God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

by Christian Cameron

  Later, unfed, I fretted alone in the palace. I had sumptuous rooms, and they had the most remarkable furnishings – Aegypt was, and remains, the richest country I had ever seen, and even the palace guest rooms to house a foreign, barbarian general were superb. I summoned slaves and ate in solitary splendour, missing anyone – Marsyas, Cleitus – who might share the tolerable beer.

  Unsummoned, a pair of attendants came and took me to a bath – a remarkably ugly bath, but enormous. It was as if someone had heard of a Greek bath but knew none of the details, and used sandstone rather than marble for the fittings. On the positive side, I emerged clean and fresh, and the towels were superb. On the negative side, I was not oiled, and so left the bath chamber feeling dry and scratchy.

  I walked back along the corridors of the palace to my rooms, flanked by four bath attendants, and it was curious that there were no other men or women in the corridors. It gave the experience a slightly dreamlike air.

  And Aegyptian architecture is heavy – to the point of ugliness – and I had a moment when I experienced something almost like vertigo, when I wanted to see something familiar – a Greek shape, a Greek column . . .

  And then I was in my rooms.

  Thaïs was sitting on a rather formal chair. It took me three heartbeats to know her, as she wore the disc of Hathor on her head and Aegyptian garments, with kohl-painted brows and lashes and henna on her hands and feet. Her eyes seemed huge, the whites white, the pupils enormous.

  She stood and smiled at me. ‘I have had the most glorious experience,’ she said, and for some reason I bowed to her.

  I must digress, because you are so young. When you fall in love, your lover is the most beautiful thing in all of creation. You cannot get enough of her. Her feet, her hands, the inside of a thigh, the perfume of her, the scent of her breath . . .

  When you have been partnered for some years, neither of your bodies has any secrets left, no surprises, no wonder. This is not the death of love – far from it – but it is possible and human to long for that sense of wonder, that desire so strong it can bend steel.

  My partner was reckoned, even after two pregnancies, one of the world’s most beautiful women. She added to that – her natural beauty – training in music, dance, singing, rhetoric – and sex. She was a superb horsewoman, and a fine archer.

  And yet, I would lie if I say that either one of us excited the other then as we had in the first months we were together. We pleased one another. No woman I’ve ever lain with had pleased me as she could, or as easily, and I dare say I knew her as none of her other partners ever had.

  And yet . . .

  I bowed because, in her Aegyptian priestess’s costume, she was herself, and yet she was someone else. Her dignity – always asserted – was even more evident, and elegant.

  And in that moment, I remembered clearly what the voice had said. It hit me – again – like a bucket of seawater on a hot day.

  I think I stumbled.

  She tilted her head a little to one side. ‘You, too, I think,’ she said.

  I sat in the chair she had been in. It was still warm from her. ‘I . . . touched . . . the gods,’ I said. Indeed, as I said the words, I thought them. I had not allowed myself to think about it, simply walled it away.

  She pursed her lips. She had some sort of wax, almost crimson, on her lips. I wanted to lick them.

  ‘A voice,’ I said. My voice was deepening, hoarse with emotion. ‘Told me I would be king here. And that I should rule well.’

  And even as I spoke, and my voice grew hoarse with emotion – thickened – I felt a pressure on my body like the very personification of lust, and I pulled her lips against mine.

  My hand found that she had nothing under her gown, and with a shrug, she lost it – but not her crown, not her regalia, not her paint.

  I have never experienced anything like that night, and I will tell you no more. Except to say that it was not sex, but the sacred. Or perhaps all sex is merely another contact with the sacred.

  Two priests instructed me the next day in every aspect of my function, because, owing to Alexander’s wounded shoulder, I was going to be his ‘champion’ and sacrifice the bull.

  Hephaestion, it turned out, would not do it. He saw it as sacrilege. He wanted nothing to do with foreign gods.

  Cleitus refused on other grounds. He was a man who feared failure more than he wished for success, and the notion of killing the sacred bull in front of an audience of a thousand, with the king’s success riding on his stroke – Cleitus passed.

