The scouts who had been sent south towards the Syrian Gates returned before midday and came before the King with their report: ‘Sire, there is no one up there, and neither is there anyone down on the plain.’
‘I do not understand,’ said the King. ‘I do not understand. Even the “ten thousand” passed through here. There is no other way . . .’
The answer arrived with Nearchus’s ship as evening fell. His men had broken their backs rowing against the wind and close to the coast to bring the news that Alexander was waiting for. As soon as the flagship was sighted, the King rushed to the beach to meet the admiral, who was approaching aboard a launch.
‘Well then?’ he asked as soon as he stepped ashore.
‘Unfortunately the messenger has told you the truth. They are behind us and there are hundreds of thousands of them – horses, war chariots, archers, slingsmen, lancers . . .’
‘But how . . .’
‘There is another pass – the Amanus Gates, fifty stadia to the north.’
‘Eumolpus has betrayed us!’ Alexander swore. ‘He has sent us into this trap between the mountains and the sea while Darius came down behind us, cutting us off from Macedon.’
‘He may not have done it deliberately,’ said Parmenion. ‘Perhaps they found out what he was up to and forced him into it. Or perhaps Darius was hoping to surprise you at Tarsus while you were still unwell.’
‘None of this changes our current situation,’ commented Ptolemy.
‘Quite,’ agreed Seleucus. ‘We are in trouble.’
‘What shall we do?’ asked Leonnatus as he lifted his freckled face which he had kept bowed up until that moment.
Alexander stood in silence as he thought to himself, and then he said, ‘Darius now knows exactly where we are. If we stay here he will come and wipe us out.’
49
ALEXANDER SUMMONED THE COUNCIL in his tent before sunrise. He had slept very little, but he seemed to be mentally alert and in perfect physical shape.
He outlined his plan briefly. ‘Friends, the Persian army is far superior to us in number and so we must move out of this position, we are too exposed here. Behind us lies a vast plain, before us, the mountains. If we stay Darius will surround and then annihilate us. Therefore we must turn back and face him at some narrow spot where he will not be able to make use of his numerical superiority.
He will not be expecting us to turn back and so we will take him by surprise. Remember the place where the Pinarus river flows into the sea? Well, that might be the right spot for us. The marching officers tell me that the space between the hills and the sea there is at the most ten or twelve stadia, but the terrain free of obstacles is no more than three stadia and is therefore good for our purposes. Our formation will be the most solid one we have – at the centre the pezhetairoi phalanx battalions and the Greek allies; to the right, off towards the hills, I will take up position with the Vanguard at the head of the hetairoi cavalry; out on the left flank General Parmenion will cover us from the seaward side with the remainder of the heavy infantry and the Thessalian cavalry. The Thracians and the Agrianians will line up behind me as reserves.
‘The phalanx will attack frontally and the cavalry laterally, just as they did at Chaeronaea, just as they did at the Granicus.
‘I have nothing else to say. Many the gods be with us! Now go to your units and line them up in battle formation so that I may inspect them.’
It was still dark when the King, astride Bucephalas and dressed in his battle armour, his iron breastplate adorned with silver friezes and with an embossed bronze gorgon over his heart, addressed his troops. To his left and right were his bodyguards and his companions – Hephaestion, Lysimachus, Seleucus, Leonnatus, Perdiccas, Ptolemy and Craterus, all bedecked in iron and bronze from head to foot, their helmets adorned with high crests that waved in the cold wind of the autumn morning.
‘Men!’ he shouted. ‘For the first time since we set foot in Asia, we must face the Persian army led by the Great King himself. He has come at us from behind and his army has cut off our escape route. He is certainly planning to advance along the coast and pin us down against these mountains, placing all of his faith in his own numerical superiority. But we will not simply sit and wait for him to come, we instead will go to him, we will take him by surprise in a narrow place and we will beat him. We have no alternative, men! We can only win, otherwise we will be annihilated. Remember! The Great King is always at the centre of his front line; if we succeed in killing him or in taking him prisoner then we will have won the war and conquered his empire in a single instant. And now, let me hear your voices, men! Let me hear the noise of your weapons!’
