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

Автор книги: Christian Cameron

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 54 (всего у книги 62 страниц)

THIRTY-THREE

Despite the army-wide depression that set in after the execution of Philotas – forty men threw javelins at him and the other conspirators until they died – we continued to plan a thrust to the east. I assumed the king would march in the spring, when there was grass in the valleys.

I was wrong.

At midwinter, we heard that Satibarzanes was back in Aria raising rebels, and Alexander sent Erigyus – recently returned to us. The Lesbian mercenary not only crushed the rebellion but killed Satibarzanes in single combat. In doing so, he won the praise of the army – and lost Alexander’s friendship.

A sign of things to come. Alexander could no longer stand to have any sign of competition.

It was five months since I’d had command of the main body of the army and rationalised the scouting system, but one afternoon Alexander came into the Military Journal tent and began reading through the entries from the days he’d been off in the north with the Aegema – that is, the entries Eumenes had made while I was in command. He paused and looked at me.

‘I gather you allowed the officers to salute you, while you were in command,’ he said. His tone was mild enough, but I’d known him from childhood.

I just held his eyes. I knew how to handle him, as well as any man in the world except perhaps Hephaestion.

He glared.

I looked back at him.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘Well what?’ I asked.

He stood there.

‘If you don’t trust me with the army,’ I said, fairly caustically, ‘then leave someone else in command.’

He shrugged.

I considered mentioning Parmenio, but I was smart enough not to. But when Craterus came with recruits, I sent Olympias andEurydike – and that hurt – away to the coast. To Ephesus. To be safe, or at least, harder to use as hostages.

At any rate, as soon as we had word that the revolt was beaten, Alexander ordered us to march – midwinter.

We struck like lightning, and we had manoeuvred Bessus out of his impregnable position astride the Oxus river by the time the first grass was growing in the valleys. That is a strategist’s way of saying that we marched over four high mountain passes in heavy snow and lost almost a thousand veteran soldiers to weather, poor supplies and bad guides; to hubris and hurry.

To be fair, fighting Bessus for the passes would have cost us more, and I know – I know– that we did all we could to prepare.

We took Aornos. So many men were snow-blind that you could see a man leading another man to the army market by the hand. I gave up trying to supply the army – Alexander outmarched all supplies I’d arranged, dumped my carts, ordered my mules eaten.

But Bessus lost Bactria without a fight, and his Bactrian tribesmen deserted him in a wave, and suddenly wehad a Bactrian army.

We pressed on into Sogdiana, across another desert. I sent Thaïs back to Susa, and she was happy to go. She handed over her networks – such as they were – to Eumenes. We stood together for a long time – she dressed as a man for riding, as straight as an arrow, her beautiful face lit by the dawn in the clear mountain air.

‘Don’t let him kill you,’ she whispered. We kissed, to the delight of the cavalry escort, and then she was gone.

I’d have gone, too, if I had thought I could leave the army without being murdered.

Alexander had never cared much for his troops, but that march set a new record. He himself changed horses daily, and he moved with the Prodromoi, covering more than a hundred stades a day to the Oxus. Men died so fast it seemed as if a plague had hit us. Men who’d been weakened in the snows died in the desert, or died of drinking too much water when we reached the Oxus. All told, from Lake Seistan to the Oxus, Alexander lost more pezhetaeroi and Hetaeroi than he’d lost in all of his battles combined, and when we reached the Oxus, we had fewer than twenty thousand men, and more than half were barbarian auxiliaries that even I didn’t trust.

And many men had had enough. None of the veterans had been allowed to go home – home to Pella – for the winter. Of course, home was so far away that if they’d marched on the usual autumn Feast of Demeter, they’d still have been marching west on the date they were due back – but that’s not how angry soldiers think. And the army had just heard of Parmenio’s murder, as we lay on our sunburned backs along the Oxus and wondered how exactly the king planned to get us across.

The Thessalians – those who were left, including a dozen troopers I’d convinced to stay with the Hetaeroi – demanded their pay and marched for home. Over a thousand veteran pezhetaeroi did the same.

