Clash of Empires

by Ben Kane

  The boat’s owner, a fisherman with a face wrinkled enough to be Philip’s grandfather, limped to his side. ‘The tide is on the turn,’ he whispered. ‘We must go.’

  ‘I hear you, old one.’

  Philip had been prepared to kill the families of any fishermen who wouldn’t take them out to the anchored trireme, but it hadn’t come to that. To his surprise, the ancient had offered the instant the demand had been made. ‘Death is coming for me soon,’ he’d said with a wink. ‘I can’t think of a better way to go than with the king of Macedon as he tries to escape this bay.’ His entire lack of reverence and surety that they would fail had tickled Philip’s humour, and so, against his officers’ wishes, he had chosen him.

  Philip signalled, and once the fisherman had clambered in, the Companions pushed the boat into the shallows. Two more craft and another twenty-four soldiers on the beach would follow close behind. Next Philip and his men heaved themselves aboard. A pair of Companions laid their backs to the oars. Down the blades went, entering the water with almost no sound. Faint splashes rose as they came up into the air. Philip, crouched in the prow and peering towards the trireme, pricked his ears. He heard only the low screech of night birds skimming over the waves; this relieved the knot of tension in his belly not at all. Never in his life had he been so rash, he thought with a thrill, but there was no going back now.

  They had set out from a secluded spot on the south-eastern edge of the beach – the closest point to the anchored trireme. Distance was impossible to judge in the darkness, but Philip knew from the day’s practice efforts that the oarsmen could slowly row four stadia as a man’s heart beat half a thousand times. The tension would make keeping this tally difficult, so he had ordered every Companion to do it. At three hundred and fifty, Philip could feel cold sweat trickling down his neck. He placed his lips against the ear of the man next to him, and whispered, ‘Your count?’

  The Companion leaned close. ‘Three hundred and ninety-six, sire.’

  Philip’s eyes shot to the water in front of the boat. He could see nothing still. Then timbers creaked dead ahead, and he almost cried out. With relief, with fear – he wasn’t sure. Signalling the Companion to tell the oarsmen to slow their pace further, he began to count his heartbeats again. At four hundred and fifty, the glow of a lamp was visible by the base of the trireme’s mast, and he had their little craft come to a halt. The risks of taking it alongside the enemy ship were too great – from here, he and his men would swim.

  Philip had no idea how many sentries there were. This was the point his senior officers had made over and again. ‘Miss even one, sire, and it won’t matter that all the others died without a sound. Noise carries across water. His shouts will wake every enemy crew on the shore.’ The officer’s point had been valid, but he and his comrades had had no answer when Philip had demanded another way out of their predicament.

  ‘Into the water,’ he whispered, giving the old man a nod of thanks before slipping over the side. The Companions joined him. Philip didn’t linger. They would succeed, or they would fail. With gentle strokes, he swam and prayed. Prayed and swam.

  If the commander of the trireme was worth his salt, thought Philip for the hundredth time, he would be resting his crew before the ‘battle’ in the morning. There might be four sentries, or as few as two. The rest aboard would be fast asleep, the oarsmen lying by their benches, and the soldiers wherever a space offered itself. Keeping them quiet after the sentries had been slain would be another matter . . .

  Stop it, he told himself. Ten paces out from the trireme’s prow, he looked up. One sentry was clearly visible, leaning on his spear. He gave no sign of seeing them. Dangerous though it was, Philip waited, treading water; a short time later, a second man appeared beside the first.

  ‘Seen anything?’ he murmured.

  ‘Course not.’ The reply was sleepy.

  ‘Gods, but this night is dragging by.’ The second sentry moved in front of his comrade, and tugged underneath his chiton. A stream of urine arced out, spattering the water close to Philip, who closed his eyes in disgust.

  When the second man had finished, he elbowed his fellow. ‘It’s your turn to walk the ship. Last time I was there, Solon was awake, but Greybeard was snoring. Give him a kick from me.’

  ‘I don’t blame the poor old bastard – he should be in his blankets like the rest of the crew,’ said the first man. ‘Posting four sentries every night is fucking stupid. That mongrel Philip and his yellow-livered followers would never attack us.’ Muttering to himself, he set off down the planking that ran from prow to stern.

