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

Автор книги: Christian Cameron

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Alexander sank on to the couch nearest the door and Myndas appeared and started taking his sandals. Myndas had never, in a year of serving me, helped me with my sandals.

But he did, when he was done with the prince.

Dinner sailed in and out like a well-ordered fleet – servants I’d never hired or paid for carrying dishes I’d eaten only at court or at home. In fact, it was plain enough – four removes, meat and bread and some eggs, but plenty of it, and everything with some little touch of culinary genius – saffron on the eggs, pepper on the lamb with sweet raisins.

Alexander ate sparingly like the ascetic he was, but he relished the bread, and when the sweets came in – nuts in honey – he ate himself to sticky excess. And he drank, too. It was all local wines – Macedon has no need to import wine, really, and our heavy reds are as good as any in the world. Off in the next room, someone was keeping the wine watered three or four to one, but Nearchus was bright red and the prince was loud.

He put his feet on the floor suddenly, and barked his laugh. ‘I want to see her!’ he said.

We all fell silent.

Alexander had a wine bowl. ‘To the mistress of this house, whosoever she might be. I haven’t eaten like this in my life.’

I said something about being at his service.

‘Then let’s see her!’ Alexander said.

I rose to my feet.

‘In my court we have many factions,’ Alexander said, his eyes a little wild. ‘Attalus believes all men are pigs. Parmenio wants us to make war for ever so he can keep his place – Antipater craves peace so he can keep his. Hephaestion would make love to the world.’ He grinned. ‘But you, my friend, are the only advocate of women. You likewomen. And now you’ve brought one home, and you are ashamed to show her to me?’ He beamed around. ‘Do you gentlemen know that he put a girl in my bed? Eh?’ he asked.

‘I’ll fetch her, by your leave, my prince.’ I headed for the door.

‘Don’t you find . . . Ptolemy, I’m asking you. Don’t you find that she makes you weaker? After you put that lady in my bed – I thought of nothing else for ten days. I could accomplish nothing. I was worth nothing. Are you a better man than I?’

Knock me over with a feather – he’d never shown a sign of being besotted. Of course, we’d ridden to rescue his father – for nothing, as it turned out.

I shrugged and went to the kitchen.

Nike wasn’t there. There was a cook, a big African I’d never seen before, with a gold earring and a faintly military air. Clearly a freeman – the earring was worth ten days’ wages. ‘Lady Nike?’

‘Changing clothes,’ he said, with one hand on a bronze pan and the other on some eggs. ‘Don’t bother me right now, lord.’

By the time I went back into the hallway, she was there, wearing a fine blue wool chiton in the old Ionian manner, pinned with some very plain bronze pins which I determined on the spot to replace with gold. I snatched a kiss, with spectacular success. Isn’t there something almost miraculous to kissing someone who wants to kiss you? Then she pulled free.

‘Don’t muss my hair,’ she said, and ignoring my attempts to stop her and give her advice, she walked into the andron.

Alexander was drinking again. Nearchus looked . . . frightened. Cleomenes was laughing and Philip was laughing with him. But they all straightened up when Nike came in. She was that kind of girl.

She made a low curtsy to Alexander – just the sort of curtsy she’d have made at one of the shrines.

He looked her over with an air that made me angry – as if she were unfit for human consumption.

‘The food is excellent,’ he said.

‘Thank you, lord,’ she answered.

‘You are a freewoman, I think,’ he said.

She nodded.

‘You can cook and weave, then? How about . . .’ He drawled the question – he meant to offend. ‘How about reading?’

‘I’ve read Isocrates,’ she said.

I’ve seen Alexander surprised a half-dozen times, I think. Maybe more. Not often, though. But when Nike said ‘Isocrates’ his eyes opened wider and his brows shot up. Even his mane of hair seemed to move.

‘Really?’ he asked. ‘And what did you gather from his works?’

She didn’t meet his eye. ‘That he’d like a place at your father’s court,’ she said. ‘And that it is time Macedon stopped playing with Greece and took Persia, instead.’ She had a matter-of-fact delivery that was like Aristotle’s – it was difficult to contradict her, as I learned early in our relationship, and love never stopped her from being ‘right’.

