God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

by Christian Cameron

  That evening, I got Alexander’s attention by the simple expedient of pushing into his tent, and asked to take the Hetaeroi back to cover the camp.

  He had forgotten. He didn’t have Thaïs waiting for him. He was Achilles, lying by the fire with his loyal myrmidons all around him. Again, he’d led the hypaspists in person, and they lay around him like mastiffs. Was I jealous?

  You bet I was. I missed them.

  Alexander looked at me. Nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he said. He was going to say something more, and then I think the king took over from the man.

  I took half the Prodromoi and all my squadron and rode off at the start of the sunset, and by full dark we were riding into our main camp, which we found terrified but sound. They’d seen some fugitive Thracians and been scouted by a mounted force, so I dismounted my troopers and sent Cleomenes back – alone – to warn Alexander. We spent a bad night on guard duty – two war parties brushed us and we held them.

  At first light, the hypaspitoi came, led by Alexander in person. He looked at the signs of fighting and led the Prodromoi out himself, and came back two hours later.

  ‘They’re still out there,’ he said angrily. I think he felt that after two shattering defeats the Thracians might have the good grace to bend a knee and give in.

  I was getting a different picture. What I saw was an enemy so diffuse and ungoverned that we couldn’t ‘beat’ them or intimidate them as a group. In effect, I was beginning to believe that we’d have to defeat every individual Thracian – at least once. Or perhaps just kill every one of them.

  The next day, the army was reunited with the camp and we moved out to the north, to the banks of the Danube, where by Alexander’s usual combination of brilliant planning and ferocious good luck, the fleet lay rocking in the rapid current, tied to giant trees along the bank.

  In the middle of the wide river, like a small ocean, lay the rocky shores of Pine Island, where eight thousand Thracians waited with their animals and their treasure. Beyond, at the very edge of sight, lay the far shore.

  Right at our feet were the palings of the bridge that Darius had built in the years before Marathon, when he took a mighty army on to the steppes, and lost.

  With a sinking feeling, I listened to the king and realised that he intended to march on – to take us on to Pine Island, crush the refugee Thracians there and then across the Danube, like Darius.

  ‘Darius lost!’ I found myself pointing out, later that evening.

  No one else seemed to care, and a lot of wine was drunk. The appearance of the fleet, thousands of stades from home, was like a miracle, and it, combined with two fine victories, raised Alexander’s spirits to a fever pitch.

  He ordered the cavalry to collect every boat and dugout canoe along the banks for two hundred stades, and I spent the next week riding up and down the river, ducking javelins, arrows and thrown rocks. The woods were full of Thracians, and I was in a fight nearly every day – my sword arm was a mass of scars.

  The only day I remember was rainy. I was soaked to the skin when I rode back into camp, fifty canoes richer, and I stripped naked because Thaïs had a bath ready for me. She got me into the bath, helped me scrub the pain away and got the rolled linen off my sword arm in the hot water so that the pain was bearable, and then she told me she was pregnant.

  I think that was the only time I’d seen her afraid. She was afraid of the pregnancy and afraid, too, of me.

  I was delighted. But I remembered what had happened to Nike, and I was . . . afraid. So we had a fight – isn’t that what people do when they are afraid?

  And in the midst of that fight – me in a tub of hot water, blood flowing from my arm, Thaïs and her woman trying to bandage me while we shouted at each other – Cleitus came in.

  ‘The king wishes you to attend him immediately,’ Cleitus said, his face deadpan.

  ‘Tell him I’m bleeding like a fucking sacrifice and naked as a baby,’ I shot back.

  Cleitus shook his head. ‘No, Ptolemy. I will not. Come. Now.’

  Things had changed a great deal. There had been a time when no one would have jumped like that for Alexander. We loved him – but we treated him as the first among equals. That was gone, now – even for Cleitus.

  I got out of the bath, and Thaïs rubbed the water off me with her own chiton and pulled one of mine over my head. ‘Go,’ she said.

  I really loved her. Then more than ever.

  Alexander was sitting on a stool in his tent, with a low table made by two raw boards laid across two more stools – iron stools, taken as loot.

