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

Of course, I knew none of this, but a god, watching from above with a magic helmet that allowed him to see through dust, might have noticed that the king’s battle plan was still intact. Our army would have looked like an embattled crab – with Persians almost all the way around us.

That’s what was happening elsewhere.

Here’s what happened where I was.

Alexander charged. But there was nothing simple about it, and while the troopers no doubt thought that it was all hard fighting, I could watch it unfold, and to me, it was all about precise manoeuvre.

As at Issus, he had formed two thousand Hetaeroi into a single wedge with himself at the head, sixty ranks deep at the centre, sixty files wide at the rear base of the triangle. The most manoeuvrable formation that you can achieve with cavalrymen.

Then he danced with it. The gap was off to his right, and Alexander faced his wedge to the right and trotted there, faster than the Persians could respond – possibly before anyone had noticed that the charge of the Persian left flank, intended to envelop our right, had opened this gap.

To genius, Alexander added patience and craftsmanship. He didn’t race to the gap and charge. He trotted past the gap and wheeled his wedge back, so that it formed an arrowhead pointing through the gap and back towards Darius. Alexander wasn’t just going to break the line. Alexander intended to kill the King of Kings. Himself. Just as he had told us.

I had time to watch it all. And I had time to watch the hypaspitoi under Nicanor wheel off by divisions to the right and reform.

My rear files then closed to the front on my line.

The hypaspitoi charged first. It is remarkable that every account – even the Military Journal – suggests that Alexander led the first, last and only important charge. I think it is a comment on what a bunch of subservient flunkies we became after Gaugamela that every man within a stade knew that Nicanor led the charge and Nicanor had his orders from the king.

Nicanor slammed into the Greek mercenaries – the best infantry Darius had, except possibly his Immortal Guards. His attack was executed faultlessly, at the double – the most difficult speed for formed troops, but devastating if delivered perfectly, and the hypaspitoi were the essence of perfection that day. They struck the Greeks, who were waiting at a stand, crumpled their front ranks and shoved their entire phalanx back ten horse lengths.

The Greeks held. But only just, and as soon as the pushing started, they were at a disadvantage – literally, rocked back on their heels.

Now every man in the Persian ranks opposite my taxeis was looking to his left, watching. Because suddenly the Persian Immortals were naked – their own left flank now hanging in the air.

I stepped forward. The Immortals were lofting arrows, but from a stade’s distance, they were more an irritation than a threat. And it told me that the Immortals were shaken.

‘Ready!’ I bellowed like a bull.

Sixteen hundred voices roared.

‘Spears! Down!’ I ordered. Two hundred and fifty files, covering more than a stade – only four or six deep. But the spears came down from the high carry to the attack.

I tucked myself back into my place. Latched my cheek-flaps. Now my view of the battle was cut again – from the panorama of the dusty line to the tunnel that led from me to the sun disc standard of the Immortals. Under their standards, they stood in perfect rows – sons of noblemen, in fine scale armour, with heavy spears and beautiful recurved bows; their alien trousers tucked into boots made of the finest leather; every man had on him enough gold to pay a file of Macedonian phalangites for a year. The officers had long beards like old-fashioned Greeks, and a few had them hennaed bright red.

‘Front! March!’ I called.

Opposite me, orders were being roared in Persian.

To my left, Coenus was matching his front rank to mine. He was eight deep, and would be more fearsome. His men overlapped the Persian guards and were facing more Greek mercenaries.

A few arrows came in, and then a volley, all loosed together – someone had fucked that up, as we were still well out.

‘At the double! March, march!’ I roared. I had not, until that moment, intended to duplicate the prowess of the hypaspitoi and charge at the double. But the early, sloppy volley of arrows gave me a slight edge. If we hurried. Perhaps Apis inspired me, or Herakles, my ancestor.

Had even one sarissa-man in the front rank tripped over a rock, or taken an arrow in the throat, it might have unravelled our front rank.

Ten horse lengths out. You can see men’s faces under their helmets.

Five, and all you feel is the gravel under your feet. There are no more thoughts, no more observations. You are no longer hot or cold, nervous, terrified, or even calm.

You are the spear. And the moment.

Men tell wonderful tales of combat. I do myself. Most of it is lies and impressions gathered up by the mind after the fact, with the lies of others added in for good measure. But I remember two parts of that fight.

Our line was well formed when we hit. That, by itself, was a miracle. So I was neither ahead of nor behind the rest of the rank when I struck, and because we slightly overlapped the end of the Immortals’ line where the Greeks had been shoved away from them, I passed the end of their line, ran a few paces and watched my men crash into the Immortals like a mighty wave on a calm beach which heralds the coming of a storm. Five or six files were with me, and we wheeled – an orderly not-quite-mob – into their left flank. A man’s left flank is his shielded flank, and ordinarily, this flank is not particularly productive to strike – especially as we were so few, just thirty men, and we couldn’t strike deep.

But the Immortals had kept their bows in their hands too long, and were still getting them back in their cases, and someone had ordered the rear ranks to keep shooting.

I had my best new spear in my hand, overhand as on the old vases, and I was killing men before I reached their line – shieldless men with too little armour. The overhand spear thrust comes down from above, into the throat, into the top of the thigh, into the breastbone, into the helmet. Without a shield, a man is all but helpless before it.

We were just thirty men, but we must have put twice that number on the ground in the time it took Perdiccas’s men to give our charge and Coenus’s three cheers. The Immortals were already jumpy – the Greek mercenaries had recoiled again – and they flinched from our attack into their flanks, and the front didn’t stand its ground.

I still had my eyes on that great golden disc. I didn’t know whether it was the king’s or just the banner of the Immortals, but I killed my way towards it.

I had a wonderful new sword – my favourite, I think, of all the swords I’d ever had. Thaïs gave it to me. It was a simple kopis, neither long nor short, not even fancy – but magnificently balanced, so that it felt like a feather – a deadly feather – in the hand. And yet, whatever I hit, parted. Flesh, leather, bronze – at one point, my beautiful sword cut through the iron rim of a Persian shield.

My Ionians were singing the paean. I had forgotten – we Macedonians don’t usually sing it after we leave camp. But it was beautiful. And the brashness of it killed the Persians as thoroughly as our spears.

A big man came out of the dust. A man with a hennaed beard – an officer with more gold on him than Thaïs wore as an Aegyptian priestess, and his first blow took the head off my best spear, and he hammered me with a long-handled axe, and his blows began to destroy my aspis.

I made myself push forward into his blows, but a blow from outside my field of vision knocked the sword from my hand. I got a hand on his right elbow and shoved him – turned him – hammered the rim of my aspis into the small of his back and he roared, and I got a leg behind his as he cut back into me, put his arse against my hip and flipped him with my sword arm, over my hip and into the dust – kicked him, and then fell on him with my dagger from my side, and he was leaking in the sand and I was up and moving.