God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

by Christian Cameron

  Now, in truth, we lost three men for every one the Athenian mercenaries – that’s what they were – lost to us. And in truth, we outnumbered them by at least two to one when all our men reached the hilltop.

  But if you ever ride through the Vale of Tempe, look up at Mount Ossa, and tell me it wasn’t one of our finest hours. We pushed them off the ridge.

  And after that, they weren’t going to make a stand anywhere. Maybe they thought we were insane. And perhaps we were.

  We camped that night at the southern end of the ridge, overlooking the Thessalian camp. Behind us, the whole Macedonian army was coming up the steps cut by the slaves.

  That night, Marsyas came to me. I had no tent – the baggage was still down on the plain. I was eating more sesame and honey, and my heart burned with the sting of it, but Polystratus had found milk, and warm milk and honey is a fine meal on a cold night in the mountains.

  Marsyas came to our fire and flopped down next to me.

  ‘Hail, Achilles, Lord of the Myrmidons!’ he said. ‘Alexander is beside himself with jealousy. Just so you know.’

  I laughed, but I knew my king, and I knew I was in trouble.

  Marsyas shrugged. ‘I have your song. And I think your corps have earned a song, don’t you?’

  ‘Slaves and Peltasts?’ I said, because that was the Macedonian way. ‘On a little hill?’

  ‘If that’s a little hill, then Aphrodite has little tits,’ Marsyas said. That seemed really funny to me, too.

  He had Polystratus fetch my lyre – a little-used instrument, I promise you. He made ‘tsk tsk’ noises while he tuned it, and then he played.

  Well, you know what he played, I’m sure.

  By the third time through, Philip and Alectus and even Cassander were singing along.

  By the next morning, enough men knew it to make a decent sound as we marched past the king, down the high pass and into the plains of Thessaly, leaving the Thessalian army standing like fools.

  Marsyas asked me for a job that morning. As I said, we’d never been close, because of our year groups, but I liked him, and I needed some good officers – and any boy who survives being a royal page is a good officer. So I gave him the first ten files. He dismounted and marched, and later in the day, his slave brought him an aspis.

  At any rate, we came down the pass with the Thessalians behind us. Of course, they were between us and home, but we, on the other hand, were between them and their homes.

  We halted at midday, ate a small and hasty meal and formed for battle. Remember, they outnumbered us two to one.

  Alexander rode out, then. He rode across the front of the army, helmet off, Tyrian purple cloak streaming behind him, and he looked like a god. I think – I may be wrong – I think it’s the first time I saw him like that.

  He galloped across the front and the roar was like a physical thing, right to left across the whole army, a shocking sound.

  And then he pulled his horse up in a little display, half a stade in advance of his whole army. And he used his spear to salute the Thessalians, who were pouring out of the pass behind us.

  The sound of our cheer rose to the heavens, climbing the pass to Olympus and to Ossa and then bouncing back in a mighty ripple of echo.

  The Thessalian army shuddered to a halt.

  They started to sort themselves out, and Alexander ordered us forward.

  We marched forward about a stade. Our line wasn’t perfect, but it was adequate. Later, Macedonian armies did this kind of display all the time, and our drill was magnificent. That summer day, it was enough that we kept our places in line and no gaps opened.

  The Thessalians, it was obvious, weren’t going to get formed in time. They were just a mob.

  A delegation was spat forth from the mounted part of the mob.

  Alexander raised his arm, and we halted.

  He rode forward by himself.

  I know that the Prodromoi started forward, and my squadron of the Hetaeroi. He waved them back, but the Prodromoi shadowed him, moving anxiously . . .

  They needn’t have worried.

  The Thessalians surrendered.

  In retrospect, you just nod, boy, because what army of barbarians could even look at a Macedonian army without fear, eh? But that was not yet come to pass. We weren’t ‘Alexander’s Macedonians’ yet – an army that, by wonderful irony, was always at least a third Thessalian.

  I count that day as Alexander’s first battle. At Chaeronea, he did what he could with a dull plan. Philip was a brilliant strategist and a fine fighter, but a dull tactician. Alexander . . . was Alexander.