  I knew I was the king’s third choice. And the thought of performing it gave me the same shakes that it gave to Cleitus. But I was driven, a mere tool of the god. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before.

  Those were two happy weeks. Something entered into my love of Thaïs – or returned to it – that had been lost with our second child. She once again looked at me with her secret smile lingering almost invisible in the corner of her mouth. She sang. I croaked back at her.

  She teased me, and parodied my bad Aegyptian accent when I practised my lines, and when I reached to tickle her, she did not run shrieking like a young fool, but took my hands in her grip of iron and put me over her hip like an old and wily pankrationist, so that I had to roll on the floor. And dug her thumbs into my armpits until I bleated like a lamb, and we lay together . . .

  Good times.

  And other times, I left her to her new friends – and she had quite a few, the priestesses of Hathor – and I went into the lower town and drank expensive wine and cheap beer with Marsyas and Cleomenes and Alectus and Cleitus.

  I remember one night, I had a slave from Marsyas inviting me for wine – Greek wine – at a tavern by the river. I dressed simply and left all my expensive jewellery and my good cloak, left a note on the cheap and available papyrus for Thaïs and ran down the palace steps like a schoolboy going on an adventure.

  The slave led me to the rendezvous, and it was well lit, with oil lamps hanging in rows so that the walls seemed to have their own star fields. It was hot, and most of the patrons sat outside in the night air. The river smelled of silt and ordure – but it was a smell you got used to quickly, like manure in springtime. Men sat on benches and drank, played dice or knucklebones – a few barrack-room intellectuals played Polis or backgammon.

  I was early, or the others were late, and I found myself sitting at a small table reserved, I expect, for those who looked likely to pay more, but wedged between an enormous potted plant in an urn carved from stone, and probably three thousand years old – and a trio of pezhetaeroi. Not mine – men of Craterus’s taxeis.

  There was an old one, a middle-aged one and a young pup straight from the fields around Pella. I tried not to listen too hard, or look too hard, as they would recognise me and grow stiff and formal, and the last thing a good officer wants to do is to rain on the fun his men are having.

  I had a scroll – Xenophon’s ‘On Hunting’. It fitted nicely in my bag, so I left it there, and sitting alone in a tavern in Aegypt with a bowl of wine that had cost me a day’s pay for a soldier, I leaned my stool back, tucked my shoulder into the enormous stone urn and read about boar spears.

  If, in spite of javelins and stones, he refuses to pull the rope tight, but draws back, wheels round and marks his assailant, in that case the man must approach him spear in hand, and grasp it with the left in front and the right behind, since the left steadies while the right drives it. The left foot must follow the left hand forward, and the right foot the other hand. As he advances let him hold the spear before him, with his legs not much further apart than in wrestling, turning the left side towards the left hand, and then watching the beast’s eye and noting the movement of the fellow’s head. Let him present the spear, taking care that the boar doesn’t knock it out of his hand with a jerk of his head, since he follows up the impetus of the sudden knock.

  ‘’Scuse me?’ the oldest man was asking. He was polite – nodding at me, and pulling at his chit
on. Drunk as a lord. ‘’Scuse me? Damme, you look familiar.’

  I laughed, perhaps a little bit self-conscious.

  ‘Except it’s like this, see? Dion says that this chit, here,’ and the grizzled veteran of Philip’s wars caught the wrist of a serving girl, ‘has the best tits of any girl in this fine establishment.’ He nodded sagely. ‘Which she may, or may not.’

  Like many Aegyptian women, the server had no garment north of her belly button, so modesty was hardly an issue. She wriggled. It was more than just an automatic gesture, and thus very winning.

  I gave the veteran a smile and then looked at the woman’s breasts.

  They were young and well displayed. Not a patch on Thaïs, but comparison is odious.

  ‘Lovely,’ I opined.

  Veteran nodded. ‘That’s a fine answer. See? He’s not too hoity-toity to look at tits, now, is he? I said to them – he’s an officer, but he ain’t above us here.’

  The youngest one shook his head. ‘I’ll take him off to bed,’ he said apologetically.

  I made a face. ‘Why?’

