And after that, it was all fighting. Poseidon slowed to a stop, and he reared every time I jerked the reins, but after the first ten heartbeats I couldn’t even back him. I’d made a hole in the corner of their phalanx and now other troopers were pushing into it.
I do remember the first man I know I put down, because he was right under my right foot, trying to throw me from the saddle. There’s a lot of wrestling in phalanx fighting, and his approach was correct – get me on the ground and kill me there. He got his shield shoulder under my right foot and started to lift, and I cut down – once, twice, a desperate third as my balance was going – cut chunks out of his aspis, and the sheer terror of being dismounted enabled me to get him, as the third cut went through shield rim, the visor of his Thracian helmet and in between his eyes, and he died right there. You don’t often see it, but I saw it – saw his shade pass his lips.
Old Heraklitus said it was the best way to go, your soul all fire, in the heat of battle. Compared to rape or torture or cursed sickness or coughing your lungs out – sure. But it was better to be alive. Achilles says it – better the slave of a bad master here than king of the dead.
No shit.
He’s the only one I remember. I yelled myself hoarse, probably shouting ‘Herakles!’ over and over, like half the men on that field. The next thing I remember is that the pressure on my knees eased – suddenly there were horsemen all around me, and just a few Thebans between us – and then, before my heart could beat three more times, there were none.
Just like that – a cloud of dust, the stink of death, and they were gone.
In fact, a whole pack of Sacred Banders were still alive and fighting – over by the Macedonian phalanx, where they were safe from the cavalry and we couldn’t tell one man on foot from another. But the unit was gone, and the whole flank of the Theban phalanx was open.
We never reformed, and we didn’t really charge again – we went into their flank files in dribs and drabs, a few at a time – in fact, I suspect most men don’t even remember a pause between fighting the Band and fighting the line infantry – but I was isolated at one end of the fight for a long time. Say, fifty heartbeats.
I got twenty men behind me in a small wedge and we rode to the right – our right – and we found another combat in ten horse lengths.
By then, the Theban line must have been coming apart. They were panicked to find us in their rear, and our Macedonian infantry was doing well enough at this end of the line.
I didn’t know anything about it. Where I was, there was the reach of my sword and the impacts of their spears on my chest, my back, my greaves – I must have taken fifty blows, and only two wounds. Even with my head bare. I was lucky – and of course, after the Sacred Band, I was mostly facing men who’d already lost the will to fight.
Polystratus stuck at my bridle hand and like most Thracians, he never relinquished his spear, but stabbed two-handed, holding on to his mount with his knees. He used a heavy spear with an odd chisel point – he could punch it right through a helmet or a breastplate. But mostly, he blocked blows coming up from my bridle side – in fact, he was a constant pressure on my left knee, his horse always there like a companion’s aspis in a phalanx fight.
After some time had passed, we could hear the cheers, and the men under our hooves weren’t making the least pretence of fighting back. But the duty of royal companions doesn’t end with victory – far from it.
The thing for which we train, the reason we’re brutalised as pages and ride all day, every day and hunt animals on horseback . . .
. . . is the pursuit.
Beaten men don’t defend themselves. They are easy to kill. But tomorrow, if you let them rally, they return to being grim-faced hoplites who will gut you if they can. There are a great many myths these days about the superiority of the Macedonian war machine. Perhaps. We had some advantages, some tactics, some technical knowledge and lots of good leadership.
But one thing Philip taught Macedon was to pursue ruthlessly. When Philip lost, his beaten troops usually slipped away covered by his cavalry, and when he won – well, men who faced him lost and usually died. They didn’t come back to fight again.
Pursuit is an art within the art of war – a cruel, inhumane, brutal art. It requires high conditioning and discipline, because all a warrior wants when he’s won a victory is to stop. And that’s true of every man on the field. The daimon can handle only so much danger, so many brushes with death, so many parries and so many killings. The fatigue of combat is such that most men are exhausted after just a hundred heartbeats of close fighting. Or standing under a shower of sling stone, unable to reply – men are exhausted. Fear, fatigue and pain are all somehow the same thing after the first seconds of a fight. The better-conditioned man lasts longer and is braver. And so on.