  Four sentries, thought Philip. It was more than he’d hoped for.

  He motioned that he and five others would swim along the trireme. At his signal, they would deal with Greybeard, Solon and the man walking towards them; the remaining Companions were to clamber up via the bronze ram, kill the lone sentry and whistle to the waiting boats. Then it would be a mad scramble from both ends of the ship to threaten, gag and murder enough of the crew so that none tried to raise the alarm.

  Using the planking of the hull as concealment – only someone leaning right out would see them – Philip swam to the stern. He reached it just as the grumbling sentry did. The complaints as the promised kicks were delivered to a groggy Greybeard provided enough noise for Philip to swarm up one of the steering oars with a dagger gripped in his teeth. A Companion who had climbed the second oar appeared atop the rail at the same moment he did; the four others were following close behind. Greybeard saw Philip, who was only an arm’s length away, and his mouth opened. The complaining sentry, who was facing towards the open sea, thought he was about to protest again, and sneered. The third man spotted both Philip and the Companion, and grabbed for his sword. Philip knifed the grumbler in the lungs, twice for good measure, then shoved him, dying, into his sword-wielding comrade. As that man stumbled backwards, the beginnings of a shout leaving his mouth, Philip caught him with a backslash across the throat. Blood showered the deck, and before Philip could prevent it, the swordsman fell backwards into the sea.

  Philip lowered himself down to the rowing deck a heartbeat after the resulting splash. Sleeping bodies lay as far as he could see, but woken by the noise, one man sat up.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he mumbled.

  Dagger behind his back, Philip replied in his best Pergamene accent, ‘That fool Greybeard only went and fell in.’

  With a snort, the man lay back down.

  Philip reached down and covered the man’s mouth with one hand, and sliced him open from ear to ear. The next oarsman along stirred, and Philip cut his throat too. When he stood upright, he found a third rower regarding him with utter horror.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut, and live,’ hissed Philip. The soldiers aboard would be loyal to Attalus, but if the men who pulled on the oars were like most, they would care less for their king than the coin they were paid. ‘Say a single fucking word, and you’ll go the same way as your mates.’

  The oarsman lay back down like a child scolded back to bed by an angry parent.

  Like silent wraiths, Philip and his Companions stole along the rowing deck, by times threatening, by times ending protest in a flurry of dagger thrusts. The six Companions who had boarded at the prow were at work too. When they were joined by the two other boats – called in with an owl call – the trireme was soon in their hands. Apart from the man who’d fallen into the sea, the only noise had been a couple of stifled cries from those crewmen foolhardy enough to challenge men standing over them with ready blades.

  Nonetheless, the commotion had been more than should be expected aboard a ship in the dead of night. Philip’s nerves were in tatters as he listened for any indication of alarm from the shoreline to the north and south.

  Time slipped by, slower than he had ever known it, but no shouts, no call to arms reached them. Finally, his anxiety eased into sheer, unadulterated delight. The danger had not gone – his entire fleet had to row out of the bay unseen and unhear
d – but in the skies above, the Fates were smiling.

  By the following day, Philip’s escape was complete. The Pergamene and Rhodian fleet had given pursuit at dawn, when the bay was seen to be empty of his ships. Despite their head start, it had been a close-run affair. The enemy’s lead vessels had closed to within ten stadia of the rearmost Macedonian ones; lacking crew members, three of Philip’s lembi had been caught and taken. The rest had rowed for their lives, and pulled away. After months of virtual imprisonment, these were trifling losses.

  Now Philip stood at his ship’s prow alone, tasting in the salty air a freedom he hadn’t had for too long. Inevitably, thoughts of home filled his mind; they soured his mood a little. He’d be glad to have Macedonian earth beneath his feet once more, but there would be little time to take his ease with his wife, or to go hunting boar in the hills. Odds were that on his northern and eastern frontiers, the Thracians or Dardani would have invaded. The Greek states would be causing trouble too. Sparta, Aitolia, Athens – all had reason to resent his kingship. If the fools would recognise Macedon’s pre-eminence, thought Philip, life would be easy. They will learn to do so, one way or another.

