Текст книги "God of War -The Story of Alexander the Great"

Автор книги: Christian Cameron

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The Getae came out of their camp when we set fire to the boats.

Alexander rode along the line, his cloak billowing behind him, and we roared his name, and charged. It wasn’t a complicated battle. In fact, there was very little fighting, and we chased them into their camp.

We milled about outside their log rampart, and then I started to call insults to the men on the walls in my best Thracian.

They sent out a warrior.

That’s the trouble with challenging men to combat. Sometimes they take you up on it.

Alexander came over to me while I had my sword arm rebandaged. ‘You up to this, my friend?’ he asked.

The Getae warrior was sitting on his horse under the walls, shouting insults. On our side, my friends were offering me their swords, their spears and their horses.

I settled my helmet on my head, flexed my fingers and vaulted on to Poseidon’s broad back.

‘I am, Lord King.’ I think I was grinning. I was afraid and elated.

‘You’ll need to do better than last time,’ he said, with a grin. He had a point. Kineas had put me down.

Men slapped my back and told me I was lucky, and then I was trotting over the turf towards my adversary. I took a pair of heavy longche from Polystratus, rather than my usual lance.

I trotted forward and waved to my adversary, thinking we would agree on some rules.

He wasn’t interested in discussing anything. He came right at me, drew an arrow to his eye and loosed.

At sixty paces, that arrow went right into Poseidon’s chest.

Bless my dear horse, he paused and then sprang forward.

The Thracian was controlling his horse with his knees, and he turned away, fitting another arrow to his bow.

Poseidon was running with an arrow three fingers deep in his chest, but he ate the ground between us as the Thracian turned his smaller horse. I closed – fifty paces, forty paces – and then he turned at a gallop and headed due west, along the front of our army.

Poseidon turned to cut his path.

He turned and shot. It was a beautiful shot, and hit my helmet just above my eyes, but the slope of the bronze and the skill of the maker saved me. Two inches lower and he’d have won that fight, and I’d never have been King of Aegypt.

At ten paces he brought the bow up again, and I threw my javelin. Ten paces is nothing to a trained man, and Poseidon, the best horse I ever had, felt my throw coming and flowed into it, so that I threw on his off foot. I hit my target – his horse – in the neck with a heavy spear, and that horse died before I reached him, and my adversary was tangled on the ground with his broken bow.

The Macedonians cheered.

The man came up out of the wreck limping, and he had a sword. He stood his ground, and I slapped him in the head with the spear-point and knocked him unconscious. Then I dragged him by his own saddle rope, tied round his feet, across the front of our army to where the king sat on Bucephalus.

‘Was that better, my lord?’ I asked.

Alexander’s eyes sparkled. He handed me a cup of wine, embraced me and let me bask in the congratulations of all the other Hetaeroi. Say what you will of the former pages – we all respected success, and no one was ever petty enough to conceal admiration for a deed well done. Cleitus was smothered in it after the Woods Battle, and now it was my turn.

I untied the man and turned him over to Polystratus. ‘See if you can revive him,’ I said. ‘A drag across the turf shouldn’t have killed him.’

In fact, my head hurt, and Polystratus took my good cavalry Boeotian, shook his head and showed me the bowl. There was a dent as deep as a man’s thumb in the front just above the cranium, and the helmet was ruined. It had saved my life three times.

I lay down for a while but Thaïs, quite wisely, didn’t let me sleep, but prattled at me and made me walk about and fed me water and honey. When I could see straight and talk well, she let me have a nap.

When I woke, the Thracians had surrendered, and the sound of the army’s cheers brought me back to earth.

They didn’t actually surrender. But the Thracians on Pine Island agreed to evacuate and surrender one half of their herds, and the Getae agreed to allow them to come over the Danube to resettle, and Alexander forced them to agree that the lands between the pass and the Danube were his to dispose of.

I suspected that this agreement would be nullified the moment they couldn’t see our spears, and I was right, but it made Alexander happy – and we’d shown them that they wouldn’t be safe anywhere, and that was worth something. To be honest, I’m not sure that it was worth the body count. We lost fifty-eight cavalrymen – mostly Hetaeroi – and almost four hundred pezhetaeroi and hypaspitoi. They were fine men in the peak of training. They died, and we got very little in return.