Philip trained us to be ready to go on after the fight was over. It was our main duty, in many ways. Alexander had been positioned behind the centre – with all the companions – not to win the battle with a lightning strike into the enemy centre, but to exploit the victory that Philip thought he’d win on foot. That was his plan.
Now that the Thebans were breaking, it was my duty to harry them to death.
I could scarcely lift my arms, and keeping my back straight to ride was beyond me – but I found one of the troop trumpeters and started sounding the rally, and before I could drain my canteen I had twenty files of cavalry at my back.
Erygius was there. He gave me a big smile, smacked my back. ‘You’re not bad!’ he said.
That made me blush.
‘We need to get into the rout and crush them,’ I said.
The veteran nodded. He shaded his eyes – did his trick of climbing a little higher on his horse and kneeling on his back. ‘Hard to tell – the Kerata Pass must be west.’ He waved towards what had been the centre of their army. ‘Where Alexander charged. No point in carving these fools up – they’re already trapped against the hills.’
Mostly, we had Boeotian dust and sunlight, and if it hadn’t been for dead trees at the edge of the marsh, I’d have been lost.
‘Let’s head west,’ I said.
He nodded.
Our horses were tired, but we keep our animals in top shape – by riding far and fast every day – and we swept across the back of the allied position, killing or scattering any opposition. Twice we turned to the south, on to rising ground – our objective was to block the Kerata Pass, not to fight every Theban soldier.
But far short of the foot of the pass, we found the rout, and then we became killers. The Thebans were utterly broken, and the Athenian hoplites weren’t much better, although some of their best men were staying together. We slaughtered the Thebans – there’s no better word for it – and I did so in a haze of fatigue. I was so tired that I didn’t fully recognise that I’d passed from killing helpless Thebans to killing helpless Athenians until Polystratus took my bridle and pulled me up so hard I almost toppled off my mount.
We’d come pretty far – almost three stades – I’ve visited the spot since. The rout filled the pass, and men were forced up the sides like flotsam in a spring rain. My cavalrymen and Alexander’s were all through the rout, hopelessly mixed in with the enemy, killing, or in many cases merely riding along, taking prisoners, or sitting on the high ground, watching. There is, as I have said, a limit to what even the trained killer can make himself do. Until Chaeronea I had killed six men – after, I never counted again.
But Polystratus hadn’t reined me as a merciful gesture. He was pointing.
Virtually under my spear was a crouching man. His shield was gone, he had a light wound and somehow his chiton had got bunched into his zone so that his butt cheeks were showing – a pitiful sight. And he was weeping, begging me to spare him.
I fully intended to kill him in sheer disgust. But again Polystratus stopped me, pushing my spear away with his own.
‘You have ears, or what?’ he asked.
I swear that until he said that, the
gods had quite literally closed my ears. I hadn’t heard anything for hours.
I must have shrugged, or something like. He grinned. ‘It’s their great man,’ Polystratus said. ‘He claims . . . well, listen to him!’
The crouching, bare-arsed man at my feet was Demosthenes the orator.
After that, I started taking prisoners. I was done killing – my whole body hurt, my right side was sticky and wet and cold with blood, and that reek – the reek of sweat and copper and excrement – was in my nose for a day – in the hair of my horse, in my own hair.
And I couldn’t kill any more men.
I just couldn’t.
I threatened, and some of them just pushed past me, as if they didn’t care either, or as if they knew I was past my limit. It’s almost like a failure of courage – your arm rises and falls, you kill and wound and maim, and then – and then, you can’t do it any more.
I gathered a dozen prisoners, and as far as I could tell, I was the southernmost Macedonian in the whole host – the rest of the pursuit had halted below me. I didn’t see Alexander anywhere.
