The New Achilles

by Christian Cameron

  He was surprised to see that the Exile cavalry was still in ranks and files. They were almost three hundred strong.

  ‘I don’t think—’ Dinaeos began. A sling stone struck him in the torso and unhorsed him. He went down, leaving his horse to stand, terrified.

  Alexanor heard another sling stone go past him with a low whirrr like a huge insect and he ducked his head. Something brushed his scalp, and he was bleeding.

  ‘Skirmish order! MOVE!’ bellowed an enormous voice.

  The man’s voice was so loud he made Alexanor’s teeth vibrate. The priest turned to see a big man in bronze armour atop a very big horse. He roared the order again like the whole of a chorus at a play. The giant figure was Philopoemen, and he seemed to have grown in stature to the size of a Titan.

  Dinaeos was up, a deep dent in his thorax.

  ‘Broke a rib,’ he said.

  Another sling stone whispered by.

  ‘Stay with me,’ Philopoemen said. ‘I was worried that they’d come back over the river in the darkness but no one …’ The Achaean used his knees clamping the horse’s back to lever himself up and get a longer view. ‘Ready?’ he roared.

  In the few heartbeats since the first sling stone went past, the cavalry had formed four deep in a line at irregular intervals.

  ‘Forward!’ Philopoemen ordered.

  The cavalry line went forward.

  Men with slings appeared in the tall grass ahead of them. A trooper was hit and came off his horse; a horse was hit and dropped like an ox felled at a sacrifice.

  ‘Charge!’ Philopoemen roared.

  The cavalry burst forward. The slingers turned to run, but too late. They died on the Exiles’ spears, or else lay cannily under the hooves of the horses and waited for them to pass, except that the Achaean cavalry knew the trick. Two ranks halted and began to kill men lying on the ground while the front two ranks carried on, flushing a big clump of peltastoi with long shields and heavy spears from the high grass by the riverside. The peltastoi made a stand; their officer ordered them to form close. Alexanor could hear every word.

  Most obeyed but some did not and the order of the peltastoi had gaps and flaws in it.

  ‘AT THEM!’ Philopoemen roared in his superhuman voice.

  Alexanor watched Philopoemen ride into one gap, striking with his spear over men’s shields, his horse pushing forward. Suddenly he had, alone, split the peltastoi into two groups, and a dozen cavalrymen followed him into the gap. There were shrieks and screams. Fifty of the Achaean horse halted, watching the rising dust as if they were watching a play or a race, and the rest surged forward.

  The rear ranks, having massacred the psiloi, came forward.

  The peltastoi collapsed into the Oenus behind them, men dropping their shields and fleeing down the steep bank.

  Philopoemen followed them down the bank and so did his cavalrymen.

  The peltastoi tried to cross the stream and were caught. Again.

  Alexanor didn’t want to watch any more. The contest had become murder. The river was suddenly red-brown in the bright sunlight. Philopoemen’s spear was like a judgement of Zeus. Alexanor turned his head so he didn’t see the number of light-armed men the Achaean killed.

  He looked back up the ridge that he’d ridden down a few minutes before. Now the Macedonian cavalry was descending. Off to the army’s right were the Illyrians and other light troops; they, too, were encountering resistance all along the front.

  Dinaeos trotted along the front of the Exiles that hadn’t followed Philopoemen into the water.

  ‘Hold, hold,’ he called. ‘Let the hipparchos play. Watch his flank, boys.’

  Behind them, perhaps two hundred paces, a Macedonian cavalry squadron halted and began to form a wedge.

  From behind it came the king. He was on a big black horse, perhaps the biggest horse Alexanor had ever seen. He rode out from behind his cavalry and across the bloody grass with a dozen officers and as many guardsmen.

  Philopoemen came trotting back out of the river bed, his javelin unbroken, blood running down the shaft and over his hand. When he saw the king he sat back on his horse and saluted with his javelin. Blood flicked away as the salute ended.

  Doson trotted up so that they met a few yards from Alexanor’s horse.

  ‘Thracian mercenaries,’ Philopoemen said. ‘My lord.’

  ‘All across the fucking plain,’ the king said. ‘That’ll cost us an hour. How much money does this bastard have? And where’s Alexander, lad?’

