to stretch those hides pretty slack, so that arrows and such just flopped off
them instead of going through.
To cut a long story short, things were going pretty much our way by this stage.
The towers were doing their job, and to increase the protection for the work
crews we’d made up rawhide fences that ran the whole length of the causeway, so
not a lot was getting through one way or another. Just when we thought we’d
cracked it, in fact, those bastards on the island turned round and showed us we
hadn’t. Let me tell you about that, brother, if you can spare the time.
It was early one morning, and there was a good stiff westerly wind blowing; we
noticed two Tyrian warships cracking along at a hell of a lick, towing this
enormous fat old hulk of a horse-transport. It was so broad in the beam it was
practically round, and it was sitting up in the water like a dog begging. Oddest
thing about it was two thin masts right forward; they looked like thin, bare
saplings and they had round cauldrons hanging from the yard-arms, like apples on
the branches of a tree.
We were staring at this thing thinking What the hell? when the warships towing
it veered off on either side of the nose end of the causeway, cut cables and
buggered off at top speed, letting the hulk carry on under its own momentum so
that it crashed into the front end and actually rode up on the causeway
broadwalk, for all the world like an otter or a seal. Under the impact the two
flimsy masts bust, and those cauldrons went toppling down; turned out that they
were full of this mixture of pitch and naphtha — that’s a kind of lamp-oil they
draw off out of the rocks in those parts, and boy, does it burn well; doesn’t
just catch fire like olive oil or lard tallow, it goes up whoosh! and the next
thing you know is, people are staring at you and saying, Sorry, didn’t recognise
you without the beard — along with this other secret ingredient they’ve got that
actually catches alight when it comes in contact with water. Result, the mixture
slops all over the wooden planking and the props and struts, not to mention the
towers, the hide fences and quite a lot of people, then drains over the side
into the water and wham, flares up like hell, and suddenly everything’s on
fire.
Meanwhile the two warships had come back, along with a whole load of other
boats, all of them with archers and catapult crews squeezed in right along the
rails; first they shot the guys jumping off the burning causeway into the water,
then the other guys who didn’t dare jump for fear of getting shot, and the fire
took care of the rest. By the time the Tyrians had disembarked their assault
parties on the causeway, there wasn’t anybody left alive to fight. So they
knuckled down to their job of breaking up the causeway, while the ships covered
them against our reinforcements. Between them and the fire, they did as thorough
a job as you’d ever want to see, and before what was happening had really
started to sink in properly, down the causeway slid, its own weight letting it
simply melt down into the water.
Enough to make you spit, really. Everything we’d worked at so hard for all that
time ended up at the bottom of the straits along with gods know how many dead
workers and the charred scrap of our two beautiful siege towers. It was one of
those moments of total and abject failure that takes it all out of you, all the
stuff inside your head and your heart that makes you keep going. For my part, I
cooked up a big hot fire of my own and started sprinkling my beautiful medicinal
leaves in big handfuls.
It was only the day after, though, that the full implications became obvious
enough that even I, with my head full of smoke and painlessness, could get the
drift of it. While we’d been farting about trying to fill in the sea, the King
of Persia had been putting his army back together again in Armenia , and he was
coming to get us. The Tyrians had been deliberately playing us along, letting us
fritter away our time with our buckets and spades so as to give the Great King a
chance to get his act together. When word reached them that the Great King was
ready, they cleared up the mess we’d made, like grown-ups putting away the toys.
We’d fallen for it, complete in every part. At last, finally, Alexander had made
a big mistake; a super-jumbo-sized, war-losing mistake that was going to get us
all killed.
And that, brother, is why if I wasn’t stuck on this damned bed unable to move,
I’d be up on my feet throttling you right now; because when the general staff
urged him to give it up and get out while there was still a slim chance of
getting away, he stared at them with those ice-cold blue eyes and said no,
certainly not, because that wasn’t the way he’d been taught the art of war, and
anybody who even suggested pulling out would pretty soon be reckoning that the
Great King was the least of his problems. So what if the enemy had pulled down
the causeway? We’d build another one; only bigger, and wider, with room for lots
more siege towers. True, thousands of our conscript workers were now dead and
at the bottom of the straits, leaving us with something of a labour shortage,
but that wasn’t really a problem; plenty more where they came from, plus all the
specialist masons and carpenters and engineers he’d had rounded up in Cyprus and
Phoenicia . History, he informed his open-mouthed heads of staff, would remember
Tyre as a shining example of Macedonian siegecraft (that is, he implied, if
History knew what was good for it).
