War is so glorious.
My tent was one of those down. Polystratus took Poseidon, made sounds indicating that I was a fool and he was a mother hen, and he took me to his tent, which had a front and back wall of woven branches and a stool. He got my cuirass off, towelled me dry and told me that there were Thracians down the valley.
Nichomachus handed me a cup of wine. I drank it.
‘I know!’ I said, trying not to sound whiney. Gordias pushed into the tent.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Get lost?’
I drank more wine. ‘I got caught on the hillside with the Thracians,’ I said. ‘Did Cleomenes get to you?’
Gordias shook his head. ‘Which one is he? One of the pages? No – I had no word. And not all the troopers here are mine – I had some trouble giving orders.’
That’s the moment I remember best of the whole evening. I’d sort of collapsed on arriving in camp – acted like a cold, wet kid rescued by his servant. Polystratus was towelling my hair when I discovered that my message hadn’t got to camp.
‘Gordias, there’s Thracians within a stade of camp. An ambush on the road north, more coming across the ridge. Where are the pages?’
Gordias shook his head. ‘There’s twenty of the youngest here in camp. I thought the rest were with you?’
‘Ares’ prick,’ I swore. It was my father’s favourite oath. ‘Put my cuirass back on. Polystratus, get us both horses.’
Polystratus didn’t squawk. I put my sodden wool chiton back on – noticing that the dye had run and stained my hips. Gordias got my cuirass closed on me again – say what you will, the bronze is a good windbreak. Mounted on Medea, with Polystratus by me, I went back out into the remnants of the storm. Dawn wasn’t far away, and there was a bit of light, and if you’ve done this sort of thing, you know that the difference between a bit of light and no light is all the difference in the world. I got us up the ridge, found my game trail and there were a dozen of my pages, shivering like young beeches in a high wind – but all clutching a spear close to them, behind trees.
‘Good lads,’ I said – an old man of seventeen to young men of fourteen. ‘Back to camp now.’
‘They are right there,’ Philip Long-nose said. ‘Right across the ravine!’ He pointed, and an arrow flew.
‘Been there all night,’ said another boy.
Polystratus whistled.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Get back now – hot wine in camp.’
The pages started to slip backwards. This was the sort of thing we practised in hunting – observe the quarry and then slip away.
But one of the youngsters made a mistake, or maybe the Thracians were coming anyway. And suddenly they were scrambling across the ravine – fifty or a hundred, how could we know?
I had no idea how many pages I had under my hand.
‘Run!’ I ordered. ‘Camp!’
They ran.
Like a fool, I waited, shepherding them down the trail, and Medea got a spear in the side as a result. She tossed me and ran a few steps and died.
I’d been thrown twice in a night and I wasn’t too happy. But I rolled to my feet in time to have Polystratus grab my arms, and we were off down the trail with a tumble of arrows and javelins behind us.
They chased us right up to camp. We had no walls or ditches, and there was a dark tide of Thracians flowing across the barley fields. Their lead elements were a spear-cast behind Polystratus’s horse’s rump.
And as soon as the Thracians in the valley saw the Thracians on the ridge moving, they came, too.
First light – a general rush.
The pages routed, running past the raw infantry.
It should have been a bloody shambles, but for men like Gordias. The infantry let the pages through and then started to form the hollow square. It was patchy, but the Thracians were in dribs and drabs, not a solid rush – I know that now. At the time it looked like a wall of them, but in fact, there were never more than fifteen men coming at us at a time.
Polystratus got through the phalanx and dropped me in the army’s central square. Myndas, of all people – my least favourite slave – appeared with my third-string charger and a cup of wine and a towel. I dried my face, drank the wine and used his back to get mounted – I had hurt my hips falling.
The pages had no trumpeter and no hyperetes – both were with Alexander. Since the infantry seemed well in hand, I rode around gathering pages – three or four at a time – and leading them into the centre of the square. They were exhausted and most were terrified. But they were royal pages, and that meant they knew their duty. I got about a hundred of them together, formed them in a deep rhomboid and led them to the unthreatened corner of the square. Halted while the file leaders opened the corner for us.
‘We’re about to ride down the barbarians who kept us up all night!’ I called. ‘Stay together and stay on me, or I’ll beat you bloody!’
My first battlefield speech.
Met by silence.
We walked our horses out of the square and wheeled north. Gordias was on to me in a heartbeat – he began to wheel the ‘back’ faces of the square – the faces with no opponents – out on to the plain, unfolding the square like a ‘W’.
The Thracians hadn’t come for a field fight, and as soon as they saw us approaching them it was over, and they started to fade into the trees – first a few, and then the whole of their front.
Over on the west side of the valley was a squadron of horse – or, rather, some tribal lords on ponies. I aimed at them. They’d have a hard time riding into the trees, and I was going to get a fight. I was mad.
The Thracians didn’t want that kind of fight, and they turned their horses and rode for it, a few of them shooting over their horses’ rumps with bows, and one of my boys took an arrow and died right there – young Eumedes, a pretty good kid.
We were half a stade away. Too damned far. They turned like a flock of birds and ran.