And yet – looked at another way, we got everything in return, because we were building the reputation for invincibility that was better than ten thousand men.

And we did receive an amazing amount of loot and tribute. When we marched for home, we looked more like a nomad nation migrating than a Macedonian army on the march, and Alexander ordered us – the cavalry – to patrol aggressively, because he feared we were so overladen with beasts and gold that we’d be easy pickings for an Illyrian raid. It had happened to Philip years before – when he fought the Sakje of the Great Steppe. He beat them, but they weren’t beaten, and they ambushed him on the road home and took his gear and his cattle.

I’d forgotten – look here, it’s in the Military Journal – I’d forgotten the Keltoi. Our last day on the river, when all the deals had been made and all our men were glutted with spear-won beef, and Thaïs and I were, in fact, rutting like a stag and a hind in season in our tent, Cleitus came to our tent – he had the worst timing – burst in and turned as red as a Tyrian cloak. Thaïs was astride me, hands locked under my neck, mouth pressed against mine, and I could see Cleitus . . .

Oh, I’m a dirty old man. But I didn’t stop, and neither did Thaïs. She just grinned.

‘The king wants you,’ Cleitus said, staring at a hanging carpet.

‘I’m . . . a little busy, but I’ll . . . be along . . . shortly,’ I said.

‘Not too shortly,’ Thaïs said.

I used to make Cleitus blush just mentioning this incident – the best killer of men in the Macedonian army, the toughest bastard Alexander had, but he’d blush like a virgin. Hah! Fine man, Cleitus. But a little odd.

When I reached the king, he smiled and said, ‘I’ve been counting the minutes,’ and laughed. It was as close to a sexual joke as I ever heard him make, and all the officers around him laughed too.

The embassage of Keltoi was twenty men and as many women. They were tall – in fact, they were huge, many of them a head taller than me, and I’m not small. Most were blond, and all of them had beautiful long hair, wrapped and plaited in gold. The women had the largest breasts and the best figures of any race I’d seen – wide hips, tiny waists and blue eyes.

Their language was truly barbaric, but they had dignity and good manners.

They also claimed to rule an empire greater than ours, stretching all the way to Thule. I was derisive, but Alexander was fascinated.

They flattered him, lauding his victories over the Thracians, although they made it clear they’d smacked the Thracians pretty hard themselves.

Alexander nodded after listening patiently. ‘Are you, then, the overlords of these Thracian tribes?’ he asked.

The most noble-looking of the men, wearing a sword worth ten of my farms, shrugged. He spoke through a woman interpreter. She didn’t look like the rest of them – she was smaller and darker and very pretty, rather than displaying the normal somewhat ethereal beauty of the Keltoi. She smiled a great deal, too. She listened to him and then turned to the king.

‘He says – we are kings and lords to the Triballi, when we will it. Never the Getae,’ she added.

Alexander nodded. ‘I am now the lord of the Triballi and the Getae,’ he said.

All the Keltoi laughed.

Alexander snapped at her. ‘What are they laughing at?’

One of the Keltoi women pointed at the sky and said something and they all laughed again.

The interpreter looked as if she was afraid. The smiles were gone.

‘What did she say?’ Alexander demanded.

‘Nothing, lord,’ she said.

Alexander shook his head. ‘I demand to know!’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘She asked if you were also lord of the clouds.’

The Keltoi woman spoke again, with vehemence.

Alexander ignored her and turned back to the richest man. ‘Are you here to swear your allegiance to me?’ he asked.

There was much talk. Then the interpreter said, ‘They say – no.’ She shrugged.

Alexander pointed at his army. We, as an army, were not at our most impressive, as most of the infantry were busy loading spear-won wagons with spear-won loot, wool and hangings and carpets and furs and some gold.

‘You should fear my army, which I can march anywhere in the world,’ Alexander said.

