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

Walk. As soon as my whole line was in motion, Erygius had his trumpeter blow trot. I angled my path across the front of the cavalry and raised my spear. I was damned if the Mytileneian veteran was going to lead this charge. This was my charge.

In the cavalry school, when you are a page, the instructors – all men with a lot of fighting behind them – say that the crucial moment in a cavalry charge is when you are five horse lengths from the enemy spear-points. They knew what they were talking about. There is some complex mechanism – the sort of thing Aristotle would have loved to analyse – whereby man and horse make a nested set of decisions. I suspect it is the distance at which the horse can really see the spears. The horse has to decide for itself – over, around, through, back. And the rider – at once master and passenger – can convey determination or indecision with the slightest shift of his arse. Horses know.

I knew the moment I got out in front that the Sacred Band had their spear-points down and we were not going over them.

So I turned my horse and raced for the rear corner of their formation, as my charge dissolved behind me.

The companions baulked.

In storybooks, cavalrymen ride infantrymen down – crashing in through their spear-points, hewing to the right and left.

Not in real life. In real life, no horse will go through a formed, unshaken body of men – even if they are armed only with pitchforks or their fists. Daimon is everything in a fight between infantry and cavalry. The daimon that motivates men to fight, to stand, to flinch, to run – that daimon.

The Sacred Band were only eight ranks deep, so they had only eight files facing me.

The end two troops were actually well past the end of their line. I raced for them, caught the attention of their phylarchs and started them in a wheel – a broad sweeping wheel into the flank and rear of the Sacred Band.

Some of the men in the rear ranks turned, and some didn’t.

I’m a quick learner. Having halted once to dress my ranks and missed an opportunity, this time I didn’t wait for perfection. As soon as I saw that at least one troop leader had the idea, I led like a Macedonian should.

I set Poseidon’s head at a gap in the enemy ranks where the fourth and fifth men in the rear rank were arguing. The corner of the enemy body was a mess.

This is where horseflesh means a great deal, because Poseidon was smart, strong and well trained. So I let him go. I didn’t aim him – he aimed me.

And then – then, it was just me and the Sacred Band. About eight of them, at the right rear corner of their original formation – meaning that I was facing file closers and right file men, the very best of the best, except for the front rank.

I didn’t think of all that. I don’t think I thought of anything, except that it was good to be me.

Spears came up, but Poseidon had made his call and I made mine. I didn’t have a lance – they were never as popular then as they are now. I had a heavy hunting spear, a longche, which Polystratus had put in my hand, and I threw it. It went somewhere – who can tell in a fight?

I got my sword out after I hit their line. Poseidon got a spear in his hindquarters, and I got one right in the gut – a perfect shot, except that my cuirass turned the point and my knees were strong – I rocked, but I didn’t come off, and the point slid over my shoulder and the shaft rang my bell – remember, I had no helmet.

And then my sword was in my hand – a long, heavy kopis. I cut down and back – a school shot, the one you practise endlessly for mounted combat, and for a reason – and caught something. I remember thinking that this wasn’t so bad – that I was doing my duty.

And after that, it was all fighting. Poseidon slowed to a stop, and he reared every time I jerked the reins, but after the first ten heartbeats I couldn’t even back him. I’d made a hole in the corner of their phalanx and now other troopers were pushing into it.

I do remember the first man I know I put down, because he was right under my right foot, trying to throw me from the saddle. There’s a lot of wrestling in phalanx fighting, and his approach was correct – get me on the ground and kill me there. He got his shield shoulder under my right foot and started to lift, and I cut down – once, twice, a desperate third as my balance was going – cut chunks out of his aspis, and the sheer terror of being dismounted enabled me to get him, as the third cut went through shield rim, the visor of his Thracian helmet and in between his eyes, and he died right there. You don’t often see it, but I saw it – saw his shade pass his lips.

Old Heraklitus said it was the best way to go, your soul all fire, in the heat of battle. Compared to rape or torture or cursed sickness or coughing your lungs out – sure. But it was better to be alive. Achilles says it – better the slave of a bad master here than king of the dead.

No shit.

He’s the only one I remember. I yelled myself hoarse, probably shouting ‘Herakles!’ over and over, like half the men on that field. The next thing I remember is that the pressure on my knees eased – suddenly there were horsemen all around me, and just a few Thebans between us – and then, before my heart could beat three more times, there were none.

Just like that – a cloud of dust, the stink of death, and they were gone.

In fact, a whole pack of Sacred Banders were still alive and fighting – over by the Macedonian phalanx, where they were safe from the cavalry and we couldn’t tell one man on foot from another. But the unit was gone, and the whole flank of the Theban phalanx was open.

We never reformed, and we didn’t really charge again – we went into their flank files in dribs and drabs, a few at a time – in fact, I suspect most men don’t even remember a pause between fighting the Band and fighting the line infantry – but I was isolated at one end of the fight for a long time. Say, fifty heartbeats.

I got twenty men behind me in a small wedge and we rode to the right – our right – and we found another combat in ten horse lengths.

By then, the Theban line must have been coming apart. They were panicked to find us in their rear, and our Macedonian infantry was doing well enough at this end of the line.

I didn’t know anything about it. Where I was, there was the reach of my sword and the impacts of their spears on my chest, my back, my greaves – I must have taken fifty blows, and only two wounds. Even with my head bare. I was lucky – and of course, after the Sacred Band, I was mostly facing men who’d already lost the will to fight.

Polystratus stuck at my bridle hand and like most Thracians, he never relinquished his spear, but stabbed two-handed, holding on to his mount with his knees. He used a heavy spear with an odd chisel point – he could punch it right through a helmet or a breastplate. But mostly, he blocked blows coming up from my bridle side – in fact, he was a constant pressure on my left knee, his horse always there like a companion’s aspis in a phalanx fight.

After some time had passed, we could hear the cheers, and the men under our hooves weren’t making the least pretence of fighting back. But the duty of royal companions doesn’t end with victory – far from it.

The thing for which we train, the reason we’re brutalised as pages and ride all day, every day and hunt animals on horseback . . .

. . . is the pursuit.

Beaten men don’t defend themselves. They are easy to kill. But tomorrow, if you let them rally, they return to being grim-faced hoplites who will gut you if they can. There are a great many myths these days about the superiority of the Macedonian war machine. Perhaps. We had some advantages, some tactics, some technical knowledge and lots of good leadership.