  Of less concern were the Rhodian and Pergamene embassies who had been sent to Rome – they would try their hardest, but Philip could not imagine the Senate reversing its decision of the previous year. Having been involved with Greece before, the Republic’s attention might well return in the future, but after the gruelling war with Hannibal, Rome currently had no stomach for another war. So reasoned Philip. Spotting a dolphin in the ship’s bow wave, he smiled. Two more joined the first, the trio slicing through the water with consummate ease, the picture of power and grace. Mesmerised, sure they were proof of Poseidon’s favour, he watched until they tired of their sport and vanished again into the depths.

  CHAPTER XI

  The army’s camp outside Pella, Macedon

  Dawn was breaking. The air was crisp and cool, and laden with the smell of wet grass. Birds chattered from the nearby woods, delighted with spring’s arrival. Trickles of smoke rose from fires that had lasted the night. Most men were still in their blankets, dreaming, but Demetrios was outside the tent he shared with five other men. After a few stretches, he was going to run the perimeter of the great camp. Fitness, he had learned, was vital to being a good soldier.

  More than a year had passed since the fateful evening when Demetrios had fought Empedokles and Philippos. Not a single day went past when he didn’t give thanks to Hermes and Ares for the beatings he’d received. Well, not the beatings, but the way events had unfolded. Demetrios was gut-sure that both gods had been watching, and smiling on him. How else could he have won the two vital bouts against Empedokles, or been admitted to one of the most prestigious speirai in the phalanx?

  To show the gods his gratitude, Demetrios made it his business once a month to visit a shrine to Hermes which lay close to the city walls, and the army’s camp. There he poured a libation of the best wine he could afford, sometimes bringing a hen for the priests to sacrifice. Next he gave thanks for his good fortune, and prayed. With Ares, he was a little more circumspect. If Demetrios was truthful, the mysterious war god in his crested helmet scared him. Simonides, already like a father figure to him, said that Ares reaped men in battle the way a farmer cut wheat with a sickle. Demetrios prayed to him, but he was a deity to be feared.

  The envy of men in other files had been evident from the first day. Demetrios didn’t understand the ugly looks until Simonides had explained that the lowliest phalangist in his file had been slain at Kios. But for that unfortunate death, and the need for a replacement, Simonides would never have offered him a place. After that, Demetrios added Hades, the god of the underworld, to his prayers.

  The day after the fights with Empedokles and Philippos, realising that Demetrios knew little of army life, Simonides had set him to learn the phalanx’s structure. He could repeat it in his sleep now, but at the time it had been confusing. Philip’s phalanx was made up of two five-thousand-men-strong strategiai, the white shields and the brazen shields. Each strategia consisted of five chiliarchies, each containing one thousand and twenty-four men. The chiliarchies were ranked in order of importance, one to five, and in each were four speirai. Simonides and his comrades – and Demetrios – served in the first speira of the second chiliarchy of the brazen shields.

  Every speira had two hundred and fifty-six phalangists, made of up of sixteen files of sixteen men. Each file had eleven phalangists and five officers: a file-leader, a half- and two quarter-file leaders, and a file-closer. Simonides was the file-leader; his friends were front-rankers, and stood behind him. As the newest recruit, Demetrios stood at the back, with only the file-closer Zotikos to his rear.

  He smiled. Since that momentous evening, the army had become his life; it was becoming hard to think of any other existence. Sorting through the pile of stacked shields outside the tent, Demetrios pulled out his own. Small, round, and a little dished, the aspis was eight times the width of a man’s palm. On the front, against a brazen background, the royal Macedonian star had been painted in black. Demetrios’ aspis was old and battered; it had belonged to the dead youth he’d replaced, but he was inordinately proud of it. Along with the dagger he’d owned since he was a boy, a simple helmet and his long sarissa spear, the shield was the only equipment he possessed.

  Of course he longed for more. Soon after joining, he had expressed this desire to Philippos, the friendliest of the veteran phalangists. Philippos had laughed his great belly laugh.