The Keltoi talked among themselves, and then the interpreter shook her head and expostulated.

‘I think they are saying we should sod off,’ I muttered to Marsyas.

Marsyas grinned. In some strange way, it was entertaining to watch these rich barbarians be utterly unimpressed with us.

Finally, the dark woman stood in front of Alexander with her shoulders square as if she was ready to resist torture. ‘They say that if you brought an army this small to their lands, they might ignore it. If you brought a real army, they would bury it under the weight of their chariot wheels and the hooves of their horses and the steel of their swords. They say that you have no idea what is north of the Danube, while they know where Pella is and where Athens is. And Rome and Carthage, too, they say. And the queen asks – would you like to swear fealty to her? She says she will be a gentle overlord.’

I burst into laughter. I couldn’t stop myself. I slapped my thighs and roared, and Alexander looked at me. His anger dissipated, and he joined me. He laughed, and Perdiccas and Hephaestion laughed, and Marsyas laughed.

And all the Keltoi laughed.

Somehow it reminded me of the visit to Diogenes.

FOURTEEN

We marched back over the Shipka Pass with our herds and our loot, and forty days’ worth of messages caught up with us all at once, and all the news was bad. The whole western border of Macedon was in arms – the Illyrians had risen, and were coming at us, to a man. Cleitus of Illyria – don’t blame me if everyone has the same name – had fifteen thousand men, and he had made a federation with two of the wilder northern tribes – the Autaratians and the Taulantians. According to our intelligence, the two northern tribes were coming down on our route of march.

Let me add that the best of our intelligence was from Thaïs. Thaïs had a stream of couriers, now – letters from Athens, letters from Pella, messages from the Triballians behind us.

‘It keeps me busy,’ she said. ‘It’s really no different from organising a party.’

I had to laugh. We were good at tactical intelligence collection – the Prodromoi and the hypaspitoi and the new Agrianian Psiloi were all excellent scouts, and they collected information and passed it back by couriers with professional competence, but at the next level we were still barbarians. Philip had some excellent sources, but they had all been intensely personal – his own friends in Athens and Sparta and Thebes and Persepolis, who sent him news. Alexander didn’t run his life that way, and we had to have new sources.

I hadn’t even seen the need. But Thaïs lived in the world of exchange of news. She bought news when she was a hetaera – now she merely bought more. And ran some of the sources herself.

Langarus, the King of the Agrianians, met us at the foot of the Shipka Pass. He’d covered our rear for two months, and now he was nervous. He had about four thousand men, and superb men at that – but the Illyrian actions meant that his neighbours might just choose to plunder him on their way to Macedon.

He was, I have to say, a fantastic ally. He stayed and watched that pass while his own crops burned. I’m not sure another ally so loyal existed in all the bowl of the world.

I read all Thaïs’s news during a long afternoon while the tent flapped in the early autumn wind, and then I took a stack of scrolls, tally sticks and small notes on papyrus to Alexander. He was sitting with Langarus and Perdiccas and a new man, who was introduced to me as Nicanor, son of Parmenio. He’d come from Asia to take command of the hypaspitoi, and to represent his father.

He glanced at me as I came in and then went back to talking to the king.

Alexander heard him out – he was discussing a point about Asia, of course. And then his eyes met mine.

‘It’s worse than it looks,’ I said. ‘I think the Illyrians are getting support from within Macedon.’ I started to synopsise the reporting, but Nicanor (as yet unintroduced) cut me off.

‘I’ll read them when I have time,’ he said. ‘Carry on.’

I looked at him. And laughed. It was becoming my new way of dealing with everything. ‘And you are?’

‘Your new strategos,’ he said. ‘I am Nicanor son of Parmenio.’

Alexander shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Nicanor,’ he said. ‘I have promised your father that you can command the hypaspitoi, but you will not be strategos. I’ll command myself.’

‘With all due respect,’ Nicanor said, ‘this is a time of real peril – not a time for boyish heroics. Pater sent me to put down the Illyrians. Riding about hunting Thracian refugees is not going to help you beat the Illyrians. Lord.’

