – as long as he could command it. And there, my friend, was the rub. Everyone imagined that we would all cooperate – even Athens and Macedon – if we could get to grips with the King of Kings, but no one wanted to play second flute, so to speak.

  Alexander raced back to his quarters and reappeared with a whole bag of Isocrates. ‘Read these while you go to your father!’ he said.

  Now by this point I’d been one of his inner circle for more than a year, and we hunted together – sometimes just the two of us – played Polis, threw knucklebones and sparred daily. I knew him pretty well – but the brilliance and brittleness of his moods still caught me by surprise. He could change topics faster than anyone I’ve ever met. Other men made allusions to femininity – women are supposed to have fickle minds, or so I’m told – but Alexander’s intellectual whims came with spear-points of iron and a will of adamantine, and there was nothing effeminate about them. Only lesser men ever thought so. What happened was that Alexander would finish a subject – often inside his head, with no reference to friends or other company – and move on. If you were up to his speed, you could reason out where he’d gone. If you weren’t, he left you behind all the time, and eventually stopped trying to talk to you.

  In this case, all he’d done was share his passion for Isocrates first, and then remember that he hadn’t told me the reason for his visit to Antipater’s rooms. My pater was dying or already dead. I was requested.

  ‘Take all the time you want,’ Alexander said. ‘I know you love him – I’ve seen the two of you together.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I am envious.’

  What do you say to that? He was envious. He and his pater were locked in a competition when they ought to have been pulling in harness like matched chariot horses.

  ‘I am lucky, lord,’ I said. ‘Pater has treated me as a man – since before I was one.’

  ‘Men say Philip is your father,’ Alexander said. He didn’t mean it to hurt. ‘Yet despite the slur, your father sees you as a . . . a person.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Lagus is my father.’ I was on dangerous ground here.

  ‘I agree. If Philip was your father, you’d be better-looking.’ Alexander smiled. ‘You are the only one of my close friends with his own estates and his own power – and yet you are completely loyal. Why?’

  Chasms were opening at my feet, and legions of Titans preparing to rend me limb from limb. He had that look in his eye.

  ‘Habit?’ I answered, with a wink.

  Alexander stopped, and his face became still for a moment, and then he barked a laugh. ‘By Herakles my ancestor, Ptolemy. Get you gone. Send your pater my respects, if he is alive to hear them, and tell him his son is somatophylax to the prince.’

  ‘I am?’ I said. I was delighted – for all his moodiness, he was my prince, and I wanted to serve.

  He put a gold ring in my hand. ‘You are.’

  I still wear the ring. I earned it a thousand times, and I never betrayed his trust. Until I killed him.

  Pater was still alive when I arrived – on the mend, it appeared. So we dined by the hearth, all the old servants happy to have me home – Pater was an excellent master, had freed all the good slaves already and paid them wages, and men competed to go to our estates. It always baffled me that men had other ways of dealing with their slaves and serfs than Pater’s – he was hard but fair, quick to reward. Who thinks that there’s another way? I think it is like raising children. Good estate management takes a few more minutes than bad estate management, just as a little time and a few words are the difference between a good child and a bad one.

  We had a good dinner, and I showed off my ring, and Pater beamed at me with approval. I saw him to bed, kissed him and gave him Alexander’s respects, and he frowned.

  ‘Your prince is mad,’ he said. ‘Steer a careful course, my son. He is no Philip.’

  I didn’t lash out – I only said, ‘My prince is worth ten of Philip.’

  Pater shook his head. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But Philip is already looking to be rid of him.’

  That was like icy water down my back. ‘What?’

  Pater shrugged, coughed and drank off a huge dollop of poppy juice. ‘I’ve said too much,’ he whispered. ‘But people tell me things – and I have some of Attalus’s slaves – they’ve run from him. He’s a dangerous man – more like a felon than a general.’ He nodded.

  ‘Where are these slaves?’ I asked.

  Pater smiled. ‘Safe. Ask Heron.’ Heron was his steward. ‘You are an excellent son. Get a wife and make some more! That’s my only advice, lad. You have the rest in your hand. Oh – and don’t forget to breed Narcissa in the spring.’ Narcissa was a big mare – beautiful and wilful and not very interested in boys, but the largest, heaviest, fastest mare we’d ever had.

  I held his hand, found myself choked with tears, reminded myself that he was going to be there for a few more nights at least, and let the nurse have him.

  He was dead in the morning. He stayed alive for a few days on poppy and willpower to speak to me one last time.

  I’m going to cry now.

  The gods know I cried then. I wept for a couple of hours, and then I got up and went riding. I rode over our home farms – three farms that had been in the family for ever, since we were smaller men, I suspect – it was winter, and the leaves were off the trees and it was pissing rain, and I didn’t care.

  I rode up the hill – we had a big hill in the middle of our property, with an ancient ruined stone tower from the old people at the top. I looked out over all of it – my land as far as my eyes could see, or close enough.

