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

Автор книги: Christian Cameron

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More than fifty of their cavalry broke the other way – towards Athens.

Poseidon was fresh, and the power was on me. I gave chase with anyone who was following me.

One by one, we caught them and captured them, or killed them – ten, twenty, thirty.

Darkness fell, and we were still running them down. None of us had horses to change.

Horses started to die. You can ride a horse to death, if you go long enough and you are sufficiently stupid – or desperate.

They were.

Poseidon ran on. He was magnificent – like a god himself. I overtook man after man, and these their vaunted best horsemen – and they would either beg for quarter, or make a cut at me with a sword or a spear, and I’d ride them down. One man, I remember well, I caught, and all I had to do was grab a fistful of his chiton and pull on Poseidon’s reins – Poseidon checked, and I pulled him right over his horse’s rump. I left him for slower men to take, and rode on.

Most of their horses foundered all together – ten or twelve in a bunch, the poor animals blowing blood out of their noses where their hearts, shattered by too long a run, had forced it.

They might have run into the woods on Parnassus and avoided me easily enough, but they stood like deer caught in torches and surrendered.

But one man rode on, and I stayed with him. He had the best horse. He was only a blur ahead, and we were riding in moonlight, and Poseidon had been moving for twelve hours, and I became afraid for him. I was not galloping, or even cantering – in fact, I moved at a walk and then a trot, and I got down as frequently as I dared to give him a rest.

I needn’t have worried. He was like a horse of the gods, and as we climbed Parnassus, he seemed to become more powerful, larger, faster . . .

I caught my foe at the top of the pass. He turned his horse, raised his sword and charged me.

I wanted his horse. Poseidon felt my weight shift, and he danced a little to the left, and the darkness betrayed us, and we were down – just like that – and a branch hit me on the head as I fell.

I came to and had no idea how much time had passed.

But I had a vast feeling of fear – of impending danger.

Poseidon gave a scream – not a neigh, but a long, loud call.

I got a foot under me, tripped over a root behind me and fell back so fast that the sword meant to cut me missed entirely. The will of the gods – no doing of mine. I fell backwards into the gully that caught the run-off from the narrow track, and hit my head again, and the earth trembled as in an earthquake.

On the other hand, the pain helped steady me, and I could see my enemy against the moon. He cursed.

I tried to get to my feet. The point of my hip felt as if I’d taken a spear or an arrow. It would support my weight, but I wasn’t going to execute any brilliant throws from pankration.

I started to climb the gully. I could hear Poseidon, and I aimed my climb at him. He had both my spare javelins, and I assumed that with a javelin in hand I could stand off my attacker.

He moved along the top of the gully and laughed grimly. I could hear his horse – breathing like an ironsmith’s bellows. He had his sword in his hand.

‘Come up, lackey of the tyrant, and I’ll gut you,’ he said.

I didn’t bother talking.

He came right to the top of the gully.

I whistled.

Poseidon kicked him, and he gave a cry and fell, clutching his thigh. I took his sword and cut his throat.

Glorious, eh?

He had a magnificent horse – a bay I called Ajax. Big as an elephant. His sons are still in my stable – mixed with Poseidon’s sons.

But both my horses were done in, and I had to walk back to camp, limping all the way.

As soon as I was back, Alexander sent for me, congratulated me and ordered me to Athens with a small escort of cavalry.

‘Take Thaïs,’ he said. ‘The city likes you, and loves her. I don’t care what you do – see to it that Demosthenes cannot raise an army to break my siege.’

Alexander was never bloodthirsty. Far from it – in his mind of wheels and gears, everyone and everything had a purpose and he could never see why people wasted time on anything so inefficient as hate.

And he said outright that if we had to lay siege to Athens, we’d never conquer Asia. ‘Athens could take us six months,’ he said. ‘Thebes I can surround. Athens – we’d need to go home and build a fleet, contest the seas with Lycurgus – at least a year wasted. Perhaps the whole warwasted.’ He shook his head and drank more wine. ‘I hate fighting Greeks. I’m beginning to hate Greeks.’ He looked into his wine cup.