And then the Athenian Hippeis showed what they were made of. Someone – not your pater, he was already down – kept a bunch of them together, and they came after me. I had to fall back along the rout, and as I went I picked up men – whole files, at times.
It was a curious form of war – I don’t think a single blow was struck. We were exhausted, and so were they, but they were willing to fight to protect their infantry, and we were not willing to fight them just to kill a few more of the fools.
And no sooner had the Athenians got formed than the best of the infantry started to form on them.
Not enough to prevent the aftermath, but enough to save their precious sense of honour, their arete. Myself, I wasn’t so impressed. Only later did I realise – when I was more of a veteran myself – what it took those tired, beaten men to stop running, find a little more courage, turn and stand their ground. I salute them. I didn’t know it then, but they were probably the bravest men on the field.
I found Alexander with his father, well back down the field. By then, there were thousands of dead Thebans and as many Athenians – heaps for the carrion birds. Greece died there – old Greece, the Greece of Aeschylus and Simonides and Marathon and Plataea. They spent three hundred years building a golden world. We killed it in a long afternoon.
I’ve never been happy about it. When I played Marathon as a boy, I never imagined that I would be there when the dream of Athens died in the dust of Chaeronea – nor that my hand would hold the sword.
More wine, here.
Mid-afternoon. Alexander was so elated that he was a danger to himself – when I rode up to him, he threw his arms around me and said, ‘Did you see me? Antipater says I won the battle. I did, too – Pater was getting beaten, and I saved us, and we won!’ He still had his sword in his hand, and his blue eyes had very faint white rims around them – he looked like a dog in the agora run mad in the heat. Hephaestion looked worried – deeply worried.
His sword beat against my breastplate when he embraced me, and he almost pulled me off Poseidon’s back.
‘Get him out of here,’ Antipater said to me.
I could see Philip, just a few horse lengths away. He had his back to us. His shoulders were slumped, and he looked old. He’d had a bad couple of hours.
‘He’s not making Philip happy.’ Antipater played the court game better than anyone, and I had just enough intelligence left to understand.
‘Come,’ I said into Alexander’s too-long embrace. ‘Bucephalus is trembling with fatigue, lord. We need to get these mounts rubbed down and fed – see to our men, too.’
He let go of my neck and his sword pommel slammed into my temple.
‘Oh!’ he said – almost a giggle.
‘Put that thing away!’ I snapped. ‘Better yet – give it to me!’
I took the blade closest to the hilt, tugged – and he kept hold of it.
‘It is stuck to my hand,’ he said, his voice a little wild.
It was, too. With blood.
‘Zeus Lord of Kings, and Ares of the Bronze Spear,’ I cursed. ‘Polystratus – water here.’
‘I just kept killing them,’ Alexander said. He was going to cry. I’d seen it with younger troopers. I’m a callous bastard myself – killing itself didn’t unman me like this.
Hephaestion got to us with a helmet full of water.
I poured it over his sword hand, and the sword came free, a little at a time. While Polystratus and Hephaestion got the sword out of his hand, I talked to him the way I would talk to a young trooper – to Nike when she cringed at thunder, the only thing that scared her – to Poseidon when he saw a snake.
‘There’s a good lad. Nothing to it – see the blood wash away? All gone. Let go, my prince. Well done – we won the day. You won the day.’ Voice pitched just so.
‘We did. I did.’ Alexander sighed. ‘They are so full of blood,’ he said.
‘May I invite you to dinner this evening, lord’?’ I asked.
He managed a wobbly smile – his mouth folded so that he seemed to smile and frown at once. But he was mastering himself – he had a will stronger than any man I’ve ever met.
‘I would be delighted, if it would not be too much trouble,’ he said, his face smoothing even as he spoke.
Hephaestion gave me a small nod. We seldom liked each other much – but when it came to Alexander, we could pull together. But when the sword came free from the prince’s fist, Hephaestion whispered in my ear –
‘Philip will have a victory dinner.’
