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

Diades nodded his thanks to me.

Cleitus fingered his beard. ‘If we fail here . . .’ he ventured.

Diades slammed his fist on the table. ‘We do not need to fail!’ he roared, no longer timid.

Alexander looked around. It was not like him to be so cautious, but he had been shaken by the killing of the ambassadors. The very impiety of it stung him.

‘Parmenio?’ he asked.

‘Oh, you want my opinion?’ Parmenio asked. ‘Delighted to give it. March away. Always bypass strength. Except that in this case, your whole strategy is that we can take any city along the coast that can offer a harbour to the Persian fleet – isn’t it? So your strategy requires that we take this city – and every other city from Ionia to Aegypt.’ He sighed theatrically. ‘Of course, we could just march home. We’re richer than Croesus. We hold the best part of the empire. And my soldiers are tired, Alexander.’

Alexander nodded. ‘My soldiers, Parmenio.’ He looked past the old general to me. ‘Ptolemy?’

‘I lost half of my new levies at Issus,’ I said. ‘I’ve had eleven suicides and four murders in the last month.’ I looked around and saw a great many heads nodding. ‘I’m concerned that while we sit here, Pharnabazus is retaking Ionia behind us, rendering our efforts meaningless. But . . . I agree with Diades – if we put our minds to it, I’m sure we can do it. I would only hope that once we decide on a course, we set that course in stone.’ I stood up. ‘Again, let me mention the Halicarnassus forts. It will take a long time. But like many tasks, it is the task never begun that is impossible.’

Alexander frowned. ‘Do I ever change my mind, once I am set on a thing?’ he asked.

Like many men, Alexander had a vision of himself that was at odds with the reality. Some men see themselves as timely, but are forever late. Other men see themselves as great lovers, and women tell a different story. So with Alexander, who thought that he possessed a will of iron.

Parmenio guffawed. ‘You change your mind like a woman,’ he said.

Very helpful.

Diades alone stuck to his message. ‘We can build something worthy of a descendant of Herakles,’ he said. ‘Perhaps greater than any labour of Herakles.’

Alexander looked at him. Looked at Parmenio.

He was silent for a long time. And then he stood straight like a sword blade, and spoke like an orator.

‘Friends and allies,’ he began, and his full charm was on. ‘I see that an expedition to Aegypt will not be safe for as long as the Persians retain the sovereignty of the sea, nor is it a safe course for other reasons – and especially looking at the state of matters in Greece – for us to pursue Darius, leaving in our rear the city of Tyre itself. I would be precipitous if I were to advance with our forces towards Babylon and in pursuit of Darius and allow the Persians to reconquer the maritime districts – and with them in hand, to transfer the war into Greece with a larger army, considering that the Lacedaemonians are now waging war against us without disguise, and the city of Athens is restrained for the present rather by fear than by any goodwill towards us! But if Tyre were captured, the whole of Phoenicia would be in our possession and the fleet of the Phoenicians, which is the most numerous and the best in the Persian navy, would in all probability come over to us. For the Phoenician sailors and marines will not put to sea in order to incur danger on behalf of others when their own cities are occupied by us. After that – well, Cyprus will either yield to us without delay or it will be captured with ease at the mere arrival of a naval force – which then prosecutes the war with the ships from Macedonia in conjunction with those of the Phoenicians.’ He looked around.

Alexander seldom made long speeches, and when he did, with his face shining, his whole attention on his audience, he was virtually impossible to resist. Even Parmenio was nodding along.

‘Once Cyprus is in our hands, we shall have the absolute sovereignty of the sea, and at the same time an expedition into Egypt will become easier for us. After we have brought Aegypt into subjection, no anxiety about Greece and our own land will any longer remain, and we shall be able to undertake the expedition to Babylon in safety with regard to affairs at home and at the same time with greater reputation in consequence of having cut off from the Persian empire all the maritime provinces and all the land this side of the Euphrates. And at Tyre, we shall have shown the world that we are worthy sons of Herakles!’

Sons of Herakles. As Diades intended, the very challenge fired him, and he, in turn, shot it at us. Because the men of Macedon see themselves as the heirs of Herakles.

The siege was on.

Diades rode around the countryside for ten days while the Tyrians jeered at our lack of effort. When he returned, he sat with Alexander for most of a day.

I sat with Thaïs, who was deeply depressed because she was pregnant, and because the Tyrians had executed one of her agents in their horrible way and dumped his body in the sea. I tried to console her that they’d executed three other men who were not her agents. ‘If they kill three of theirs for every one of ours, we will win the siege in a month,’ I joked.

She raised her eyes. ‘Leave me,’ she said. And she meant it. Never make a jest about defeat or death.

I wandered among my troops, watched a dice game, watched two men beat a slave, watched two more men butchering a lamb. The pezhetaeroi were sullen and didn’t want me in their camp. I went to sit and drink wine with Marsyas and Cleomenes, but they were screaming at each other like prostitutes fighting over a customer in the streets of Athens – and on the same subject.

‘She was mine ,’ Cleomenes shrieked.

‘She’s not a slave. You cannot own a woman.’ Marsyas spoke in the sneering way that poets have when being superior, always the very best way to incite a riot.

Two of my officers, standing in the street, fighting over a woman. With half a thousand of their own men watching.

Cleomenes reached for the dagger he always wore. Really, we all wore them. I grabbed his hand from behind and then had to kick Marsyas in the crotch as he had drawn his and in his rage seemed to think I was pinning Cleomenes’ arms for him.

Macedon. I tell you.

As Marsyas the Poet fell forward, I slammed his forehead into Cleomenes’ forehead and the two fell together to the ground.

I didn’t feel any better, but I’m sure that I helped to preserve discipline, which was going to Hades already, and we were on the day before the start of a year-long siege. Bubores, passing by, helped me take them to their tents.

‘We had a murder this morning,’ he said sullenly.

As I left Cleomenes’ tent, I couldn’t help but note that the men going on guard were drunk.

However, the finest anodyne to soldiers’ behaviour is work. And suddenly, the God of Work, with his high priest Diades, descended from the heavens. And none too soon.

He had divided the areas around the landward end of his proposed mole into districts, and he’d assigned one each to all of the pezhetaeroi commanders. We were to employ our men as labour, and gather stone and wood.

Craterus held a meeting and suggested that we refuse.

‘You have to be kidding,’ I said. I remember laughing at him. ‘It’s better than my lads deserve. I intend to work them like slaves. Until I trowel off the fat and the bad attitude.’

Perdiccas nodded. Perdiccas and I had always been rivals – but having reached high command, we were, somehow, allies. He rubbed his chin and drank wine and then nodded. ‘If I enforced the king’s law about harming civilians,’ he said, ‘I’d have no phalangites. Last night, some of my men were sending children into the hills so they could hunt them. I need this work .’