I put my heels into my charger’s side. I had a fresh horse, a bigger, faster horse, and I was mad. I hadn’t even named my new chargers – that’s how much of my time oats and cartwheels took.
The Thracians were mostly gone into the trees. Nearer to hand, the chief and his retinue were beginning to scatter along the valley.
I got up on my charger’s neck and let him run. I ignored the followers and stayed on the chief. He turned, made a rude gesture at me and turned his horse into the sopping woods.
I didn’t give a shit, and followed him, closing the distance between us at every stride. I’d picked a good remount – this horse could move and had some brains, as well, and we were hurtling though the trees, never more than a heartbeat from being thrown or scraped off on a tree – just try galloping through open woods.
But my mount was eating the distance. The chief looked back at me – he was a bigger man, much older. He looked back, measured the distance, looked back again, and we both knew it was too late for him to turn his horse and fight. So he drew his sword and prepared to fight as I came up on him – jigging like a hare, trying to get me off his bridle-hand side.
I wasn’t having it. And my mount was smart – as I said. He turned on his front feet, right across the pony’s rump, and in a flash we were up with them and I got an arm round his neck and ripped him off the horse – just as the instructor taught. I never even let go of my spear.
He went down hard, rolled. Before he was on his feet, my spear was at his throat. His leg was broken, anyway.
He wasn’t the warlord. But he was the warlord’s sister’s son. And I got him back to camp, having collected my pages from their pursuit. We had a dozen prisoners, and Eumedes was our only loss.
I didn’t try and move. Our infantry had seen the Thracians off, and they were a lot better for it. I got a cheer as I rode in with the Thracian, covered in gold – he had a lot of gold on. I ordered all the prisoners stripped of their jewellery and all of it – and everything off the men killed by the infantry – put in a pile in the middle of cam
p. I had my herald announce that all the loot would be divided among the whole army, share and share alike.
And the sun rose. The low clouds burned off, and it was early summer at the edge of the hills instead of late autumn, and the men were warm. No one grumbled when I sent forage parties into the hills for more fuel.
Gordias slapped my back. ‘Well done,’ he said.
‘You mean I fucked almost everything away, but it came out well enough?’ I asked. I was feeling pretty cocky. But I knew I’d done almost everything wrong.
Gordias nodded. ‘That’s just what I mean, son.’ He shaded his eyes, watching the distant Thracians. ‘We have a word for it. We call it war.’
That night, I decided to press my luck. Gordian and Perdias, my other mercenary officer, were completely against it.
Even Polystratus was hesitant.
I decided to attack the Thracians in the dark. There was some moon. And we’d had forage parties out all day – there’d been steady low-level fighting, our woodcutters against theirs, all day. We’d had the best of it – mostly because our farm boys had chased their farm boys off in the early morning, and that sort of thing makes all the difference. And while they had a few tattooed killers, it seemed to me an awful lot of my opponents were as raw as my own troops.
No, I’m lying. That’s what Perdias said, and later in the day Gordias agreed. I didn’t have a clue – but once they’d said it, I took it as true.
At last light I put a minimum of men on watch and sent the rest to bed. Myndas had my tent back up and all my kit dry – there’s a hard campaign all in itself – and he’d built a big fire, built a drying frame – quite a job of work for a Greek mathematician. But he was still trying to overcome my anger, and he had a long way to go.
We stood at the fire – the two infantry officers and the commander of the Thessalians, a wild bastard named Drako, who wore his hair long like a Thracian, with twisted gold wire in it, and the Thracian auxiliary commander, Alcus. He and Drako were like opposites – Drako was slim, long and pretended to a false effeminacy, as some very tough men do; Alcus was short, squat, covered in thick ropes of muscle and heavy blue tattoos.
‘We’re going at them, across the ridge-top trail at moonrise,’ I said.
Gordias shook his head. ‘Son, you did well enough today—’
‘I’m not your son. We have them on the ropes—’
Alcus spat. ‘Thracians attack at night, not Greeks.’
I wasn’t sure which side he was supporting, but I chose to interpret it my way. ‘Exactly. They won’t even have sentries.’
Gordias sighed. ‘Listen – my lord. We’ve done well. But we don’t know where the prince is. This is his expedition. If we fail, we’ll be crushed. And – listen to me, my lord – if we succeed, Alexander may not be too thrilled. You know what I’m speaking of.’
I considered that for a few heartbeats. ‘Point made. We attack at moonrise.’
I heard an enormous amount of bitching when we woke the troops – the camp was too small for me to be isolated from their discontent. The only trooper more unwilling than a beaten man is a victorious man – he’s proved his mettle and got some loot, and he’d like to go home and get laid.
They went on and on – they were still bitching about my sexual habits, my incompetence and my errors of judgement when I roared for silence and marched the lead of the column off into the trees.
My plan was fairly simple. I sent the Thracians and the Thessalians down the valley – they were to start an hour after us, and make noise and trouble only after we struck. All the infantry were with me. The pages were staying in camp as a rallying point, and because they were so tired that most of them didn’t even wake up for the rallying call. Thirteen-year-olds – when they collapse, they’re like puppies, and it takes a day or two to get their strength back.