  Veteran nodded. ‘Exactly. Why? I may be fucking dead in a few days, if soldier-boy-the-war-god gets a hair up his arse and marches us to Hyperborea. Why can’t I sit and look at her tits? They’re fine, and she won’t come to no harm from me.’

  The middle-aged soldier just glowered. Finally he said, ‘What’re you reading?’

  I had to smile. ‘Xenophon. On hunting.’

  Veteran roared. ‘You’re a fuckin’ officer. Look, lad – that’s a girl. For a tenth of the cost of that scroll – a hundredth – you can have what she offers. Feel alive.’

  Middle-age shook his head. ‘The scroll gives him something for ever. That girl will be gone in the morning.’

  ‘At her age? She’ll be gone in ten minutes – off to another garliceater, eh? Moving from sausage to sausage?’ He laughed at his own witticism. ‘Who cares? When I sit and think—’

  ‘You fall asleep, old man,’ said Middle-age.

  ‘Yeah?’ Veteran shot back. ‘Who put the fucking Syrian in the dust when somebody was on his back at Gaza? Eh?’ The older man got up, and just for a moment he wasn’t a drunk fuck – he was a vicious predator with thin limbs and a grizzled beard, and eyes that burned with malice.

  Then he subsided. But the other two had flinched.

  He tossed a gold stater on to the table and laughed. ‘I’m all blather, boys. Don’t let me piss on your evening.’ His eyes flicked over to me, and I realised he wasn’t as drunk as he let on.

  The serving girl came, her eyes drawn by the gold. When her hand reached out for it, Veteran pinned it to the table with his own, and pulled her on to his lap and neatly tucked his tongue inside her throat. She put her arms around his neck.

  He came up spluttering and laughing, and gave her the coin. She skipped away, and he shook his head.

  ‘Where did it go?’ he asked. ‘A gold daric – where’d she put it? Eh? I ask you, gentlemen. I gave her a gold coin, and she made it disappear.’ He laughed, drank off his wine and got to his feet, and I realised that I’d been wrong again – he could barely walk. ‘Well, friends, I’m off to find it. If she hid it where I think.’ He leered. Looked at me. ‘You’re Ptolemy, I think.’

  I nodded.

  He nodded back. ‘King’s friend?’

  I nodded again.

  ‘Tell him from me he can suck my dick if he thinks I’m doing any more forced marches in the desert for fuck all. Eh? That’s Amyntas son of Philip, phylarch of the third company of the taxeis of Craterus.’ He winked. ‘You think I’m kidding, eh?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. I think you’re serious.’

  ‘You’re not bad, for an officer.’ He was swaying, and the girl, who, when bought, apparently stayed bought, had come back and caught his hand. He clasped hers. ‘He’s made us do some bad shit, eh?’ he said suddenly. ‘Storming a town’s one thing – right? Officer? Whatever you do in a town that refuses to surrender – that’s between you and the gods, eh?’

  He spat.

  ‘But what we did at Gaza . . .’ He looked at the girl. ‘I killed one just like you, honey.’

  The other two were taking his arms. I thought he might cry. But he didn’t. He grinned. ‘Fuck me,’ he said. ‘Let me go.’

  ‘Let him go,’ I said.

  The girl pulled his hand, and he laughed. It wasn’t a good laugh, but neither was it the laugh of a broken man.

  ‘Let him go,’ I said again.

  He came back at me. ‘Give me a hug, eh, officer boy?’ he said.

  I stood up, because I thought he was serious, and he was. He put his arms around me. ‘What’s it about, eh?’ he whispered in my ear. ‘I just want to know what the fuck it’s about, eh?’

  Then he pushed himself away. ‘Sorry. I’m drunk. You smell good, officer. But not as good as my little friend here, who’s waited. Aphrodite, she stayed!’

  He smiled at all of us, but most of all at her, and took her away into the dark.

  Middle-age shook his head.

  ‘He’s saved my life ten times,’ he said. ‘Please – don’t report him.’

  I sat back down. ‘Relax!’ I said. I caught the attention of another girl, whose breasts, to be frank, were not up to the standard of the first. ‘A krater of wine,’ I said. And then made gestures. Finally I showed her a large silver coin, and she bit it and smiled and ran off, showing her flanks very nicely.

