God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

by Christian Cameron

  And yet – looked at another way, we got everything in return, because we were building the reputation for invincibility that was better than ten thousand men.

  And we did receive an amazing amount of loot and tribute. When we marched for home, we looked more like a nomad nation migrating than a Macedonian army on the march, and Alexander ordered us – the cavalry – to patrol aggressively, because he feared we were so overladen with beasts and gold that we’d be easy pickings for an Illyrian raid. It had happened to Philip years before – when he fought the Sakje of the Great Steppe. He beat them, but they weren’t beaten, and they ambushed him on the road home and took his gear and his cattle.

  I’d forgotten – look here, it’s in the Military Journal – I’d forgotten the Keltoi. Our last day on the river, when all the deals had been made and all our men were glutted with spear-won beef, and Thaïs and I were, in fact, rutting like a stag and a hind in season in our tent, Cleitus came to our tent – he had the worst timing – burst in and turned as red as a Tyrian cloak. Thaïs was astride me, hands locked under my neck, mouth pressed against mine, and I could see Cleitus . . .

  Oh, I’m a dirty old man. But I didn’t stop, and neither did Thaïs. She just grinned.

  ‘The king wants you,’ Cleitus said, staring at a hanging carpet.

  ‘I’m . . . a little busy, but I’ll . . . be along . . . shortly,’ I said.

  ‘Not too shortly,’ Thaïs said.

  I used to make Cleitus blush just mentioning this incident – the best killer of men in the Macedonian army, the toughest bastard Alexander had, but he’d blush like a virgin. Hah! Fine man, Cleitus. But a little odd.

  When I reached the king, he smiled and said, ‘I’ve been counting the minutes,’ and laughed. It was as close to a sexual joke as I ever heard him make, and all the officers around him laughed too.

  The embassage of Keltoi was twenty men and as many women. They were tall – in fact, they were huge, many of them a head taller than me, and I’m not small. Most were blond, and all of them had beautiful long hair, wrapped and plaited in gold. The women had the largest breasts and the best figures of any race I’d seen – wide hips, tiny waists and blue eyes.

  Their language was truly barbaric, but they had dignity and good manners.

  They also claimed to rule an empire greater than ours, stretching all the way to Thule. I was derisive, but Alexander was fascinated.

  They flattered him, lauding his victories over the Thracians, although they made it clear they’d smacked the Thracians pretty hard themselves.

  Alexander nodded after listening patiently. ‘Are you, then, the overlords of these Thracian tribes?’ he asked.

  The most noble-looking of the men, wearing a sword worth ten of my farms, shrugged. He spoke through a woman interpreter. She didn’t look like the rest of them – she was smaller and darker and very pretty, rather than displaying the normal somewhat ethereal beauty of the Keltoi. She smiled a great deal, too. She listened to him and then turned to the king.

  ‘He says – we are kings and lords to the Triballi, when we will it. Never the Getae,’ she added.

  Alexander nodded. ‘I am now the lord of the Triballi and the Getae,’ he said.

  All the Keltoi laughed.

  Alexander snapped at her. ‘What are they laughing at?’

  One of the Keltoi women pointed at the sky and said something and they all laughed again.

  The interpreter looked as if she was afraid. The smiles were gone.

  ‘What did she say?’ Alexander demanded.

  ‘Nothing, lord,’ she said.

  Alexander shook his head. ‘I demand to know!’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘She asked if you were also lord of the clouds.’

  The Keltoi woman spoke again, with vehemence.

  Alexander ignored her and turned back to the richest man. ‘Are you here to swear your allegiance to me?’ he asked.

  There was much talk. Then the interpreter said, ‘They say – no.’ She shrugged.

  Alexander pointed at his army. We, as an army, were not at our most impressive, as most of the infantry were busy loading spear-won wagons with spear-won loot, wool and hangings and carpets and furs and some gold.

  ‘You should fear my army, which I can march anywhere in the world,’ Alexander said.

  The Keltoi talked among themselves, and then the interpreter shook her head and expostulated.

  ‘I think they are saying we should sod off,’ I muttered to Marsyas.

