Towards evening, Alexander came with the army, looked approvingly at the small ash-altar our sacrifices had left, and dismounted immediately to add his own. His devotions were absolutely genuine – he was a very religious man, and the sacrifices of heroes – all heroes, regardless of cause or race – meant a great deal to him. Some he had to equal or exceed – he was locked in agonistic competition even with the very gods – but that didn’t mean he didn’t worship their achievements. By acknowledging them, he worshipped himself. Or that’s how I see it now.
The next morning, we slept in, and held impromptu games in honour of the Spartans. We had only four Spartans in the whole army, but they were made the judges, and we had a wonderful time, running and throwing javelins, riding horses, wrestling, fencing and reading poetry.
It was a first, but like many aspects of that campaign, it was a sign of the future. Alexander the innovator was also Alexander the conservative. He wanted the old ways restored, even at the risk of seeming a little silly to his men. The first games we held had a slightly forced atmosphere – I remember that when the first wreaths of ludicrously over-woven laurel were awarded to the distance runner, men laughed – but the laughter stopped soon enough.
Marsyas found some local girls and asked them to make us proper wreaths, and when I won the run in armour on the second afternoon – running with a spear wound in my left foot, let me add – I received a beautiful wreath, which I was proud to wear all the next day. And those of us who won wreaths ate together that night.
Astibus won the javelin throw for accuracy.
Little Cleomenes wasn’t so little now, and had long legs like a woman, and won the two-stade sprint – won it handily.
That one I remember, because Alexander watched that race with something very like lust. He wanted to compete.
I was lounging about, literally resting on my laurels. I was lying on a pallet of new straw watching men run and cheering, and I caught the king’s eye. I shrugged. ‘Go run!’ I said quietly.
He gave me a sad smile. ‘Prince Alexander might have run,’ he said. ‘King Alexander will never run again.’
It wasn’t all fun and games. As soon as he made camp, Alexander sent heralds to the members of the Amphictyonic League, demanding – in the most courteous way possible – that they meet him at the Gates of Fire.
In effect, he announced, ‘I’m at the gates of mainland Greece, and none of you have the strength of arms to stop me. Want to talk?’
And they all came.
Even before the League assembled, states around us were falling into line. Or rather, back into our allegiance. The cities of southern Epirus begged for forgiveness and insisted they hadn’t meant to revolt. Listening to their ambassadors was an education in bad rhetoric.
Alexander stunned them by giving a few of them their independence. It was a complex version of independence, wherein he kept absolute control of their foreign relations, but they had city charters and city magnates. I didn’t understand right away, and thought that he was making concessions to the realities – but in a matter of a few weeks his policy became audience. It was his father’s policy in Boeotia to liberate the smaller cities and use them as watchdogs on Thebes. Of course they were loyal Macedonian allies – they owed us everything. Plataea comes to mind.
Alexander did the same. And the outer provinces crawled all over themselves to return to the fold. Even the ones we’d left behind when we marched on Greece.
Athens and Thebes did not send representatives to the Gates of Fire.
It is remarkable, when you are a soldier, how quickly after exhaustion that rest gives way to boredom. The change seems to be immediate – you are exhausted, you have a rest, suddenly you are bored. Bored soldiers are the most dangerous animals in the human bestiary. They fight duels, they get drunk, they rape.
All bad.
By the third day at the Gates of Fire, I’d killed a man who’d fought at Mount Ossa with my own hand – he raped a child, and I gutted him in front of the parade. That gave the rest of them pause. And I learned my lesson – I hope that child’s life saved a few others – and I brought in instructors for sword work, for wrestling, for running. We threw javelins relentlessly, and we climbed the cliffs, and we began to master the close-order drill that Philip had insisted the pezhetaeroi learn. We had a lexicon of manoeuvres, and we spent four days marching through them – Spartan counter-march, Macedonian counter-march, files and form to the left, files and form to the right, wheeling motions, half-file manoeuvres and file-doubling manoeuvres. Anything to keep the bastards busy.
The League representatives met, and on the first day they voted Alexander to be head of the League, as his father had been. Alexander smiled and proposed an agenda for the next four days of meetings.
