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

I sent it back to the king with Pyrrhus and ten troopers, and then I sat in Mazaka and waited for Philotas. He came up the next day, and I was happy to see him, and he to see me. Things are different, once the fur begins to fly.

Kineas was four more days, and all his horses looked as if they were going to die. He’d gone as far east as Tyana and had made two contacts with the Persian scouts coming over the mountains from the Euphrates Valley, far to the east. The Persians were closer than we hoped, though farther than our worst fears. Just like war.

Philotas wanted to go for the Gates with five or six hundred horse, but I restrained him gently. I appealed to his fear of failure.

The king crossed the desert in three days. He did it with night marches – always easier in the desert – and forward stores of water.

When he was a day away and we were in contact with the Prodromoi, Polystratus came back with a gold ring and a promise.

‘He’s a right bastard, and that’s no mistake, lord,’ Polystratus said. ‘He wants to play both sides – said he won’t openly go against the Great King, but that he’ll keep all but his advance guard out of the Gates and it’s up to us to get through them.’ Polystratus shrugged. ‘And that’s what we get for a thousand talents.’

But Alexander agreed like a shot, and then he sent the Thracians, the Agrianians and a company of hypaspitoi through the gates. The Cretan archers and the Macedonian crossbowmen moved along the high ground, slowly but thoroughly, and the Thracians tripped anything they came across, and the army marched in behind us – I was with the archers. Alexander was so confident that the advance guard didn’t even leave a day in advance. We moved at a slow walking pace, and we surprised the poor bastards at the break of the second day. It was red slaughter, professionals against amateurs. When the Thracians broke them, the Agrianians harried them along the ridges and the archers shot them down.

We were beginning to see what two years of Memnon had done to us. We had a team.

Three days of careful movement, advancing from one strong-point to the next, the two groups on either ridge supporting each other, and we were through. The plains around Tarsus were so green they seemed to burn green, and I could see the sea in the distance. Behind me, the army began to shout, ‘Thalassa!’ like Xenophon’s hoplites, and men hugged each other.

Arsames was burning the plains, scorching the crops to deny us food.

We picked up a bunch of angry peasants who claimed he was going to burn the city.

Parmenio was commanding the advance guard himself, and he told us to go for it. His assumption was that if the local people viewed us as liberators, the worst we’d get was a bloody nose.

Alexander was in the rear. Rumour was that he’d drunk too much the night before with Parmenio, and could barely ride.

Kineas’s Athenians were the first into Tarsus, because he went by road while I covered his flanks and two heavy troops of Thessalians covered mine. We found Arsames just north of the city and had a sharp skirmish, but he had no confidence, or he was a traitor, or whatever happened inside that kind of man’s head, and his troops ran. Kineas secured the north gate – more, he said later, by happenstance than by plan.

We took Tarsus intact, granaries and all. And Arsames rode off to the east to join King Darius, whom he had just betrayed, either by crass incompetence or by greed.

Alexander was one of the last men into the city. He’d spent the day, unaware we were fighting, driving the stragglers across the last of the desert and up into the Gates, making sure that no one lay down and died. It was noble of him, but when he came in through the north gate, he was tired, hot and surly, because we’d fought a nice little action, taken prisoners, seized a town, and all without him.

And we were through the greatest obstacle in Asia.

But he brightened up when he heard the tale, and he gave Kineas his hand and thanked him. Kineas adored the king. He didn’t see the flaws beneath the surface. To Kineas, Alexander was the hegemon of the League, leading us to revenge against Persia. And the hegemon’s thanks made him glow with joy.

Alexander rode along with Philotas, Kineas and Parmenio. I trailed behind. He rode down to the river, which flowed icy cold from the mountains we’d just traversed.

Kineas put his hand on the king’s bridle when Alexander moved to dismount. ‘I lost a horse to that river this morning, lord,’ Kineas said.

Parmenio laughed. ‘Don’t be such a nursemaid, Athenian! In Macedon, we swim in ice.’

The king stripped off his chiton and boots and dived into the clear water and surfaced, spluttering. Hephaestion leaped in after him, shrieked and swam back to the bank.

He crawled out, laughing. ‘Zeus! My balls are gone.’

We all joined him. I was stripping off my own chiton when I realised that the king wasn’t there. Everyone else realised it at the same time, and we charged into the water – me, Philotas, Seleucus, Black Cleitus, Philip the Red and Kineas. We found him floating just under the surface, and we hauled him to the bank. He was having some sort of fit, and his skin was dead white. He’d taken in some water, too.

Everyone assumed he’d breathed too much water, and we did what men do for a drowning victim – a blanket, and Hephaestion forced air into his lungs, and he breathed.

But an hour later, he was no better.

By nightfall, he was speechless and his eyes were closed and his breathing was rough.

Parmenio took command. Thaïs had agents here, and they reported that Darius was just ten or fifteen days to the east. We were too close to break off in safety. Parmenio held a command council the first night of the king’s illness and told us that, while he doubted the wisdom of facing the Great King, he was going to accept battle if he could get it on his own terms.

Perhaps I defame him, but I heard a man making his bid for the kingship. If he defeated Darius, no Macedonian would stand in his way. I think we all knew it.

After the meeting, I went to the king’s tent. The vultures were gone. I wondered if they were already clamouring for Parmenio’s attention.

I gave the password to the guards and entered the tent. Alexander was awake. He was pale in the lamplight, and only his head showed. His eyes were wild, and his hair was plastered to his forehead.

I sat down, and Hephaestion got up with an ill grace and made room for me.

‘I must get up,’ Alexander said.

I shook my head. ‘Parmenio is no fool. He’ll fight.’

But Alexander shook his head, and his whole body shook. ‘This is the battle!’ he said, with so much force that they must have heard him in the streets of Tarsus. ‘This is the battle. Not for Parmenio! For me!’ He all but writhed.

‘He just keeps saying that,’ Hephaestion complained. ‘I can’t get him to sleep.’

I took his hands. ‘There will be other fights, lord,’ I said. In fact, I had my doubts. The odds were long, and if we won, and Parmenio led us – well, I’ve said before that Alexander’s popularity with the troops was based on godlike demeanour and unbroken victory.

‘My battle!’ he said, and his eyes rolled back in his head.

Parmenio took the Thracians, all the light cavalry and his precious Thessalians and rode east. I should have gone, but Thaïs convinced me that Parmenio meant to kill Alexander with poison. Or that, rather, it was possible enough to warrant caution. But the king drank only water and ate only bread, and I didn’t see how he was getting poison.

Five days of this and the king was obviously losing weight, and his stomach had swelled in an odd and very bad way. His gut hurt all the time. He didn’t scream, but he lay on his camp bed and made grunting noises when he thought we couldn’t hear him.