Alexander was so shaken he let them go. Or so uncaring. Every day, local chiefs brought their barbarous retinues in to join us. These weren’t Persians like Cyrus. These were utterly barbarous northerners who hid their womenfolk, swore oaths for everything and lied when they breathed.

They were excellent light cavalry, though.

Alexander made up his numbers from them. Then he ordered all our leather tents stitched into bladders, and we used them to float ourselves across the Oxus. It was midsummer, and terrifying, but the survivors of the army were by this time not so much hardened as indifferent.

You can still find some of those pezhetaeroi – in my army, or on the streets of Alexandria. Look at them. Ask them.

By the time they reached the Oxus, they no longer expected to live. They marched day to day. They didn’t even grumble. Nor did they drill, and discipline became a real problem, even in the elite corps. Officers were murdered. When recruits came in, they were treated brutally and ignored. The older veterans didn’t associate with them, or help them. In fact, mostly, the veterans just waited to see which of the new boys would die first.

My old friend Amyntas son of Philip found me one day, just after we crossed the Oxus. I was trying to convince Ariston and Hephaestion to give me a thousand local cavalry to use to gather forage from the west, where we hadn’t been yet.

They left me to find Alexander, and I was standing under some kind of tree – something alien to me, anyway. A thousand Macedonians were washing their chitons in the river, or swimming, or simply lying on the rocks watching the water trickle by.

Philip came and saluted. He’d never saluted me before. I clasped his hand, and he smiled.

‘You never know, these days,’ he muttered.

‘What’s on your mind?’ I asked. ‘I won’t ask how you are.’

‘Hah!’ he said. ‘I’m alive, that’s how I am. Alive to walk the earth.’ He sighed. And was silent.

I offered him some wine, which he drank.

‘How’s your little girl?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I hope that she’s safe in Ephesus by now. Hermes protect her, and the Virgin Goddess stand by her side.’

Philip smiled. ‘I love to hear you speak Greek,’ he said. ‘Virgin Goddess.’ He crossed his arms and hugged himself. ‘I’m too far from home,’ he said.

‘Don’t you think the gods see us here as well as in Greece?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t really think they care. But here?’ He looked around – at the patches of scraggly grass, the rock, the barrenness, the trickle of water.

My adopted son, despite his status as a priest, had become a passable cavalryman, and he was serving me as a messenger. He had a pair of fine horses – local stock. Horses loved him.

I digress. Barsalus smiled at old Philip. ‘Of course the gods are here, friend,’ he said with his usual complete confidence.

Philip nodded. He didn’t agree. ‘You know the recruits Craterus brought us?’ he said.

I nodded. Amyntas son of Philip looked away.

‘The old boys stripped them. You know that? Took all their equipment, and made them take ours. They had good chitons and good spolas. Now we have them. And we beat the ones that complained. And Amyntas and his friends are wagering on them – on what they’ll die of, and when they’ll die.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m wagering, too. Fuck it all. He’s going to kill every one of us.’ He looked around. It was the new epidemic in the army – fear. Hephaestion, men said, had organised a corps of pages and serving soldiers as secret police. Myself – I had trouble believing it. But later, it proved to be true.

When Amyntas son of Philip looked over his shoulder, I did too.

That’s how it was.

In effect, the army that had left Ecbatana ceased to exist. Alexander had yet another new army – a central Asian army with a few Macedonian and Persian officers. He made a new army out of the air, and we crossed the Oxus, again outmanoeuvring the supposedly mobile Bessus.

Bessus’s nobles deposed him. In the East, men ruled by military competence, and Bessus had failed them three times – in Hyrkania, in Bactria and now at the Oxus. Many abandoned him, and his lieutenant, Spitamenes, offered to betray him and make submission to the conqueror.

I was sent – with a major portion of the army – to take Bessus from Spitamenes. In fact, the wily bastard handed over a whole company of troublemakers – his former commander, a dozen untrustworthy chiefs and some captured Saka, including three women.

One of whom was your mother, of course. I had no idea – I just saw trouble. I didn’t even find her modestly attractive at the time. Her glare of hate was enough to render her more murderous than beautiful, let me tell you. And she tried to escape.

More than Bessus did. I dragged Bessus back, and at Alexander’s orders, he was tied naked to a post by the side of the road, and the entire army marched past him.