And then we marched away in the dark. All Alexander ever wanted was the League’s recognition. As soon as he had it, he was finished with them and their trappings of authority. The Prodromoi marched in pitch darkness, very early on a short summer night, and my hypaspitoi followed them. We had guides we’d recruited from the countryside and paid well, and we moved very fast.
We had to cross the mountains of Phokia, and Alexander, always religious, was determined to march past Delphi. The going was steep, but it was high summer and we’d had a week’s rest, and we flew. Three days to Delphi, and a day’s rest.
Alectus went to the temple, presented himself to the priests and was refused – as a barbarian.
So I accompanied him, both of us in armour.
Greeks like to claim that we Macedonians are barbarians when it suits them. As Alexander was the head of the Holy League and his soldiers were the guarantors of the temple treasury, I had a feeling they would accept me as a Hellene – nor was I disappointed.
We waited in the antechamber while a trio of Athenians asked detailed questions about business and about Alexander’s intentions for their city.
When they emerged, I sent Alectus in alone. And I walked out on to the portico with the Athenians. Two of them were unknown to me, but the third was Kineas’s friend Diodorus.
‘They say that meetings in the temple precincts are part of the will of the God,’ I said, putting my arm around his shoulder. Diodorus turned and we embraced.
‘Alexander wants to be recognised as hegemon of the League of Corinth. He’ll fight to get it, too.’ I held both his hands and looked him in the eye so that he’d see I was being utterly honest.
He nodded. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘And a great deal clearer than what the priestess muttered.’
His companions looked uneasy, and kept their distance.
He jerked a thumb at them, rudely. ‘I’m the token aristocrat. They’re my fellow democrats – friends of Demosthenes, or followers. More like acolytes – very dull companions. Give me dinner tonight and I’ll tell you how happy I am that Alexander is coming to rescue us!’ He laughed bitterly.
I sent him on his way and waited for Alectus, who emerged looking troubled.
‘She is a real prophetess,’ he said, and fingered his beard. ‘I could feel her power.’
I shrugged, because only a fool doubts the power of the god at Delphi.
Alectus walked with me back to camp, but I could tell he was not in a mood for talk.
That night, I gave a small dinner for Diodorus, and invited some of the Hetaeroi – Philip the Red, Cleomenes, Nearchus and Marsyas. He was good company, but his tale was a sad one – Athens was in a state of near stasis, civil war, because Demothenes kept the commons united against Alexander – who he caricatured as a fop, a poseur, an effeminate impostor.
Kineas was in the other faction, of course. And Diodorus had finally turned his back on the democrats.
‘If that fool has his way, we’ll fight you again,’ Diodorus said wearily. Then he brightened. ‘Say – you know that Thaïs speaks of you often?’
‘Does she?’ I asked. That gave me a little heart-burst of joy.
‘She gave me a party the night before I lef
t – she prophesied that I would have days of dull company and would need to remember her wit.’ He smiled. ‘Some day, I long to afford a woman like her – to have her all to myself, every day. I’ll take her to dinner parties. Shock the matrons. Perhaps marry her!’
I laughed, although I was jealous.
He smiled at me as if reading my thoughts. ‘Thaïs said that she had been told by a seer she trusts that she is to leave Athens.’ He laughed. ‘Hardly news – the old men hate her so much they threaten to exile her constantly. Bad for public morals. Worse than old Socrates. Or so I hear.’ He laughed into his wine.
Marsyas leaned over. ‘Who is this paragon?’
‘Ah,’ I said, and took the opportunity every man loves, to discuss his paramour. Or perhaps she wasn’t my paramour. I won’t have you imagine that every time I lay with a slave girl or a willing free woman, I dreamed of Thaïs. That would have been, if nothing else, rude. The partner of the moment deserves your full attention. If you can’t remember the woman with whom you are lying – don’t bother!
But I thought of her often, more so as we came closer to Athens, and to discuss her openly with Diodorus was delightful.
At the same time, I sent Nearchus to Alexander when he went on duty with a note explaining the presence of the Athenian envoys and their mission.