‘Macedonians are better?’ I asked.

‘Amyntas is dead,’ he said. ‘There will be no more trouble in Macedon.’

I shrugged. ‘Unless Parmenio or Antipater decides to take the throne himself.’

Alexander smiled. ‘If I die. Not until. Or am defeated repeatedly in the field.’ His smile widened. ‘Which is never going to happen. I’m invincible.’

I took my grooms under Polystratus. Thaïs and I had an abbreviated reunion. She did not want to go to Athens.

‘I do not want to be treated as a traitor,’ she said.

‘You have a unique opportunity to save lives in Athens,’ I said.

She hit me. It was the only time she ever struck me, but she did it with venom. She meant to hurt me.

She loved Athens.

But she went.

I went with a letter from Alexander demanding that ten leading men of Athens be surrendered to the judgement of the hegemon. I don’t think Alexander meant to execute them – well, to tell you the truth, I doubt that Demosthenes would have survived an hour, but there were so manyof us out for his blood . . .

Charmeides and Lycurgus were courageous, if wily, opponents. And they’d have made wonderful hostages. You need to remember the origin of the Hetaeroi – originally, the Hetaeroi and the pages were the sons of captured enemy chiefs and princes – hostages for their father’s good behaviour. It was a Macedonian custom to take prisoners and integrate them into our service – and reward them so richly that they became part of us. Charmeides would have done better with us, but he took ship and fled to Darius. Lycurgus lay low. Demosthenes doubtless pissed on his chiton in terror and hid in a basement.

Thaïs was cursed wherever she went. Her house had graffiti scrawled across the beautiful façade, and men yelled obscenities at her in the street.

But Phokion and Eumeles, Diodorus and Kineas and a thousand men like them stood with us, and the Assembly refused to vote for Demosthenes’ resolution to send an army to support Thebes.

I’m not sure I helped by being in Athens – in fact, I was hit with a stone on my first day and had little to say for a week – but Thaïs did. Despite her fears and her anger, she was unmoved by the catcalls and the vulgarity. She opened her house and held court – and men came.

And she told them what would happen if Macedon stormed Athens. And she drew them pictures of our siege machines. Athens had a few on the walls. She told them what Alexander had at Thebes.

But her most impressive speech was about Persia.

‘Just because Thebes – our ancient enemy – is choosing to waste herself against Macedon,’ she said, ‘must we? Thebes bragged – I heard them – that they were once again allies of the Mede. Is that who we are? Demosthenes has taken money from the Great King – would Miltiades approve? What about Pericles? Socrates? Plato? Did Athenians die at Marathon so that we could be slaves of Persia? Allies of Thebes?’ She shrugged. ‘Thebes is not in revolt against the tyrant of Macedon – Thebes has reverted to her truest self, and turned her back on Greece.’

Nice speech. I give it here in full, because I feel she might have been another Pericles, had she been born with a penis and not a vagina.

Her words, in Phokion’s mouth – and that was a matter for bitter mirth in itself, because Phokion and Eumeles hated her – and Demosthenes’ faction was wrecked.

The Athenians voted to send a delegation of ten men to Alexander to crave forgiveness. They sent Phokion to lead it, and Kineas with a squadron of elite Hippeis as an escort.

We arrived to find Thebes a burned-out husk, with her entire population raped and degraded, huddled in pens, awaiting sale. Later I heard Perdiccas, who led the assault, brag that no woman between ten and seventy remained unraped when the town was stormed. Children were butchered wholesale.

The Theban hoplites fought brilliantly, but they were no match for us. I heard later that they were the best fighters, man for man, of any foe most of the hypaspists ever faced. But as a body, they made mistakes, and a major gate was left virtually unguarded, and Alexander led the hypaspitoi through it and the town was stormed. Most of the hoplites died in the streets.