  If Philopoemen disliked being called ‘lad’, he didn’t show it.

  ‘Off to the right, covering the Illyrians, my lord,’ he said.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Philopoemen, my lord, hipparchos of Megalopolis,’ he said. ‘Alexander calls us the Exiles.’

  ‘Megalopolis? If it is such a big city, why doesn’t it send more cavalry?’ He laughed. ‘Very well, I only think I’m funny because I’m king … Get off to the right, Hipparchos. I need this ground for the phalanx.’

  ‘And those are the thanks of kings,’ Philopoemen said without much malice as his troopers filed off to the right.

  They had one dead and one man unconscious and carried to the rear. The peltastoi had lost almost half of their men and more had surrendered. Dinaeos had sent two files of cavalrymen to guard the hundred prisoners.

  ‘You took prisoners,’ Alexanor said.

  ‘I’m not a barbarian. I don’t kill without reason.’ Philopoemen gestured at the captured Thracians. ‘It might be my turn next time. Besides, the tall fellow with the dyed red hair and the starburst tattoo is a Getae noble.’

  ‘I thought Thracians never surrendered,’ Alexanor said.

  ‘Maybe when they fight each other,’ Philopoemen said.

  He snapped a salute at the Getae, who nodded. Then he waved and rode off into the dust on the right, leaving Alexanor to Dinaeos.

  The Megalopolitan Exile cavalry reformed in its ranks, this time in a wedge. It took time.

  ‘Everyone’s tired,’ Dinaeos said.

  Alexanor nodded.

  ‘If we had remounts,’ Dinaeos said, ‘we’d be in better shape. Macedonian cavalrymen mostly have two horses.’

  He slipped to the ground and stretched his legs, then went off a few paces and raised the hem of his chiton to piss.

  ‘Dismount and rest your horse,’ he called.

  ‘I’m afraid if I get off I’ll never get back on,’ Alexanor said.

  ‘I’ll help you up,’ Kleostratos said. ‘Come on down, sir.’

  Alexanor allowed himself to sort of collapse off his mount. He wasn’t wearing armour and he was already very tired. But, off his horse, he stretched, the same exercises he would do at dawn back at the temple, and the muscles in his thighs and buttocks began to give him a little grace.

  Off to the right, he could see the Illyrians coming forward. They were tall men, mostly blond, a few red-headed or black-haired, all in fine armour; linen thorakes or bronze, and many in the new maille armour from the north. They carried all manner of shields, from crescent-shaped peltoi to the old-style aspis, three feet across, to the new-style aspis, only two feet across, and some even had long, narrow shields in the Celtic style. One man looked at him and he had very light eyes and a deep tan, so that his eyes seemed to glitter with menace. The man wore a fortune in gold on his arms and had tattoos across his face and his linen chiton was woven in patterns.

  Alexanor held his gaze.

  The man turned away and waved an arm. A thousand warriors raised a cry.

  Philopoemen came back, walking his horse carefully in the stony field. There were a dozen men with him; one had a purple cloak.

  ‘My lord Alexander,’ Dinaeos said, bowing in the saddle.

  ‘Dinaeos!’ Alexander said. ‘Regular as the oracle, our Philopoemen. Why do I ignore him?’ He smiled. ‘Maybe too much wine?’ He turned his horse to face Antipater, the king’s aide. ‘Philopoemen said that the Spartans would put their skirmishers back
into the river valley during the night, and look, they did. Credit where credit is due.’ He turned back, looked at the ford and the river, and shrugged. ‘The king is going to take the phalanx straight up the slope of Olympos and into the Spartan king. That’s the battle. We’re a sideshow. Don’t die, that’s my advice. This is the worst terrain for cavalry I’ve ever ridden across.’

  ‘We can ride across it all day long,’ Philopoemen said. ‘All of Arkadia is like this.’

  ‘I should rent you all to Seleucus to fight the Parthians, then,’ Prince Alexander said. ‘Just stay here and don’t move. I’m going to ride over to the king and see what our timings are. The valley being full of psiloi may have set us back a day.’

  He touched his helmet and his horse sprang away, followed by his staff and Antipater, who waved a salute at Philopoemen.

  ‘They’re fine horsemen,’ Philopoemen said contentedly.