Nearchus came back with two grooms and regretfully informed Diodorus that he and his fellow envoys would be guests of the temple for a few days. Diodorus accepted this with good grace. His fellows were obviously terrified.
We marched away in the dark.
We were at Lebedaea before noon, a hundred and ten stades of running and marching, with the Prodromoi just ahead of us and on either side, and the king with them, surrounded by his somatophylakes – the inner companions, the trusted bodyguards. I was one of them, in title.
I knew all morning we weren’t going to stop. Alexander was playing for the whole jar of oil, as the Athenians say, and we were going to make the dash. My men were in peak condition, and ready for anything. The Prodromoi changed horses at the meal break – and every one of them had at least two remounts.
The sun had scarcely begun to decline when we started for Thebes, another hundred and twenty stades across the plains of Boeotia, the dance floor of Ares. If the Thebans were going to fight, it was going to be today, tonight or tomorrow. My men had already come five parasanges on foot, in their armour, with their shields on their shoulders. Go and try it. Tell me how you do.
And we were off. The Prodromoi didn’t range far ahead. A thousand hypaspitoi, two hundred Prodromoi and twenty somatophylakes in full armour – the cream of the Macedonian army. And the king. Twelve hundred men against the might of Thebes and Athens – against a possible sixty thousand hoplites.
Farmers stood at their ploughs and watched us as if we were an army of ghosts.
Women stood at the edges of fields and watched us pass. Let me tell you what that means. Women are usually locked away when armies come. It’s a good idea. If country people get a rumour of an army, their grain is buried, their animals are driven up the hills and their women vanish.
We marched through a Boeotia full of late-summer grain, donkeys and beautiful women watching us march. They had no idea we were coming, and the Prodromoi moved so fast and so professionally that any man among them who thought to saddle his mare and ride for the city was quietly, ruthlessly removed and brought before the king. No one was killed, but by the time the sun was well down in the sky, we had thirty of these honest citizens trailing the king.
And we could see the Cadmea in the distance. Fabled Thebes.
Bastards. Really, an example of bad behaviour to ring through the ages. Only worthy thing Thebes ever did was to beat Sparta, and even there, really the Spartans beat themselves. Otherwise, Thebes was like a weathercock to tell worthy men what not to do, eh?
It is very fashionable these days in Greece to decry the fate of Thebes. Fuck them. They got what they deserved. How’s that for insensitive?
Anyway, we kept marching. We were on a superb road by then, rounded at the crest, paved with stones, and we sped up.
We marched right up to the gates. We posted a double line of sentries, paid the farmers of the near Cadmea to provide chicken, lamb and barley, and made a rich dinner. The hordes of Thebes didn’t frighten me any, and I slept well.
We were up in the dark, but however early the hypaspitoi rose that day, the men of Thebes were up earlier. By the time I found Alexander, Thebes had already surrendered and agreed to accept a new garrison, and accepted Alexander as the hegemon of the League.
I went back to bed.
I awoke late, to a new world. A world where Alexander, my boyhood friend, was actually going to be the hegemon of the League of Corinth – the master of the Amphictyonic League, the keeper of Delphi. The King of Macedon, Lord of Thessaly and undisputed master of his father’s empire.
It was thirty-nine days since we’d marched out of Pella, with Antipater claiming we should sit and negotiate and lay out some bribes.
The first sign of the new world was Amyntas son of Philotas, one of Parmenio’s household officers. I knew him well – he’d brought me my first toy sword.
He was waiting with Polystratus when I awoke. We embraced, and he shook his head.
‘When I was a young man, I never slept this late,’ he said with mock severity.
‘When you were a young man, Agamemnon was still king and the siege of Troy was in its second year,’ I said. ‘And I doubt you ever marched two hundred stades in a day.’
He grinned. ‘With Philip? I’ve made some marches, boy. Watch what you claim.’ Then he gave Polystratus a long look. ‘Can I trust your man?’
‘With anything,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Parmenio was always a good friend to your father,’ he said quietly.
‘Absolutely. Parmenio has my complete respect and admiration. Where’s this going?’ I asked.
Amyntas shrugged. ‘Alexander made my lord an offer.’ He looked around again.