I nodded. Alexander was sitting straight, eyes darting – the white rims gone.
‘One battle at a time,’ I muttered, and Hephaestion gave me a quick smile.
‘Let’s get cleaned up and see to our horses,’ he said to the prince.
I saluted, kneed Poseidon and cleared their path. Then I rode over to Philip. He was surrounded by sycophants – and officers. Older men, mostly.
They were telling him how brilliant his plan of luring the Athenians off the hill had been.
‘It was our counterstroke that broke them,’ Philip said to Laodon. ‘When we turned on them, they couldn’t stand.’
I remember thinking, Oho, so that’s how it’s to be, eh?
‘Your boy thinks he won the battle himself,’ Nearchus the elder said.
‘Let him,’ said Philip with a hollow laugh. ‘Boys always think they are important. And the troops love him.’ He shook his head. ‘Cavalry against hoplites – what was he thinking?’
Saving your sorry arse, I thought.
Attalus’s cousin Diomedes laughed a little too long. ‘He’s as mad as a dog in the heat, lord. We all know it.’
Philip turned and glowered at Diomedes. But he said no word, struck no blow. Something in this little scene told me that the words had been said before – that the catamite was playing a long game.
But Philip’s somewhat careless glare silenced Diomedes, although I noticed that he had a ‘cat’s got the cream’ smile on his over-thick lips. Then Philip noticed me.
‘Well fought, son of Lagus,’ he said, offering me his hand – a major favour, at court. He grinned – a genuine Philip grin. ‘Although you got off to a bit of a rocky start.’
I rubbed the goose egg on my head and smiled back.
‘Next time you represent Macedon in single combat, see that you win,’ he went on, and most of the older men laughed.
‘He was pretty good,’ commented Antipater. ‘Kineas son of Eumedes. I know him. His father’s my guest friend.’
Philip nodded. ‘One of Phokion’s boys – what do you expect?’ He clapped me on the back. ‘You look like a man with something to say.’
I couldn’t help but grin, despite my fatigue. ‘I have a gift for you, lord.’
Philip raised his eyebrows.
I motioned to Polystratus, and he led the wretched Demosthenes forward.
Philip smiled as
a wolf smiles at a lamb.
I slipped away, duty done, and suddenly all I wanted was to sleep.
But the path to camp crossed the brow of the hill, and there I found Philip the Red and most of my own troop, still mounted.
They were picking up their wounded and dead, like good soldiers, and I joined them, like a good officer.
That took us an hour – killing the worst wounded and picking up the least wounded of both sides. Something turns over in you – you kill, you can’t kill any more, you help save one, and all you want to do is save them all. Men are complex beasts.
And I didn’t want to stop. If I stopped collecting the wounded, if I paused in getting water – well, I’d have to start thinking about it all. Besides, as long as Cleomenes and Philip were working, I was working.
Our grooms came out to help.
We got all of our own – there were only eight – and then we started collecting our own infantrymen, and enemy infantrymen. They lay in neat rows, or all muddled together – some men awoke as if from sleep when touched, to stumble to their feet, barely injured – others had screamed themselves to wheezing silence and lay as a deer lies when he has your arrow in his guts and he’s run as far as he can and the dogs have ripped his flesh and for some reason he’s not dead yet.
Every time I got another wounded man on to the litter made by my horse and Philip’s, I swore it would be the last.
But I kept going back. The younger companions were proving something, or saying something, or too young to know when to quit. I didn’t know which. But most of us were out there.
Philip’s victory dinner was starting – I could see the torches and the slaves – when I found your pater. He was lying almost alone in some high grass – I found out later that his friends had taken him out of the melee and laid him there, and then been caught up in the battle. He had three wounds – rather as I did, myself. Polystratus and I got him on the litter and took him back to the surgeons. He was deeply unconscious. And he’d lost his gorgeous lion’s-head helmet, which I rather fancied, I must confess.
God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great Page 17