  ‘They put too much stock in big battles,’ Dinaeos said. ‘Are you all right, Phil?’

  The helmet turned, and the eyes inside seemed to shine with their own light.

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  Dinaeos looked away. ‘I worry about you.’

  Alexanor looked at him.

  The hipparchos shrugged, his armoured shoulders rising and falling.

  Then both men turned to look at the Illyrians. The tall man with the light eyes and the gold arm rings was chanting. It sounded like poetry.

  ‘What’s that mean?’ Alexanor asked.

  ‘Honestly? I don’t know.’ Philopoemen shook his head. He looked back to the west, where the king could be seen talking to Prince Alexander. ‘I don’t know much. But that man is Demetrios of Pharos, their chief. They say he fought the Romans. I want to meet him.’

  The Illyrians gave a great, hooting roar, a sound not unlike the sound a wave makes crashing on a rocky shore.

  The Macedonian phalanx answered them with a roar like a crash of thunder.

  Off to the left, another phalanx was forming. They were coming down a separate trail from the camp above – another eight thousand men or more in dark red cloaks, and then a big contingent in grey cloaks.

  ‘The Boeotians in blood red and the Achaean phalanx in grey,’ Dinaeos said. ‘Under fucking Cercidas.’

  ‘Cercidas the poet?’ Alexanor asked.

  ‘Cercidas the fat traitor?’

  ‘Dinaeos,’ Philopoemen chided gently. ‘Let us keep our family quarrels for ourselves, eh?’

  Far away on their left, Alexanor could see what they were watching: the Spartiates, the cream of the Spartan army, in their matching scarlet cloaks, were moving into position on the hillside. There were four thousand of them, and their brilliant red cloaks seemed to cover the slopes of Olympos in neat lines.

  ‘Would you at least like a sword?’ Dinaeos asked.

  Alexanor shook his head. ‘Once the fighting starts, I’ll go back to the hospital. I have a sword in my baggage.’ He shrugged.

  Philopoemen nodded, once, as if that was a logical, correct thing, which in fact it was. But he was watching the Spartans with the same professional intensity that Doson had watched the skirmishing the day before.

  ‘See?’ He pointed. ‘There is Cleomenes, up on Olympos with his elite infantry. Here is his brother Eucleidas, just above us on the other “breast” – he has all their mercenaries.’ He was watching the enemy lines the way a predator watches a herd of deer. ‘Now where is their cavalry?’

  ‘It must be on the flank, with the king,’ Dinaeos said.

  Philopoemen shrugged. ‘There’s a rubble-field of volcanic stone on the right flank and the southern slopes of these hills are murder, even to me. Surely he’ll place his cavalry in the centre between the hills, as we did?’

  ‘Maybe Cleomenes doesn’t have anyone as smart as you,’ Dinaeos said.

  ‘I think you are mocking me.’

  Dinaeos nodded. ‘Yep.’

  Dinaeos turned to the priest.

  ‘Years ago, when he came back from his time in Athens, he gave me a lecture about philosophy,’ he said. ‘I decided that I’m a Skeptic. I only care about what works and most theories are so much shit.’

  ‘There is more to Skepticism …’ Philopoemen began.

  Dinaeos shook his head. ‘I’m a pragmatist. I just want to get the job done. Perhaps I could start a philosophic school in Athens that taught people to cook and fix broken water mains and things.’ He laughed. ‘And drink. I believe in wine. But then, I’m a wine merchant.’

  ‘I’m a farmer,’ Philopoemen said. ‘But— Damn. What …?’

  The last was occasioned by a roar from the right, where the Macedonian phalanx started forward. The very left of the line was the King’s Companions with their magnificent shields; then, echeloned behind them, came the main body of the phalanx, eight thousand men, in files sixteen men deep and just five hundred men wide, their twenty-foot sarissae erect on their shoulders. They went down into the stream bed, losing their order completely, and Alexanor saw one man knocked unconscious or killed by the casual swing of another man’s pike as he slid down the bank. A file leader struck him; orders were called.

  Alexanor moved without volition; rode to the fallen man’s side and dismounted. The whole side of the fallen man’s bronze helmet was dented as if he’d been hit by a sling stone. A Macedonian file-closer with an elaborately dyed horsehair plume paused.