The army responded with a deafening roar, then all the officers and the soldiers together unsheathed their swords and began beating rhythmically against their shields, flooding the plain with a deafening clangour. Alexander lifted his spear and spurred Bucephalas forward so that the stallion advanced with his majestic stride, flanked by the other horsemen enclosed in their armour. Behind them there soon came the heavy, regular steps of the phalanx, which blended with the noise of thousands of hooves.
They proceeded northwards for some hours without anything particular happening, but about half-way through the morning a group of scouts who had gone on ahead returned at a gallop.
‘Sire!’ shouted their commander with an expression of horror on his face. ‘The barbarians have sent us back the men we had left at Issus.’
Alexander looked at him, unable to understand what was happening.
‘They have all been mutilated, Sire. They have cut off their hands. Many of them are already dead from loss of blood, others are dragging themselves along the road moaning and crying out in pain. It is a frightful sight.’
The King immediately set off at a gallop to see his men, and when he came to them they held out their bloody arms, the stumps bandaged up with filthy rags as well as could be managed under the circumstances.
The King’s face broke into a grimace of horror; he leaped from Bucephalas and cried and shouted as though out of his mind as he began embracing his soldiers one by one.
One veteran dragged himself to Alexander’s feet to tell him something, but he had used up all his strength and collapsed, dying there in the mud.
Alexander started shouting. ‘Call Philip, call the physicians, quickly! Quickly! They must help these men.’ Then he turned to his troops and said, ‘Look at what they have done to our companions! Now you know what awaits you if we lose this battle. Not one of us must rest until this outrage is avenged.’
Philip arranged medical help for the wounded, having them put on carts that would take them back to the camp before meeting up with the army once more. He was well aware that before sunset his skills would again be required.
Darius’s army came into sight around midday, spread out along a huge line on the northern bank of the Pinarus. It was an amazing spectacle – at least two hundred thousand soldiers lined up in battle formation, arranged in several rows and preceded by war chariots equipped with scythes which protruded menacingly from the hubs of the wheels. On the flanks were the Median, Cyssaean, Saka and Hyrcanian horsemen; at the centre, behind the chariots, was the infantry of the Immortals, Darius’s guard, with their silver quivers, their golden-tipped spears and the long double-curved bows across their shoulders.
‘Gods of Olympus, there are so many of them!’ exclaimed Lysimachus.
Alexander said nothing as he continued staring at the centre of the enemy line, searching for the Great King’s chariot. Ptolemy interrupted him:
‘Look! The Persians are manoeuvring out to the right!’
The King looked towards the hills and saw that a squadron of cavalry was setting off up towards the high ground in a move designed to surround his army.
‘We cannot engage them at this distance. Send the Thracians and the Agrianians to stop them. They must not pass at any cost. Give the signal, we are about to attack!’
Ptolemy galloped off
towards the Thracian and Agrianian contingents and sent them off towards the hills. Hephaestion gave a signal to the trumpeters and they sounded their instruments. More trumpet blasts came in response from the left-hand flank and the army set off, infantry and cavalry at a walk.
‘And look over there!’ said Hephaestion. ‘Greek heavy infantry! They have lined them up at the centre.’
‘And down there,’ said Perdiccas, ‘they’re putting sharpened stakes into the ground.’
‘And the river is swollen,’ added Lysimachus, ‘because of the rain last night.’
Alexander stood in silence watching the Agrianians and the Thracians, who had engaged the Persians and were driving them back. By now they were very close to the bank of the Pinarus. The river itself was not deep, but it was flowing fast and full of brown water between its two muddy banks. The King raised his hand again and the trumpets sounded the attack signal.
The phalanx lowered their sarissae and charged, the Thessalian cavalry on the left set off at a gallop and Alexander spurred on Bucephalas, leading his hetairoi. He veered as much as possible towards the right, driving his horse into the river at the narrowest point, followed by the entire squadron, before the Persians managed to stop him, then he turned and set off with his spear in his hand to attack the flank of the enemy line-up.