I didn’t have to force a laugh. I could see this would be entertaining, and I sat down.

Nicanor turned and looked at me. ‘Who the fuck are you to sit down in the presence of your king?’ he asked.

Alexander settled his shoulders against the tent wall and smiled gently.

So be it. ‘I’m Ptolemy,’ I said. ‘If it has escaped your notice – I’m the largest landowner in Macedon after the king. I’m somatophylakes to the king. I grew up with him. And I have no idea who you are.’

‘Your insolence is astounding,’ Nicanor said.

I turned to Alexander. ‘May I smack him around, lord?’ I asked.

Alexander shook his head. ‘No. But Nicanor, most of the men in this army have earned their rank, through years of hard campaigning. To them, you are a newcomer and you will have to prove yourself. You will command the hypaspitoi under my supervision and direct orders until I say otherwise.’

Nicanor turned red and then white and then red. ‘Lord,’ he said. He took a deep breath. ‘You have been ill advised, if you imagine that you and your boys are ready to face the Illyrians in a campaign.’

Alexander didn’t explode. He nodded. ‘Would you care to place a wager?’ he asked.

When Nicanor stomped out of the tent, Alexander sent Nearchus after him.

‘Watch him,’ Alexander said. Then he turned and sighed. ‘So it begins,’ he said. ‘Parmenio will never see me as an adult – nor forgive me for outmanoeuvring him. Eventually . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Never mind. Give me Thaïs’s gleanings.’

I ran through what we knew, or guessed, about Cleitus of Illyria.

Hephaestion and Langarus had sat through all of this, and when I finished, Langarus made a face. ‘I think you should let Ptolemy here take Nicanor’s head,’ he said. ‘That one will make trouble.’

‘Perhaps in Pella,’ Alexander said. ‘Ptolemy, am I right in thinking he’ll make no trouble here?’

I nodded. I was glad he was asking my opinion about how the men felt – he needed the help – but in this case he was right. We’d just rolled over the Thracians – the men were worshipping their king like a god. Nicanor was not going to get anywhere with them.

Langarus smiled like a wolf. ‘Well – never mind him, then. I’ll take the Autaratians – I’ll head north in the morning along the old road. You go and take Cleitus, and we’ll crush this thing before it spreads.’

Langarus was, as I have mentioned, a pearl among allies.

We sent almost half the infantry home with all our loot and all the baggage. We kept about a third of the beasts – all cattle – to be able to drive our food with us, and we marched before the sun was up in the morning, heading west. We were in top physical shape, and we had just won a string of victories. The defeats of Pine Island were forgotten. We were invincible, and we raced across the Paeonian Mountains at a speed that was unheard of for an army with so many infantry. We’d marched three thousand stades in a month – now it was high summer, and even the high passes were comfortable.

Alexander’s goal was to turn Cleitus’s flank by rapid marches before he’d heard of us. He wanted to invest Cleitus’s capital at Pellium before Cleitus could gather reinforcements – especially from Glaucias of the Taulantians. It was an ambitious plan that required that we march eighty stades a day through mountains, and while we could do it, the cattle could not. Our carts started to break down, and our animals were dying – baggage animals cannot be pushed.

But neither could Alexander. He ordered all the baggage animals slaughtered. We ate for two days. Then everyone shouldered as much food as he could carry – officers and Hetaeroi included – and we marched without baggage. My whole camp went from a tent and three slaves and a cook pot with other pots nesting inside – to a bear fur robe that rolled on the crupper of my saddle, two cloaks and some spare chitons. I kept Ochrid to make my food and sent my other slaves home.

In truth, we looked more like a defeated army than a victorious one, and I worried every day about the weather. Five days of hard, cold rain in the mountains, and we’d have been in trouble. Even as it was, I knew – as keeper of the Military Journal – that we were losing men to desertion and exhaustion.

I had another run-in with Nicanor. There was no report from the hypaspists three days running, and when I approached Alectus, he simply made a face.

So I went to Nicanor.

‘You understand the Military Journal?’ I asked him, without preamble.

