by Ben Bova
"What would your master, the Great King, say?"
Again he shrugged. "I served the Great King because I was commanded to by my king. He gave me to the Great King as a gift, to curry favor with the Persians. I am a professional diplomat, and I know I will never see my home again."
"Then you don't care who wins this battle?"
"It makes little difference. We are all bound up on the wheel of life. Those who die tomorrow will return to life again and again. The great goal is to get off the wheel, to achieve final nothingness."
I stopped him with a touch on his arm. "You believe that men live more than one life?"
"Oh yes. We are reborn into this world of pain and suffering until we can purify ourselves sufficiently to attain Nirvana."
"Nirvana?"
"Nothingness. The end of all sensation. The end of desire and pain."
"I have had other lives before this one."
"We all have."
"I can remember some of them."
His large liquid eyes went wide. "Remember? Your past lives?"
"Parts of them. Some of them."
"That is a sign of great holiness. You may be a Bodhisattva, a holy being."
I had to smile at that. "No, I was created to be a warrior. Even my name means 'hunter.' I am a slayer of men; that is my destiny."
"But if you remember your former lives—that is something that only a Buddha can do truly."
"Do you believe in the gods?" I asked him.
"There are gods, yes. And demons, too."
I nodded, old memories stirring inside me. "I have fought demons. Devils. Long ago."
He stared hard at me. "We must speak further of this. It is of great importance, Orion."
"Yes, I agree."
Horses were stirring in the growing light of dawn. And men. The camp was bustling.
"But the battle comes first," said Ketu. "May the gods favor you, Orion."
I thanked him. The first trumpet blew. We would be forming up for battle within the hour.
Chapter 15
Just as Ketu had told us, the Athenians were on the extreme left of their battle line, opposite our right. By long tradition, the right side of an army's line was the stronger. The Thebans with their invincible Sacred Band stood on their right. The middle of the enemy line was filled with allies from Corinth, Megara and other cities opposed to Philip.
Demosthenes must have talked their generals into letting the Athenians take the position most likely to be opposite Philip himself. Or perhaps they reasoned that the Thebans, led by their Sacred Band, would crush our weaker left flank and roll up our line like an unstoppable juggernaut.
They had no cavalry, but their line stretched from the steep hill of Chaeroneia's acropolis to the marshy ground by the river. There was no way for the Macedonian cavalry to round either of their flanks, one anchored on the temple-topped acropolis and other on the muddy flats. We would have to break their line, one way or the other.
I sat astride Thunderbolt, who was flicking his ears nervously and snuffling as we waited at the extreme left end of the Macedonian line. In front of us were only light troops, peltast. Beyond them, facing us, stood the Thebans in phalanxes twelve men deep. The Sacred Band stood on the extreme right of their formation, at the edge of the mud flats, their polished armor gleaming in the morning sun, their spears bristling like a forest of death.
Alexandros, sitting on black Ox-Head in front of me, was in command of the entire heavy cavalry. We had some lighter horsemen off to our left, by the river. As I waited for the trumpet to sound the advance, I remembered Philip's final word to us, less than an hour before, when the commanders had gathered for their final conference before the fighting began. From the back of his horse Philip looked up and down the two assembled armies with his good eye.
"Now we'll see how well this nation of lawyers can fight," Antigonos had joked.
"Well enough, I expect," said Philip. "They have a fair number of mercenaries among them."
"Yes," agreed Antipatros, "but most of the Athenians are citizen hoplites, not professional soldiers."
"The same kind of citizen hoplites that defeated the Persians more than once," said Parmenio, eyeing the Athenian phalanxes.
Philip had shaken his head. "That was a long time ago, my friend. They've spent the generations in between getting soft."
"Lawyers, all of them," Antigonos repeated.
"Well," said Parmenio, pointing to the other side of the line, "the Thebans aren't soft, and their Sacred Band aren't citizen-soldiers. They're as professional as they come."
"That's why I've put the cavalry against them," Philip had answered.
Alexandros, standing bareheaded beside his father, pulled himself up a little taller. He had never commanded the entire cavalry before, only smaller detachments. His father was showing enormous faith in him.
"You know what to do?" Philip asked him.
"Wait for your signal."
"No matter what happens, you wait for my signal."
"No matter what, I will wait."
"Whether my side of the line advances or retreats, you wait for my signal."
Alexandros nodded.
"If the earth should open up and swallow the whole army—"
"I will wait for your signal."
"Good." Philip laughed and reached out to tousle Alexandros' hair. "Better get your helmet on, son. You're going to need some protection for those pretty curls."
Alexandros flushed as the generals laughed. As we rode back to our position in the line he complained, "He always gives with one hand and takes away with the other."
"He's put you in the most important position," I said. "He's showing great faith in you."
"He's put me in the spot where I'm most likely to get killed," Alexandros grumbled.
I could not let that stand. "I thought your destiny was not to get killed until you've conquered the whole world."
His grin told me that he understood the irony of the situation. "Yes, and now I know that there's a lot more of it to conquer: Hindustan and Cathay and the gods know what else."