  Then I rode back down and buried my pater. He was never a king, or a general. He spurned the court, and mostly he was interested in breeding horses and dogs and cattle and pigs. But he was an excellent father and husband and lord to his people.

  Heron understood that there had to be changes. So I spent two weeks – right through the winter festival of lights – sitting in my pater’s chair. I dispensed some justice, walked some boundaries and talked to Heron about the
future of the estates. The problem was that most men like me had some brothers or sisters – even bastards – to hold the home fort, so to speak. I was a close friend of the prince, and in twenty years I had every expectation of being a general, or a King’s Councillor, or something better. Satrap? Really, when I was seventeen, I saw no limit to my ambition.

  Pretty accurate, as it turned out.

  So I wasn’t going to run my estates myself.

  Menander and all the ‘New Comedy’ is filled with bad stewards and rapacious managers stealing from lord and peasant alike. Those stereotypes exist for a reason. Heron didn’t want my unlimited trust. He wanted a system of checks and balances to keep him honest. He was a fair man, and he knew that if I rode away and ignored him – well, he’d be under strain.

  So for two weeks we hammered out a new administration of my estates, with what was, in effect, a regency council. Heron ran the council, and I got his oldest son, Laodekes, a vacancy as a page. In effect, I ennobled Heron, and his son became my hostage.

  That’s Macedon, friend.

  At some point in my time at home, I met Nike. She was a house servant – by no means a slave, but rather the daughter of one of Heron’s closest friends, brought in to learn the management of a house before she had her own. She was fifteen, with Aphrodite’s figure and a nose that aimed at the outright conquest of her face. She was pretty sharp – she knew exactly the border between humour and disrespect to her lord, and she walked it carefully, teasing me a little, trying to get me to smile.

  I was not doing very well, those weeks after Pater died.

  But I liked her for trying, and all of a sudden, in less than a week, I was following her around the house while she did her work. She was the only person I really wanted to see. I’d never been in love before, so the whole thing rather took me by surprise.

  I don’t remember how long into the week it was, but I remember standing on the terrace behind the kitchen. She had on a good chiton – good linen – with a zone of braided silk. She always looked like a lady – but the lines were not as clear, then, and her people were not peasants.

  She had an apron on, and a scarf in her hair, and a heavy bronze knife in her fist. And what I remember is the moment she turned on me, knife in hand. ‘Shouldn’t you be working?’ she asked. ‘Your father worked all day on these estates.’

  I didn’t know what to say, and so, in the best tradition of seventeen-year-old boys, I stammered a great deal.

  She laughed – I remember watching her laugh, and there and then, I understood. I wanted her. Up to that moment, somehow I had thought I wanted us to be friends. Or just sought her good opinion.

  ‘I’ll go and work,’ I muttered – or something like it.

  ‘Good.’ She nodded. Then, almost sly, out of the corner of her mouth, with the slightest glance out of the corner of her eye – ‘I like to ride – when the work is done.’

  A woman who liked to ride? Clearly the gods had made her for me.

  We rode out every evening until I left for Pella. I was no blushing virgin, and she burned hot enough that I assume she was not, either. But we had more than lust. The son of Lagus was not going to marry a servant girl, but I went to her father, paid her bride price and when I left for Pella, she and a slave-maid rode with me. And Nike she surely was.

  Somehow, I also found time to read Isocrates end to end. It was, after all, a royal command. I read it, and I caught fire. We could do this thing. It was the Thracian campaign writ large – the biggest challenge of men and logistics since the dawn of the world. I read and reread the philosopher’s words, and began to dream of a new world, where we younger men conquered Persia. I could see it.

  The first night back in Pella, Alexander came to my rooms unannounced. This required explanation, too. In the last year, as we were promoted – first by experience, and then by decree – to the ranks of manhood and made royal companions rather than just pages, some of us received apartments in the palace. Other men stayed in the pages’ barracks, and others still bought houses in Pella or rented rooms – remember, some of our number were as poor as peasants.

  I had two rooms in the palace. I kept them – they were close to the king and very useful when I was on duty, or when we were awake all night.

  But after Pater died and I had Nike, I bought a house in town. I bought a big house – in fact, I bought the house that Aristotle vacated. I moved Nike in as my mistress – in effect, as my wife – and I enlarged the stables to hold twenty horses and invited Cleitus, Philip and my two other best friends among the pages – Nearchus and young Cleomenes – to come and live with me. None of them had any money, and all of them were, in effect, my men. Oh, that’s not fair – Cleitus had his own relationship with Alexander, and Philip the Red was never really mine, but we were all close, we shared loyalties, tastes and friends.

  I set up housekeeping in a few hours, or, rather, my new chief of staff, Nike, did – she bought furniture, won over my useless slaves, bought food, bought a cook, found all my friends and moved all their kit into our house, assigned them rooms – all while I was on duty with Antipater.