I doubt most of the remaining pezhetaeroi even noticed him as they trudged on towards the horizon.

With the submission of Spitamenes, even I thought we were done. Alexander was fascinated by the Amazons, as he insisted on calling them, and Hephaestion, who was growing more inhuman by the day, took one and tried to rape her into submission, and was badly injured as a result. No tears from me.

But Alexander wanted to see what was north of us, and he had a notion that he could remount the Hetaeroi on the superb Saka heavy horses of the steppe. At the time, we thought – some men still do – that we were close to the Euxine. Our patrols had begun to spar with eastern Massagetae, the Saka that Cyrus the Great died fighting. Since we knew from experience that the Assagetae – your mother’s people – lived north of the Euxine and were cousins of the mighty Massagetae, the philosophers, like Callisthenes, came to the conclusion that we were close – that the Hindu Kush connected to the Caucasus mountains, that Hyrkania and Bactria were much closer than they were.

We were wrong, but Alexander believed it, and your mother’s appearance seemed to clinch the deal – a western Assagetae in Sogdiana. We went north towards the Jaxartes, to gain the submission of the Saka, and a tribute in horses that we could use, so Alexander claimed, to conquer India.

There comes a point when hubris is raised to an art form.

We marched north.

Spitamenes felt betrayed. We were, in effect, doing what we’d just told him we wouldn’t do – we were marching into his tribal areas.

He didn’t withdraw. He raised an army, and attacked.

THIRTY-FOUR

Anyone who served with Alexander that year calls it the same – the ‘Summer of Spitamenes’.

Go down to the waterfront, find a soldier’s wine shop and offer to buy a round. Then ask the men with grey hair from Macedon who was the most dangerous enemy we ever faced. Memnon was brilliant, and daring. Darius was cautious, capable and resilient.

To my mind, Spitamenes was brilliant, daring, capable and resilient. If he had known when to be cautious – if he had had any reliable troops . . .

It was the year Cephisophon was archon in Athens. We had beaten every army in the world from Sparta to Persia.

And then came Spitamenes.

Just in time. Let me explain.

We took Marakanda without a sword being loosened in its scabbard – the first town worthy of the name we’d seen north of the Oxus, and we were happy to use its markets. It was a major entrepôt, too, and I received two letters – long, lovely letters – from Thaïs, full of love and information. Olympias was safely ensconced in the great Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, and enclosed a note begging my forgiveness. Thaïs was at Babylon, with a house and forty servants and all my treasure, bless her.

I went out of my tent, I remember, and I built an altar with my own hands, out beyond the horse lines. Polystratus helped me, and Strako, and Eumenes the Cardian came when I was done. I invited Astibus and Bubares, Theophilus of the Hetaeroi, Philip the Red, Amyntas son of Philip from Craterus’s taxeis, and Ochrid, now not only a freeman but the head of my household, my steward. My son sacrificed a white ram in the dawn, and I swore to wed Thaïs if I made it alive back to Babylon. I swore to Zeus-Apis to build a temple in Alexandria to his glory, and I have not been a laggard in that, have I? And the others swore similar oaths. It made every one of us feel closer to home, and Barsulas spoke to us in the new light as we roasted our shares of the ram over the ashes.

‘You think the gods have forgotten you,’ he said. ‘But they are here, all around us, every day, I promise you.’

I think he was right – but I know he put heart into every one of us. Even the king loved him – and consulted him often enough that his seer and his other priests became jealous.

But enough of my life. Our supply lines now ran from the coast of the Persian Gulf upriver and over two mountain ranges. A recruit coming from Macedon had to march from Pella to the Pontus, cross on a ship, march to Babylon, then down to the gulf, take ship to Hormuz, then march upcountry to the king. New armour, good swords, decent spearheads, long ash hafts for sarissas, any kind of olive oil, letters from home – everything had to crawl up this lifeline.

Alexander was aware of it. He left four taxeis under Craterus, with ten squadrons of local cavalry, to hold Bactria behind us and he took the rest of the army north and farther east, to explore the northern borders of the Persian Empire.

It made me happy just to hear him say the word border. A border implied a limit, and if we had a limit, then perhaps some day we’d all march home.