The Military Journal says that thirty thousand Thebans died. As many again were enslaved.

There were exceptions – a widow of one of the Boeotarchs, an aristocrat, was raped by one of our officers – a taxiarch in the pezhetaeroi. She didn’t break or even bend – when he went to take a drink after getting off her, she pushed him into her well and dropped rocks on him until he died. Alexander gave her freedom and all her property.

In fact, he was appalled. His troops had got away from him in the storming, and they were angry. Exhausted. They had marched across the world, in horrible conditions, because of these rebels (as we called them), and they wanted revenge for every boil and every sore, every pulled muscle, every broken bone, every day without food.

I won’t say Alexander wept. Merely that, like his father, he would have preferred other means.

But as I say, by the time the Athenian delegation arrived, there were no other means left. Alexander sat blank-faced on a stool and gave many Thebans their freedom – even their property. Many of the temples were spared. Several public buildings were spared. Slaves collected all the dead Theban hoplites and gave them a monument and a decent burial.

But the rest were sold into slavery en masse, and the town was destroyed. Turned to rubble.

Later – during the Lamian War – I heard Greeks claim that the true resistance to Macedon started there, and that Greek unity began in the ashes of Thebes.

Bullshit, says I. Thebes got what was coming to it. A nation of traitors, served the dish they’d ordered. The women of Thebes have my pity. The men died in harness, as rebels, and stupid rebels at that, and they got precisely what they deserved. And no one in Greece gave an obol. Had we done the same to Athens, it would have been war to the end – even Sparta, or Argos or Megara. But Thebes?

When we marched away, the ruins were still smoking, and Plataeans had come all the way across the plain, thirty stades, just to piss on the rubble. They waved at us and threw flowers.

We waved back.

And finally, we marched back to Pella.

Most of us in that army had been on campaign for more than a year. No one had been home that summer, and from the noble Hetaeroi to the lowliest pezhetaeroi, we had fought in at least five actions per man, marched ten thousand stades, killed enemies without count – fought against odds over and over.

We called it ‘The Year of Miracles’.

We called Alexander . . . king. He wasking. He was king from Thrace to Illyria, from Sparta to Athens and across Thessaly to Pella. Demosthenes and Darius of Persia had tried to unite with Amyntas and the Thebans to make a web of steel to surround and crush our king, and he had beaten every one of them, all at once.

From the Shipka Pass to Pellium and down to Thebes, no enemy wanted to face Macedon in the field, ever again. And the smoke rising from the yawning basements of Thebes warned potential rebels of the consequences of foolishness.

Tribute flowed from the ‘allies’. Everyone in the empire paid their taxes that winter.

As the leaves reddened on the trees, we rode back to Pella. The last morning, Alexander was nearly giddy with excitement at returning victorious, and I suggested we put on our best armour and ride our best horses and make a fine show, and he laughed and agreed.

We spent the morning preparing. Veterans among the pezhetaeroi mounted their horsehair plumes, or their ostrich feathers. I’d gone back to the same smith in Athens and got another helmet – this one covered in gold. He’d delivered it with ill grace – but he’d done a magnificent job, and my helmet had a distinctive shape, with a brim over the eyes and a forged iron crest over the bronze bowl, and a tall ruff of horsehair. It was the kind of helmet men called ‘Attic’. It had less face protection, but I could hear and see and, most importantly, it was magnificent, and every man who could see it would know where I was. And the iron crest meant I would never be killed by a blow to the head.

Tirseas of Athens. Best armourer of his day. Hated Macedonians.

We put all our best on – clean chitons, full armour, polished by the slaves with ash and tallow. Swords shining, spears sparkling. Shaved. We were wearing a fortune in armour – brilliant horsehair plumes, Aegyptian ostrich feathers, solid-gold eagles’ wings, panther skins, leopard skins, bronze armour polished like the disc of the sun and decorated in silver and gold, tin-plated bronze buckles and solid-silver buckles in our horse tack, crimson leather strapping on every mount, tall Persian bloodstock horses with pale coats and dark legs and faces. Alexander was the richest and the best-armoured – unlike his father, he looked like a god. No one could doubt that he was in command.