He shrugged. ‘Send it to me and I’ll show you how to keep it,’ he said. ‘You do it wrong, and it is full of information it doesn’t need to have.’

‘I keep it as the king commands,’ I said. ‘You need to send an officer with your reports.’

Nicanor didn’t even look at me. ‘No. When you serve under my father, you will learn your place. For the moment – don’t imagine you can give me orders. I have heard how you fucked up the hypaspitoi and had to be replaced – eh? Don’t play with me, boy.’

He had never served in the pages, and in many ways, despite his years of service under his father, he was soft. I threw him to the ground and rotated his left arm until he made a mewling noise.

‘I am not a boy. Next time you call me that, I’ll kill you and stuff your dick down your throat, understand? Your father is not worth shit here, understand?’ I was angry, and spit flew from my lips. ‘Your father is all but a convicted traitor, and if you so much as breathe in the wrong way with these troops, you will cease to be. Do you understand?’ I wrenched his shoulder with every word.

He said nothing. He was going to tough it out.

So I wrenched his shoulder harder, and he screamed. I had a knee in his back, and his Thessalian bodyguards were just a little too late – and Alectus was there, and so was Philip Longsword.

The two Thessalians were induced to stand perfectly still.

‘This is not Asia,’ I said. ‘Your father is notthe king. And if I rip this arm off, nothingwill happen to me. Now – order Philip to have an adjutant send reports to the Military Journal, or by Herakles my ancestor, I will make sure the hypaspitoi need a new commander today.’

‘Fuck youuuuaaheeh!’ he said. And then he collapsed. ‘Do it – just stop!’

I stopped. Looked around. ‘This was a disciplinary matter, and nothing will be said about it unless the king asks,’ I said. I let Nicanor go, and stepped away.

As soon as he was with his bodyguards, he turned on me.

‘I’ll have you skinned alive,’ he said.

I walked over to him and his Thessalians, who understood better than he did, and did nothing.

He flinched.

‘Go back to Asia or learn our ways,’ I said.

Macedon, eh? Tough crowd. And I had a temper, back then. Really, Parmenio made a mistake in not sending his sons to serve as pages. Nicanor would have known better. He’d have been one of us.

He never did learn, and neither did his brother, but that’s another story.

Fifteen days over the mountains. Alexander took me to task for beating Nicanor, and I took his admonishment with good grace, since Hephaestion told me in private that Alexander had blessed my name.

We were bleeding men by the time we reached Pellium. We’d come too far, too fast, and we lost more than a hundred veterans in the mountains. Alexander didn’t care, and you couldn’t make him care. He was on top of the world.

We came down the valley of the Asopus like a torrent, and our cavalry patrols were like a thunderbolt. Cleitus thought we were a thousand stades away.

In fact, I nearly caught him myself. I was leading two files of Hetaeroi in support of the Prodromoi, because the king wanted us to be able to do their job, too – a brilliant idea, really. So we took rotations as scouts, and it was my day, and we were fifty stades ahead of the hypaspitoi when we heard screams.

We were at the head of the valley, and we could see the ripening grain all the way to the foot of the rocky ridge where the grim fortress lurked – a true robber baron, our Cleitus, with his impregnable fort on a high rock so he would never need to fear the revenge of his many foes.

Somewhere away on my right, a child was screaming.

I had fifteen of the best warriors in the world. So I turned my horse and rode to the sound of the screams.

We burst out of the trees to see a ring of richly dressed men – furs, good wool cloaks, gold-mounted swords – and a big natural stone altar covered with blood. There were two sheep’s carcasses, and three dead children – two boys and girl. I saw it all in a glance.

The priest had his copper knife at the throat of the fourth child.

In truth, had Thaïs not been pregnant, I’d have captured Cleitus. He was right there, watching the sacrifices to see if the campaign against Alexander would be propitious. But her pregnancy had awakened something in me. That girl – she might have been two – set something off, and my first javelin took the priest high in the breast. He never got to cut her throat, but fell away from her, and she stood there and screamed while Nearchus and Cleomenes and all my lads started to kill the Illyrians around the altar.

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 beforethe 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.