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

I think I’ve made my point. Horsemen eat dust too – but they can ride out of it.

We marched east to the Amanus mountains and then south to Issus. Parmenio took a Persian cavalry patrol, and the officer knew all the details of Darius’s campaign plan – and confirmed the rumour we’d heard from the peasants that Darius would come across the southern pass, which was the kind of slow, conservative move that we expected from Darius, who always seemed, like all Persians, to act to best protect his own communications.

Let me just pause here to note that when I gained high command, I always acted to preserve my communications. Some forms of conservative behaviour just make sense. A starving army is no army at all.

At Epiphaneia, the coast of the sea turns sharply south and the terrain starts to change, from the austerity of Cilicia to the relative richness of Syria. Just a day’s march south of Epiphaneia, the king ordered all of us to leave our baggage and our sick at Issus, a very pleasant small town on its own river. That night, in Issus, there was a general officers’ meeting, and for the first time I attended as a general officer, as opposed to a king’s friend.

Parmenio argued that we should camp on the green plains around Issus and wait for Darius to cross the passes.

He talked for too long. I could see Alexander’s attention wandering, and I’ll just mention here that one of the things that stood between them was that neither of them could really speak to the other in his own language. Parmenio spoke to Alexander as a man speaks to a boy, which robbed even his best arguments of worth. Alexander, on the other hand, always spoke of glory, of religious duty, of omens – he phrased his strategies, which were often as brilliant as Parmenio’s, in the heroic terms of the Iliad . That’s how Alexander saw the world – through the Iliad . Parmenio had, I swear, never even read the Iliad . No, I mean it.

The result should have been lethal to us. I can only suppose that the internal divisions and miscommunications of the Persians were worse.

At any rate, Parmenio argued for putting the army between the passes, sitting and waiting for Darius to make his move. With our backs to the sea and our supplies intact, we had the rest of the fighting weather to wait – all autumn, if Darius hesitated. We had the wages to pay the troops, and we were holding his terrain. In effect, from a moral standpoint, Darius had to come to us.

Like most of Parmenio’s suggestions, it was sound, unexceptional and virtually guaranteed success.

Parmenio further argued, in a monotonous voice that put many officers to sleep, that on the narrow plains this side of the mountain, our flanks – both of them – would be secure, and the Persians’ numbers wouldn’t matter.

But somehow, in his summing up, Parmenio managed to offend Alexander. I watched it happen. He said that our army could not hope to triumph against the Persians in the open field.

Really, that doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Alexander reacted like a horse given too much bit.

He leaped to his feet. ‘If we cross the mountains, Darius will be forced to fight, and his army will be at the disadvantage of knowing themselves the lesser men. Our boldness will disconcert them and make up for any disparity in numbers. We know from the prisoners that Darius was going by the southerly, Syrian Gates. Let us go to the Gates and force our way through before he seizes them, and the whole plain of the Euphrates is before us.’

Like all of Alexander’s visions, it was bold to the point of madness. The young men were fired by it and the old men shook their heads. His voice rose with emotion, the more so as he was not yet fully recovered and his hands still shook when he got excited.

Parmenio shook his head. ‘Lord, this is folly.’

That was waving a red flag. Sometimes I thought that Parmenio did this on purpose, to drive Alexander to recklessness and defeat, but none of the old man’s other behaviours tended that way. Perhaps he couldn’t help himself. I’ve seen parents make the same error with a wayward child. In fact, I’ve made it myself.

Parmenio was shouted down, and we marched before light in the morning, headed south for the Syrian Gates. We were outnumbered two to one, but this, we all knew, was the battle for Asia.

If anyone worried because the king’s eyes glittered or his hands shook, they kept that to themselves.

The rains started two days south of Issus, and they battered us like a living embodiment of Poseidon pouring himself on the land, and men offered sacrifices – the sea was so angry, over to our right, and we passed very slowly through the Pillar of Jonah. Men were lost to the waves, and baggage animals. We had to march virtually single file, and when the water rose too high, we just had to wait. You don’t know it? Well, there’s a point south of Issus where the coast road has to go down the cliffs and across the beach. Just for a few stades – and the beach is wide and easy – unless Poseidon is angry. When we crossed, it was as narrow as a cart track in the mountains, and the penalty for slipping was drowning.

Then we marched farther along the coast, taking Myriandros. There, at Parmenio’s insistence, we sent Philotas with six hundred cavalry into the passes to make sure we could get across before Darius did. That much caution the king accepted.

I was summoned to the command tent in the morning, at which time I was standing on a wagon bed holding my morning orders group. I had just managed to get all of my phylarchs to laugh at a fairly weak witticism when Black Cleitus appeared behind me, spoke to Polystratus and literally ran off.

That caught my attention. I turned to Polystratus, who was mounted.

Polystratus was laconic. ‘Trouble,’ he said.

Such was my trust in Alexander that I assumed it was trouble between Parmenio and Alexander, or medical trouble. I left Isokles to command the troops and I jumped on Medea (a new Medea, a beautiful Arab palfrey with a small head and a wonderful stride), and cantered across the camp to Alexander’s pavilion. At the palisade gate, there were forty men – disfigured men, most of them blinded, many with other wounds. Prisoners? I passed them, thinking on the fates.

No one was talking when I entered. But every officer in the army was there. Parmenio’s face was white and red – blotches of red. That meant rage.

Alexander was smiling.

No one was saying anything.

Craterus was my brigadier, so I went and stood with him and Perdiccas, and he gave me a nod.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

Perdiccas caught my eye and I followed him out of the tent.

‘Darius tricked us. He’s already behind us – has retaken Issus and all our baggage. He . . . blinded most of our sick and wounded, except a few he left with one eye.’ Perdiccas shrugged.

‘Ares,’ I breathed. Now Darius had us. He was on our communications. He’d outmarched us.

Darius, the slow, conservative Persian.

I followed Perdiccas back inside.

Parmenio was busy apportioning blame. ‘I told you!’ he shouted as I entered. ‘Darius will pick a river – the one with the steepest sides – and he’ll entrench on the other side, and we will have to fight through him. We’re going to have to attack an entrenched army that is double our size.’

Alexander’s smile never wavered. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory. And now Darius is committed to fight. He won’t be allowed to slip away.’

Parmenio was about to go on with his (perfectly accurate) rant, but Alexander’s comment brought him up short.

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Parmenio asked. ‘This is not a play. This is not a game. If we fail to break Darius, we are done . We will have lost .’ He was so angry that spittle flew from his mouth.