That was an hour ago. Now we sat waiting for the order to charge, grooms standing beside us to help keep the horses steady, squires holding the lances we would use when we went into action. Nerves were screwed up tight, palms sweating, the very air crackling with that special electricity that comes when nearly a hundred thousand men are ready to do their utmost to slaughter one another.
The enemy stood their ground, content to wait for Philip to make the first move. They were defending their homeland; to get to Thebes and Athens we would have to get past them. If we beat them, there was nothing between us and the cities of the south. If they beat us Philip's kingdom would collapse. This one battle would determine the outcome of the war.
The sun climbed higher. The two lines of armed men stood facing one another, sweating not entirely from the heat, waiting, waiting.
A single trumpet sounded. Like a single creature, Philip's phalanxes on his far right began to march forward toward the Athenians. Not a charge, just a slow methodical march of some twenty thousand hoplites, shaking the ground with each step they took.
The Athenian line seemed to shudder. Then their spears came down to point at the advancing Macedonians. A battle between phalanxes often turned into a pushing match. The two lines would meet with a clashing of spears and roar of fury and each would try to push down the other. That was why Philip ordered his phalanxes sixteen men deep; the extra weight was often the difference between victory and defeat.
The Athenians were twelve men deep. They began to move forward, toward the advancing Macedonians, with an equally slow, measured tread.
From our horses we saw it all unfolding. Thunderbolt was quivering with excitement, eager to go. I stroked his neck and glanced at Alexandros. Even with his helmet on and his cheek flaps strapped on I could see that he, too, was eager to charge. But true to his promise he kept his place, even though the rest of the enemy line wa
s now moving toward us, keeping pace with the Athenians. The Thebans were marching straight toward us, as methodical and inexorable as death itself.
From out of the Macedonian phalanxes a flurry of peltasts scampered, showering the advancing Athenians with arrows and javelins and rocks. The second and more rearward ranks raised their shields over their heads, protecting themselves and their first rank, who kept their shields before them. I saw a few men fall, but by and large the peltasts did little more than irritate the Athenians.
I was more worried about the advancing Thebans. Horses will not charge spears, no matter how you urge them. And a forest of Theban spears was approaching us, with nothing between us and them except a scattering of our own peltasts. They annoyed the Thebans but could not stop them.
Philip's troops were advancing in oblique order, their farthest right phalanxes leading the others. It was a technique Philip had learned from the great Theban commander Epaminondas when, as a boy, he had lived in Thebes for several years, a royal hostage after Macedonia had been trounced by the Thebans.
I heard Alexandros gasp. The peltasts in front of Philip's line turned away from the advancing Athenians and fled from the field. And the phalanxes began to retreat, as well.
"They're running away!" Alexandros said. His voice was low, breathless.
Not running, I saw. They were retreating in good order. But retreating. Even before they had come to grips with the enemy line.
A great exultant shout went up from the Athenians and they broke into a headlong charge to close the distance with the retreating Macedonians.
"Should we send some of the cavalry to go help them?" I asked Alexandros.
"No," he said grimly. "We stand here until he gives us the signal."
The Thebans were moving toward us faster, now, but they were not charging wildly, as the Athenians were. The allied troops in the center of the enemy line were struggling to keep the line intact, with the Athenians rushing pell-mell on the left side of them and the Thebans advancing more slowly on the right.
Not a blow had yet been struck by the hoplites anywhere on either line, yet it looked to me as if the battle had already been lost.
And it had. But not by the wily One-Eyed Fox.
The allied hoplites could not keep up with the charging Athenians. Gaps opened up in their line. The Theban commander must have seen this, for now he began to move his phalanxes more toward the center of their formation, trying to close the gap—leaving some firm ground open between his own right flank and the marshland by the river.
Another trumpet sounded, blasting the air like the crack of doom. Alexandros grabbed the lance from the hands of his squire, raised it over his helmeted head and screamed, "Follow me!"
We charged headlong into the gap between the allies and the Thebans, thundering across the sloping ground like a torrent of death. The world around me slowed once again as my body went into overdrive. Right behind Alexandros I rode, gripping Thunderbolt with my thighs, leveling my lance as I leaned forward against the horse's flowing mane.
We poured into the gap between the Thebans and the allied phalanxes before they could close the ground between them. Wheeling around faster than the phalanxes could turn, we hit them from the rear and sides. The allied hoplites broke and ran. The Thebans held their ground and fought back. But our light cavalry swung around their other flank, skirting the marshy ground, and completed their encirclement. In front of the Theban phalanxes our light troops harried them with arrows and javelins. They could not turn their backs on the peltasts. They could not turn their backs to our cavalry. Their commanders bellowed orders but their voices were lost in the thunder of the battle. They tried to form a circle of shields, but we cut through them and sliced their formation into smaller and smaller bits. I left my lance buried in a man's chest and pulled out my sword, hacking and swinging madly at the milling, frightened, disorganized men all around me.
When an army loses discipline it loses the battle. The Thebans, good as they were, had lost the cohesion a phalanx needs to make it effective. They were not an army now, they had no phalanxes, only knots of shaken and confused men who were being cut to pieces by our cavalry.
