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

Where was I?

Ochrid called, ‘Good morning,’ and that seemed to allow other men to approach me, and before I had a cup of hot milk in my hand, a dozen men were all around me – could I look at a wound? Did I know that third file was now three men short? Would we be getting new drafts to make up our numbers?

I was starting to know my phylarchs. And I liked most of what I saw. Nicanor was a Macedonian only by adoption – he was a former mercenary, also from Lesbos, a friend of Aristotle – the great man’s former lover, in fact. Nicanor was the fourth file commander, thin, small, full of fire. A handsome man, with serious culture.

Astibus, on the other hand, was an Agrianian chieftain’s son, tall, blond and outweighing me by half. A giant. Virtually the first man up Ossa, after me. He had an axe – a very old-fashioned weapon indeed – which rested in carefully forged spring-bronze mounts inside his aspis, a vicious surprise when he broke his spear. He put as much thought into fighting as Aristotle did into categorising living things, and the Greek pankration fascinated him utterly – the Agrianians had nothing like it.

Nicanor and Astibus were among the more memorable, but I had one hundred and twenty phylarchs, and they came in a huge variety of sizes and flavours, and one was actually black – an African. He was another former mercenary, and his Macedonian name was Bubores, and he had horrible nightmares and could terrify all of us when he screamed in the night. His Greek was pitiful, but his battlefield power was legendary, and he, like Astibus, had been among the first men up the mountain.

Astibus was stubborn and inclined to argue with orders. Nicanor was arrogant and snide – used big words, and patronised his lessers, which meant nearly everyone. Bubares was often drunk on duty, although his men liked him well enough that they covered for him.

These men exist in every army in the world, I suspect. When the Hittites rolled their chariots to windy Ilium, I suspect there were old drunks, arrogant poets and brash youngsters.

And new commanders trying to create legends.

But what they all wanted to know, that morning, was who had won the prize at Ossa – who had been first up the hill. The phylarchs crowded around me, arguing the merits of this man and that.

Old Philip laughed. ‘Lord Ptolemy was first up the hill,’ he said. ‘I saw him.’

Alectus laughed. ‘Cheap bastard,’ he said.

That got a general guffaw.

‘I am not a cheap bastard,’ I said, with mock horror. ‘So I’ll pay half the prize each to the two men who were second up the hill – and without whom I’d be dead!’ I sent Polystratus back to my tent for cash, and I gave half a mina of silver – a pretty fair prize – to Philip Longsword and to young Astibus.

That seemed to make everyone happy. Despite funereal hangovers – the night before, my boys had discovered that Agrianians and Macedonians share a belief that the dead are best mourned drunk – despite muscles of cast lead. Despite all of that, we were first on parade, in pitch darkness.

In armour, with our spears and aspides.

I’ve won battles, and I’ve killed heroes in single combat. I’ve slept with outrageously beautiful women I had no business even looking at, and I’ve climbed mountains and travelled the world. On balance, that moment in Thessaly, standing confidently, arrogantly, despite my pains and my wounded instep and the gouge in my leg – standing bare-legged on parade, with my heroes all lined up behind me, clamouring to start their march – even the slaves all in the ranks, all our baggage packed – we, who had fought a heroic action two days before – and around us, the royal companions and the pezhetaeroi scrambled to be ready – it was one of the most satisfying moments of my life, and I grew taller and handsomer.

The king rode out to me. I didn’t see him coming until the last moment – he was riding quietly on a palfrey.

‘Splendid,’ he said. He grinned – a boyish grin I seldom saw after he was twelve. ‘You know, Ptolemy, just now, I think I’d like to trade places with you. Right now, it is you who are a god, and I am merely your commander.’

Sometimes he was impossibly arrogant, and sometimes he was impossible not to love. I took his hand and locked it in a clasp – the way warriors do. He leaned down. ‘We are going to conquer the world with these men,’ he said. The grin was still there.

The hypaspitoi began to cheer – Alaialaialaialai .

Suddenly Alexander laughed. ‘Fuck them if they’re late to parade!’ he shouted, and pumped his hand to indicate that we should prepare to march.

So we marched away from Thessaly to conquer the world. The hypaspitoi led, and all the rest of the army had to catch up.

Beat that story, lad. Those were great days, great men, doing great things.

We made forced marches across the Thessalian plain, one hundred stades a day and sometimes more. We didn’t drink wine in the stews of Larissa – we missed nothing, I can tell you – and we didn’t bother the shepherd boys on the slopes of Mount Othrys. We crossed Thessaly in five days, and the Thessalian nobles complained we were ruining their horses.

My men laughed. They were marching five parasanges a day, running a third of the distance, keeping up with the cavalry scouts and the king. They were young and strong, and after three weeks in the field, they had bodies as hard as rock. We rested at the height of the pass over the shoulders of Othrys – my men were tucked into rocks and fissures, and there was snow. Men curled up three to a cloak – or rather, three to three cloaks. The man in the middle got a little sleep.

Alexander rode into my ‘camp’, which means that he asked a few sleepy men and a sentry, and Polystratus woke me.

Alexander had only Hephaestion with him.

‘I need another dash from your myrmidons,’ the king said. ‘I need you to be at the Gates of Fire by tonight. I don’t think Thebes has the balls to contest my passage, but once I have the Gates, we’ve got all the time in the world. Tell your boys I promise at least a week’s rest at the Gates. But I need this done now – I went to sleep thinking about it, and I woke up just now with Herakles’ hand on my shoulder.’

Fuck him. Let’s face it, I’m not at my best in freezing cold in the middle of the night after a hundred-stade march and very little sleep.

But there comes a moment – when you are building something special – when you just want to keep testing it, because you cannot really believe how good it is. I’ve seen a cutler put an edge on a razor and then test it until his thumb is bleeding – grinning like a fool because the edge is so good. That was me.

I got to my feet, smiled at the king and Polystratus bellowed, ‘Spears and armour! March in one hour!’

And they got up off their rocks and joked that marching would be warmer than lying in the snow.

We marched along the beach and through the Gates of Fire unopposed. In fact, we had time to stop and make sacrifice to the Spartans who fell there for Greece – though I knew we were better men than they ever were. After all, they were merely Greeks, without even the erudition of Athens.

But they were good, brave men, and all brave men should be brothers, even when they fight against each other. War’s bad enough without rules. I hear men say that war should be fought without rules, but I despise such weaklings. Rules in contests are the courtesies of the strong to the strong.

But I digress.

We bought sheep from the shepherds and sacrificed them, and we poured libations to the dead – Persians as well as Greeks. And while we did that, fifty picked men climbed the high pass on our right flank and another fifty prowled ahead twenty stades under Alectus, who neither knew nor cared who Leonidas had been, despite his gleanings of Greek learning.