Alexander clapped his hands together, much in the way he might have done for a talking dog, I fear. You have to remember that Aristotle had no time for women at all, and Philip liked them only at the end of his cock, and even then he found them interchangeable with men. Alexander’s mother was too feminine, too much the avatar of Dionysian excess. He didn’t have any charming, witty, argumentative women in his life.

More’s the pity. Aristotle told him that pleasure came with cost, and distracted great men from great deeds, and he took that bait and swallowed it. Domestic happiness puzzled him utterly.

He interrogated her for as long as it took the brazier to burn down, and never asked her to sit. He asked her about her father, about her education, about her views of women as priestesses, as mothers – asked her whether she planned to be a mother.

At first I found it offensive, and then I found the explanation. She was suddenly the ambassador of the tribe of women to the court of Alexander. He’d never really had one to talk to before. And he always kept ambassadors standing because he forgot to ask them to sit – because questioning them about their alien lands excited him so much.

When I understood that, I drank a little to catch up, caught her eye and winked, and she stood calmly and answered him as best she could – some sharp answers, some witty answers, and some plain answers.

When she said that, yes, she wanted to have children, he smiled at her.

‘Ptolemy’s sons? Or will you wed some lesser man?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure that I can answer that,’ she said. ‘Nor would I, even if I knew.’ She met his eye, and for a moment the Prince of Macedon was eye to eye with a tiger. Neither shrank.

‘Fascinating,’ he said. ‘I drink to you, my lady.’

And then he was finished with her. I took her by the hand and led her out, and she walked into our bedroom and threw up in a basin, and then tidied herself and went to the kitchen to see what had happened to the barley rolls. That was Nike.

I walked him home, with Nearchus and Cleomenes and Philip as guards – because people didwant to kill him, and the streets of Pella after dark were an unbeatable opportunity.

He seemed sober. But just short of the palace, he turned to me. ‘I’m not sure that wasn’t the best dinner I’ve ever had,’ he said. ‘And I’m not sure what to think of that.’

‘You are welcome any time,’ I said.

‘Good. I’ll come the second day of every week. I may invite one or two others. See to it that the duty officer knows the way.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry, please ask the lady Nike if I might come every Tuesday.’

I grinned. ‘I will,’ I said.

Those dinners saved his life. And more. But that’s another story.

FIVE

In spring, we marched.

In fact, it was still late winter, and there was snow everywhere, and our farm-boy recruits got to march through it in Iphactrian sandals that made the snow pack in under the soles of the feet – I was wearing them myself.

Camping an army in snow is dreadful. First, because everythingis wet. Snow is water held close to the ground, ready to turn back to water the moment you are comfortable. In higher areas, it stays snow for a while and you are merely cold, but in spring – water, waiting to happen.

Second, because everything wet is cold.Even wood has to be warmed and dried before it will ignite.

There’s no casual forage for animals. The grass – old, tough and useless – is underthe snow. Animals use energy getting at it.

And the process of freezing and thawing turns roads to mush. In late summer and early autumn, a good dirt road has a surface like builder’s concrete or better, and can shed water from a long rain. But in early spring, there isno surface, and every wheel rut is a potential spiked pit of death for carts or hooves. I was ready, this time – in fact, I was merely Antipater’s aide, and didn’t bear the full weight of the responsibility, although I’d done a great deal of the work. I had spare wheels in every other cart, my carts were the pick of the litter and not the runts and my draught animals would have been chosen as cavalry horses in most armies.

We had two thousand infantry, almost all recruits. We had all the former pages over sixteen years old, three full troops of fifty, each with three chargers and a fully armed groom. Most of us had three or four grooms, although only one was armed and armoured. Polystratus was mine.

We stopped in Thessaly and picked up two hundred young noblemen. We looked at them with some amusement as they flailed around being miserable, camping in the snow – they were as tough as nails, but this was outside their experience. A man can camp in the snow with his pater and a pair of retainers while hunting and still not have a clue how to keep clean and neat and warm in the midst of four thousand men.

