Christian Cameron - God of War - The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

She laughed into my mouth, my busy little plotter.

And the next day, we marched for Halicarnassus down the high passes. We had to climb the mountains behind Ada’s castle, and we made Labraunda by dark the first day, Mylasa the second – days were getting shorter. The third night we were at Iasus on the coast, which had submitted to our Athenian flotilla, and where Alexander guaranteed their ‘ancient rights’ (the ink was not yet dry), and we met a young man who was considered a prophet of Poseidon. He was sixteen, and he could talk to the dolphins – they swam up to him eagerly. I saw this with my own eyes. One dolphin in particular followed him all over the town’s inner harbour. And my horses adored him – when he came (at my invitation, as Poseidon is my special god) to my tent for a cup of wine, Polystratus hurried in to see what had happened, because all the horses had begun to whinny.

He was a very special young man. His name was Barsulas, but we all called him Triton. I took him into my household as a priest. He could read and write, and to get ahead of myself, Thaïs had me send him to the Temple of Poseidon at Sounnion in Attika, and we sent our young foundling, Olympias, with him. We trusted the boy, and with good reason. They were, in many ways, like our family. We sent him to Sounnion to be trained as a priest of Poseidon, and we sent her to the Temple of Artemis to learn all the dances of the Bear. I made good donations to both temples, and they were only too happy to admit my ‘children’ and Thaïs’s.

Our daughter was eight months old, and Thaïs had a pair of nurses for her, because running Alexander’s special intelligence section was now a full-time job. And at Iasus, we were one day’s march from Halicarnassus, and she had no report to make.

I was at that meeting.

Thaïs hated to be defeated, but none of her agents had emerged from Halicarnassus to report. She’d sent three or four. We had friends in the town – by then, every town in Ionia had a faction who wanted Alexander to liberate them.

That night, Parmenio had another try at reasoning with the king. I was starting to change sides, by then. There was a nip in the air – autumn was coming. It had rained intermittently all day, and as usual we were ahead of our tents, so that our men were camping in fields – wet.

‘It takes three years to make a good soldier,’ Parmenio said, after dinner. We were in the local Temple of Ares, using it as a headquarters. ‘It takes three nights of rain to kill him. Lord, it is time to call it quits. Ada was a brilliant conquest. You will be lord of Caria in no time – well done. But let’s get back to Ephesus and get the troops under cover. You’ll want to send all the pezhetaeroi home for the winter – it’s their right – and you must be as tired as I am.’ Parmenio chuckled smugly.

Alexander shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not tired, and I’m going to take Halicarnassus from Memnon.’

Parmenio shrugged. ‘As you will, lord. But the weather is turning and this is not a fertile area. There’s not much fodder here, and little wine and less olive oil. What will the army eat, while we lay siege to Halicarnassus?’

‘We have a magazine at Miletus,’ Alexander said. ‘We can send convoys along the coast road.’

‘For water?’ Parmenio shot out. ‘You’ve never been to Halicarnassus. I have. There’s no water – all the water’s inside the town. We have thirty thousand men. They drink a great deal of water.’

Alexander looked around at the rest of us. ‘Anyone else of the same mind?’ he asked.

His voice gave away his opinion. He wasn’t asking. He was looking at dissent.

No one spoke up.

That made Parmenio angry.

‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Tomorrow, when we head up the coast, we’re going up against Memnon . He’s not some hill chieftain. He’s not the commander of a soft confederation and he’s not going to make any easy mistakes. He’s going to meet us on a battlefield of his own choosing, where he has a fleet at his back and an army of mercenaries – expendable men. You’ve sent our fleet away. He can get reinforcements – and food – whenever he likes. And if he doesn’t like the odds, he can sail away. And you won’t be able to stop him .’

Alexander took a deep breath. He nodded very slowly.

Some of the older officers began to let out their long-held breaths in relief.

‘I guess we’ll just have to be on our best game, then,’ Alexander said. ‘Because in the morning, we march for Halicarnassus.’

Philotas had the advance guard. His version was two hundred Thracian Peltastoi and a hundred Thracian cavalry, well spread out in front, backed with two full squadrons of Hetaeroi and two hundred archers. Philotas didn’t like my ‘W’, and he used a more linear advance-guard formation.

We entered the mountains again at Bargylia, with Mount Lyda on our left and the sea below us on the right – a road well cut, an old road, and one that offered no cover at all. Twenty stades south of Bargylia we left the sea and started overland on the last leg of the road, through a valley pass that climbed slowly, and was at least broad enough for the advance guard to shake out into formation.

It was raining. I felt old – my hand throbbed, and all my wounds hurt as if they were new, and Thaïs and I had had a fight – about Queen Ada. A stupid fight.

I was riding with the royal escort, well back in the column, and Parmenio was well behind us – pouting, or so it seemed. Seleucus was finally healed from his wounds at Granicus, and he was back with us, in armour. Nearchus was there, and Marsyas, and most of the rest of the old guard. Kineas was with us.

‘I wish Ada could see this,’ Alexander said.

‘Aphrodite’s tits, I’m tired of Ada,’ Hephaestion said.

‘You know I do not like blasphemy,’ Alexander said coldly. ‘Or vulgarity.’

‘Ada has tits,’ Hephaestion said reasonably. ‘I assumed that you’d want to hear about them.’

Alexander turned to glare at him.

‘Well, she does!’ Hephaestion insisted with his usual foolishness. ‘I mean, they’re not much bigger than mine, but she does have tits.’

Nearchus started to laugh, and Black Cleitus, and Alexander reined in.

‘Shut up!’ he barked, and raised his hand.

Hephaestion, always happiest with an appreciative audience, ignored the king. ‘And arm muscles! Bigger than mine!’

Alexander struck him. He had a riding whip – as long as his legs – in his hand, and he hit Hephaestion in the mouth – not hard, but fast. ‘Shut your foul mouth and listen,’ Alexander said.

Hephaestion put both hands to his mouth. ‘You bastard,’ he spat.

By now I could hear what the king was hearing. ‘They’re fighting!’ I said.

Alexander put his heels to his riding horse. None of us was on war horses, but we raced up the top of the pass, crowding around the hypaspists and the second Hetaeroi squadron.

‘Arm!’ I shouted as we pushed by. ‘Shields! Armour!’

Only the advance guard marched armed for battle.

We went over the top of the pass, and below us we saw Philotas entangled with an ambush.

There were enemy hoplites, immediately identifiable by their big, round shields, in among Philotas’s archers, and farther ahead, archers were dropping arrows from high above on the Prodromoi and the Thracians.

The Thracians panicked and broke, running back along the column, just as Alexander and Seleucus and I started to get a counter-attack together. It was my squadron of Hetaeroi, after all. They were to hand, and they were good, if I don’t say so myself.

Alexander watched the Thracians break, five stades away. He looked around.

Calm as a man in his andron – calmer – Alexander looked off to the north. ‘Philotas was not ready for this. Now, if Memnon is the great man people say he is, he’ll have cavalry. And cavalry can only be . . .’