At noon, the Hetaeroi entered Pella, and the crowds cheered us, I suppose, but what I remember is riding with the somatophylakes into the courtyard of the palace. Olympias was there, of course – best pass over her – and even the slaves were cheering us.

When we reined up in the courtyard, there was a moment – no longer than the thickness of a hair, so to speak – when none of us moved. We sat on our horses and looked around.

I looked up, to where I could see the marble rail of the exedra, and the double arch of the window of Alexander’s childhood nursery. I thought I saw a pair of small heads there, and I wondered if, despite Heraclitus, I could put my toe back in the same part of the river. If I could reach across time to those boys – if they were right there.

Those boys being us – me and Cleitus and Alexander. And tell them – some day, we will do it. We will be heroes. Fear nothing. We will win. We will do what Philip did.

But better. And the best was yet to come.

PART III

Asia

FIFTEEN

Pella, 335 BC

We had no money.

Of course, that’s not true. The sale of all the Thebans, plus the loot from Thrace and Illyria, paid the crown of Macedon a little less than eight hundred talents of gold, which didn’t quite cover the arrears of pay to the army. Philip had died leaving the crown five hundred talents of gold in debt – in fact, like many an unlucky son, we had new creditors appearing every day, and Philip probably left Alexander more like a thousand talents in debt. A thousand talents. In gold. Remember that the King of Kings tried to buy Athens for three hundred talents . . .

We’d been home from our year of miracles for three days when I saw Alexander throw one of the worst temper tantrums of his life. It was horrible. It started badly and grew steadily worse.

I had the duty. There was a rumour – one of Thaïs’s sources – that Darius had put out money to arrange Alexander’ s murder, and the Hetaeroi were on high alert. In fact, I had Ochrid – now a freeman – tasting the king’s food because we’d been away from Pella a year and none of us trusted anyone in the palace.

So I was in armour, and I had just walked the corridors of the palace with Seleucus and Nearchus as my lieutenants, checking every post. I had almost sixty men on duty, and two more shifts ready to take over in turn. Alexander had just promoted almost a hundred men to the Hetaeroi – some from the Prodromoi, some from the grooms and some from other units, or straight from civilian life. They were a mixed bag. Perdiccas and I had shared them out like boys choosing sides for a game of hockey.

Of course we played hockey in Macedon. Do you think we’re barbarians?

Hah! Don’t answer that.

At any rate, putting my recruits into their places, making sure that every new man was on duty with a reliable oldster – it used up half my evening, and I was late to the great hall.

Olympias was there. I missed what had transpired, but I gathered from witnesses that Alexander had taken her to task for her wholesale massacre of young Cleopatra’s relatives, and she had told him to get more realistic about his approach to imperial politics.

As I entered, Olympias had just lain down on a couch – something Macedonian women most emphatically did not do, back then. ‘At any rate,’ she drawled, ‘you need their money, dear. You have none.’

‘Money is easy,’ Alexander said, and snapped his fingers. ‘I’ll act, and the money will come.’

Antipater shook his head. ‘We’ve reached a stable point,’ he said. ‘With the money from your last campaigns, which is just enough to pay most of your father’s debts. Disband the army, and we’re home free.’

You have to imagine the scene – forty senior officers and noblemen – Laodon and Erygius, Cleitus, Perdiccas, Hephaestion, of course – all the inner circle, dressed in their best, but relaxed, lying about the place drinking too much. We’d gone a year without a break, and the atmosphere was . . . festive. Even dangerous. Slave girls walked carefully, or bow-legged. Boys too.

Olympias downed her wine. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Disband the army, call Parmenio home where you can keep an eye on him, and we’ll be fine.’ She smiled demurely. ‘I’m sure we can live safe and happy, after that.’