  ‘Listen to you! First off, you stand right at the back of the phalanx, so you don’t need armour or a sword. Second, this kit–’ Philippos had flicked a finger off his padded linen cuirass ‘–is expensive. You can’t afford it. Save your pay, boy, and in a year or two, you’ll have enough coin. Or you might be lucky and kill a man wearing one, and take it for your own.’

  ‘What if the enemy attacks the rear of the phalanx?’ Demetrios had demanded. ‘I’ll need armour then.’ At the time, he had never seen the speirai drilling on the plain beside the camp.

  Philippos had laughed again. ‘Patience. We’re trained to wheel about and reform with the front-rankers facing the enemy. If that happens, you’ll be at the back again.’ He had smiled at Demetrios’ glare. ‘Standing at the front of the phalanx is unpleasant and dangerous. Only a madman would choose to be there.’

  ‘Simonides does it! So do you and the others.’

  Philippos’ face had grown serious. ‘Sliding your spear into a man’s eye socket takes its toll. Hearing your mate drowning in his own blood, and being able to do nothing for him, is horrific. During a battle some men lose control of themselves – the air is laced with the smell of shit and piss and puke. You can feel the terror – almost touch it. Everyone is afraid, bar a few insane fuckers on both sides.’

  ‘If it’s so bad, why are you in the army?’ Demetrios had challenged.

  ‘My father was a phalangist, and so was his before him. I couldn’t think of any other life. Then there’s the comradeship – you already know what that’s like. And by the gods, because there’s nothing quite like breaking an enemy phalanx. Your heart sings. Ares’ strength flows into you, I swear it, and you know that no one can stop you.’

  Demetrios had liked that part best.

  ‘Live long enough, and you’ll work your way up the file. I was a rear ranker when I joined up.’ Philippos had clapped him on the back, like an equal.

  Demetrios had relived the conversation many times since. He didn’t know how long it would take – years, like as not – but one day he would stand near the front with Simonides and Philippos. He slipped on his felt and wool arming cap, which already smelt as if he’d worn it his whole life, and after, his plain bronze helmet. Aspis slung over one shoulder, he picked up his sarissa.

  ‘Practising for the hoplitodromos?’

  He turned, seeing Empedokles’ head poking out of his tent. Demetrios uttered a self-conscious, truthful but not-
knowing-what-else-to-say, ‘No.’

  Empedokles curled his lip. ‘It’s good to practise running, boy, because that’s what you will do the first time we fight.’

  Demetrios flushed with anger and shame. Perhaps the malevolent phalangist was right – how could he know? He took off at a lope, Empedokles’ mocking laughter ringing in his ears.

  Demetrios returned from his run, Empedokles forgotten, belly snarling with hunger. Kimon, another rear-ranker and one of the men he shared a tent with, had the barley porridge cooking. Open-faced, with longish brown hair, he had an impressively sized nose. About a year older than Demetrios and about the same height and build, Kimon was interested in everything, and more fair-minded than Demetrios ever cared to be. The two had been friends from the first moment they’d met.

  ‘Is it ready?’ demanded Demetrios.

  Kimon grinned and spooned in a little honey. ‘Hungry?’

  ‘Fucking starving.’ Demetrios set down his sarissa and shield with the rest, and sat down by the fire.

  ‘Good run?’

  ‘Aye. You should come along some morning.’

  Kimon shook his head. ‘I get enough exercise on the training ground.’

  He opened his mouth to argue, but thought better of it. Kimon was fonder of drinking and cooking than anything else, and it seemed nothing would change that. Demetrios concentrated instead on wolfing down his porridge. It was a smaller portion than he’d have liked, but for good reason. Soon after joining the phalanx, with memories of the hungry times at the rowing bench still vivid, he had ignored Kimon’s advice and gorged himself before the morning’s drill. An hour into training, Demetrios had broken ranks to vomit. Everyone had laughed, even Kimon. Everyone apart from Simonides, that is. His measured dressing-down had humiliated Demetrios more than a beating. Now he always held back at the morning meal. Evenings were a different matter – he filled his belly then until it could hold no more.