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

‘Alexander needs my lord,’ Amyntas said. He was in shock. ‘You can’t honestly believe that the gold-haired boy can defeat Parmenio?’

‘In fact, Uncle, you believe it too, or you wouldn’t be here. You’d be in Asia, readying your army to come and fight us for Macedon with Attalus. Eh?’ I grinned. ‘Have some wine. We’re not as young as we used to be.’

He rubbed his chin. Ochrid brought a stool and he sat on it, took wine from Polystratus and shook his head. ‘I’m to negotiate for Attalus.’

I nodded. ‘Spare yourself. Attalus is a dead man.’

Amyntas rubbed his chin as if looking for a louse. Maybe he was. ‘Like that, is it?’

‘Listen – you weren’t there. Neither was Parmenio. But Attalus did things – none of us will ever forgive him. If Alexander let him live?’ I shrugged. ‘One of us would do him anyway. And Alexander would let it be.’ I met his eyes. ‘You know how it is, right? When a man has gone outside the laws other men accept? Attalus did that. And he put himself against the king. He’s a dead man.’

Amyntas seemed to deflate. ‘Is this the stupid business about the boy Pausanias?’

I nodded. ‘That’s part of it.’

He nodded. ‘When Attalus came to Asia, he told us that story. He told it with pleasure. And Lord Parmenio left the dinner in disgust.’ He shrugged. ‘Attalus carries the seeds of his own death.’

I nodded. ‘Let him go, then. Attalus is done.’

Amyntas nodded. ‘I hadn’t expected to find Alexander in possession of the League,’ he said. ‘I think I should sail back to Asia and ask my lord to think again.’

‘Finish your wine first,’ I suggested.

After breakfast I reported the whole conversation to Alexander. If I was to be the new faction leader of the lowland nobles – a job I thought that I wanted – I had to play both ends. I’d given Amyntas sound advice, but the king had to know I gave it from loyalty, not self-interest. All very complicated, as being a courtier – even a martial, active courtier – always is.

Alexander nodded. He made a face – rare for him, because he prized his immobile good looks – and spat. ‘I wonder what his terms were,’ he said bitterly. ‘From the great Parmenio to a poor misguided boy.’

‘Better not to know,’ I said. ‘I told him that Attalus was not negotiable.’

Alexander shrugged. ‘Oh, him. He’s in his late sixties – hardly a major power—’

I stopped the king with a raised hand – which shocked him – but I was instantly outraged. ‘I told him that Attalus was not negotiable,’ I said again, quite harshly. ‘Now I’ll tell you. Or rather, lord, I’ll remind you. Your loyal men died or were injured, humiliated, raped – by Attalus. None of the pages will ever accept him. If you forgive him, I’ll kill him myself.’

Alexander looked at me, and again, his eyes narrowed.

I was challenging him.

‘You are above yourself, Ptolemy,’ Alexander said. ‘It is not your place to tell the king what he may and may not do.’

Something – something that had been hanging over me since I stormed Mount Ossa – broke.

‘You’re wrong, Alexander,’ I said, and my use of his name was deliberate. ‘It is my place. I am your friend and your trusted man, one of your great nobles, the leader of your best troops. If you leave Attalus alive, you tell us, your pages, that our sacrifices meant nothing to you. And that makes you an ungrateful bastard, not a king. Everything is not a trade of this for that, a compromise towards better rulership. Sometimes, you just have to accept that you are a leader not by the will of the gods but by the consent of the men of worth. If you leave Attalus alive, you betray us.’

He turned away. His posture hardened. With a good athlete, you can read anger in every muscle, not just in a few in the arms, shoulders and neck. He had rage in his hips and in his lower back.

‘Remove yourself,’ he said.

‘Fuck you,’ I said. Not what Aristotle would have wanted me to say. ‘Call your companions and have me dragged out.’

Hephaestion came in in a hurry. I have no doubt he’d been listening. ‘You cannot address your king that way,’ he said. ‘Apologise!’

‘Alexander is going to pardon Attalus!’ I said.

Hephaestion hadn’t been listening as closely as I had thought. He stopped dead. ‘What?’

Alexander whirled. ‘Not you too! Listen. Attalus is a tool. I need him in Asia. I need all my father’s generals.’

Hephaestion made a moue of distaste and glanced at me, clearly caught between annoyance at the king and dislike of me. ‘Attalus,’ he spat.

I leaned forward. ‘My king, you do not need Attalus to conquer Asia. You do not need Parmenio and you do not need Amyntas. You just conquered Greece in forty days – with your own men and your own army. And your own head.’ I shrugged. ‘And I stand on my statement. If you pardon Attalus, I will take my grooms and retire to my estates.’

Alexander paused and just looked at me.

‘My father did it,’ I reminded him. ‘I can live without all this.’

Alexander was as white as a new-woven chiton. ‘Leave me.’ He waved his hand quickly, like a man dying of suffocation. ‘Don’t argue. Go.’

I left the tent.

That was a bad day. I ordered my kit packed. I called Philip Longsword and told him the whole story – much as I’m telling you now, because my story went back to the hunt with Laodon and the rape of Pausanias. He heard me out, and shook his head.

‘Bad,’ he said. ‘But you shouldn’t have defied the king.’

I knew he was right. I knew that in a moment’s hot-headedness, I’d lost years of ground with Alexander, and maybe lost him altogether.

So I handed command to Philip, and said some goodbyes, and then sat down on a camp stool – our kit caught up with us that morning when the rest of the army marched in – and waited for the summons.

It didn’t come all day.

Men watched me – men who had been my own a few hours before. But they kept their distance. Philip Longsword had told them – on parade – not to come within a spear’s length of me, by my own order.

A long day.

As the sun was setting and the evening sacrifices were being made, Nearchus came with a full file of Hetaeroi. Before he could ask, I gave him my sword.

We walked back through a silent camp.

The king was with Hephaestion in his tent. No one else. I took that as a good sign. If he meant to execute me, he’d have to order it done before my peers, and they’d have to agree.

He kept his back to me.

Hephaestion did the talking.

‘The king requests that you resign the command of his household guards. And requests – as one man to another – that you withdraw the term bastard .’ I had expected Hephaestion to be delighted by my fall from grace, but he looked stricken.

‘My king, I deeply regret my show of anger, this morning,’ I said. ‘I withdraw the term bastard, and offer my apologies.’

Alexander turned around. ‘And trying to make me alter my policy?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry, Alexander. But if you won’t give in on this, you will eventually die as your father did.’

Yes, I said that.

It was true. I loved him, and he was about to make a capital mistake at the very start. If he let Attalus live – do you see it, young man? If he let the bastard live, Cleomenes and Nearchus and Pyrrhus and Marsyas would begin to feel the germs of doubt. The kind of doubt that ends with a King of Macedon surrounded in bed by a ring of daggers held by men who were once his friends.

That’s the way it is, in Macedon.

Alexander had allowed himself to forget it. Not for the last time.

But he shook his head. ‘If I kill Attalus,’ he said through clenched teeth, ‘I have to give everything to Parmenio. I have no counterbalance to him. I hate Attalus – but that’s not important! I am king! I must do what is best!’