  Marsyas grinned. In some strange way, it was entertaining to watch these rich barbarians be utterly unimpressed with us.

  Finally, the dark woman stood in front of Alexander with her shoulders square as if she was ready to resist torture. ‘They say that if you brought an army this small to their lands, they might ignore it. If you brought a real army, they would bury it under the weight of their chariot wheels and the hooves of their horses and the steel of their swords. They say that you have no idea what is north of the Danube, while they know where Pella is and where Athens is. And Rome and Carthage, too, they say. And the queen asks – would you like to swear fealty to her? She says she will be a gentle overlord.’

  I burst into laughter. I couldn’t stop myself. I slapped my thighs and roared, and Alexander looked at me. His anger dissipated, and he joined me. He laughed, and Perdiccas and Hephaestion laughed, and Marsyas laughed.

  And all the Keltoi laughed.

  Somehow it reminded me of the visit to Diogenes.

  FOURTEEN

  We marched back over the Shipka Pass with our herds and our loot, and forty days’ worth of messages caught up with us all at once, and all the news was bad. The whole western border of Macedon was in arms – the Illyrians had risen, and were coming at us, to a man. Cleitus of Illyria – don’t blame me if everyone has the same name – had fifteen thousand men, and he had made a federation with two of the wilder northern tribes – the Autaratians and the Taulantians. According to our intelligence, the two northern tribes were coming down on our route of march.

  Let me add that the best of our intelligence was from Thaïs. Thaïs had a stream of couriers, now – letters from Athens, letters from Pella, messages from the Triballians behind us.

  ‘It keeps me busy,’ she said. ‘It’s really no different from organising a party.’

  I had to laugh. We were good at tactical intelligence collection – the Prodromoi and the hypaspitoi and the new Agrianian Psiloi were all excellent scouts, and they collected information and passed it back by couriers with professional competence, but at the next level we were still barbarians. Philip had some excellent sources, but they had all been intensely personal – his own friends in Athens and Sparta and Thebes and Persepolis, who sent him news. Alexander didn’t run his life that way, and we had to have new sources.

  I hadn’t even seen the need. But Thaïs lived in the world of exchange of news. She bought news when she was a hetaera – now she merely bought more. And ran some of the sources herself.

  Langarus, the King of the Agrianians, met us at the foot of the Shipka Pass. He’d covered our rear for two months, and now he was nervous. He had about four thousand men, and superb men at that – but the Illyrian actions meant that his neighbours might just choose to plunder him on their way to Macedon.

  He was, I have to say, a fantastic ally. He stayed and watched that pass while his own crops burned. I’m not sure another ally so loyal existed in all the bowl of the world.

  I read all Thaïs’s news during a long afternoon while the tent flapped in the early autumn wind, and then I took a stack of scrolls, tally sticks and small notes on papyrus to Alexander. He was sitting with Langarus and Perdiccas and a new man, who was introduced to me as Nicanor, son of Parmenio. He’d come from Asia to take command of the hypaspitoi, and to represent his father.

  He glanced at me as I came in and then went back to talking to the king.

  Alexander heard him out – he was discussing a point about Asia, of course
. And then his eyes met mine.

  ‘It’s worse than it looks,’ I said. ‘I think the Illyrians are getting support from within Macedon.’ I started to synopsise the reporting, but Nicanor (as yet unintroduced) cut me off.

  ‘I’ll read them when I have time,’ he said. ‘Carry on.’

  I looked at him. And laughed. It was becoming my new way of dealing with everything. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Your new strategos,’ he said. ‘I am Nicanor son of Parmenio.’

  Alexander shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Nicanor,’ he said. ‘I have promised your father that you can command the hypaspitoi, but you will not be strategos. I’ll command myself.’

  ‘With all due respect,’ Nicanor said, ‘this is a time of real peril – not a time for boyish heroics. Pater sent me to put down the Illyrians. Riding about hunting Thracian refugees is not going to help you beat the Illyrians. Lord.’

  I didn’t have to force a laugh. I could see this would be entertaining, and I sat down.