  ‘When I ask for you to come immediately,’ he said, and then he raised his head and saw the blood running down my right arm.

  ‘I was having my wound dressed, and having a fight with my hetaera, my lord. I apologise for being late.’ I suspect my sarcasm was all too evident.

  He looked at me for a long time. His eyes were red, and he hadn’t slept, and Hephaestion looked like a corpse with a skull for a head.

  ‘I have fifty more canoes, and I lost three men over the last two days.’ I shrugged. ‘Aristotle would reduce this campaign to a mathematical equation. If we kill Thracians at this rate, we’ll still run out of highly trained Hetaeroi before they run out of ignorant savages.’

  Alexander drank some wine. ‘You are dismissed,’ he said.

  I turned and left the tent. I relate this to show that it was not all wine and roses. Alexander had launched four attacks against Pine Island – you won’t find this in the Military Journal – and been pushed off every time. The last time he’d got ashore in person, certain that his men would walk on water to save him. Instead, he’d almost been overrun, and twenty hypaspitoi had died saving him. Two full files. Dead.

  Alexander probably summoned me to order me to lead the next assault. I was mouthy and he dismissed me and summoned Perdiccas, and he went and got wounded in the arm and the hip so that he was out for the rest of the campaign.

  The next day it was Cassander’s turn. He went and got knocked unconscious by a blow to the throat that left him unable to speak for days. No great loss.

  I brought in more canoes and lost another trooper in the endless fighting, out there in the woods. And I learned from prisoners that the Getae, the largest, fiercest and best-mounted tribe of Thracians – not really Thracians, but a sort of mixed bag of Thracians and Scythians – were present in force on the far bank, with a fortified camp and at least ten thousand horsemen. They were feeding the Thracians on Pine Island.

  When I returned, I heard about Cassander, and I went to Alexander’s pavilion and was admitted.

  ‘I’m sure you have a great deal to tell me, Ptolemy,’ Alexander said bitterly.

  I realised that he was drunk. But I told him about the Getae, anyway.

  He snorted. ‘Barbarians. They won’t stop me. I’ll have Pine Island, I’ll build a bridge like Darius and we’ll march across.’

  ‘When do you send Hephaestion?’ I asked. ‘You’ve sent everyone else. When is it his turn to try for a miracle?’

  ‘You are dismissed. I should never have admitted you,’ Alexander slurred.

  ‘You’re drunk. That’s not your way, lord. And I’m here to remind you that it is not all arete. You have a kingdom.’ I was walking a sword edge.

  He spat and drank again. ‘I am invincible,’ he said.

  ‘Just such a prophecy that the gods send to drive a man to madness. There’s more ways than one to win a battle.’ I shrugged. ‘We will never storm that island, not with ten thousand canoes.’

  He shrugged.

  Hephaestion glared at me. ‘I would be proud to lead tomorrow’s assault,’ he said. ‘I’m not afraid of it, like Ptolemy,’ he added.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid.’ I shrugged. ‘Lord, we need another solution. All the good we’ve done with those victories is being frittered away with these little actions.’

  Alexander nodded. ‘Begone,’ he said.

  So I went.

 
The next morning, Alexander called all his officers together and outlined his new plan. He was as fresh as a new-caught tuna, and his plan was all daring and no sense. We were going to take the fleet and as many soldiers as could be fitted into the canoes and boats, and we were going across the Danube. His point was that by holding both banks, we would force Pine Island to surrender. They couldn’t feed themselves.

  It was a fine plan, except that there were ten thousand Getae on the far bank, just waiting for us. It sounded to me like hubris of the grandest kind.

  But – it sounded better than battering Pine Island for another week while we ran out of food.

  I spent two days gathering another forty boats. The banks were stripped bare. On a positive note, the Thracians had given up trying to ambush my patrols. Even they couldn’t take any more casualties.