At this point, a nervous young man called Hegelochus, who held a command in the
Horse Guards, cleared his throat pointedly and asked what, if anything, led
Alexander to believe that he’d have any more luck the second time round than he
had the first. Now, I wasn’t there, so this is all hearsay; but a man I used to
play knucklebones with had a cousin who was in the same cockflghting syndicate
as the younger brother of Callas, the commander of the Thracian heavy cavalry,
who was there; so what I’m telling you now is as close to absolute Platonic
truth as you’re likely to get in this sadly imperfect world, and Callas said
that Alexander didn’t like the implications of that question, not one bit.
‘Something’s bothering you about this, Hegelochus,’ he said, in that level, calm
voice of his that sent people who knew him scurrying off in search of abandoned
well-shafts to hide down. ‘I’d like to know what it is.’
That young fool Hegelochus cleared his throat again. ‘With respect, the whole
thing bothers me,’ he said, ‘because I’ve got the strangest feeling I’ve been
here before.’
Alexander smiled. ‘Is that so? Now that’s strange, my friend, because we’ve
known each other since we were both six years old, and I don’t ever remember you
going abroad even, let alone to Phoenicia. When was this?’
‘When we studied together in the school at Mieza,’ Hegelochus replied. ‘That
time when Professor Euxenus was telling us about that battle — sorry, can’t
remember the name of it now — where the besieging army sat under the walls of
this im
pregnable city grinding themselves down to no effect until the relief
force came and scrunched them up.
‘ Syracuse ,’ Alexander said. ‘You’re thinking of when the Athenians tried to
take Syracuse in the Great War. Euxenus told us his grandfather was in that
army.’
Hegelochus nodded. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘He was one of the very few survivors,
wasn’t he?’
Alexander scowled at that; he’d been made to play the straight man, something he
hated unless he’d deliberately set it up himself. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘And I’m sure
you remember the moral of the story. Euxenus said that if he’d been the Athenian
commander there, he’d have kept pegging away till he found a way to take
Syracuse , because that was the only way the army was going to get out of there
in one piece. And then one of us — wasn’t that you, Cleitus? — one of us asked
how he’d have proposed going about that, since everything they’d tried had
failed. And Euxenus just smiled, that way he did, and said, “Simple. I’d have
waited for them to make a mistake.They always do, you know. All wars are lost by
the loser, not won by the victor.”’ He paused for a moment and looked at
Cleitus, his head slightly on one side. ‘You haven’t forgotten that, have you?’
he went on. ‘Or are you saying Euxenus was wrong?’
(‘I don’t remember saying that,’ I interrupted.
Eudaemon gave me a long, cold stare. ‘Don’t you indeed,’ he said. I thought for
a moment. ‘Well, bits of it,’ I replied. ‘That tag about wars being lost by the
loser — that was a favourite line of mine, I admit. I thought it was pretty
neat, and it seemed to impress the kids, so I used it a lot to save myself the
trouble of thinking. But that actual conversation, about what I’d have done at
Syracuse ; I don’t remember that at all. Sorry.’
Eudaemon shrugged. ‘Maybe you don’t,’ he said. ‘After all, who’d expect you to
be able to remember every damn thing you said to a bunch of kids when you were
teaching them? Maybe you never actually said it at all, in so many words, and
Alexander remembered it wrong. Doesn’t matter. Alexander’s Euxenus said it, and
it very nearly got us all killed. And Alexander’s Euxenus was more real to him
—and, as a result, to me — than you’ll ever bloody be. In fact,’ he added,
glowering at me, ‘of all the Euxenuses there are or were, I’ll bet you’re about
the most insignificant of the lot.’)
So that was that. Hegelochus and Cleitus were in disgrace, we were staying, the
siege continued, with us trapped up against Tyre like a billet of red-hot bronze
between the hammer and the anvil. The Tyrians started building up their walls
with wooden towers so they could shoot fire-arrows directly down into the
working parties. We stumbled on — there were people getting shot down or
squashed flat by rocks from the catapults every minute of every day, and we were
just supposed to ignore it — and in the meantime Alexander got bored and
wandered off, with his boyhood chums and his pet light-infantry brigade, to go
hunting tribesmen in the hills. Of course, the bloody clown nearly got himself
killed; there was this old fool called Lysimachus, who’d been a teacher at your
school —(‘I know Lysimachus,’ I interrupted.
‘No doubt.’)
— And he’d insisted on tagging along on this adventure. Seems they were playing
at being people in Homer, they were always doing it; Alexander was Achilles,
Lysimachus was the old tutor, Phoenix . Anyhow, Lysimachus strayed off and got
left behind. The tribesmen were all around, dogging the column’s footsteps,
never coming to grips, just making sneak attacks, shooting arrows and throwing
javelins and then melting away; a lot of our people got killed, and there was
bugger all our Achilles and his Homeric knights could do about it; I guess the
tribesmen hadn’t been to your classes, didn’t know to conduct themselves in a
fitting manner. Well, everybody was terrified out of their minds; all except
Alexander, who was absolutely furious. They were spoiling his game, you see,
there wasn’t anything in all of this for him.