I nodded. ‘I know all about it.’
He looked startled. ‘You do?’
‘Command in Asia, under the king. First satrapy, all the high offices for his sons and his favourites. Like you, Uncle Amyntas.’ I shrugged. ‘You should ask for the hypaspists. Best outfit in the army.’
He twirled his moustache. ‘So you know. So – is it genuine?’
‘Polystratus, get my Uncle Amyntas a cup of wine.’ I gestured, but Polystratus was already gone. A damned good man, Polystratus. Then I turned to Amyntas. He wasn’t actually an uncle at all – he was Parmenio’s political manager, and he’d been close to my pater.
‘You know, Uncle Amyntas – the truth is, it doesn’t matter whether the deal is genuine or not.’ I grinned. I liked him, but I needed, right then, for him to understand what we’d all just spent thirty-nine days learning. I went on, ‘I assume it is genuine – I’m one of the king’s friends, and he’s never spoken of Parmenio with anything but respect.’ I shrugged. ‘But truth to tell, Uncle, if Parmenio doesn’t ditch Attalus and switch sides, we’ll come to Asia and beat the shit out of him. The king is the king. And look around, Uncle. We hold Greece in the palms of our hands. Thebes fell today. This is Philip’s son, and the gods love him.’ I smiled. ‘Don’t be mad at me. Just take it on board. He’s the king. Parmenio needs to bend the knee. Or . . . else.’
‘Alexander needs my lord,’ Amyntas said. He was in shock. ‘You can’t honestly believe that the gold-haired boy can defeat Parmenio?’
‘In fact, Uncle, you believe it too, or you wouldn’t be here. You’d be in Asia, readying your army to come and fight us for Macedon with Attalus. Eh?’ I grinned. ‘Have some wine. We’re not as young as we used to be.’
He rubbed his chin. Ochrid brought a stool and he sat on it, took wine from Polystratus and shook his head. ‘I’m to negotiate for Attalus.’
I nodded. ‘Spare yourself. Attalus is a dead man.’
Amyntas rubbe
d his chin as if looking for a louse. Maybe he was. ‘Like that, is it?’
‘Listen – you weren’t there. Neither was Parmenio. But Attalus did things – none of us will ever forgive him. If Alexander let him live?’ I shrugged. ‘One of us would do him anyway. And Alexander would let it be.’ I met his eyes. ‘You know how it is, right? When a man has gone outside the laws other men accept? Attalus did that. And he put himself against the king. He’s a dead man.’
Amyntas seemed to deflate. ‘Is this the stupid business about the boy Pausanias?’
I nodded. ‘That’s part of it.’
He nodded. ‘When Attalus came to Asia, he told us that story. He told it with pleasure. And Lord Parmenio left the dinner in disgust.’ He shrugged. ‘Attalus carries the seeds of his own death.’
I nodded. ‘Let him go, then. Attalus is done.’
Amyntas nodded. ‘I hadn’t expected to find Alexander in possession of the League,’ he said. ‘I think I should sail back to Asia and ask my lord to think again.’
‘Finish your wine first,’ I suggested.
After breakfast I reported the whole conversation to Alexander. If I was to be the new faction leader of the lowland nobles – a job I thought that I wanted – I had to play both ends. I’d given Amyntas sound advice, but the king had to know I gave it from loyalty, not self-interest. All very complicated, as being a courtier – even a martial, active courtier – always is.
Alexander nodded. He made a face – rare for him, because he prized his immobile good looks – and spat. ‘I wonder what his terms were,’ he said bitterly. ‘From the great Parmenio to a poor misguided boy.’
‘Better not to know,’ I said. ‘I told him that Attalus was not negotiable.’
Alexander shrugged. ‘Oh, him. He’s in his late sixties – hardly a major power—’
I stopped the king with a raised hand – which shocked him – but I was instantly outraged. ‘I told him that Attalus was not negotiable,’ I said again, quite harshly. ‘Now I’ll tell you. Or rather, lord, I’ll remind you. Your loyal men died or were injured, humiliated, raped – by Attalus. None of the pages will ever accept him. If you forgive him, I’ll kill him myself.’
God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great Page 33