  Had we rolled forward into the Thessalians, we would have killed a great many of them – and been at war for years. Alexander took a terrible risk. But the circumstances – when every province in the empire was in revolt, and we had no friends – required risk. Or that’s how the king saw it, and he was the king.

  And Thessaly was ours. The best cavalry in Greece, the finest horses and a nation that immediately offered two years’ tribute as recompense for hesitation.

  In one day, Alexander had changed the game.

  Heh. Alexander, with the help of the hypaspists. And not for the last time, either.

  ELEVEN

  I imagine that Greece offered many strategoi who could have turned the flanks of the Thessalians and beaten them without a battle. Old Phokion could have done it – it was very much his sort of victory. Philip – well, I suspect Philip would have forced the battle and the massacre, and taken the consequences.

  But Alexander wasn’t done.

  We picked up a thousand noble Thessalians – aristocratic cavalrymen, men who were in almost every way just like us. After all, they’d been our allies, almost our subjects, right up until Philip’s death – and the only men who’d died on the slopes of Mount Ossa had been Athenian mercenaries. And hypaspists. I lost fifty-five men on Mount Ossa, a number I’ll never forget. I didn’t even know all of their names. More Agrianians died than Macedonians, because the Agrianians got to the top faster. But, cruel as it sounds, there were enough corpses of both races to bind them together.

  We buried them on the plains of Thessaly, in five barrows of eleven men each, and the king came and poured the libations at the edge of night, and fog rolled down from the hills to cover the newly turned earth, and men said that the ghosts of Hades had come to lick the blood of the sacrifices and the wine of the libations.

  I was tipsy. I remember that. I’d fought hard, and fighting on foot is exhausting – cavalrymen really have no idea. But I’d also made decisions that killed men, and it was, perhaps, the first time I faced the consequence of glorious victory – the sad, sick feeling afterwards, the same feeling you get when you know you’ve paid far too much for wheat in the marketplace, except ten times worse. And somehow, the rain of unforced congratulations from my peers only served to make it worse.

  Of course, I bore it all with smiles, backslapping, coarse humour – I’m telling the truth here, and the truth is that it never does to show weakness with Macedonians – or any other human animal, eh, lad? But I was hurt, inside – hurt as if I’d taken a wound – by those fifty-five men who’d died so that my king could not have a battle.

  So I was tipsy. I drank from the moment the libations were poured, and when the king poured one to Herakles and ordered us all to drink our cups dry, I drank mine and sent it back to be refilled, and smiled at a Thessalian aristocrat-boy so that he shrank away.

  Marsyas steadied me.

  But Alexander came over and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Yesterday was well done,’ he said.

  A great many responses came to me, and I bit them down. It wasn’t the king’s fault so many men had died, and it wasn’t his fault – exactly – that it all seemed to be for nothing and the leaders of the ‘enemy’ army were sharing our funeral feast. So I made a smile come to my face and muttered, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Will your men be ready to march tomorrow?’ he asked.

  Zeus Soter! I remem
ber that question shooting down my muscles like new pain. My men were exhausted.

  But that was not something I chose to say. Good or bad leadership is often a matter of perspective. I was going to make my hypaspists creatures of legend. Creatures of legend do not admit fatigue. Paradox, if you like – I was angry at my losses and eager to keep my men’s reputation well shined.

  ‘We could march now, if you want us to,’ I said.

  Just for a moment, in the flickering torchlight, I saw Alexander’s eyes narrow a fraction. And Marsyas stepped forward, took my arm and smiled. ‘If they can walk, that is. Come, big brother. I’ll steer you to bed.’

  I woke in the darkness – fully alert. I got up, kicked Polystratus out of his cloak and crawled into a dry chiton and a heavy chlamys, because the plains of Thessaly had the same fog in early morning as they did at night.

  Every muscle in my body protested softly, and a few protested loudly, but the advantage of a life of activity is that even as a very young man you know that none of this is actually pain, and that it will all be gone as soon as you sweat.