  We were deeply in love, but that love was aided by events and by the fact that we were good allies, too – she wanted to run a household, and I needed a household manager. And by the will of the gods, I got one. A brilliant one. She could find chicken stock in a desert – enough for as many guests as she wanted to have. She was delighted by my body every hour I wanted her – scars and all. She was happy enough to occupy herself when I was busy. She never fawned, and she could read.

  I still don’t know what she saw in me.

  I get ahead of myself. I was in my rooms at the palace, unbuckling my breastplate and contemplating the short walk ‘home’. In fact, I’d been there once and expected a shambles.

  Alexander walked in without warning and started helping me with the buckles under my arms.

  ‘Did you read Isocrates?’ he asked. As if he’d been waiting for three weeks just to hear my opinion. Which, in a way, was probably true.

  ‘Every word,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it.’

  He stopped fumbling with my buckles. ‘You mean it?’

  I remember that moment. It was a week of changes for me, and any astrologer would have been able to tell me, I suspect. ‘We can conquer Asia,’ I said. ‘Your friends. Your team, if you like.’

  He kissed me – he never kissed anyone, our golden-haired boy, but he kissed my cheek and pressed me to his chest. ‘Yes!’ he breathed in my ear. ‘I knew you would understand.’

  I got out of my armour, stripped, wiped myself down and put on an old chiton and a warm chlamys for the walk home, while he babbled plans. Good plans – it wasn’t that he was babbling nonsense, but that human speech was too slow for the efficient transfer of everything he had to say.

  But I had read Isocrates, so I could keep up with him, and nod or cut him short. I won’t bore you with this, but conversation often sounded like this, to an outsider:

  Alexander: We need a navy.

  Me (or Hephaestion or Philotas or anyone in the inner circle who could keep up): Ports. We have the wood.

  Alexander: Oarsmen.

  Me: Amphilopolis. But Athens!

  Alexander (sometimes with a chorus of all of us together): It all comes down to Athens.

  Me: Isocrates might help.

  Alexander: A gift. But we can’t be seen—

  Me: We need to find a way to bribe from strength.

  Alexander: Good phrase. (So in the next conversation, we’d say ‘Bribe from strength’ without explanation – just as we didn’t need an explanation for the words ‘oarsmen’ because everyone in the inner circle knew that was a code for our complete lack of trained sailors, oarsmen, shipwrights – you get the picture.)

  On that day, though, we weren’t with the others. Hephaestion – who knew where he was? He was always Alexander’s right hand, but he had begun to branch out himself – serving maids, boys with nice hair – basically anyone who
was alive and wanted to fuck. Alexander was tolerant – amused. And not very interested.

  And for whatever reason, Hephaestion never bothered to read Isocrates.

  I’m taking my time telling this, because while it was the culmination of my career as a courtier, and in some ways the logical development of my career, it was also the moment at which the knucklebones were cast. For good or ill.

  So – I had changed into plain clothes, arranged my armour on its stand, buffed a few flecks of dust off the bronze – I was waiting for Alexander to lose interest so I could go home. That doesn’t mean I wanted him to lose interest – I was a courtier as well as a friend – merely that in the normal run of things, my time would expire and he’d go back to Hephaestion or go to sit with Antipater or go and read letters from his father – listen to court cases, dine with ambassadors, what have you. I’d been back for three days and on duty the whole time, and while I loved having his attention – his entirely favourable attention – I was really looking forward to putting my mouth over Nike’s and feeling her breath in my chest.

  Alexander was arguing both sides of the notion of starting the Hellenic conquest of Asia in Aegypt when he looked up. He was a little shorter than I, with tousled, leonine blond hair and darting eyes. My blond hair was darker, with some brown in it, but curly enough – I was taller, and had the big nose. Hah! Still do.

  He grinned. ‘I’m hungry. Let’s go and steal some food in the kitchen.’

  I didn’t even think. ‘Come to my house,’ I said. ‘I’m sure there’s food. Better than stealing from the companions’ cook!’ I shrugged. ‘It’s not one of Aristotle’s foolish exercises.’

  Alexander’s eyes flicked away and then back. ‘You have a house?’ he asked.

  ‘Aristotle’s house,’ I said. ‘I bought it. My pater – well, I’m a rich man now.’

  Alexander laughed. ‘Wait for me,’ he said.

  A minute later, he appeared in a companion’s dun-coloured cloak. ‘Let’s go. I hope you didn’t buy Aristotle’s cook?’

  ‘I didn’t. But to be honest, I haven’t been home since I bought the place. It’ll be chaos. I invited Cleitus to come and live with me – but he’s on watch tonight. And Philip and Nearchus, I think . . .’ I remember yawning. Alexander walked along next to me – for a few minutes, we were two young men at large in Pella. And woe betide the bodyguard who was supposed to be on duty.