Alexander stood up. Hephaestion knew him best and caught at his hand, but Alexander was too fast. His cup crashed to the floor a hand’s breadth from his mother’s head. ‘I am going to Asia!’ he shrieked. ‘I am not disbanding my army. I am not releasing one man.’ He was shaking. ‘I care nothingfor the cost. My men will march without airif I march.’

Uh-oh. I knew that the pezhetaeroi had been home three days and they were already muttering about back pay, land grants, new clothes, sandals – all the things soldiers require.

Antipater had been away from the king too long, and had forgotten how to manage him. He took on a pompous tone. ‘Eventually, we can consider Asia, lord. But for now, we have to be realistic.’

Alexander stopped shrieking. He turned on Antipater, and his hands were shaking. ‘Listen, you,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t care if I have to have my mother murder every aristocrat in Macedon so that I can seize their estates. I am marching on Asia at the head of a magnificent army – all the allies – the crusade to avenge Xerxes.’ He walked carefully over to Antipater. ‘Do – you – understand?’

Antipater was shaken. We all were. Alexander had been on the edge of this sort of explosion before, but he didn’t actually cross a certain line.

Right then, he had his hidden dagger in his hand, and I thought he was going to kill Antipater. So did Antipater.

Olympias got to her feet – she came up to Alexander’s shoulder, or a little more – and took his hand. ‘There, there, my love,’ she said cautiously but firmly. She took the dagger from him and put her wine cup in its place.

He drank, but his eyes had more white than pupil, and he terrified all of us so much that we didn’t talk about it.

The next day, Antipater sent for Parmenio. He did it with Alexander’s permission and over the royal seal, but we knew who ordered whom, and again, I was afraid. I suspected that Parmenio and Antipater were now going to murder Alexander because they were afraid of him.

Parmenio arrived two days later. He’d already been on his way – or, as Thaïs suggested, he’d been near by, waiting for Antipater to arrange his arrival. Either way, his timing was propitious.

I’m going to pause in my historical account here to talk about Thaïs. We were ‘getting along’. Athens had poisoned something between us. It is difficult to explain, because I understood enough to worry and not enough to make it right. Had she been unfaithful with Alexander? What was unfaithfulness, in a hetaera? And had the situation – loyalty to me, to Alexander, to Athens – unbalanced her? What role had pregnancy played? Pregnant women can be deeply irrational. Men use this as an excuse to describe women as irrational as a tribe – unfair, stupid, vicious, of men, but let’s face it. Pregnant women can be very difficult.

Hey, you’d be difficult, too, if you were carrying a baby between your legs in a Greek summer.

At any rate, we avoided allthese topics. We were like allies, not lovers. We lived together, we were intimate enough. I thought I’d outlast her anger.

Sometimes, I’m quite intelligent.

Parmenio’s welcome was tumultuous and magnificent. Alexander spared no effort for him, and he received much the sort of welcome we had received. He had, after all, taken and held the crossings into Asia, even though he’d lost most of the cities to Memnon, who had, let’s face it, outgeneralled Parmenio in each of three encounters. Something else you won’t find in the Military Journal.

Parmenio was a careful man, a professional soldier and not a courtier. He’d been Philip’s favourite, and he and Antipater were, I think, actually, genuinely friends, not just tolerant allies and rivals. As soon as Parmenio arrived and was welcomed, he and Antipater vanished into the part of the palace that functioned as the headquarters of the army and the secretariat of the king – the bureaucracy, if you like. They spoke for four hours, and Parmenio emerged smiling.

I say he emerged, because I was right there. Alexander had ordered me to provide Parmenio with a direct escort. He had a troop of Thessalian cavalry of his own – his ‘grooms’, if you like, although he was so famous that they were all knights – but they were not allowed in the palace (my new security cordon in effect) and I watched the great man myself.

When he came out of the ‘office’ wing, he looked around as my guards moved to surround him.