We crossed the ridge more slowly than I could believe – we seemed to be held up by every downed tree, and we lost the trail over and over, despite the moonlight. Finally I pushed up to the front of the column and led it myself – and immediately lost the trail. People say ‘as slow as honey in winter’, but really they should say ‘as slow as an army moving at night’.
After a couple of hours, the moon began to go down, the light changed and I discovered that I had perhaps two hundred men with me and the rest were gone – far behind, on another trail, or hopelessly lost.
But we were there. I could see the Thracian fires.
And I didn’t really understand how few of my men were with me because, of course, it was night. Really, until you’ve tried to fight at night, it seems quite reasonable.
I had Polystratus right at my heels – Gordias at my right shoulder.
I remembered my Iliad, so I whispered that every man was to pin back the right shoulder of his chiton. I waited for what seemed like half the night for this order to be passed and obeyed, and then we were moving forward again, bare arms gleaming faintly in the last moonlight.
We found that the Thracians weren’t fools – they had camped in a web of dykes, where in better times hundreds of cattle and sheep could be penned. Some of the ground between the dykes was flooded.
Really, I had a dozen opportunities to realise that I was being an idiot and call the whole thing off.
I led them along the face of the first dyke wall – over the berm, and down into the evil surprise of smelly waste water on the far side. Disgusting. And up, now smelling like a latrine – over the next dyke, and again I saw their fires. I was off by a stade, already turned around in the berms.
But now the system of dykes worked in my favour – we were inside the outer walls, and we moved west along the north side of a long earth wall, and there was no way a sentry could see us, unless he was right atop us.
I was right at the front, moving as fast as I could.
So, of course, I began to outpace all my troops, until Polystratus and Gordias and I were alone.
We stopped at the end of a long wall – almost a stade long. We didn’t need scouts to know that we were there – we could hear drunken Thracians calling one to another.
I poked my head over the berm.
There was the sentry, an arm’s length away. He roared, I stabbed at him, missed, his counter-thrust tangled in my cloak and I got my left arm around his spear, shoved it into his armpit, lifted it and slammed my fist into his face six or seven times, and he was down. Gordias killed him.
But every Thracian awake in that corner saw me, and there was a growl from the camp.
Gordias roared for the men to cross the dyke and charge.
I watched my beautiful plan fall to rubble. But since there wasn’t any alternative, I drew my sword and ran headlong into the Thracians at the foot of the dyke.
It was dark. I think I wounded or killed two or even three men before they began to realise what was happening.
There were Macedonians coming over the dykes. Just not all that many.
I still don’t know how many were still with me at that point. A hundred? Two hundred?
They made quite a bit of noise, though.
Gordias crashed into the knot of men where I was fighting, and Polystratus – who had had the sense to bring a shield – stood at my shoulder, and most of the men we were facing were awake enough, but they had eating knives and dirks – all their gear was somewhere else. (Try to find your gear in the dark when you are drunk.)
And of course they were drunk. They were Thracians.
This is a story about Alexander, not about me – but I love to tell this story, and it touches on Alexander in the end. That fight in the dark was perfectly balanced – a hundred fully armed Macedonian infantrymen against two thousand sleepy, drunk, unarmed Thracians.
Just when they should have swamped us, Drako swept over the wall behind us with fifty horsemen, looking like fiends from the Thracian hell, and they broke and ran off. Alcus bit into another group and then both my cavalry leaders – neither one of whom made any attempt to find or communicate
with me – swept off into the dark. They got the pony herd and some stolen beef and headed back to camp.
By now, the sun was coming up, somewhere far to the east, and there was a line of grey on the far ridge and eye-baffling half-light. And more and more of my missing infantrymen were coming in – most of them from the wrong direction. By sunrise I had half a thousand men and full possession of their camp.
They formed in the middle of the valley – a dejected band of beaten men, most of them without spears. They knew they had to take the camp back, and their leaders were haranguing them.
My cavalry had begun to harass them with javelins.
I lined the dyke closest to them – every minute brought me more light and two or three more men, as they scrambled up the earth walls behind me. Most of my lost infantrymen had gone too far north in the dark.
The Thracians were game. They put their best-armed men in front, formed as tight as they could and swept forward to the base of the dyke, where they stood, roaring, getting their courage up. They still outnumbered my men four to one, and we didn’t have our sarissas – they were in camp. We had javelins – a good weapon, but not as useful in stopping an angry Thracian as a pike as long as three men are tall.
I walked up and down in front of my men – manic with energy, elated by my success, terrified of the next few minutes. I was at the right end of my line when a helmetless man leaped off his horse and ran lightly up the berm.
‘Well done,’ he said, and threw his arms around me. ‘Hold their charge and we have them.’
He gleamed like a god come to earth. It was, of course, Alexander.
‘We will, my prince!’ I said – torn between relief and annoyance. But relief won. It’s like being angry at your lover – and then seeing her after an absence. Suddenly, at the sight of her, you care nothing for her infidelities – you’re too young to know whereof I speak.
The Thracians came up to the base of the berm.
We stood at the top.
A chief roared something – I think he called, ‘Who are we!’
And they roared.
God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great Page 11