The nightly drinking had reached epic proportions. It had started after Darius’s death – in fact, Alexander had always drunk too much when the mood was on him – but the last year, he was drunk every night.

In fact, he was bored, in the first weeks of that summer.

In a way – a distant, godlike way – it was interesting to study him when he was bored. He became increasingly irritable; he tended to focus on things of no importance whatsoever, which confused men who didn’t really know him, such as Callisthenes and Aristander. His focus could suddenly fall on exercise, on medicine, on the power of prophecy, on the colour of a man’s excrement as influenced by food. And then, for days, that focus would consume him.

We were south of the Jaxartes, in the brownest country I have ever seen. Thirty of us were lying on portable klines by a bonfire – it was the little Heraklion, and we’d had a day of contests. I hadn’t won anything, but I had that pleasant level of fatigue that comes with the agon.

Hephaestion came and lay down on my couch. I had avoided him since the torture of Philotas. He knew it. But he lay down.

‘Philotas was never one of us,’ Hephaestion said.

And at some horrible base level, that was true. I knew what he meant. He meant that he didn’t owe Philotas the kind of emotive loyalty that he owed me, or any of the other men who’d survived childhood at Philip’s court.

It was an olive branch.

‘No,’ I said. That was my dove back to him.

He nodded. His head was on his arms, and he was watching a trio of lewd slave girls writhe. They weren’t any good – they’d been used too hard, paid too little and they assumed men were brutes. It is one of the delightful, horrible complexities of the human condition – soldiers want girls who want them, not whores. They’ll take whores, but only if the whores behave as if they want the soldiers.

Makes you laugh, in a nasty way, doesn’t it?

Ares, you’re thirteen. My apologies, lad.

At any rate, he watched them. And then he grunted. Rolled over.

‘I need help,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to manage the king all by myself. He needs . . .’ Hephaestion made a sign of aversion – the peasant sign, with two fingers.

‘ O phile pais, I’ve known Alexander since he was five,’ I said. Hephaestion had seldom asked me, or anyone else, for help before. So I put an arm around his shoulder and he let his head sink on his arms. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘The matter?’ Hephaestion looked at me, and his eyes held more rage than sorrow. ‘He’s fucking cut himself off from everyone, and doesn’t know how to get back.’

‘Does he wantto get back?’ I asked.

Hephaestion hid his head. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘He just wants to be god.’

Hephaestion must have manipulated the king, one way or another, because I was promoted from king’s friend to the Persian equivalent of somatophylakes a day later, and suddenly Alexander wanted me to ride with him.

We were on the Oxus, and the day before I’d met a Sakje while on patrol and bartered a fine mare for a superb bow and fifty arrows in a gorytos. I’m not much of an archer, but I loved a thing well made and I’d just determined – back then – to write a book about my travels. I had my journal and the Military Journal, but I was not so different from the king, and I, too, wanted to know – Is this all there is?The idea of writing a travel book made me happy.

Perhaps you have to be fifteen thousand stades from home for this to make sense.

And the conversation with the Sakje man made me happy, perhaps because he met me with a grin, chose to trust my patrol and no one was killed. I had become so inured to killing every fucking stranger I came across that sharing the white horse milk that the Sakje think is delicious wasfun. He ate our onion sausage, we ate his deer meat and he rode away richer by two horses and without one of his bows, and Cyrus, who was at my side the whole time, actually laughed. Out loud.

Never mind. You have to make war for a long, long time for a man’s laugh to seem alien. But these are the things that stick in my head.

I left my squadrons with Polystratus. He was an officer, now – increasingly, a trusted officer. No one doubted that he was an aristocrat. Think of it! From Thracian slave to Macedonian cavalry officer! Mind you, he was a superb officer – but such a thing would never have happened if our lines hadn’t been so long. Ochrid, my steward, now routinely gave orders to fifty slaves. He often helped me with the logistika and would casually order out a patrol for forage. No one doubted his place, although he had started out as my slave. What seemed like a lifetime before.

I rode along with the king, and he affected to be delighted to see me. By luck, his latest passion – dice – had burned itself out.

