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

That was the easy one. But every man in my force knew we had beaten the great Memnon. I had thousands of Greek mercenaries – men who might, but for the chances of Moira, fate, Tyche, have been serving Memnon and not me. I needed some victories to convince them that I was the better boss.

Somewhere south of me, the king was marching through the snow of the high mountains. I had no idea what he was doing – or why. I knew that he intended to take every city in Asia Minor before he went inland – to cut the King of Persia off from the sea. Queen Ada fretted, and sometimes I did too.

On the other hand, Thaïs and I had a wonderful winter. I had enough campaigning to keep me busy, and I enjoyed – I still do – administration. They don’t call me Farm Boy for nothing. I made sure that the city was rebuilt, and I built Ada a mint. When bandits plagued her main road, I sent Kineas and his Athenian Hippeis and they destroyed the bandits and burned their camp.

Locals told Thaïs and her people that there came a two-week period in late winter when the storms die away and zephyrs blow. It seemed worth a try, so I collected light boats – fishing boats, which could carry ten men. We collected several hundred of them, causing grumbling and mutiny all along the coast, which moved me not at all.

When we’d had two days of golden sunshine and light winds, I put all my cavalry into the boats with the best of my Greek mercenaries and we flew under sail across Keramaeios Bay – eighty stades of pure terror, where a few big waves might have done me in. I’m no great fan of the sea. But I knew that Memnon would be insane to risk his naval supremacy at this time of year. I felt it was worth the risk.

We landed on the rocky beaches east of Knidos in the last light of evening, and we spent a hard night on the rocks north and east of the town. I got lost in the darkness and there was no moon, and we were an hour late to our rendezvous when we found Strako and his lieutenant, Anarches, waiting beneath the walls.

But after that, it went like a play. Strakos pounded his spear-butt against a low postern gate – and it opened.

He grinned at me. ‘And it didn’t cost an obol!’ he said, and that was that.

By the gods, that one was sweet. There is a special feeling when you take a great risk and pull it off. I sent a message to Kineas to send me a garrison – by land – and waited to see who would reach me first – Memnon or Kineas. I sent Strako to Thaïs with the same message and a note of thanks for a job well done.

Perhaps Memnon was too busy taking Mytilene, or perhaps he made an error, or maybe, just maybe, Thaïs’s precious agent and his false information about the size of my garrison kept him at home.

However it worked out, I took Knidos with no loss, and ten days later I left Kineas there with his Athenians and four hundred mercenaries.

We heard – from the captured garrison – that the king was in Pamphylia. Whatever the truth of it, he wasn’t communicating with me or with Ada, and he moved so fast that Thaïs didn’t know where he was.

I got quite a nice note of congratulations over the mountains from Parmenio. It was as flattering as the source was unexpected. He wrote from Sardis, praised my energy, diligence and success, and asked me to bring my part of the army to a rendezvous at Gordia in the late spring. The letter informed me that the married men and new recruits under Coenus would meet us there, and the king, as well.

That left me with only the three island forts to deal with.

The problem was that each fort occupied the entirety of its island, and I couldn’t lay siege without a fleet. So I once again hired naval architects – this time with input from Helios and other men to make sure I wasn’t cozened – and I started to build a quinquereme and three triremes – at Queen Ada’s expense. Caria had once been a naval power, and she fancied the idea. Helios felt that this was the smallest squadron that would give us a chance. And we built a mole under the walls of the city – a fortified mole with engine towers, to cover our ships. And to bombard the nearest island, less than a stade off the coast.

Spring burst into flower, and my mole brought my ten engines in range. Over the water, on Lesbos, Mytilene was still holding out, which gave us hope, and Mythymna promised to rebel against Memnon when we gave the word. I suspected that now that the sailing weather was here, as soon as Mytilene fell Memnon would come and try to take Halicarnassus back. And he would, too – but I might hold him long enough for Alexander or Parmenio to swoop down on him . I dreamed of such a victory.

Just after the Athenian spring feast of Demeter, Mytilene fell after a heroic resistance. These days, when men speak of the ease of Alexander’s conquest of Ionia, I want to spit. Men died – good men – fighting for Alexander or just fighting for their own beliefs and freedoms. Mytilene helped us almost as much as victory at Granicus.

A week later, Memnon had seized Miletus, too, and all the other port cities in Ionia and Aetolia hurried to surrender to him.

In three weeks, all our gains of two years were reversed. Memnon had cut Alexander off from mainland Greece, and the rumour that Thaïs’s agents had was that he was going to use Mytilene as a springboard to go to the island of Euboea off the coast of Boeotia, near Thebes, where the population would welcome him as a liberator from Macedonian oppression.

It wasn’t a ‘brilliant’ plan. It was merely an excellent plan that he’d worked out carefully, and he had the money, the logistics and the fleet to make it work.

Antipater had a powerful army, and Macedon had a fleet in the Dardanelles. And Athens, bless them, wavered – they had three hundred triremes in the water, thanks to Lycurgus, and Demosthenes was demanding that his city join Memnon every day.

We were one bold stroke from ruin.

I saw no reason to stop what I was doing, so I sent a message to Parmenio telling him that I would come to the rendezvous at Gordia when I’d finished the task set me. Then I sat in my chair in the warm spring sun and watched my ten-talent engines chip away at the nearest island’s walls.

I had to pretend I had all the time in the world. It really was the most leisurely siege ever – the defenders were sure they’d be relieved, or even become the attackers, in just a few weeks – they had abundant supplies, and I had no fleet. I, on the other hand, had an inexhaustible supply of stones and ten heavy engines and a proper platform for them.

I turned their walls to rubble, and then I went to work on their inner works – or rather, Helios did. We spent forty days pounding their walls, and by the end of it, my artillerists were probably the best shots in the world, and I needed new machines – I’d worn even the crossbars to flinders.

That night, with blackened faces, my companions and I stormed the farthest island – the one out of range of my machines, the one whose garrison hadn’t had a scratch. They had no idea I had four ships, no idea that I could reach them. Helios had built high ladders on to the triremes – and lashed two of them together. We ran them in under the island’s cliffs and ran up the ladders straight to the top while the sentries tried to figure out what was happening. One sentry – a gifted fighter – killed the first three men on to the wall.

Kineas put him down with a thrown javelin.

And then we were in, and the butchery began.

I thought that perhaps, after the shock of that, the other two islands would surrender, but they did not, and now I had wasted my surprise. Or – not precisely wasted. I could now bombard both islands. I tried a daytime maritime assault on the nearest, and lost fifty men and got an arrow in my behind as a memory. That hurt, and I had scant sympathy from Thaïs. I lay there for five days, feeling like a fool, and Thaïs came and went, and mocked me gently when she had time.