  A day’s wages for me. Wine for three.

  Bad wine. But I poured for the two of them, as if they were guests in my house, and we drank.

  ‘He’s a great man, really,’ Middle-age said. ‘But he needs to go home.’

  I shot my mouth off, too. ‘He can’t go home,’ I said. ‘Unless you want him to die as a bandit in the mountains. It would be like caging a wild boar.’

  Middle-age nodded. ‘That’s what war has made him. It’s all he knows. All I’ll know, soon, too.’ He drank.

  ‘All they do is complain,’ the farm boy added. ‘It’s glorious serving the king. My pater served Philip and he was in two battles. I’ve already been in two great sieges and a battle.’ He shook his head. ‘Who gives a shit if we kill a bunch of barbarians?’

  Middle-age shrugged. ‘You will, boy. Or you won’t. We have both kinds in the phalanx. Except that if you don’t give a shit about them, like enough in time you won’t care about anyone. Not even yourself. And then – you’ll die.’

  ‘You’re just old and burned out,’ Youth said.

  ‘Talk to me in twenty more fights, boy.’ Middle-age looked at me. He was half my age again – but I’d been fighting a long time. ‘If you live that long.’

  Youth took a big drink, anger written on his face.

  And fear.

  I bought another round. I seldom thought much about my longevity, or my future. Despite Aristotle and Heron, I lived from day to day.

  Some day, I would be King of Aegypt.

  That hit me again, and I sat there drinking, my scroll forgotten.

  Veteran came back, his girl in tow, and perched her on his knee and drank my wine. He was mellow now, and the girl ran her hands idly over his chest.

  He looked at me and laughed. ‘Good hug,’ he said.

  I pointed at the girl. ‘She does have the best tits in here,’ I agreed.

  He laughed and laughed, and he was still laughing when Marsyas came in. He had Cleomenes and Philip the Red with him, and Kineas and Diodorus, and we embraced as comrades do, and then my three companions tried to escape.

  ‘They’re good companions,’ I said. ‘Let’s stay and drink with them.’

  Marsyas, it proved, knew all of them, and their names – Amyntas son of Philip (one of a dozen I know) and Dion, and Charmides. Marsyas was a poet, and a drinker, and a rogue, and he knew everyone. And we sat and drank, and watched the girls.

  That was Memphis.

  I worried myself sick about the sacrifice. When it came, it was sacred, but my nerves fell away
as if the god touched me, and perhaps he did.

  The bull stood, undrugged, in the middle courtyard of the great temple, tethered to a ring but otherwise unconstrained. I had met him three times, so he would know my smell, and I walked up to him, and the crowd of priests and royal advisers and Alexander’s entourage – and Anaximenes, of course – knelt. All except Alexander, who stood just behind me, the only man standing.

  The bull saw only me. He moved his head, and I walked very slowly up to him. Dignity has this added benefit – movement with dignity is an excellent practice for calming an animal, whether a horse or a bull.

  When I was at his head, I drew the sword I had brought, purified by the priests and fresh from a night on Osiris’s altar, wiped clean to perfection with a cloth provided by the priestess of Hathor and smelling very strongly of Thaïs.

  I drew it very slowly, and he rolled his eyes, and I wondered how many kings and champions had been lost this way. And I wondered if the high priest, if he disapproved of the pharaoh, or his champion, arranged for the bull to be in a mood. I wondered at a great many things, and then the tip of my sword – a heavy kopis – cleared the scabbard throat and I slowly raised the blade, placed my left hand on the great beast’s head just behind the horns, slowly rotated my hips and passed the sword back into the overhand guard position you see so often on vases. It’s there for a reason.

  The bull raised his head, stretching his neck, and roared – a trumpet noise that made me jump, but with his neck muscles stretched like that . . .

  I severed his head.

  He fell forward on to his knees and pumped blood for a moment, and then sank to the ground and fell over, and the earth shook, and Alexander slapped my shoulder with his right hand.

  ‘Perfect,’ he breathed.

  I felt empty. Hollow. And from the eye of the head on the floor came a last . . . something.