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

I shrugged and went to the kitchen.

Nike wasn’t there. There was a cook, a big African I’d never seen before, with a gold earring and a faintly military air. Clearly a freeman – the earring was worth ten days’ wages. ‘Lady Nike?’

‘Changing clothes,’ he said, with one hand on a bronze pan and the other on some eggs. ‘Don’t bother me right now, lord.’

By the time I went back into the hallway, she was there, wearing a fine blue wool chiton in the old Ionian manner, pinned with some very plain bronze pins which I determined on the spot to replace with gold. I snatched a kiss, with spectacular success. Isn’t there something almost miraculous to kissing someone who wants to kiss you? Then she pulled free.

‘Don’t muss my hair,’ she said, and ignoring my attempts to stop her and give her advice, she walked into the andron.

Alexander was drinking again. Nearchus looked . . . frightened. Cleomenes was laughing and Philip was laughing with him. But they all straightened up when Nike came in. She was that kind of girl.

She made a low curtsy to Alexander – just the sort of curtsy she’d have made at one of the shrines.

He looked her over with an air that made me angry – as if she were unfit for human consumption.

‘The food is excellent,’ he said.

‘Thank you, lord,’ she answered.

‘You are a freewoman, I think,’ he said.

She nodded.

‘You can cook and weave, then? How about . . .’ He drawled the question – he meant to offend. ‘How about reading?’

‘I’ve read Isocrates,’ she said.

I’ve seen Alexander surprised a half-dozen times, I think. Maybe more. Not often, though. But when Nike said ‘Isocrates’ his eyes opened wider and his brows shot up. Even his mane of hair seemed to move.

‘Really?’ he asked. ‘And what did you gather from his works?’

She didn’t meet his eye. ‘That he’d like a place at your father’s court,’ she said. ‘And that it is time Macedon stopped playing with Greece and took Persia, instead.’ She had a matter-of-fact delivery that was like Aristotle’s – it was difficult to contradict her, as I learned early in our relationship, and love never stopped her from being ‘right’.

Alexander clapped his hands together, much in the way he might have done for a talking dog, I fear. You have to remember that Aristotle had no time for women at all, and Philip liked them only at the end of his cock, and even then he found them interchangeable with men. Alexander’s mother was too feminine, too much the avatar of Dionysian excess. He didn’t have any charming, witty, argumentative women in his life.

More’s the pity. Aristotle told him that pleasure came with cost, and distracted great men from great deeds, and he took that bait and swallowed it. Domestic happiness puzzled him utterly.

He interrogated her for as long as it took the brazier to burn down, and never asked her to sit. He asked her about her father, about her education, about her views of women as priestesses, as mothers – asked her whether she planned to be a mother.

At first I found it offensive, and then I found the explanation. She was suddenly the ambassador of the tribe of women to the court of Alexander. He’d never really had one to talk to before. And he always kept ambassadors standing because he forgot to ask them to sit – because questioning them about their alien lands excited him so much.

When I understood that, I drank a little to catch up, caught her eye and winked, and she stood calmly and answered him as best she could – some sharp answers, some witty answers, and some plain answers.

When she said that, yes, she wanted to have children, he smiled at her.

‘Ptolemy’s sons? Or will you wed some lesser man?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure that I can answer that,’ she said. ‘Nor would I, even if I knew.’ She met his eye, and for a moment the Prince of Macedon was eye to eye with a tiger. Neither shrank.

‘Fascinating,’ he said. ‘I drink to you, my lady.’

And then he was finished with her. I took her by the hand and led her out, and she walked into our bedroom and threw up in a basin, and then tidied herself and went to the kitchen to see what had happened to the barley rolls. That was Nike.

I walked him home, with Nearchus and Cleomenes and Philip as guards – because people did want to kill him, and the streets of Pella after dark were an unbeatable opportunity.

He seemed sober. But just short of the palace, he turned to me. ‘I’m not sure that wasn’t the best dinner I’ve ever had,’ he said. ‘And I’m not sure what to think of that.’

‘You are welcome any time,’ I said.

‘Good. I’ll come the second day of every week. I may invite one or two others. See to it that the duty officer knows the way.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry, please ask the lady Nike if I might come every Tuesday.’

I grinned. ‘I will,’ I said.

Those dinners saved his life. And more. But that’s another story.

FIVE

In spring, we marched.

In fact, it was still late winter, and there was snow everywhere, and our farm-boy recruits got to march through it in Iphactrian sandals that made the snow pack in under the soles of the feet – I was wearing them myself.

Camping an army in snow is dreadful. First, because everything is wet. Snow is water held close to the ground, ready to turn back to water the moment you are comfortable. In higher areas, it stays snow for a while and you are merely cold, but in spring – water, waiting to happen.

Second, because everything wet is cold. Even wood has to be warmed and dried before it will ignite.

There’s no casual forage for animals. The grass – old, tough and useless – is under the snow. Animals use energy getting at it.

And the process of freezing and thawing turns roads to mush. In late summer and early autumn, a good dirt road has a surface like builder’s concrete or better, and can shed water from a long rain. But in early spring, there is no surface, and every wheel rut is a potential spiked pit of death for carts or hooves. I was ready, this time – in fact, I was merely Antipater’s aide, and didn’t bear the full weight of the responsibility, although I’d done a great deal of the work. I had spare wheels in every other cart, my carts were the pick of the litter and not the runts and my draught animals would have been chosen as cavalry horses in most armies.

We had two thousand infantry, almost all recruits. We had all the former pages over sixteen years old, three full troops of fifty, each with three chargers and a fully armed groom. Most of us had three or four grooms, although only one was armed and armoured. Polystratus was mine.

We stopped in Thessaly and picked up two hundred young noblemen. We looked at them with some amusement as they flailed around being miserable, camping in the snow – they were as tough as nails, but this was outside their experience. A man can camp in the snow with his pater and a pair of retainers while hunting and still not have a clue how to keep clean and neat and warm in the midst of four thousand men.

At any rate, we crossed the high passes in temperatures that made all of us bond. I was widely envied for my foresight in bringing my own bed-warmer – Nike came. I was an officer – I could get away with it. And her talent for organisation – and her willingness to win Polystratus as an ally – made her perfect for the life. She had food ready when my duty was over – not just for me but for my mess. Don’t imagine she cooked it herself. She simply organised all the servants in our mess like a little military unit and had them rotate all the duties. She got them tents, too. Our little corner of the companions’ camp went up in no time, and had a central street, with our tents on one side and the servants’ tents on the other and the fires in between. Before we were out of the mountain passes, this had become the pattern for all the younger companions, and we all lived better for it, with our fires and our weapons closer to hand. Not all these ideas were Nike’s – some were mine, some Philip’s, some Alexander’s, some Polystratus’s. But we implemented them all on that march, and we had a better, tighter, more defensible camp with happier camp servants and warmer men as a result.