  The army was mutinous. It’s hard to believe, now, that Alexander’s armies were ever mutinous. In fact, they often were. He had a way of expecting superhuman effort too often, of making plans and not explaining them, or showing childish displeasure when the troops failed to achieve success against high odds – in fact, he didn’t understand them. When we were at the edge of battle, he understood them, because men at the edge of battle are more alive, more alert, smarter, better men – more like Alexander, in fact.

  But the campaign was wearing them out. We’d marched far, and we were at the edge of the world. We were running out of wine and oil, and those were the key supplies for any army of Hellenes. Most of the cavalry and the hypaspists were fighting every day, in scrubby little actions against teenagers – warriors so young we could take no pride in killing them, but their sling stones and arrows hurt us. And the pezhetaeroi were making daily attempts at Pine Island, and failing. Failure is the canker that eats at an army, and two miraculous victories – as good as anything Philip ever won against the Thracians – were immediately offset by the daily defeats at Pine Island, because soldiers are as fickle as whores and twice as costly.

  I tried to tell Alexander that. Twice.

  The second time was worse. He looked at me – he had his helmet under his arm, and he was about to take the Prodromoi south to make sure our retreat was clear.

  ‘Are they children, to be cosseted?’ he asked. ‘See to it.’

  ‘Can we set a date for marching home?’ I asked. I managed all this under the guise of the sacred Military Journal.

  Alexander was looking at the entries for the last few days, and carefully running the spatulate end of the stylus across the casualties for Pine Island. ‘Yes,’ he said. He was taking this seriously. He was no fool, and if I’m giving that impression, wipe it from your mind. He was as far above me as I am above most men. He just couldn’t think like them, and they were mysterious to him. He looked at me under those blond eyelashes and he gave me that rare smile – the look of his full attention.

  ‘How long do I have?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Three weeks,’ I answered, because I’d prayed he’d accept my guidance and so I had an answer ready. ‘If I let it be known this morning, I think you’ll find the men a great deal more willing to try the Danube crossing. They think . . . they think we’re going to march off the edge of the world.’

  ‘How well they know me,’ he said with a gentle smile. ‘Let it be done.’ He looked at the Military Journal again and furrowed his eyebrows. ‘Every ambassador is going to end up reading this, Ptolemy. Keep that in mind when you write. I don’t ask that we seem perfect.’ He grinned. ‘Merely invincible.’

  I must have grinned back. To be honest, I was relieved, myself – first, because we were not wintering here, which I had feared he’d try to do, and second, because this was the Alexander I loved. He’d been hard to find since the victories started to come.

  That morning I summoned all my adjutants and gathered the entries for the day before, and then I passed the word – three weeks. The Feast of Demeter in the Macedonian festival calendar, and we’d march for hearth and home.

  Ever work yourself to exhaustion?

  And then eat a meal? And you can feel the power going into your limbs – you can feel the lifting of the fatigue? Eh? That’s how it was after I dismissed my adjutants. I could feel the change.

  We loaded men into the boats. The cavalry went on the triremes, a trick we’d learned from Athens, and the infantry went in the canoes and fishing boats. It took us all day to cross the river, and we spent the night just offshore, a fleet of vulnerable dugout canoes overladen with men, armour and long spears. In the morning, we landed with the dawn, and marched inland through fields of oats and wheat that stood almost as high as a man, and we marched at open order, with every infantryman carrying his spear parallel to the ground so that the glinting heads wouldn’t give us away. The cavalry was last ashore, inside a great square protected by the infantry, and we got on our horses without incident. I led my squadron out to the right. Cleitus had the left squadron.

  We came out of the fields about three stades from the riverbank, and we could see their fortified camp in the distance. Our element of surprise was total, and we swept towards them quickly, the cavalry well out on the flanks in extended lines, only two deep and ten horse lengths between men, looking for ambushes.

  There were none.

  We captured an undefended horse herd, and we overran the little makeshift port where they’d been supplying the island. We took four days’ supplies for the whole army and another two hundred small boats. The men loaded up with food and bad wine.

  The Getae came out of their camp when we set fire to the boats.

  Alexander rode along the line, his cloak billowing behind him, and we roared his name, and charged. It wasn’t a complicated battle. In fact, there was very little fighting, and we chased them into their camp.