‘Young Ptolemy, I think? Last time I saw you, lad, you were naked and playing in the mud.’ He held out a hand. But despite his patronising words, he offered me the full hand and arm clasp of the warrior, and held it warmly. ‘Your father would, I think, be quite proud.’

‘From your mouth to the ears of the gods,’ I said. ‘The king is waiting for you, sir.’

He nodded. As we walked, he said, ‘I gather you and Nicanor had a disagreement.’

I nodded. ‘A misunderstanding, I think. My impression is that Nicanor and I are good, now. If not, let’s settle it. Your family and mine are old allies.’

‘By Zeus, lad, you speak just like your father. “Let’s settle it”. Herakles’ dick, Ptolemy, how do you survive here, if you speak the truth?’ Parmenio was like a force of nature. It was impossible – impossible– not to like him.

I grinned. ‘It’s my job. Ask the king. He’ll say the same. Hephaestion tells him what he wants to hear and I tell him what he doesn’t want to hear.’

Parmenio stopped. ‘Like what?’

I saw the pit yawning at my feet. ‘Best ask the king, sir.’

He nodded. ‘You want to go to Asia?’

Now I stopped. ‘Is this a trick question? I command a squadron of the Hetaeroi.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know if we’re going to Asia, and I don’t know if I’m taking you, even if we go. If this talk is too straight for you, you tell me, son of Lagus.’

‘Meaning that I’m no longer commanding my Hetaeroi?’ I asked.

He looked at me. ‘We’ll see, lad. You did a fine job this summer, but you’re no veteran. And Antipater wants you.’ He looked around – an astounding gesture from a man so powerful. Creepy, almost. ‘You are a great landowner, not a penniless mercenary. Think about it.’

He nodded pleasantly to me and I passed him through the sentries, to the king.

I came off duty and was summoned to the king myself.

He was papyrus white, and his hands were shaking.

‘I am notthe king,’ he said very quietly.

I made a face. ‘You are, lord.’

Alexander put his face in his hands. I had neverseen him do any such thing. ‘I am not the king,’ he said again. Then, in a voice suddenly more rueful than angst-ridden, he said, ‘I don’t suppose that you have a secret sister you’d like me to marry?’

I pretended to take him seriously – stared off into space for a little while, shook my head.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

He managed a small smile for my performance. ‘Might I marry Thaïs, then?’

I shook my head emphatically. ‘No, lord.’

He smiled. ‘She’s one of the few women I actually fancy. But no – I am Achilles, not Agamemnon. I would never stoop to take your war prize.’ He smiled to show it was all in fun – a kind of fun at which he was not very good, and playing far too close to the bone for me. But he was trying to tell me something. I wasn’t seeing it.

‘Antipater and Parmenio have laid out for me the conditions under which they will allowme to cross over to Asia.’ He looked out of the window. ‘I am to marry and beget an heir.’

I laughed. ‘I’m not sure that Hephaestion can bear you a child,’ I quipped.

Alexander whirled. ‘How dare you presume!’ he said. ‘Hephaestion is a noble man, not some effeminate.’

Me and my big mouth. ‘I apologise, lord. I was attempting to lighten your mood, not to attack Hephaestion.’ I shrugged. ‘And – your comment about Thaïs hit me hard.’

It was his turn to pause.

He had a scroll in his hand, and he put it down carefully, came over to me and put his hands on my arms. ‘I am very fond of Thaïs. I don’t know of another woman who, six months pregnant, nonetheless makes me admire her.’ He looked into my eyes. ‘I have never lain with her.’

I didn’t like his choice of words. Too precise. But he was trying to convey . . . love, charm, trust – and I wanted it, so I nodded.

Alexander shook his head and let go of my arms. ‘I am the womanish one, today. I am sure you thought that was humour. I will try to keep my temper in check. Parmenio has changed every command in the army. That, too, is part of his price.’

