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

Alexander rode out, then. He rode across the front of the army, helmet off, Tyrian purple cloak streaming behind him, and he looked like a god. I think – I may be wrong – I think it’s the first time I saw him like that.

He galloped across the front and the roar was like a physical thing, right to left across the whole army, a shocking sound.

And then he pulled his horse up in a little display, half a stade in advance of his whole army. And he used his spear to salute the Thessalians, who were pouring out of the pass behind us.

The sound of our cheer rose to the heavens, climbing the pass to Olympus and to Ossa and then bouncing back in a mighty ripple of echo.

The Thessalian army shuddered to a halt.

They started to sort themselves out, and Alexander ordered us forward.

We marched forward about a stade. Our line wasn’t perfect, but it was adequate. Later, Macedonian armies did this kind of display all the time, and our drill was magnificent. That summer day, it was enough that we kept our places in line and no gaps opened.

The Thessalians, it was obvious, weren’t going to get formed in time. They were just a mob.

A delegation was spat forth from the mounted part of the mob.

Alexander raised his arm, and we halted.

He rode forward by himself.

I know that the Prodromoi started forward, and my squadron of the Hetaeroi. He waved them back, but the Prodromoi shadowed him, moving anxiously . . .

They needn’t have worried.

The Thessalians surrendered.

In retrospect, you just nod, boy, because what army of barbarians could even look at a Macedonian army without fear, eh? But that was not yet come to pass. We weren’t ‘Alexander’s Macedonians’ yet – an army that, by wonderful irony, was always at least a third Thessalian.

I count that day as Alexander’s first battle. At Chaeronea, he did what he could with a dull plan. Philip was a brilliant strategist and a fine fighter, but a dull tactician. Alexander . . . was Alexander.

Had we rolled forward into the Thessalians, we would have killed a great many of them – and been at war for years. Alexander took a terrible risk. But the circumstances – when every province in the empire was in revolt, and we had no friends – required risk. Or that’s how the king saw it, and he was the king.

And Thessaly was ours. The best cavalry in Greece, the finest horses and a nation that immediately offered two years’ tribute as recompense for hesitation.

In one day, Alexander had changed the game.

Heh. Alexander, with the help of the hypaspists. And not for the last time, either.

ELEVEN

I imagine that Greece offered many strategoi who could have turned the flanks of the Thessalians and beaten them without a battle. Old Phokion could have done it – it was very much his sort of victory. Philip – well, I suspect Philip would have forced the battle and the massacre, and taken the consequences.

But Alexander wasn’t done.

We picked up a thousand noble Thessalians – aristocratic cavalrymen, men who were in almost every way just like us. After all, they’d been our allies, almost our subjects, right up until Philip’s death – and the only men who’d died on the slopes of Mount Ossa had been Athenian mercenaries. And hypaspists. I lost fifty-five men on Mount Ossa, a number I’ll never forget. I didn’t even know all of their names. More Agrianians died than Macedonians, because the Agrianians got to the top faster. But, cruel as it sounds, there were enough corpses of both races to bind them together.

We buried them on the plains of Thessaly, in five barrows of eleven men each, and the king came and poured the libations at the edge of night, and fog rolled down from the hills to cover the newly turned earth, and men said that the ghosts of Hades had come to lick the blood of the sacrifices and the wine of the libations.

I was tipsy. I remember that. I’d fought hard, and fighting on foot is exhausting – cavalrymen really have no idea. But I’d also made decisions that killed men, and it was, perhaps, the first time I faced the consequence of glorious victory – the sad, sick feeling afterwards, the same feeling you get when you know you’ve paid far too much for wheat in the marketplace, except ten times worse. And somehow, the rain of unforced congratulations from my peers only served to make it worse.

Of course, I bore it all with smiles, backslapping, coarse humour – I’m telling the truth here, and the truth is that it never does to show weakness with Macedonians – or any other human animal, eh, lad? But I was hurt, inside – hurt as if I’d taken a wound – by those fifty-five men who’d died so that my king could not have a battle.

So I was tipsy. I drank from the moment the libations were poured, and when the king poured one to Herakles and ordered us all to drink our cups dry, I drank mine and sent it back to be refilled, and smiled at a Thessalian aristocrat-boy so that he shrank away.

Marsyas steadied me.

But Alexander came over and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Yesterday was well done,’ he said.

A great many responses came to me, and I bit them down. It wasn’t the king’s fault so many men had died, and it wasn’t his fault – exactly – that it all seemed to be for nothing and the leaders of the ‘enemy’ army were sharing our funeral feast. So I made a smile come to my face and muttered, ‘Thanks.’

‘Will your men be ready to march tomorrow?’ he asked.

Zeus Soter! I remember that question shooting down my muscles like new pain. My men were exhausted.

But that was not something I chose to say. Good or bad leadership is often a matter of perspective. I was going to make my hypaspists creatures of legend. Creatures of legend do not admit fatigue. Paradox, if you like – I was angry at my losses and eager to keep my men’s reputation well shined.

‘We could march now, if you want us to,’ I said.

Just for a moment, in the flickering torchlight, I saw Alexander’s eyes narrow a fraction. And Marsyas stepped forward, took my arm and smiled. ‘If they can walk, that is. Come, big brother. I’ll steer you to bed.’

I woke in the darkness – fully alert. I got up, kicked Polystratus out of his cloak and crawled into a dry chiton and a heavy chlamys, because the plains of Thessaly had the same fog in early morning as they did at night.

Every muscle in my body protested softly, and a few protested loudly, but the advantage of a life of activity is that even as a very young man you know that none of this is actually pain, and that it will all be gone as soon as you sweat.

I walked out and roused my mess group. Polystratus woke my slaves, and Ochrid, the lead slave, pulled out a quill and blew the coals of the fire into life. ‘Morning, master,’ he said, cheerfully. Ochrid was a big fellow, a Paeonian. He wasn’t too bright, and he wasn’t too big – he had an open, pleasant face and bright blond hair, and no apparent need to be a freeman. But he was steady, trustworthy – as long as you didn’t task him beyond his skills – and careful. He was warm, too.

Let me just say that slaves came and went. A few stayed with me for years, but in general, I tried to keep them moving – to freedom, or to the farms. Being a soldier’s slave is brutal work, and it breaks them. And they can never marry, or have children, or have a little hut or a plot of land. Mind you, they can earn their freedom in an hour of looting or a single lucky kill – or die screaming on someone’s spear-point, for sport. My point is that Ochrid survived years of this life, and he’s got a place in Memphis as my tax farmer there. So he’s an exception. Mostly, I won’t even mention their names. Sad. But one of those facts of life. Slaves come and go.