  We milled about outside their log rampart, and then I started to call insults to the men on the walls in my best Thracian.

  They sent out a warrior.

  That’s the trouble with challenging men to combat. Sometimes they take you up on it.

  Alexander came over to me while I had my sword arm rebandaged. ‘You up to this, my friend?’ he asked.

  The Getae warrior was sitting on his horse under the walls, shouting insults. On our side, my friends were offering me their swords, their spears and their horses.

  I settled my helmet on my head, flexed my fingers and vaulted on to Poseidon’s broad back.

  ‘I am, Lord King.’ I think I was grinning. I was afraid and elated.

  ‘You’ll need to do better than last time,’ he said, with a grin. He had a point. Kineas had put me down.

  Men slapped my back and told me I was lucky, and then I was trotting over the turf towards my adversary. I took a pair of heavy longche from Polystratus, rather than my usual lance.

  I trotted forward and waved to my adversary, thinking we would agree on some rules.

  He wasn’t interested in discussing anything. He came right at me, drew an arrow to his eye and loosed.

  At sixty paces, that arrow went right into Poseidon’s chest.

  Bless my dear horse, he paused and then sprang forward.

  The Thracian was controlling his horse with his knees, and he turned away, fitting another arrow to his bow.

  Poseidon was running with an arrow three fingers deep in his chest, but he ate the ground between us as the Thracian turned his smaller horse. I closed – fifty paces, forty paces – and then he turned at a gallop and headed due west, along the front of our army.

  Poseidon turned to cut his path.

  He turned and shot. It was a beautiful shot, and hit my helmet just above my eyes, but the slope of the bronze and the skill of the maker saved me. Two inches lower and he’d have won that fight, and I’d never have been King of Aegypt.

  At ten paces he brought the bow up again, and I threw my javelin. Ten paces is nothing to a trained man, and Poseidon, the best horse I ever had, felt my throw coming and flowed into it, so that I threw on his off foot. I hit my target – his horse
– in the neck with a heavy spear, and that horse died before I reached him, and my adversary was tangled on the ground with his broken bow.

  The Macedonians cheered.

  The man came up out of the wreck limping, and he had a sword. He stood his ground, and I slapped him in the head with the spear-point and knocked him unconscious. Then I dragged him by his own saddle rope, tied round his feet, across the front of our army to where the king sat on Bucephalus.

  ‘Was that better, my lord?’ I asked.

  Alexander’s eyes sparkled. He handed me a cup of wine, embraced me and let me bask in the congratulations of all the other Hetaeroi. Say what you will of the former pages – we all respected success, and no one was ever petty enough to conceal admiration for a deed well done. Cleitus was smothered in it after the Woods Battle, and now it was my turn.

  I untied the man and turned him over to Polystratus. ‘See if you can revive him,’ I said. ‘A drag across the turf shouldn’t have killed him.’

  In fact, my head hurt, and Polystratus took my good cavalry Boeotian, shook his head and showed me the bowl. There was a dent as deep as a man’s thumb in the front just above the cranium, and the helmet was ruined. It had saved my life three times.

  I lay down for a while but Thaïs, quite wisely, didn’t let me sleep, but prattled at me and made me walk about and fed me water and honey. When I could see straight and talk well, she let me have a nap.

  When I woke, the Thracians had surrendered, and the sound of the army’s cheers brought me back to earth.

  They didn’t actually surrender. But the Thracians on Pine Island agreed to evacuate and surrender one half of their herds, and the Getae agreed to allow them to come over the Danube to resettle, and Alexander forced them to agree that the lands between the pass and the Danube were his to dispose of.

  I suspected that this agreement would be nullified the moment they couldn’t see our spears, and I was right, but it made Alexander happy – and we’d shown them that they wouldn’t be safe anywhere, and that was worth something. To be honest, I’m not sure that it was worth the body count. We lost fifty-eight cavalrymen – mostly Hetaeroi – and almost four hundred pezhetaeroi and hypaspitoi. They were fine men in the peak of training. They died, and we got very little in return.