At any rate, we crossed the high passes in temperatures that made all of us bond. I was widely envied for my foresight in bringing my own bed-warmer – Nike came. I was an officer – I could get away with it. And her talent for organisation – and her willingness to win Polystratus as an ally – made her perfect for the life. She had food ready when my duty was over – not just for me but for my mess. Don’t imagine she cooked it herself. She simply organised all the servants in our mess like a little military unit and had them rotate all the duties. She got them tents, too. Our little corner of the companions’ camp went up in no time, and had a central street, with our tents on one side and the servants’ tents on the other and the fires in between. Before we were out of the mountain passes, this had become the pattern for all the younger companions, and we all lived better for it, with our fires and our weapons closer to hand. Not all these ideas were Nike’s – some were mine, some Philip’s, some Alexander’s, some Polystratus’s. But we implemented them all on that march, and we had a better, tighter, more defensible camp with happier camp servants and warmer men as a result.

We marched down on to the coast road where Leonidas made his stand at the Gates of Fire, and Alexander stopped and made sacrifice there. Hephaestion made a great show of pouring an enormous and costly libation. The rest of us shared an ox, slaughtered it and feasted over the Spartan dead. Nearchus read the poem by Simonides.

We knew we were the invaders and not the defenders. But our hearts were with those Spartans standing at the wall.

Spring came after we passed the Gates of Fire – or rather, what was late winter in Thessaly was early spring in Greece, with jasmine blooming like yellow fire on the hills. The Thebans were holding some of the passes, and the Athenians the others – over by Delphi – and their mercenary army, ten thousand professional soldiers, held the coast road.

Two nights before we marched into Philip’s camp, he stormed the mercenaries’ positions. It was his first great victory in years – and one of his best. I wasn’t there, but I heard about it in detail from men who were. It was, in some ways, the pinnacle of his achievements – the storming of an impregnable position against superb soldiers, done in bad weather, through a mixture of bribery and audacity. He hit the mercenaries so hard that he drove them off their dry-stone walls in the first charge, and he’d moved a dismounted force of his own companions and a pack of Agrianian javelin men – the fruits of his latest barbarian marriage – across impossible terrain to close the pass behindthe mercenaries, so that they could not rally against him, or seize another pass to hold. In fact, he virtually exterminated them.

We arrived within an hour of his return to his base camp from the bloody pursuit. He embraced his son – as the victor in a recent battle, he was all love – and he reviewed us the next morning, pronounced us fit to be royal companions and confirmed all of Antipater and Alexander’s promotions, including mine.

And then we were off like hounds from a leash – all the cavalry under Alexander, racing down the newly captured passes and into the plains of Boeotia, turning the flanks of the whole alliance and leaving them with nowhere to go but back, abandoning Delphi to us and all the mountain states. With no further fighting, we were in behind them.

Chares, the Athenian strategos, had received a great deal of wine-inspired criticism for his campaign, but in fact he did a brilliant job with the tools he had. The Athenians needed only to endure – their fleet was out on the seas, busy wrecking our commerce. And we could endure only so long, while Athens gathered momentum and threatened to do things like take Amphilopolis behind us.

So Chares held his line of mountains, and when he was turned out of them, he had a plan for that, too, and both armies – Thebans and Athenians – retired in good order. My first taste of combat with professional opponents was in late spring – all Boeotia was a garden and a farm, already tawny with grain, and we came cantering down the passes. Our greatest advantage besides sheer training was that every one of us had three remounts, and we could move for days, changing horses as we went. So we did.

The Thebans had little cavalry to speak of, but the Athenian Hippeis were good – not as good as we, but too good to trifle with. They bloodied our noses in our first skirmish – Philotas charged them as if they were Thracians, and they scattered down a Boeotian road, and Philotas pelted after them, and it was a trap – we lost six men.

But after that, we had their measure, and we’d unfold from our road column into a fighting line at the gallop, racing for the flanks the moment the Athenians were spotted, and after that we flushed their roadside ambushes the way a hunter flushes birds from hedgerows.

And so started the most glorious of summers. The sun was warm, Greece was beautiful and kind, the peasants and free farmers mostly welcomed us as liberators because Thebes is hard to love. We marched to the gates of Thebes and drove in their pickets, then turned and went for the passes to Athens – but Chares, as I say, was no fool, and he took ground at Chaeronea like a dozen strategoi before him.