  Nicanor turned and looked at me. ‘Who the fuck are you to sit down in the presence of your king?’ he asked.

  Alexander settled his shoulders against the tent wall and smiled gently.

  So be it. ‘I’m Ptolemy,’ I said. ‘If it has escaped your notice – I’m the largest landowner in Macedon after the king. I’m somatophylakes to the king. I grew up with him. And I have no idea who you are.’

  ‘Your insolence is astounding,’ Nicanor said.

  I turned to Alexander. ‘May I smack him around, lord?’ I asked.

  Alexander shook his head. ‘No. But Nicanor, most of the men in this army have earned their rank, through years of hard campaigning. To them, you are a newcomer and you will have to prove yourself. You will command the hypaspitoi under my supervision and direct orders until I say otherwise.’

  Nicanor turned red and then white and then red. ‘Lord,’ he said. He took a deep breath. ‘You have been ill advised, if you imagine that you and your boys are ready to face the Illyrians in a campaign.’

  Alexander didn’t explode. He nodded. ‘Would you care to place a wager?’ he asked.

  When Nicanor stomped out of the tent, Alexander sent Nearchus after him.

  ‘Watch him,’ Alexander said. Then he turned and sighed. ‘So it begins,’ he said. ‘Parmenio will never see me as an adult – nor forgive me for outmanoeuvring him. Eventually . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Never mind. Give me Thaïs’s gleanings.’

  I ran through what we knew, or guessed, about Cleitus of Illyria.

  Hephaestion and Langarus had sat through all of this, and when I finished, Langarus made a face. ‘I think you should let Ptolemy here take Nicanor’s head,’ he said. ‘That one will make trouble.’

  ‘Perhaps in Pella,’ Alexander said. ‘Ptolemy, am I right in thinking he’ll make no trouble here?’

  I nodded. I was glad he was asking my opinion about how the men felt – he needed the help – but in this case he was right. We’d just rolled over the Thracians – the men were worshipping their king like a god. Nicanor was not going to get anywhere with them.

  Langarus smiled like a wolf. ‘Well – never mind him, then. I’ll take the Autaratians – I’ll head north in the morning along the old road. You go and take Cleitus, and we’ll crush this thing before it spreads.’

  Langarus was, as I have mentioned, a pearl among allies.

  We sent almost half the infantry home with all our loot and all the baggage. We kept about a third of the beasts – all cattle – to be able to drive our food with us, and we marched before the sun was up in the morning, heading west. We were in top physical shape, and we had just won a string of victories. The defeats of Pine Island were forgotten. We were invincible, and we raced across the Paeonian Mountains at a speed that was unheard of for an army with so many infantry. We’d marched three thousand stades in a month – now it was high summer, and even the high passes were comfortable.

  Alexander’s goal was to turn Cleitus’s flank by rapid marches before he’d heard of us. He wanted to invest Cleitus’s capital at Pellium before Cleitus could gather reinforcements – especially from Glaucias of the Taulantians. It was an ambitious plan that required that we march eighty stades a day through mountains, and while we could do it, the cattle could not. Our carts started to break down, and our animals were dying – baggage animals cannot be pushed.

  But neither could Alexander. He ordered all the baggage animals slaughtered. We ate for two days. Then everyone shouldered as much food as he could carry – officers and Hetaeroi included – and we marched without baggage. My whole camp went from a tent and three slaves and a cook pot with other pots nesting inside – to a bear fur robe that rolled on the crupper of my saddle, two cloaks and some spare chitons. I kept Ochrid to make my food and sent my other slaves home.

  In truth, we looked more like a defeated army than a victorious one, and I worried every day about the weather. Five days of hard, cold rain in the mountains, and we’d have been in trouble. Even as it was, I knew – as keeper of the Military Journal – that we were losing men to desertion and exhaustion.

  I had another run-in with Nicanor. There was no report from the hypaspists three days running, and when I approached Alectus, he simply made a face.

  So I went to Nicanor.

  ‘You understand the Military Journal?’ I asked him, without preamble.

  He shrugged. ‘Send it to me and I’ll show you how to keep it,’ he said. ‘You do it wrong, and it is full of information it doesn’t need to have.’