‘Nearchus is on his way to us,’ I said. I was handling the incoming letters. Eumenes was trying to establish even the most basic level of intelligence collection in Sogdiana and Transoxiana, and he had – in one of those role reversals impossible to enemies and simple to friends – asked me to run the Journal for a few days while he tried to get a network of agents in Marakanda.

‘Nearchus?’ Alexander looked at the mountains to either side for as long as it takes a man to breathe three or four times. ‘Ah! Nearchus!’

For a moment, you see, the king didn’t know of whom I was speaking.

‘Remember shooting bows, lord?’ I asked. My false innocence was glaring to Hephaestion, and he looked at me, but Alexander noticed nothing.

He glanced at me.

‘Look at this,’ I said, and held out my new bow.

He all but snatched it from my hands.

For nine days, we shot everything that moved. I gave him my fine bow, and Cyrus, bless him, took a patrol north of the Oxus and exchanged a dozen local horses for five good bows, so that the inner circle all had them.

The king had a dozen Sakje hostages, and he brought a woman out to see her shoot. He was intending to mock her, and he was already shooting well, although his forefinger and thumb were bleeding from the Sakje release, which Cyrus taught us. Cyrus used a leather thumb ring and had a thumb callus as deep as a coin, but Alexander was above such things.

‘Amazons!’ he laughed, as we rode along.

The woman who joined us, between two guards, was heavily pregnant. She was beautiful – in a deadly, feral way, and pregnancy neither softened nor diminished her. And she rode like a satyr – which is to say, the horse seemed part of her. The king had met her a dozen times, and she’d famously threatened to geld Hephaestion, which made her a bit of a favourite among the inner circle.

She spoke beautiful Greek – accented, but pure Athenian. Well, we both know why, don’t we?

The king had set a dozen targets by the trail – we were well in advance of the army, moving south along the Jaxartes. The first was about ten horse lengths from the rocky road, the next was a little farther, and so on, until the last was easily a hundred paces to the south of the road.

The king came up to the Sakje woman with her two guards – both, as it happened, men from Philotas’s former squadron.

‘My apologies, lady, but the guards say you begged to be allowed to ride.’ He smiled. ‘I thought perhaps you could show us some shooting.’

Hephaestion was smirking. This was for him – she was being humiliated to please the bastard.

Well, I know she was your mother, but at the time she was just some barbarian captive, and if that’s what it took to keep the king happy, I was willing enough.

She looked at Alexander with contempt. I suspect that wasn’t a look he received often. I wonder if the novelty of it drew him to her. She held out her hand for the bow he carried.

He held it out, but snatched it back, and we all laughed at her eagerness. Macedonian humour.

‘You want to kill us all,’ he said. ‘Please remember that we have your other ladies. They would not survive any dramatic performances. And neither would you.’ He pointed to where a pair of the army’s engineers stood with their crossbows.

She shrugged. He gave her the bow, and she flexed it. ‘Heavy,’ she said. And held out her hand for his quiver.

Alexander gave it to her with unaccustomed hesitation. ‘You will shoot the targets, and only the targets,’ he said. ‘Let’s see how many you can hit. Show us how the Sakje shoot. And perhaps – perhaps I’ll send you back to your husband.’

He smiled at her. He was used to the responses of men who lived and died at his whim, so his smile was expectant.

She laughed. ‘It amazes me that a man so foolish could have conquered so much,’ she said. And took his quiver.

She put her heels to the barrel of her horse the moment the strap of the gorytos touched her palm, and her horse – a small gelding – went straight to a gallop. And she screamed – a long, ululating yell. As she rode, she twisted her body, and the quiver fell down her arm and she buckled it into place, riding at a full gallop with no hands, the bow pinned under her right knee, and then it was back in her hand and an arrow leaped from her bow and shot throughthe king’s first target.

At that point, we’d been shooting that bow mounted for a week. None of us had even considered loosing arrows at a gallop.

Her second arrow went into the second target.

Her third arrow went into the third target.

She hit every target.

Then she turned her horse and rode back to us. Men were applauding, and Hephaestion had the good grace to join them.

She was coming at us at a gallop. I noticed that she had arrows in her fingers.

Suddenly, she angled her horse a little to the north, turned – remember, she was eight months pregnant.

She was shooting backwards.