And there our lightning offensive stopped. Chaeronea has been the scene of a dozen battles for a reason. And it is not for nothing we call that area ‘The dance floor of Ares’. It is flat, good going, for stades in every direction. The ground rose towards the Athenian position. They had an excellent view of our camp night and day, without even sending their horse out as scouts. Their backs were to the passes over Parnassus to Athens, and yet they had three roads into the countryside around Thebes, so that we were hard put to watch them all, and in fact, contingent after contingent joined their army without our being able to stop them.

We were in the saddle for days at a time.

I loved it. I had a great deal to learn, and I learned it – I fought skirmishes where I might have gathered information, I ignored heavensent opportunities to grab enemy supplies, or I grabbed supplies that didn’t matter . . .

I got to visit Plataea, and was received as a hero. They hate Thebes, even the shepherds. Probably even the sheep. Philip was already declaring his policy of dismembering the Theban League, and towns that had known independence, such as Plataea, were already ours.

The main army camped opposite the allies at Chaeronea, and Philip made peace offers. He meant them, too. He had the plain of Boeotia and that’s all he needed to negotiate – time was now on no one’s side, and as long as he could absorb the farm produce of the great plain, Thebes was the city that was in the most trouble.

But Thebes had delusions of grandeur, and so did Athens. They were perfect reflections of each other – living in past glories, even past glories where they’d been enemies. Philip told us one night at dinner that they were like two people who are each spurned by a third and use that as a basis for marriage.

I remember it as a golden summer. Alexander was happy – he led us on raids and long tours in person, and he was brilliant at such stuff – always a step ahead of the Thebans and the Athenians – and then back to camp, tired but happy after three days on the road, to the unstinting praise of his father.

We were shutting the enemy cavalry in a box and dominating the countryside. The Athenian Hippeis had done well against Macedonians in the past – we’d got our fingers nipped by Phokion a few times. It was heady to be better than they in every skirmish. And the Theban cavalry were a sorry lot, and we bullied them. The Athenians never got bullied.

After one encounter, where we chased the Thebans twenty stades and captured a Boeotarch, Philip allowed that, in his son, he might have discovered a second Macedonian general after Parmenio.

Now that’s flattery. And Alexander loved him for it, gave him a leg-up when he went for a ride, held his horse when he dismounted, waited on him with a cup in his hand, and was the dutiful son that he secretly longed to be.

Both of them were better men when they were successful, together.

And all the plots fell to pieces. No one at court was going to plot against rampant success. Philip, the best general in Greek history, had a son who bid fair to be his equal. We were headed for glory. Attalus took a fraction of the army and marched off to reduce Naupactus, just to keep Athens at the bargaining table, and after he left, the camp was like paradise.

Sophists and priests like to tell people that war is a terrible thing, and indeed, it can be – dead babes, children starving, horses screaming for a man to come and put them down. Horrible. But war in the summer in Boeotia, between Greeks, men of education, courage and principle, was merely the greatest sport man could invent, or the gods. Those who died, died in the flower of youth and vigour, and we feasted every shade. And those that lived were better for having eaten at danger’s table and survived. And that is the other face of war – the contest of the worthy.

It went on for months, and while we faced the allies across the dance floor of Ares, we skirmished with their cavalry every day, we rode in races, we wrestled, we ate well and every night Nike took me in her arms. And Alexander ate with our mess once a week, when he wasn’t in the field. And Nike began to organise the camp girls – not that she was one of them, but neither did she put on airs.

Good times. I never tired of her. I captured a beauty one day – captured is too strong, but my patrol snapped up a dozen boys and a girl headed into the enemy camp, and the girl was my share. Hair like honey, big tits and a tiny waist – I sent her home. I had what I wanted. And I did it as a sacrifice to Aphrodite.

The wheat was ripening in the fields and the barley was golden when it became plain that no matter what we offered, Athens intended to fight. The last straw was Naupactus, a vital Athenian naval base. Attalus took it – he was a good soldier, despite being a total shit of a man – and at that point, Athens shouldhave wanted peace. Instead, they marched their ephebes over the mountains, brought up four hundred more Hippeis, and the cavalry war heated up.