At that same instant the phalanx entered the Pinarus, crossed it and began climbing up the right-hand bank. Facing them, however, they found the Greek mercenary infantry in perfectly compact formation. The terrain was rough and slippery, there were rocks on the riverbed and on the bank which broke up the Macedonian ranks and the Greeks made the most of these gaps, engaging the pezhetairoi in furious hand-to-hand combat.
Craterus, who was fighting on foot on the right of the phalanx, saw the danger and had the trumpets sound to call up the shieldsmen in support. Indeed, many of the pezhetairoi had been forced to abandon their sarissae and to unsheath their short swords to defend themselves from the furious assault of the Greek mercenaries, but they were in serious trouble now.
Off to the left, in the meantime, Parmenion had sent his Thessalian horsemen against the Persian right flank in waves, squadron after squadron. Each wave let loose a cloud of javelins and then turned back, while the second and third wave moved forwards at brief intervals. The Hyrcanians and the Saka in their turn contributed with furious charges, covered by dense sallies of arrows from the Cyssaean archers. Even a squadron of chariots was used in this area, but the rough ground did not help matters – many of the chariots overturned and the horses fled in terror, dragging behind them their drivers, tied to the reins at their wrists, tearing them to shreds on the rocks.
The battle raged on at length, with the Persians continually pushing forward fresh troops from their inexhaustible reserves. At a certain point one single brigade of the shieldsmen, led by Craterus, managed to break through behind the lines of the Greek mercenary foot-soldiers, isolating them from the rest of the Persian line-up and breaking up their formation.
These mercenaries were exhausted now by the fatigue, oppressed by the weight of their heavy armour, and, on finding themselves trapped between two lines of enemy troops, they began to lose ground and disperse and were finished off by the Thessalian cavalry. The shieldsmen then took up position on the two flanks while the pezhetairoi phalanx re-formed, lowered their sarissae and advanced towards the huge front presented by Darius’s ten thousand Immortals, who moved forward forcefully, shield against shield, their spears lowered in readiness. A sharp trumpet blast came suddenly from the rearguard and then the noise of thunder broke through to dominate the infernal shouting and neighing and clangour of arms – the thunder of Chaeronaea!
The giant drum had been transported disassembled but now, reassembled and drawn by eight horses, it had reached the front line to add its powerful voice to the shouts of the soldiers.
The pezhetairoi shouted, ‘Alalalài!’ and they rushed forward, heedless of their tiredness and the pain their wounds were causing them. Filthy all over with mud and with blood, they looked like wild furies straight from hell, but the Great King’s Immortals were not frightened by them and in their turn they attacked with still compact energy. The two lines wavered slightly at the initial clash and more than once the front line moved forward and then backwards in response to the wild charges.
Out on the right wing Alexander, still on the front line, preceded by his standard-bearer with the red flag and the Argead star with its sixteen points, launched attack after attack, but the squadrons of Arabian and Assyrian horsemen counterattacked each time with unyielding valour, supported by the continuous, dense flights of arrows from the Median and Armenian archers.
When the sun began to dip towards the sea, the Thracians and the Agrianians had finally defeated the Persian cavalry they had been sent to engage with and they regrouped and went to the infantry units involved in the bitter hand-to-hand combat. Their arrival gave the tired pezhetairoi new vigour and new hope in the midst of the interminable battle, and Alexander renewed the Vanguard’s attacks with a wild cry as he spurred Bucephalas on again. The ever-willing animal felt his rider’s resolve, rose up on to his hind legs as he neighed loudly and then set off forwards on his powerful legs, clearing the enemy crowds out of the way with tremendous force.
All of a sudden, almost delirious with the effort, the Macedonian leader found himself face to face with his adversary and for an instant the two Kings’ eyes met. Just then, however, Alexander felt a searing pain in his thigh and on looking down saw that an arrow had penetrated, just above his knee. He clenched his teeth and pulled it out, struggling to control himself, but when he looked up once more Darius had disappeared – his driver had turned the horses and was whipping them wildly in the direction of the hills, along the road that led to the Amanus Gates.