On the other side of the battlefield, I learned later, the Macedonians stopped their planned retreat the instant the trumpet blast gave us the order to charge. Suddenly the Athenians were facing those sixteen-man-deep phalanxes. The two sides clashed briefly, then the Athenians broke and started to run away. Philip's men pursued them, slaughtering them as they ran, until he saw that the Thebans were still fighting for their lives against us. He ordered an end to the pursuit of the Athenians and brought his phalanxes over to our side of the field to finish off the Thebans.
For even though we had won our battle, the fighting was far from over. The Thebans refused to surrender. Hopeless, they fought on, especially their Sacred Band. Those men lived up to their reputation; even when we had cut them down to scattered pairs of men they fought on, back to back, on their knees when they were too badly wounded to stand. They refused to give up.
"You may kill us, but you will never see our backs," shouted one of them as he stood over the drooping body of his companion, dying from several spear thrusts.
It was grisly work, and costly. Thunderbolt took a spear thrust through his ribs and went down with a hideous shriek, almost pinning me beneath him. I leaped clear and skewered the Theban who had killed him. I saw Alexandros still on Ox-Head, his helmet gone, golden hair flowing in the breeze, hacking at the enemy with a fierce grin pulling his lips back from his teeth. His Companions were scattered through the melee, killing with equal ruthlessness, their swords and sword-arms dripping with hot blood.
A pair of Thebans must have recognized Alexandros' blond mane, for they pushed their way past the peltasts in front of them and headed for the prince. Coming up behind him they raised their spears simultaneously at his unprotected back.
Unprotected except for me. I had tried to stay as close to Alexandros as I could, but in this awful slaughter the excitement of battle, the passions of fear and blood-lust, and the sheer exhilaration of killing had almost made me lose my head. Almost. I knew somehow that this craving for violence had been built into me by the Creators; I was their instrument of destruction, their Hunter.
But despite the battle-fury that drove me on I saw the two Thebans ready to strike Alexandros from the rear. I was fighting a pair of them myself, both of them protecting themselves from my sword with their big shields, one of them still holding a spear, which he used to keep me at a distance from them.
The spear point seemed to waver in slow-motion before my eyes, almost hypnotically, while the other Theban tried to work himself over to my left side, where he could thrust at me with his bloodied sword.
I had no time to waste on them. I ducked beneath the spear point, rolled to the ground and kicked the spear-wielder in the groin. As he collapsed onto his own shield I jumped to my feet and slammed my shoulder into the shield of the other Theban. He jounced backward a step and I dashed off toward the men who were about to kill Alexandros.
I could not close the distance in time. So I threw my sword as hard as I could as I yelled, "Alexandros! Behind you!"
My sword point went completely through the nearer Theban's shoulder. He screamed and the spear dropped from his paralyzed fingers as his companion jabbed his own weapon at Alexandros. But the young prince had turned slightly at my shouted warning and the spear point slid across the belly of his bronze cuirass harmlessly as Alexandros raised his sword and brought it down on the Theban's neck hard enough to take his head almost completely off his shoulders. Blood geysered as the man gasped his death agony.
I had reached the other Theban by then. He had fallen almost beneath Ox-Head's shuffling hooves. Wrenching my sword from his shoulder, I plunged it into his throat. He died with a look of surprise on his face.
Philip's phalanxes reached us then, marching up in good order to dispatch the last of the Sacred Band.
The
king rode up just behind his phalanxes and went straight to Alexandros. Looking him over with his one good eye, Philip broke into a tired smile.
"Not a scratch on you!" He seemed pleased. "Not even on Ox-Head. The gods must work overtime protecting you."
Alexandros smiled back as if he had received nothing more than his due. If he realized that I had saved his life he made no mention of it.
I stood, panting and suddenly very weary, on grassy ground made slippery with blood and entrails. All around me the field was littered with corpses and the writhing, moaning bodies of the wounded. The battle was over. Now some of the troops were moving among the wounded, giving them the final merciful dagger in the throat. Others were stripping the dead of their arms and armor.
Ignoring the men, I staggered across the battlefield looking for Thunderbolt. Philip's strategy had worked almost perfectly. The enemy commanders had known that cavalry could not attack a well-formed line of spears. So Philip had induced the Athenian citizen-soldiers to break ranks and ruin the solidarity of their line. Then our cavalry could destroy their foot soldiers, and we did. But it had cost me a valiant steed.
Thunderbolt was already dead when I found him, the spear still sticking in his flank. I hoped that he had not suffered too much, then found it ludicrous that I cared more for this horse than for all the men who had fallen.
I began to laugh, at myself, at the folly of men who slaughter one another, at the so-called gods to whom men pray. If they knew that the gods were nothing more than selfish humans like themselves, what would they do? How would they re-order their lives if they rejected the gods they worshiped?
I had to get off by myself. Slowly, painfully I climbed the steep hill of Chaeroneia's acropolis. The sun was going down behind the distant mountains, and from the steps of the temple atop the hill I could see the entire battlefield in the long shadows of the setting sun. Thousands of bodies lay strewn like broken toys the breadth of the field.
"Are you pleased?" I muttered. "Is this the kind of human sacrifice that you enjoy watching?"