The new Athenian cavalry were better – the best we’d faced, with excellent horses and better discipline. Of course, they were the real aristocrats, most of whom were politically in favour of Philip – members of Phokion’s party to a man. Whatever their ethics, they had superb horses and they were crafty devils.

That’s the first time I saw your pater, sprig. He was a troop leader, like me, and we tangled twice in a row, honours even. His troop was excellent – not as rock hard as my boys, but better mounted. He caught me flat-footed at the edge of the hills over towards the Kerata Pass, and I caught him the next day, his troop tired and too strung out on the road – but while the men were tired, the mounts were fine, and I got one prisoner, a scruffy peasant boy named Niceas – he was allowed as he was a hyperetes, which with us is a servant, and I slapped his arse and told him to stay out of the fighting. More fool I. Among Athenians, that made him an under-officer, the troop leaders’ right hand.

Laugh at me, will you?

It was that night, though, that Philip called all the officers together and told us he was going to attack. He didn’t make a speech – we’d lived it. We knew that we’d done our bit, and that if Athens and Thebes held us here until winter, we’d have to go home and start the whole thing again next summer, storm the Gates of Fire or some other damned pass – on and on.

So he outlined his battle plan, which was simple – that his foot would defeat the Athenian foot, and force the Thebans to open their ranks, and then the Macedonian cavalry would ride them down. And Alexander would command the cavalry.

All the younger men were silent after he announced his plan. Philip was the best general of the day – but we were going uphill into a larger army, an army with the Sacred Band, the most feared taxeis of soldiers in the world; a regiment of pairs of lovers, each bound to the other by ties stronger than steel. You know the Plato—Phaedrus speaks in the Symposiumand says:

And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?

The Thebans built their regiment just that way. And they were unbeatable.

And behind or alongside them were the deeply ranked professional Theban hoplites who had beaten the Spartans, and the Athenian hoplites who, whatever their failings, were reputed as the most tenacious in the Greek world. It has become fashionable to view the Athenians as second-class soldiers. Don’t ever confuse your own propaganda with the truth. And the younger men had grown to manhood on tales of Athens’ greatness.

It didn’t sound like a great plan to us.

And the older men didn’t like it any better, because Alexander, not Parmenio, had the cavalry. Parmenio wasn’t there – he was busy holding the Chersonese and keeping the Thracians at bay – but even Antipater got a subordinate command. Alexander had all the cavalry – all the Thessalians, all the Thracians, all the scouts and skirmishers and, of course, all the companions.

Philip left his horse and went to serve on foot, leading his precious hypaspists. Demosthenes said that Philip had fucked every man in the hypaspists, and Philip retorted that Demosthenes had an extra arse instead of a face.

We moved our camp forward, and Alexander pitched his tent under an ancient oak, and we camped around him, street by street. It was a clear declaration that we were coming to fight – we knew it, they knew it and a hundred thousand men, more or less, had bad dreams, sharpened things, polished things and were afraid.

The allies tried to outflank us to the south, by the citadel, where the rising ground gave them a natural advantage. That’s where the fight started, in the first light of dawn, and I was still drinking hot wine and trying not to throw up my porridge. Luckily, I had other people to worry about – an excellent way of remaining brave.

Besides, Nike was watching me. She was right there – not a distant rumour of womanhood back in Macedon, but the living embodiment of feminine opinion, and she did a great deal to make us what we were. Young men will compete for a woman’s good opinion, if she is worthy.

Besides, as far as we knew, there was nothing of which she was afraid.

When Polystratus brought my charger, Nike held the bridle, gave me a stirrup cup, said the prayer of Aphrodite over me and poured wine on my sword – and on Nearchus’s and Philip’s, too.

She kissed me – not a long, lust-filled kiss, but a plain kiss on the lips. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said. And grinned. ‘So either way, you’re covered.’

She meant that if I lived, I had a child to raise, and if I died, an heir.

Not sure if that’s what every man wants to hear as he rides to battle, but for me, it was perfect. Something dropped away, and I rode to the prince with a light heart.

To our right, in the first true light of day, the phalanx was forming. In the best tradition of all Greek warfare, our best troops were on the right – the hypaspists and then the foot companions and then the phalanx, but all formed shield to shield in one long line sixteen deep and six stades long, covering the whole of the open ground from the rocks and scrubby ground at the base of the citadel hill, to the banks of the Cephissus river. Across the fields, just a few stades that a fit man could run before breakfast, the Thebans and Athenians formed, too. They had the Sacred Band on their right, so it was facing our rawest levies – not really all that raw.