  I walked out and roused my mess group. Polystratus woke my slaves, and Ochrid, the lead slave, pulled out a quill and blew the coals of the fire into life. ‘Morning, master,’ he said, cheerfully. Ochrid was a big fellow, a Paeonian. He wasn’t too bright, and he wasn’t too big – he had an open, pleasant face and bright blond hair, and no apparent need to be a freeman. But he was steady, trustworthy – as long as you didn’t task him beyond his skills – and careful. He was warm, too.

  Let me just say that slaves came and went. A few stayed with me for years, but in general, I tried to keep them moving – to freedom, or to the farms. Being a soldier’s slave is brutal work, and it breaks them. And they can never marry, or have children, or have a little hut or a plot of land. Mind you, they can earn their freedom in an hour of looting or a single lucky kill – or die screaming on someone’s spear-point, for sport. My point is that Ochrid survived years of this life, and he’s got a place in Memphis as my tax farmer there. So he’s an exception. Mostly, I won’t even mention their names. Sad. But one of those facts of life. Slaves come and go.

  Where was I?

  Ochrid called, ‘Good morning,’ and that seemed to allow other men to approach me, and before I had a cup of hot milk in my hand, a dozen men were all around me – could I look at a wound? Did I know that third file was now three men short? Would we be getting new drafts to make up our numbers?

  I was starting to know my phylarchs. And I liked most of what I saw. Nicanor was a Macedonian only by adoption – he was a former mercenary, also from Lesbos, a friend of Aristotle – the great man’s former lover, in fact. Nicanor was the fourth file commander, thin, small, full of fire. A handsome man, with serious culture.

  Astibus, on the other hand, was an Agrianian chieftain’s son, tall, blond and outweighing me by half. A giant. Virtually the first man up Ossa, after me. He had an axe – a very old-fashioned weapon indeed – which rested in carefully forged spring-bronze mounts inside his aspis, a vicious surprise when he broke his spear. He put as much thought into fighting as Aristotle did into categorising living things, and the Greek pankration fascinated him utterly – the Agrianians had nothing like it.

  Nicanor and Astibus were among the more memorable, but I had one hundred and twenty phylarchs, and they came in a huge variety of sizes and flavours, and one was actually black – an African. He was another former mercenary, and his Macedonian name was Bubores, and he had horrible nightmares and could terrify all of us when he screamed in the night. His Greek was pitiful, but his battlefield power was legendary, and he, like Astibus, had been among the first men up the mountain.

  Astibus was stubborn and inclined to argue with orders. Nicanor was arrogant and snide – used big words, and patronised his lessers, which meant nearly everyone. Bubares was often drunk on duty, although his men liked him well enough that they covered for him.

  These men exist in every army in the world, I suspect. When the Hittites rolled their chariots to windy Ilium, I suspect there were old drunks, arrogant poets and brash youngsters.

  And new commanders trying to create legends.

  But what they all wanted to know, that morning, was who had won the prize at Ossa – who had been first up the hill. The phylarchs crowded around me, arguing the merits of this man and that.

  Old Philip laughed. ‘Lord Ptolemy was first up the hill,’ he said. ‘I saw him.’

  Alectus laughed. ‘Cheap bastard,’ he said.

  That got a general guffaw.

  ‘I am not a cheap bastard,’ I said, with mock horror. ‘So I’ll pay half the prize each to the two men who were second up the hill – and without whom I’d be dead!’ I sent Polystratus back to my tent for cash, and I gave half a mina of silver – a pretty fair prize – to Philip Longsword and to young Astibus.

  That seemed to make everyone happy. Despite funereal hangovers – the night before, my boys had discovered that Agrianians and Macedonians share a belief that the dead are best mourned drunk – despite muscles of cast lead. Despite all of that, we were first on parade, in pitch darkness.

  In armour, with our spears and aspides.