  ‘I keep it as the king commands,’ I said. ‘You need to send an officer with your reports.’

  Nicanor didn’t even look at me. ‘No. When you serve under my father, you will learn your place. For the moment – don’t imagine you can give me orders. I have heard how you fucked up the hypaspitoi and had to be replaced – eh? Don’t play with me, boy.’

  He had never served in the pages, and in many ways, despite his years of service under his father, he was soft. I threw him to the ground and rotated his left arm until he made a mewling noise.

  ‘I am not a boy. Next time you call me that, I’ll kill you and stuff your dick down your throat, understand? Your father is not worth shit here, understand?’ I was angry, and spit flew from my lips. ‘Your father is all but a convicted traitor, and if you so much as breathe in the wrong way with these troops, you will cease to be. Do you understand?’ I wrenched his shoulder with every word.

  He said nothing. He was going to tough it out.

  So I wrenched his shoulder harder, and he screamed. I had a knee in his back, and his Thessalian bodyguards were just a little too late – and Alectus was there, and so was Philip Longsword.

  The two Thessalians were induced to stand perfectly still.

  ‘This is not Asia,’ I said. ‘Your father is not the king. And if I rip this arm off, nothing will happen to me. Now – order Philip to have an adjutant send reports to the Military Journal, or by Herakles my ancestor, I will make sure the hypaspitoi need a new commander today.’

  ‘Fuck youuuuaaheeh!’ he said. And then he collapsed. ‘Do it – just stop!’

  I stopped. Looked around. ‘This was a disciplinary matter, and nothing will be said about it unless the king asks,’ I said. I let Nicanor go, and stepped away.

  As soon as he was with his bodyguards, he turned on me.

  ‘I’ll have you skinned alive,’ he said.

  I walked over to him and his Thessalians, who understood better than he did, and did nothing.

  He flinched.

  ‘Go back to Asia or learn our ways,’ I said.

  Macedon, eh? Tough crowd. And I had a temper, back then. Really, Parmenio made a mistake in not sending his sons to serve as pages. Nicanor would have known better. He’d have been one of us.

  He never did learn, and neither did his brother, but that’s another story.

  Fifteen days over the mountains. Alexander took me to task for beating Nicanor, and I took his admonishment with good g
race, since Hephaestion told me in private that Alexander had blessed my name.

  We were bleeding men by the time we reached Pellium. We’d come too far, too fast, and we lost more than a hundred veterans in the mountains. Alexander didn’t care, and you couldn’t make him care. He was on top of the world.

  We came down the valley of the Asopus like a torrent, and our cavalry patrols were like a thunderbolt. Cleitus thought we were a thousand stades away.

  In fact, I nearly caught him myself. I was leading two files of Hetaeroi in support of the Prodromoi, because the king wanted us to be able to do their job, too – a brilliant idea, really. So we took rotations as scouts, and it was my day, and we were fifty stades ahead of the hypaspitoi when we heard screams.

  We were at the head of the valley, and we could see the ripening grain all the way to the foot of the rocky ridge where the grim fortress lurked – a true robber baron, our Cleitus, with his impregnable fort on a high rock so he would never need to fear the revenge of his many foes.

  Somewhere away on my right, a child was screaming.

  I had fifteen of the best warriors in the world. So I turned my horse and rode to the sound of the screams.

  We burst out of the trees to see a ring of richly dressed men – furs, good wool cloaks, gold-mounted swords – and a big natural stone altar covered with blood. There were two sheep’s carcasses, and three dead children – two boys and girl. I saw it all in a glance.

  The priest had his copper knife at the throat of the fourth child.

  In truth, had Thaïs not been pregnant, I’d have captured Cleitus. He was right there, watching the sacrifices to see if the campaign against Alexander would be propitious. But her pregnancy had awakened something in me. That girl – she might have been two – set something off, and my first javelin took the priest high in the breast. He never got to cut her throat, but fell away from her, and she stood there and screamed while Nearchus and Cleomenes and all my lads started to kill the Illyrians around the altar.