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

Alexander’s smile was like the grin of a satyr. ‘Then we’d best win, hadn’t we?’ he said, and his confidence was both infectious and offensive, all at the same time.

Two more days of rain, and we came back to the Pillar of Jonah. Darius could have held it against us for ever, but that wasn’t his style. He wanted a field battle as much as Alexander did. So we began to pass it, led by the Agrianians and the Thracians and Paeonians, who went through as fast as men could swim and run, and then spread out on the far side to give us some cover.

That night, we camped on the heights north of the Pillars, and we could see Darius’s fires like a carpet of fireflies. The weather was mild in the evening, but around midnight the rains returned, drowning out Alexander’s attempt to make a burned offering on an ancient altar in the hills.

I doubt my men were dry, but here’s the value of an old sweat like Isokles – he’d spent time training the new men to build shelters. Recruits build shelters that trap water and soak their cloaks – and then fall down at the first touch of wind. Veterans tend to build tiny, snug shelters that will last out a hurricane and have room for five men as long as the men don’t mind lying atop each other. Warm men can sleep, even if they are damp. Our men built some remarkable shelters that night – I remember them – my favourite of which (remember we were camped on a steep hillside) was a shallow cave with stakes driven deep into the sandy soil at the back – and then the file’s shields carefully laid across the stakes to form a roof of solid wood and hide. With some cloaks and some stolen cloth to pad it out, it was as dry as a bone and warm in there. I know, because that’s where I ate breakfast in the morning. With the rain still pouring down.

I had some old friends to breakfast, because we’d made camp late and were all camped together on the ridge – pezhetaeroi and Agrianians and hypaspitoi and Hetaeroi, too. So Bubores and Astibus shared my hot wine and honey, my barley with local yogurt – and those were a general officer’s provisions, gathered by expert foragers like Ochrid. We were in trouble, and everyone knew it.

Later, I gathered that the yogurt cost me a gold daric. The cost of a good donkey, at home.

Bubores was delighted by the provender, and deeply troubled. Astibus was less concerned, but he kept looking at the rain as he chewed his three-day-old bread, and both of them were damp and less than lively company.

Polystratus made room for Strakos, who pushed in under the shields like a dancer, carefully avoiding putting undue pressure on the supports or shaking water off the shields.

‘What news?’ Polystratus asked the Angelos.

Strakos laughed. ‘Darius has a huge army, and it is still raining,’ he said. He got his cloak off and threw it out into the rain.

Bubores looked at me from under his eyebrows. ‘It’s the wrath of the gods,’ he said quietly.

Astibus rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t start that crap again,’ he said. ‘It’s bad weather, and it is just as bad for the Persians.’

Bubores shrugged. ‘I know what I know,’ he muttered.

‘What do you know?’ I asked. Bubores had a reputation in Aegema as a seer and a bit of an astrologer – self-taught, but still respected.

He rocked back on his heels. He could sit on his heels more comfortably than any man I’d ever seen. ‘There’s a blood offence against the gods,’ he said firmly. ‘It must be expiated.’

This wasn’t just bad morale. This was a serious accusation. Ignoring this kind of thing is what got Parmenio into trouble. ‘Have you spoken to the king?’ I asked.

Bubores shrugged. ‘It is the king’s to answer,’ he said in his deep voice.

Astibus slapped his shoulder. ‘You and your dark premonitions! At Halicarnassus, you said—’

‘It’s the rain,’ Strakos said. ‘The Thracians are openly mutinous. Last night I heard a group of them preparing to desert to Darius.’

Polystratus nodded. ‘There’s men among the Paeonian cavalry who are suggesting the same.’

Polystratus handed me a cup of hot wine, and I drank it – rich with honey, the nectar of the gods. I passed it around. It was my job to tell them that this was all nonsense, and we’d be triumphant in the end, and I was just framing my reply when Cleomenes pointed to the beach below us.

‘Look at him,’ Cleomenes said, awe in his voice.

Alexander had ordered that his four-horse chariot be hitched on the beach. The horses were restless in the rain and thunder – but even in the rain, they gleamed with gold and animal magnificence. Alexander was practically at our feet – as I say, we were eating our barley in a dry cave on a steep hillside in the first light. The rain lashed us, the wind blew straight out to sea from the land, and the king’s pavilion was directly below mine.

Alexander emerged from it naked except for a wreath of gold. He had a good body – his legs were a little short for perfection, and his shoulders were a little narrow, but he was always in top shape, every ridge on his abdomen perfectly defined, and he never minded being seen naked. Now he leaped into his chariot and whipped his horses along the beach, and as he drove them along the front of the army, men stood up, despite the rain, and cheered him.

By the gods, he was the king.

He looked like a god, and the rain didn’t change that. Had he driven in a sodden purple cloak, he’d have looked like a fool, but naked he looked like Poseidon’s son, or Zeus’s, as much a creature of the weather as the horses.

I will never forget the sight. He was a god. What more can I say?

From the far end of the beach – the end closest to the Persians, about twenty-five stades away – he turned the chariot and drove it back along the army at a dead gallop, the wheels throwing sand, the horse’s hooves shaking the earth, so that we could feel his passage upon our ridge. His hair blew out behind him despite the rain.

And then he turned the chariot – right into the sea.

He drove his chariot, horses and all, until the horses were swimming. The weight of their harness dragged them down. They panicked when they were too deep to save themselves – there was a steep drop just off the beach, and the whole chariot, car, team, gold and all, vanished into the dark line of water just off the beach.

The whole beach was stunned into silence. We sat there. Thirty thousand men. Men coughed, and it disturbed the silence. That’s how quiet we were.

The rain stopped .

And just beyond the line where the dark water met the light water, a blond head, dark with wet and crowned with bright green kelp, surfaced.

The sun broke through the clouds .

I was there. The sun came out, and turned his hair to a fiery gold as he walked up the beach.

It was the greatest, most perfect sacrifice I have ever seen, and Poseidon gave us his favour immediately. I think of it every time I make sacrifice. Impiety is for the foolish, lad. I was there .

The army stood as one man, as if it was drill, and bellowed our cheers to Apollo Helios and to Zeus, and to Alexander, son of the gods, crowned by Poseidon.

Bubores was beaming like the sun, pumping his fist in the air, with Astibus pounding him on the back, and even Strakos, who never betrayed emotion, was grinning from ear to ear.

And then, in the light of the warm sun, we donned our sodden equipment and we marched towards Darius.

We marched out of the defile where we’d camped in a column of files. Alexander’s plan was as simple as one of Parmenio’s, with the difference that Alexander played with his plans constantly, so that a string of messengers altered our dispositions all the time.