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

We slammed into the Greeks. We didn’t really catch them by surprise – the Athenian captains had turned to face us – Ephialtes himself, I heard later, one of their best.

But our arrival had an effect nonetheless. The Persian levies were dead or broken, and their survivors were glutting the gates in terror, and now we threw in our last reserve – and Memnon, who also had an elite reserve, couldn’t get men through the gates blocked by his useless peasants.

Don’t think the irony was lost on any of us, lad. We were saved – Macedon was saved from defeat by Athens under the walls of a city in Asia by the cowardice of Persian levies.

The fighting was desperate. All fighting is, but this was made nightmarish by the darkness. Inside my helmet, I could see nothing once I was engaged, and the worst of it was that our rear-rankers had no sense of the combat and kept pushing forward, grinding me relentlessly into the ranks of the hoplites I was fighting, so that I couldn’t fully control my weight or balance. More than once, an unintended shove from my file partner sent me to my knees or worse.

But unlike most men, Kineas and I were in full armour. I had greaves and a heavy breastplate, a full helmet, an aspis and a heavy spear, and Kineas was armed the same way, and details – long ‘feathers’ covering our upper arms, a full yoke covering the back of my neck in bronze – were lifesavers, because none of us could see a blow coming. I don’t know how many times I was hit, but I know that the next day I threw my beautiful helmet into the sea – too dented and cut up to be saved. Only the thickness of my cap and my hair saved me from death – there were shearing blows that penetrated the thick bronze.

I don’t remember a single fight. There’s nothing to remember – no vision to cling to – just the relentless weight of the men behind me and the ringing blows on my shield and all too often on my helmet. I took a bad blow – something, probably a spear shaft, hit my spear hand and suddenly I had no weapon and was almost weeping from the pain.

Pyrrhus and Kineas covered me while the tears flowed out of my eyes unbidden and I flailed about on the bloody ground for a weapon. My sword was gone, my spear was gone, and by the time my hand closed on the shaft of a spear I was disoriented. But I got my feet under me and found myself under Pyrrhus’s shield, safe – I got a breath in me and got my spear and shield up, and I was alive.

That heartbeat of complete disorientation on the dark battlefield with death all around – it still visits my dreams, like falling from a great height. That’s terror.

And then the Greeks began to back away.

In fact, I suspect they’d been backing away for some time, and I was just too busy to notice. But now I was moving forward at a brisk pace – by the standards of infantry combat – tripping over bodies and without someone’s spear trying to poke out my eyes.

Memnon ordered the main gates closed while more than two hundred of his hoplites were still trapped in the darkness. It was the correct decision, but it doomed them to death, and they knew it, and the whole combat developed a ferocity that I have seldom seen equalled. It is not for nothing that strategoi speak of the ‘Golden Bridge’ – the easy path of retreat we offer to a defeated enemy in most circumstances. Trapped men with nothing to lose are ferocious.

Those Greeks were monsters, and many of us died.

Of course, they all died.

Alexander was in the front of it, and his spear flashed like the bolts of Zeus, and he didn’t hesitate to go shield to shield with those raging monsters and slay them, and where he led, we followed, shouting his name.

But when the last Greeks were dying, we were still under the walls, the gates were still locked and they were pouring red-hot sand on us.

The Military Journal says that we lost one hundred and twelve pezhetaeroi and found six hundred bodies of the enemy.

In fact, we lost – dead and badly wounded – a little over nine hundred men, and we found about five hundred corpses.

Our machines were all burned, and we would have to start all over again.

In the morning, Memnon asked for a truce to retrieve his dead. This pleased Alexander immensely, as it meant that he could claim to have won a victory. He was difficult, that morning – elated, brash and far, far too talkative. Parmenio looked at him with something that seemed to me like loathing.

He was never his own best friend, Alexander. On the battlefield, he was solid, calm and brave, but afterwards, he was like a boy after his first girl – all bragging and no substance. How could the god become so very human?

He went on and on, that day, tiring every one of us – even Nearchus grew tired of his recitation of his own triumphs. He may well have killed the Athenian captain, Ephialtes, himself – he certainly claimed he had, and we found the body – but when he told the story of the fight with Iliad -like embellishment, we all knew he was a liar. No one among us could have seen a single thing, and his description was like a piece of theatre. The theatre of the inside of the king’s head.

Hephaestion tried to shush him, and failed.

Philotas left the tent, disgusted, and Parmenio walked out a little later. I was trying to pretend I was somewhere else – perhaps someplace involving a bath – when Parmenio came back.

‘You have won a noble victory,’ he said with rich sarcasm. ‘Come and see, great king.’

Alexander, when he was like this, didn’t even notice his sarcasm. He followed Parmenio out of the great tent, and up to the top of one of our northerly engine platforms.

Memnon was abandoning the city.

He was ferrying his entire force to the three island citadels that dominated the harbour mouth, and the Persian fleet was putting to sea.

He was keeping his army intact, and slipping away to fight another day. And we could do nothing to stop him.

Alexander nodded. Looked around, expecting approval. ‘We beat him,’ he said. ‘Every city in Greece will know we took Halicarnassus from Memnon.’

Parmenio watched his nemesis slipping away, and all we could hear was the sound of the slaves digging graves in the thin soil. The only smell was smoke, because as he left, Memnon set fire to the city. It burned for three days, and there was nothing we could do to stop it.

‘He intends to bleed us until we drop, and then destroy us,’ Parmenio said.

‘We made him ask for a truce to bury his dead,’ Alexander said.

‘We have no fleet!’ Parmenio said, disgusted.

‘I will deal with that. One victory at a time,’ Alexander said, his voice a little too bright.

‘Ten more victories like this one and we will have no more Macedonians!’ Parmenio shouted.

‘Calm yourself,’ Alexander said.

‘He is not beaten! He still holds all the citadels and he’s left the city an empty shell! By the gods, are you insane? Stop this! We cannot conquer Asia!’ Spittle flew from Parmenio’s mouth. ‘Even if by the will of the gods we were to war down Persepolis, we will never hold it all!’

Alexander looked around. ‘How many of you feel the same?’ he asked, ingenuously. You had to have grown up with him to know what mood he was in.

About half of the officers present raised a hand.

Most of them were older men, Parmenio’s friends.

‘Then I recommend you go home, every one of you.’ Alexander shrugged. ‘We’ll just have to carry on without you.’

NINETEEN

Parmenio took half the army and marched away.

Alexander gave me four thousand Greek mercenaries, my squadron of companions and Kineas and his Allied Horse, and left me to reduce the coast to obedience and complete the conquest of Caria and Cilicia.