I shrugged. ‘Well, I knew it was coming. Nicanor to the hypaspists, and Philotas to the Hetaeroi. Coenus? Where’s he going?’

‘He’s to have the Pellan regiment of pezhetaeroi.’ Alexander sounded angry, and well he might. The Pellans – the local boys – were the best regiment of pikes – the elite. Alexander looked at the floor. ‘But his men – his officers – my father’s officers. Asander has the Prodromoi.’

That annoyed me. I’d wanted the cavalry scouts for myself. Not that I’d ever asked.

‘You and Perdiccas both lose your squadrons,’ Alexander went on. ‘I’m sorry, Ptolemy.’

I stood silently, my lips trembling. I lovedcommanding the Hetaeroi. And I had done well at it. I didn’t want to whine. But this was . . . unfair. That adolescent word that adults never use.

‘Have I . . . failed you? Lord, I . . . by Zeus, King of the Heavens!’ I turned away from the king. I knew that I was going to cry.

Alexander came and put his arm around me. ‘I know!’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Ptolemy. But I’m paying, too. As soon as I have command – I’ll put you all back in your places. But as soon as that man walked into the palace – I was no longer king.’

I held my temper in check, although my stomach did flips and I remember the tears running down my cheeks.

‘You are still somatophylakes,’ he said. ‘And one of my royal huntsmen, for life.’

‘I want to hunt Persians,’ I said. ‘And I’ll go as a trooper, under one of Philip’s fart-sacks.’

Alexander smiled. It was like the sun coming through clouds. ‘You will?’

I frowned. ‘Of course.’

He nodded. ‘Well, we’ll find something for you to do. Antipater wants to keep you home.’

‘Antipater doesn’t trust me,’ I said.

Alexander laughed bitterly. ‘The opposite, Ptolemy. We all trust you, and that means you should be left at home. It’s the ones I hate that I have to take to Asia.’

The next day, Antipater began to sell the crown lands around Pella – for cash. Alexander wouldn’t discuss it.

I had handed all my palace keys to Philotas. He wasn’t bad – and neither was Nicanor. They were sitting together in what had always been my room. They rose when I entered. I was in armour.

‘My brother says you are like a lion,’ Philotas said, and held out his hand.

I didn’t feel much like smiling – but remember, my father and their father were old friends, and we all saw Parmenio as the head of our faction, the old aristocrats. I shook hands.

‘These are my keys to all the strong places in the palace,’ I said. ‘They are numbered and have tags on them with the name of the place they unlock.’

Philotas sat and read all the keys. ‘Perdiccas has a set as well?’

I shrugged. ‘Sorry, sir, you will have to ask him.’

Philotas shook his head. ‘Can we nothave this as us against you? Parmenio’s men against Alexander’s men? That won’t defeat the Persians.’

I folded my arms over my chest. ‘You really want to have this conversation?’ I asked.

‘Try me,’ Philotas said.

‘Alexander doesn’t need you or your father to conquer Asia. You went out there and got your arses handed to you by Memnon while the king was reconquering Greece with a handful of men and the will of the gods. Now you and yours are taking control of an army we created and we trained. So – yes, sir, there is going to be some strain.’ I felt much better, having said it.

Nicanor smiled at me. He looked at his brother. ‘I told you,’ he said.

Philotas shook his head. ‘You kids are arrogant, I’ll give you that. Webuilt this army, Ptolemy. My father and Philip and Antipater. I’ve been in harness with this army since I was twelve years old. I’ve trained more pezhetaeroi than you’ve had shits. I’ve pissed more water than you’ve sailed over. You kids have never seen a real battle – never fought an equal foe. And you have the gall to come here and tell me that you trained this army?’

I nodded. ‘Yes. That’s what I’m telling you. You were never a page, though – so you wouldn’t understand.’

‘One of Alexander’s butt-boys? That makes you special?’ Philotas laughed. ‘Let’s just leave it there. I don’t want you in my squadrons, however much my brother seems to like you.’