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

Had I been a little quicker, or not wasted my javelin on the priest, I’d have had Cleitus. I didn’t know who he was, but he was there – we took a dozen noble prisoners and they all blabbed. He must have run the moment the javelins flew, and he must not have been dressed very well.

We killed a few of them and took most of the rest. I carried the girl back to camp. We had very few camp followers, but Ochrid took her. And of course, as soon as we made camp on the plain below the fortress at Pellium, we acquired hundreds of Illyrian women. Women are attracted by successful soldiers. I picked up a woman old enough to know her own mind and purchased her services as a nanny for the girl, whom I called Olympias for her imperious way with Ochrid. She was a funny little imp, and I liked her.

The problem was, we weren’t really all that successful. We occupied the fertile valley easily enough, and when part of his army came down from the hills, we chewed them up. But the bulk of his forces outnumbered us, and he had a heavy garrison in the fortress.

Alexander sent to Pella for siege machines and specialists. A small convoy reached us right away – the light catapults we’d left in the Paeonians came almost immediately, and we assembled them.

But then, Glaucias arrived and occupied the high ground behind us in the passes.

It was, to be frank, one of the worst errors I had ever seen Alexander make. He’d said – back there at the foot of Shipka – that we needed to strike before the Illyrians combined.

We failed, and they combined.

They started to eat our foraging parties. Our Agrianians and our archers could hold their own, but the slaves – what was left of them – were taken or killed.

The last of our Thracian cattle were killed and eaten, and we started on the food available in the little valley below the fortress. I knew – it was my job – that we had about five days’ food.

Alexander knew. We had an officers’ meeting – forty senior officers.

Alexander laid out his plan – a simple one – and we all listened in silence.

Nicanor waited until the king was done. ‘This is foolishness, lord. Send me to negotiate. If this army is lost, the army of Asia will have to be recalled.’

Alexander ignored him, and the rest of us saluted and headed for our units. On the way out of the tent, Hephaestion could be heard asking Nicanor how his shoulder was. And if he’d ever worried that the other one might be made to match it.

How Nicanor must have hated us. It still pleases me.

We marched off by regiments, out into the grain fields at the centre of the plain. We only had about seven thousand men, and we filled less than five stades’ frontage.

I’d written Alexander’s orders down on wax when he gave them, and there they are, copied fair in the Military Journal. We moved in line – eight deep – to the centre of the plain, and then we wheeled by subsections – ten files to a subsection – wheeled to the right to form a column, and then marched a few stades and formed front by inclining our subsections, so that we started in column, moved into a deep echelon, and then as the formed phalanx moved at half-step, the rest of the expended column gradually caught up – a beautiful manoeuvre, with the hypaspitoi on the right and the Agrianians on the left – the new Agrianians, not the ones integrated into the hypaspitoi. The Hetaeroi squadrons were on the wings, split left and right, as usual.

Then we retired from the centre by sections – right/left/right, the phalanx facing an imaginary enemy shrinking and shrinking while the column marched away to the rear – a manoeuvre we practised to be ready for a day of heavy defeat. And to the rear, the phalanx suddenly expanded at the run and faced in the new direction.

It was all well done – and best of all, it was done in total silence. Oh, here and there some awkward sod got struck by his phylarch or his file closer, but the effect was awe-inspiring.

We did it for three hours. We could see the Illyrians, up on the ridges above our little valley, moving around – gathering to watch – wandering down the hills to the edge of the woods. The bolder ones came right out into the fields to watch.

The whole valley was only twenty stades long and ten wide, and every time we changed formation or direction, we eased a little closer to the valley entrance. There was a low knoll there between two steep hills where the enemy had posted some armoured infantry and some archers to stop us from getting out of the valley.

We changed front to the right and then to the left. We faced about. We advanced with ponderous slowness, our lines perfectly dressed, our officers silenced. Even the horses were silent.

And every manoeuvre brought us a few paces closer to the knoll.

We advanced by wings, leaving the centre standing fast, and then wheeled the whole army all the way around, silently, swinging like an enormous and very slow door.

At the completion of that silent, slow wheel, the centre under Alexander was just about two hundred paces from the knoll.

Alexander raised his right arm and pumped it, once, and every man in the army gave the war cry. And then the whole army charged. The spears slammed down into the fighting stance, and the men of the pezhetaeroi charged at a dead run. No ponderous slowness at all. We were on the knoll before the Illyrians could react – and the cavalry rode right up those steep hills.

Cavalry doesn’t need cohesion to fight. It’s a lesson that infantry get to learn over and over.

I was the first man up the left-hand hill, and it was thick with Illyrians, many of whom were completely unarmed. But more of them were armed, and a lot of them had spears and bows, and we took hits. And every one of us had to pick our way over rocks and steep slopes.

Well – that’s what courage is for.

My long spear was perfect for the fight – I could reach up and punch it at a man a little above me on the hill, and it was long enough to pierce an eye socket a horse length away.

Illyrians are brave, and skilled hill fighters, and they tried to get under Poseidon, who was well recovered from his wound. But I used my javelins carefully and then my lance, which I ended up throwing into some bastard who needed it, and then I had the Keltoi sword in my hand, and I was at the top of the rocky hill, and I had beaten Perdiccas, who was still climbing the far hill.

Down in the valley below me, on the knoll, Alexander had the hypaspitoi formed in a small phalanx – now facing the way we had come, because we’d cleared the hills on either side and now, by the grace of the gods and pure luck and daring, the Illyrians were in the valley and we held the knoll.

My men cleared our hill – but we could already see that the victory would be fleeting. We couldn’t charge down the hill, and only surprise – complete and total fucking surprise, may I add – got us up that hill. Now the Illyrians were coming to their senses, and their chieftains were arming up and getting their warriors ready to rush us.

I sent Cleomenes down to ask Alexander if we were to dismount and hold the hilltops.

He waved us away as soon as he heard Cleomenes. I didn’t need to wait for orders. I ordered my troopers to file down the back of the hill – shallower, and better riding – but some men still had to dismount to negotiate the paths. Despite which, we were down the hills before the Illyrians could come at us, and we formed wedges in the rear of the hypaspitoi.

The hypaspitoi demonstrated the retreat by files from the centre manoeuvre that the pezhetaeroi had done earlier. The hypaspitoi did it in the face of a real enemy, but as soon as their front had shrunk enough to make them vulnerable, I charged from behind them with my squadron. We dispersed the Illyrians and rode over them, past them, and into our camp.