I need to speak about phalanx warfare. Foreigners think that there’s something to be gained by experience – by spending more time in the storm of bronze and iron. If you are a cavalryman, there’s a great deal of truth to that assertion. Man and horse grow better every encounter – and when wounded, can ride away. It is a different form of war, on a horse’s back.

But down in the dust on a summer’s day in Boeotia, the advantage is often with the most fit, with the highest hearts. Older men who have seen battle may stay alive longer – but they also know the fear of the spear that slips past your guard unseen. Of the chance arrow. The fears of all the details that they survived the other times, when friends died beside them.

Sometimes, the bravest men are those who do notknow what lies in store for them.

The Athenians were an army of veterans – most of their hoplites had made campaigns in the Chersonese, or as marines – against us, or policing their empire. The Thebans – they hadn’t seen much action since they carved up the Spartans. No one really wanted to take them on. And opposite me, up that hill, they’d formed twenty-five deep. That did not look good.

But our farm boys looked surprisingly tough, when facing two of the most famous armies in the world. They had a touch of swagger to them that made me nod in respect. Some of our men had been to Asia – most had fought in mountains and plains, in the dark, in storms . . .

They trusted Philip.

I sat my Poseidon by Alexander, and we watched them form.

‘He’s insane,’ Alexander said quietly.

That snapped me back to reality. ‘Who is, lord?’ I asked.

‘My father – Philip. He thinks that his hypaspists can go uphill into those Athenians and break them?’ He shook his head.

I was caught between loyalties. I was absolutely loyal to Alexander – but Philip was Philip. A force of nature. He could not be wrong.

‘If he throws it all away, here, we’ll never get to storm Asia, Ptolemy. We’ll be lucky to hold Macedon. We’ll be some kind of historical side-note, like Alexander I and the battle of the Nine Roads.’ His eyes were darting around – here, there, everywhere.

Hephaestion was mounted by now. He rode over to Alexander and they embraced.

A rider came from the king and ordered Alexander to send two troops around the army to watch the Athenian skirmishers on our right. Laodon got the nod, and I went with him. Troops cheered us as we passed behind them. They looked calm, as if on parade. I felt like I had a belly full of bees.

Laodon didn’t seem too concerned.

‘I don’t want to miss the main action because I’m chasing slaves,’ was all he’d say about being sent to the right.

When we arrived, we saw why we were needed – there was a stade-wide gap between the hypaspists and the edge of the bad ground, the product of a slight widening of the valley and just possibly a mistake on Philip’s part.

We slotted into our place in time to watch some of our Psiloi get driven off the ground by allied skirmishers. It wasn’t a hot fight, but the enemy had cavalry mixed in with their Psiloi, and they were killing our lads in short rushes.

Laodon shook his head, pointing at the ground. ‘I’m not taking my knights into that,’ he said. ‘We’ll kill more horses then men.’

I had to agree – he was older, and I thought he was right.

But the Athenian cavalry was in there, and they were having a field day against our javelin men. Finally the whole pack of our light armed gave it up and fled. They ran right through us, and rallied behind us.

Then we got to endure arrows and javelins. We pulled back, found a better piece of ground and the Athenian cavalry formed to face us and just sat there. We hooted at them, they hooted at us – our numbers were even, and neither of us had anything to gain from a charge.

Our light armed were ready to go forward again, and their leader was talking to Laodon, when a man came galloping towards us from the Athenian ranks. He halted a few horse lengths from our line.

‘I am Kineas, son of Eumenes,’ he called out. He declared his whole lineage – how he was descended from Herakles via the heroes of Plataea. He had beautiful armour, and a pair of white plumes in his helmet.

He was challenging us to fight man to man.

Laodon spat. Looked away. Young enough to be embarrassed – too professional to accept.

Not me. I took my good spear from Polystratus. I gave Kineas of Athens a proper salute, and we went at it. We charged each other from about half a stade – a long ride, when you’ve nothing to do but contemplate mortality.