Anyhow, when Phoenix went missing, Alexander freaked out and said they had to go
back and find him. None of the others wanted anything to do with that,
understandably enough; they were in enough shit as it was. But no, Alexander
insisted, he’d caught a whiff of honour in the breeze and went off after it like
a bad dog after a hare. So there they were, completely lost, surrounded by these
tribesmen who were knocking them off like ducks on a pond; and night falls, and
everybody knows they aren’t going to see tomorrow, because the tribesmen have
started up their spirit dance, which means they’re going to attack and finish
the job, and there’s thousands and thousands of them out there, according to a
friend of mine who was on this jolly. Our boys know they’ve got no chance,
because they haven’t been able to get a fire going — sudden downpour of rain,
all the kindling soaked through — so they can’t see spit, they’re completely at
the mercy of the enemy. At this point, when it really couldn’t get any worse if
it tried, Alexander gets up without a word, takes his cloak with the hood and a
long dagger and walks away. Twenty minutes later, he’s back; he’s only snuck up
on the nearest enemy camp, scragged a couple of sentries, lit a torch in their
fire and come bouncing back with an absolutely enormous grin on his face, like
a boy who’s just killed something. Think about it, brother; the king of the
known world, prancing about stalking sentries; everybody else was scared out of
their wits and he was off playing.
But he’d got a torch, and they were able to light a fire and see to keep a
lookout, and what with one thing and another the enemy didn’t attack; and the
next day, by the purest fluke, they stumbled across old Lysimachus, curled up in
a bush and whimpering with fear. Alexander didn’t like that, completely out of
character for his role in the make-believe game, but he’d got what he came for
and they headed back. Made it, too, though they left a lot of their own behind,
littered all over the trail like bits of crust and apple-cores a bunch of untidy
kids leave behind them as they go. And of course, Alexander’s the great hero who
single-handedly saved everybody’s life, and the fact that the whole trip was a
disastrous failure — well, History knows better than to record that. But old
Lysimachus, who’s desperate to get back in the lad’s good books after disgracing
himself, he stands up at the next council of war and starts going on about how
Alexander’s really braver and better than Achilles ever was, and how even Homer
himself wouldn’t have been able to find words to tell the story like it should
be told; and Alexander’s face melts into this huge self-satisfied smirk.
Well, now he’s back Alexander calls a council and says there’s been a change of
plan. Forget the causeway, he says, it’s obviously not going to work, any fool
could have told you that. Nobody says a word; and Alexander goes on and says
that the only way t
o take Tyre is to fit out special warships with
battering-rams mounted on them and go smash in the seaward walls. So we do that,
and it’s an absolute disaster. The ships just can’t get in close enough, the
water’s too shallow, except in one place and the enemy’ve realised this and
dumped huge great rocks there to obstruct the shallows and keep ships from
coming in.
But Alexander won’t be beaten. He’s really away with the wood-nymphs now;
sometimes, when he isn’t thinking, he’s calling the place Troy instead of Tyre,
every day he’s sending heralds demanding single combat with the enemy’s champion
— they’re just standing there in their watchtowers looking embarrassed — and
when they tell him about the rocks he just frowns and says, ‘Well, if they’re in
the way, you’d better fish them out again.’ Bugger me, Euxenus, he was serious;
so we had to build ship-mounted cranes for hauling up these rocks — under fire
all the time, remember, and the rawhide screens we’d used on the first causeway
to keep the arrows off were useless, because these new towers the enemy had
built meant they could shoot right over the top. Also, the enemy sent out ships
and boats of their own, and soon they were fighting ship to ship; they’d sent in
these little ships that were all planked in to protect their men from our
archers, and they’d nip out, cut the anchor cables of the dredgers and scoot off
again before we could do anything about them, though eventually we swapped the
cables for chains, and that put a stop to it.
So Alexander called a council of war and said the ships weren’t working, time to
finish off the causeway, which was clearly their only hope of taking the city.
So we finished the causeway — we were using the rocks the dredgers were pulling
up out of the shallows, and if that wasn’t the dumbest thing; pulling trash out
of the sea at point A and slinging it back at point B — and we set up battering
rams on it, but they don’t do any bloody good, the wall’s made of huge blocks of
stone cemented together.
So Alexander called a council of war and said stuff the causeway, concentrate on
the ships. Finally, after we’d nearly filled up the hole the dredgers had
excavated with the bodies of our dead, we managed to bash a hole in the seaward
Alexander at the Worlds End Tom Holt Page 56