  I’ve won battles, and I’ve killed heroes in single combat. I’ve slept with outrageously beautiful women I had no business even looking at, and I’ve climbed mountains and travelled the world. On balance, that moment in Thessaly, standing confidently, arrogantly, despite my pains and my wounded instep and the gouge in my leg – standing bare-legged on parade, with my heroes all lined up behind me, clamouring to start their march – even the slaves all in the ranks, all our baggage packed – we, who had fought a heroic action two days before – and around us, the royal companions and the pezhetaeroi scrambled to be ready – it was one of the most satisfying moments of my life, and I grew taller and handsomer.

  The king rode out to me. I didn’t see him coming until the last moment – he was riding quietly on a palfrey.

  ‘Splendid,’ he said. He grinned – a boyish grin I seldom saw after he was twelve. ‘You know, Ptolemy, just now, I think I’d like to trade places with you. Right now, it is you who are a god, and I am merely your commander.’

  Sometimes he was impossibly arrogant, and sometimes he was impossible not to love. I took his hand and locked it in a clasp – the way warriors do. He leaned down. ‘We are going to conquer the world with these men,’ he said. The grin was still there.

  The hypaspitoi began to cheer – Alaialaialaialai.

  Suddenly Alexander laughed. ‘Fuck them if they’re late to parade!’ he shouted, and pumped his hand to indicate that we should prepare to march.

  So we marched away from Thessaly to conquer the world. The hypaspitoi led, and all the rest of the army had to catch up.

  Beat that story, lad. Those were great days, great men, doing great things.

  We made forced marches across the Thessalian plain, one hundred stades a day and sometimes more. We didn’t drink wine in the stews of Larissa – we missed nothing, I can tell you – and we didn’t bother the shepherd boys on the slopes of Mount Othrys. We crossed Thessaly in five days, and the Thessalian nobles complained we were ruining their horses.

  My men laughed. They were marching five parasanges a day, running a third of the distance, keeping up with the cavalry scouts and the king. They were young and strong, and after three weeks in the field, they had bodies as hard as rock. We rested at the height of the pass over the shoulders of Othrys – my men were tucked into rocks and fissures, and there was snow. Men curled up three to a cloak – or rather, three to three cloaks. The man in the middle got a little sleep.

  Alexander rode into my ‘camp’, which means that he asked a few sleepy men and a sentry, and Polystratus woke me.

  Alexander had only Hephaestion with him.

  ‘I need another dash from your myrmidons,’ the king said. ‘I need you to be at the Gates of Fire by tonight. I don’t think Thebes has the balls to contest my passage,
but once I have the Gates, we’ve got all the time in the world. Tell your boys I promise at least a week’s rest at the Gates. But I need this done now – I went to sleep thinking about it, and I woke up just now with Herakles’ hand on my shoulder.’

  Fuck him. Let’s face it, I’m not at my best in freezing cold in the middle of the night after a hundred-stade march and very little sleep.

  But there comes a moment – when you are building something special – when you just want to keep testing it, because you cannot really believe how good it is. I’ve seen a cutler put an edge on a razor and then test it until his thumb is bleeding – grinning like a fool because the edge is so good. That was me.

  I got to my feet, smiled at the king and Polystratus bellowed, ‘Spears and armour! March in one hour!’

  And they got up off their rocks and joked that marching would be warmer than lying in the snow.

  We marched along the beach and through the Gates of Fire unopposed. In fact, we had time to stop and make sacrifice to the Spartans who fell there for Greece – though I knew we were better men than they ever were. After all, they were merely Greeks, without even the erudition of Athens.

  But they were good, brave men, and all brave men should be brothers, even when they fight against each other. War’s bad enough without rules. I hear men say that war should be fought without rules, but I despise such weaklings. Rules in contests are the courtesies of the strong to the strong.

  But I digress.

  We bought sheep from the shepherds and sacrificed them, and we poured libations to the dead – Persians as well as Greeks. And while we did that, fifty picked men climbed the high pass on our right flank and another fifty prowled ahead twenty stades under Alectus, who neither knew nor cared who Leonidas had been, despite his gleanings of Greek learning.

  We were ahead of the Prodromoi, so we laid out the camp – the first time that ever happened – and we got the pick of the sheep. The farmers were thin on the ground, and there wasn’t much food. I sent scouts north into Achaea looking for grain and wine and oil.