  ‘Fucking Erinida,’ he said, indicating the man who’d swung his spear so inexpertly. ‘Useless fucking fuck. Meleager was …’

  ‘Is,’ Alexanor said.

  Men were passing on either side of his horse, struggling down the riverbank. Alexanor could imagine what it would have been like if the river had been held against them. He took a knife from around his neck and cut the man’s cheek plate cord. The cheek plates sprang apart and Alexanor slipped the helmet off his head. He’d used a sponge as the padding in his helmet and it had clearly taken some of the blow, but now it was full of blood.

  Alexanor ran his fingers over the contusion. The skin was swollen, and he could feel fluid under his fingers, as if the scalp had absorbed some of the sponge. But there was no fracture; the skull did not give under his gentle pressure.

  ‘Move him into the shade,’ Alexanor ordered.

  Two pikemen laid their long weapons on the riverbank, picked up their comrade, and carried him like a sack of grain into the brush.

  ‘He’s the lucky one, ain’t he?’ said the first, a scrawny man who seemed too small to be one of the fearsome Macedonian pikemen. ‘I hear it’s gonna be murder up that hill.’

  ‘Stay in the shade, that’s my plan,’ said the other. ‘Fuck, now Antenor can see me.’

  Both men hurried to their weapons as under-officers pressed every man into the phalanx; a file-closer gave Alexanor a long look, as if suspecting him of malingering.

  Alexanor collected his own helmet and rode back to the left. The Achaean cavalry had moved another hundred paces, keeping with the left flank as it moved. A gap was opening in the Allied centre.

  Two hundred paces further off to the left, the Boeotian and Achaean phalanxes began to move forward. Their efforts to cross the stream were even less organised than the Macedonians’ had been. Alexanor tried to make out what he was seeing, but the whole Achaean phalanx seemed to turn into a mob; men pushed other men into the water.

  ‘Poor Cercidas,’ Philopoemen said.

  ‘Cercidas is your political enemy and he is a fat, traitorous slug. Stop being all noble – it only pisses me off,’ Dinaeos said.

  He pointed. A man in a magnificent, gold-plated helmet with a huge transverse crest had his helmet well back on his head as he roared at the Achaeans in a powerful, trained voice, like a rhapsode or an actor.

  ‘That should be you.’ Dinaeos shook his head.

  Alexanor looked at him.

  ‘Cercidas only won the election for taxiarchos by three votes,’ Dinaeos said. ‘The League phalanx is fucking hopeless. We’d do better to take a few thousa
nd slaves and criminals and train them up, the way the Macedonians do. Our so-called citizens are more useless than tits on a boar.’

  The men at the back of the mob kept pushing and sliding down the riverbank, which was steeper on the left than on the right.

  Then stones and arrows began to fall on the mob in the river.

  Prince Alexander galloped up, trailing a dozen Macedonian knights.

  ‘What the hell …? What is Cercidas playing at?’

  ‘The enemy peltastoi and psiloi have come back down the hillside,’ Philopoemen said. ‘See, my lord?’

  Even as the Achaean spoke, dozens of unarmoured men appeared on the near flank of the Boeotian mob and began to rain missiles into the river bed. They were relatively ineffective; a hundred javelins killed perhaps five men.

  But the Boeotians were knee deep in water and taken by surprise. And one of the first men to die was their Boeotarch, the commander of their phalanx. He took a dart in the neck, over the top of his fine bronze thorax, and he fell forward into the shallow stream, dead, his dark red cloak floating on the water.

  ‘I could …’ Philopoemen was bristling like a dog at the sight of a lion.

  ‘You will stand your ground,’ Prince Alexander said. ‘You will wait here with my reserve. Damn it all, you Greeks are the worst fucking soldiers I’ve ever seen.’

  Alexanor was shocked at the Macedonian commander’s invective, but Dinaeos merely turned and winked.

  ‘In a mood,’ he mouthed.

  Philopoemen turned his horse in a circle, then rode, almost unwittingly, closer to the riverbank.

  Cercidas had got his front rankers together, and now, in a bold move, he led a small, well-armed group forward – almost three hundred men in good armour, all athletes. They got across the stream; a few fell, victims of the slippery, weed-covered rocks. Then the Achaean infantrymen were climbing the far bank, which was head height and as steep as a wall.