Her first arrow was shot at the most distanttarget.

She drew and loosed, drew, loosed, drew and loosed, so fast that I couldn’t follow all the movements of her arm. She was still riding away from the targets at a dead gallop.

Drew and loosed and drew and loosed.

Her horse turned under her – a sudden turn on her bow side – and she loosed the arrow on the bow and drew and loosed again.

And again.

I was holding my breath.

Her first six arrows struck. She’d shot from farthest to closest, so that they all struck at the same time.

She cantered her gelding across the rocky slope, to the side of the king.

‘Good bow,’ she said, and handed it to him.

Later that same afternoon, a Corinthian athlete offered to demonstrate his skills as a hoplomachos. He’d made a claim about what a good fighter he was, and the king was in a foul mood, overheard the boast and ordered the man to dismount right there, strip and fight.

He looked around, and his eye fell on Coenus.

One of our very best.

Coenus dismounted and summoned a slave to help him take off his armour, but Alexander spat. ‘If he’s so very good, this Greek, he can fight naked with a club. Like Herakles. And you can wear your armour.’

The Greek was all but weeping with frustration. He was prepared to apologise, but the king was in no mood. The archery had ruined his day – he’d ordered the woman and her companions to be taken to Marakanda under escort.

Coenus was uneasy. He could be a brute, but the Greek – despite a superb physique – was not a big man, and he looked inoffensive – naked, with a club. Coenus looked at the king. The king shook his head. ‘Just kill him,’ he said.

The naked man was an Olympic athlete who had come all this way to train Alexander’s soldiers.

Coenus – our Coenus, not your father’s friend – wouldn’t have lasted this long if he hadn’t been absolutely obedient. He turned, drew his sword and set his shield.

The naked boy came forward, edging crabwise.

Coenus struck, thrusting his shield into the man’s body and cutting hard, overhand.

The Greek slid inside the cut, broke his arm and knocked him unconscious with his club in one blow.

Fight over.

Alexander drew his bow from the gorytos, nocked an arrow and shot the Greek. The arrow went in just over his kidneys, and he fell screaming.

His screams pursued us down the ridge.

Hephaestion looked at me, and I just shook my head at him. I couldn’t think of what to say, or do, but for the first time, I considered two things.

Riding away from the army and taking my chances with the king ordering me killed.

Or killing Alexander.

That night, six of us had a secret meeting. It was a conspiracy – we all knew we could be killed for having the discussion. I swore never to repeat what we said, or who was there. It was a desperate hour, and a desperate oath. So I won’t tell you – except that we discussed options.

When we were done, Hephaestion held me back. ‘Barsines or her sister,’ he said. ‘Bagoas turns my stomach, but he’d do, too.’

Well, it was better than regicide. I nodded. ‘But we have to get through the weeks until he finds a sex toy or we can import one,’ I said.

Hephaestion shook his head. ‘We need something as good as the bow was. And we need it to stay beautiful.’ His bronze hair glittered in the firelight. It was already cold in the mountains.

‘Horses? Playing Polis? How silk is made?’ I was talking to hear myself. I wanted Thaïs. I wanted to drink wine with Polystratus and Cyrus, or Marsyas. I wanted to stop being afraid.

Hephaestion shook his head. ‘He’s close to the edge,’ he said. ‘What do we do?’

I didn’t have an answer.

I went to bed.

Polystratus wakened me while the stars were still turning overhead. ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘The king wants you.’

I got out of my cloak, wrapped it back around me and ran for his tent – terrified, in a sleepy, cold way, that he’d done something. Killed Hephaestion.

But they were sitting together.

He was smiling, his face easy and unlined, his eyes glittering.

‘Listen, Ptolemy!’ he said. ‘Spitamenes is in revolt, and he’s slaughtered all seven of our new garrisons.’

Hephaestion looked at me. His eyes said everything.

Alexander went on, ‘He’s raised the whole province while we were playing at archery – and he’s cut us off from the main army. We’re surrounded. And our supply lines are cut.’ He fingered his beard. And smiled.

Hephaestion smiled.

Hades, I smiled myself.

Alexander looked up from the dispatch. ‘Gentlemen, I think we might have a war on our hands,’ he said.

We were saved.