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

It was growing hot, and the ground was dry. The campaign season was opening, and I had lots to worry about.

Thaïs came in – I remember this vividly. She was skipping like a girl, and she beamed as she took my hands.

‘Memnon is dead,’ she said.

I was speechless, and she laughed.

It took me a moment to realise what she wasn’t saying.

‘You killed him?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘I tried to. I assume that I succeeded.’

I sat there with my arse hurting and shook my head. ‘Brilliant. Don’t ever let Alexander suspect.’

She looked at me with the pity that women use on men who state the obvious.

Memnon died north of Mytilene, of a curious stomach complaint that came on suddenly. The nut of the Strychos, ground fine. It comes from India, and Aristotle taught us about it. Thaïs had her own sources, of course.

Over the next weeks, as Helios cast bronze parts for new torsion engines, as his smiths pounded iron to make new frame supports and as trains of oxen brought timber for new frames from the mountains, we watched Memnon’s plan shatter. There was no successor to his office as the Great King’s strategos. There was no man who could hold his plan, or his army, or the fleet, together.

His death changed everything.

And still the two islands wouldn’t surrender.

Memnon’s death rendered my presence in Halicarnassus somewhat unnecessary. Now there was no threat from the sea. Now there would be no relief of the garrisons. In effect, I had won, or rather, Thaïs had. Game over. No further need even to hold Caria, really. No threat to Macedon.

At the end of the planting season, we heard from Thaïs’s people that Coenus was marching the new recruits and married men by rapid stages across Thrace. And we heard that Charidemus – another Athenian-born professional – had advised the Great King to send him to Ionia to carry out the invasion of Greece. According to our source – a damned good source – Charidemus dug his grave with the truth, telling Darius that he didn’t have the troops to face Alexander in the field and shouldn’t try, but should leave the fighting to Greeks, who could bear the brunt of it.

He was a brilliant fighter, or so men said. I heard he was a good general. Whatever the truth of it, Darius had him executed and started raising an army, and the last of the Persian fleet across from us at Chios broke up and sailed away, and the two garrisons asked to meet me in an hour when we shot news of his execution into their positions.

Both garrison commanders were Athenians. Most of the best mercenaries were Athenians or Spartans, and the latter were as good or better. I gave them wine and told them what I knew.

Isokles and Plataeus, they were. Older men, almost Parmenio’s age. Plataeus was a true believer – one of Phokion’s men. He hated us, and all our ways. But he hated serving Persia, too. I knew all this from Thaïs.

I talked to them for an hour, and they surrendered their islands and I let them keep everything – their loot, their pay, their armour and weapons. Isokles joined me. Plataeus sailed away for Athens.

Pharnabazus, the last Persian friend of Memnon’s still trying to do any work, threw a major garrison into Mytilene, and ordered all the mercenaries and citizens captured there in arms to be used as forced labour rebuilding the walls. I suppose it was better than executing them, as Alexander did, but not much better. Thaïs got her agents in among them, and recruited a dozen to report to us on what was happening in Mytilene. Most of them were ignorant men, but one was literate and so gifted at spying that by the time the last garrison surrendered after the summer feast of Demeter, he himself was running a dozen other agents and had refused to be ‘rescued’. He remained in place until the city fell to us later, leading the life of a slave, leading teams of saboteurs, scouting for weak points.

I wouldn’t mention it, but that’s your friend Philokles. I never met him, until we fought along the Jaxartes river. But I’m sure it was him. It was a huge war, and yet it seemed like a very small world, and it still does. And the irony of it – Philokles hated Alexander, but he loved liberty, and he loved both Mythymna and Mytilene. And a woman, or so I’m told. It’s his story. Ask him.

At any rate, with Memnon went his intelligence-collection apparatus. We never lost another agent. Now we had the better information, and the networks in place to get the earliest reports of changes in policy. It was clear that Darius meant business. He was raising an army. He was levying troops, and raising rebellions where he could.

I sent Kineas to Parmenio with his Athenians and the promise that I would march in three weeks, when Caria was secure. Then I moved fast, south, clearing the coast road as far as Kallipolis. I gave Queen Ada the keys to her own capital, and left it . . . well, better than I might have. She was a bitter woman. But returning to her earlier armour of doubt, and probably healthier for it.

On my march north, I collected Thaïs and all my baggage, and all my men. I had been king in all but name for almost a year. I think I did pretty well. I certainly enjoyed it.

It was a happy time.

I found, as I marched north, that I hadn’t really thought of Alexander in a year.

TWENTY

When I rode into Gordia, I found something more – and less – than an army camp. Gordia in high summer is a nasty place, where waves of gritty dust roll on the slightest breeze and the sun pounds down like a white-hot aspis held a few arm’s lengths from your face. There’s not enough water and not enough greenery and everyone smells.

I had four thousand men behind me on the bad roads, strung out over fifty stades. My cavalry was at the rear, preserving their horses. I had plundered Caria for horses – with Queen Ada’s willing support – and my Hetaeroi had two or even three chargers apiece – and I meant to keep it that way.

The army camp was vast, reaching across the rolling valley to the north and west. At a glance I thought there were more than thirty thousand men in the valley.

And then there was the other camp.

I rode along the edge of it with the taste of grit in my mouth. There were more than two hundred great pavilions, towering edifices of canvas and silk.

Thaïs sneered. She had a very pretty sneer. She was dressed as a man and riding at my side, our preferred method of travel. With a scarf over her hat, she was invisible to most men. These days, she sometimes led her Angeloi in person, dressed this way.

‘Look at them,’ she said.

They were a new breed of courtiers, a breed of vermin never before seen in a Macedonian army camp. Artists, musicians, actors, prostitutes, politicians from twenty rival cities and every faction in Greece and some in Asia.

Thaïs shook her head. ‘Alexander must be winning,’ she said. ‘These vultures are usually in the Great King’s camp.’

I found Parmenio at the north end of the town, under the great ridge that rose above it. He was standing in the middle of a dozen Macedonian officers, watching two female slaves fight. They’d torn off most of their clothing and they were hard at it in the dust, and they both meant business.

To the Macedonian mind, this is about the highest form of entertainment.

I slid from Poseidon’s back and hobbled over to the old man. I’d been in the saddle for twenty days and I wanted wine, bread and oil, in that order. A massage. A bed with Thaïs in it, if she was clean.

Heh. Anyway, I got to Parmenio, and he turned at my approach and surprised me by throwing his arms around me.

‘There’s a proper Macedonian,’ he said.

Apparently we were few enough on the ground that we all loved each other. I filed that away.