Perdiccas, Ptolemy and Leonnatus surrounded the wounded King and cleared some space around him, while Alexander shouted, ‘Darius is escaping! Follow him! Follow him!’
The Persians were now feeling the full pressure of the concentric attacks of the enemy squadrons and they began to waver and to disperse. Only the Immortals maintained their positions, forming a square formation and continuing to repulse the Macedonian attacks blow for blow.
Alexander ripped a strip of cloth from his cloak, tied it around his thigh and set off once more on the chase. A horseman from the royal guard appeared before him with an unsheathed sabre, but the King instantly took his double-bladed axe from its holder and let loose such a blow that it snapped the sword in two. Just as the King was lifting the axe once more to finish off the guard, a strange play of light from the dying sun helped him recognize his opponent.
He recognized the brown face and the black beard of the giant archer who so many years before, with one single arrow, had struck down the lioness which had been about to drag him to the floor. That day was far off now, a day of hunting and celebration on the flower-filled plain of Eordaea.
The Persian recognized Alexander as well and stared at him speechless, as though struck by lightning.
‘No one must touch this man!’ shouted Alexander, and he set off at a gallop behind his companions.
The chase for Darius lasted until nightfall. The fleeing King would appear in the distance in the half-light only to disappear once again along new hidden roads in the thick vegetation which covered the hilltops. Suddenly, on coming round a bend, Alexander and his friends found themselves before Darius’s abandoned chariot, the royal gown hanging there, together with the Great King’s golden quiver, his spear and his bow.
‘There is no point going on,’ said Ptolemy. ‘It is dark and Darius is on a fresh horse now – we’ll never catch him. And you are wounded,’ he added, looking at Alexander’s bleeding thigh. ‘Let’s go back – the gods have been most generous to us this day.’
50
ALEXANDER RETURNED TO the camp in the middle of the night, soiled with blood and mud after crossing the plain, where fires were still burning and corpses and
carcasses lay everywhere. Even Bucephalas was covered with a flaking layer of blood and dirt that gave him a spectral, nightmarish colour.
His companions rode alongside and, attached to the harnesses of their horses, towed behind them the Great King’s war chariot.
The Persian camp had been completely ransacked and looted by the Macedonian soldiers, but the royal pavilions had been left untouched because they belonged to Alexander by right.
Darius’s tent was gigantic, made entirely of decorated leather, with drapes of purple and gold. The supporting poles were of carved cedar, laminated in pure gold. The ground was covered with the most precious carpets imaginable. Inside, heavy curtains of white, red and blue byssus divided the various rooms, as though it were a true and proper headquarters, with the throne room for audiences, the dining room, the sleeping chamber with a canopy over the bed, and the bathchamber.
Alexander looked around without really taking in the fact that all these riches and such luxury were now at his complete disposal. The bathtub, the amphorae, the finger-bowls were all in solid gold and Darius’s handmaids and his young eunuchs, all stunningly beautiful, had prepared a bath for their new master and were ready, trembling with fear, to obey his every command.
Still astounded, he continued to send his gaze into every luxurious corner as he murmured, almost to himself, ‘So this is what it means to be a king.’ For one used to the austere simplicity of the palace at Pella, this tent was like a god’s home.
He moved towards the bath, limping because of the pain from his wound, and immediately the women hurried about him, undressing him and preparing to wash him. In the meantime, however, Philip arrived to examine and treat his King. Indeed, Philip showed the handmaids how to wash Alexander without causing any more bleeding. Then he had the King lie down on a table and with the help of his assistants he operated, cleaning and draining the wound then carefully sewing and bandaging. Alexander did not murmur even a single complaint, but the terrible effort, together with the superhuman feats of the battle, left him completely exhausted and as soon as Philip had finished he fell into a leaden sleep.
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