God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

by Christian Cameron

  He turned – he was ahead – and waved to me. ‘I need your Polystratus,’ he said.

  I brought all my grooms forward.

  Alexander reined in, snapped his fingers and a groom came up with Bucephalus. While he changed horses, he issued orders to Polystratus.

  ‘Straight back – find Parmenion. Tell him to march the phalanx to the right by sections – along the line of hills and around the lake to the south. Use the hills to screen the march. I’ll buy us some time at the ford and fix their attention there. And tell him to send me all the Hetaeroi.’

  Polystratus nodded. ‘All the Hetaeroi to you, phalanx to the right, screened by those hills and around the lake.’ He raised an eyebrow.

  I read his mind. ‘That’s forty stades, lord. They won’t make it before darkness falls.’

  Alexander bobbed his head. He was up on Bucephalus, and his cheeks were bright crimson with anticipation, and Hephaestion was holding out his magnificent golden helmet.

  ‘If this works, they won’t be necessary, and if this doesn’t work, we fight tomorrow,’ he said. His eyes were fixed on the ford, now just three stades away.

  The second and third squadrons of the Hetaeroi were coming up. Nearchus saluted. ‘Philotas is ten minutes behind me, lord,’ he said to Alexander. ‘He’s pushing the rest of the Hetaeroi up the column.’

  Alexander nodded. ‘I won’t wait. Wedge!’

  We formed behind the king – he insisted on being at the point of the wedge – and after all, he was King of Macedon. I fell into place behind him – with Black Cleitus on his right rear and me on his left rear.

  And then we trotted for the ford.

  The Persians saw us, but they took for ever to react. I’m going to guess that they didn’t expect us to cross. And they weren’t formed in a body, but a few hundred Persian nobles spread out across a stade of ground – some were even watering their horses.

  We went from a trot to a canter, and our wedge began to spread out. The king was making no concessions to differences in horse flesh. He was watching something – I could see from the tension in his neck under the base of his helmet.

  All the Persians began to point. The king was hard to miss. His green-bronze armour and his superb helmet shouted his presence. A messenger dashed back from the forward Persian troops, and they began to form.

  We hit the ford. Our horses raised a curtain of spray and Alexander wasn’t slowing, so I dug my heels into Poseidon and hung on. Poseidon doesn’t love water.

  A Persian – a noble in a bronze peaked helmet and a magnificent scarlet saddle – hurtled across our front on a big Nisean horse, moving like a grey streak, and he threw his javelin at the king, and Alexander caught it in the air with his own spear and parried it – a fine feat. Men cheered all along the faces of the wedge.

  We started up the far bank. There were fifty Persians there, all throwing their spears, but none of them abided our onset, and they broke before us, and we were across.

  Yet as soon as we were up the far bank, I could see that we’d charged into a nest of angry bees. Cavalrymen were coming up from the south and the east – even from the north – as far as the eye could see.

  Alexander laughed. It was a mad laugh. He turned and his eyes glittered and his face was white, his cheeks and lips red as blood, and he looked like a dramatic mask – or like a god.

  ‘I think we have their attention!’ he shouted, and pointed the tip of the wedge at the nearest formed enemy body, two hundred Phrygian horse preparing to charge us. He raised his spear. ‘Ready, Hetaeroi? Charge!’ he roared, and my trumpeter picked up his command and sang it out.

  The head of the wedge turned less than an eighth part of a circle, and then we were pounding forward up a slight incline, and the Phrygians came down at us with their longer spears. Their files spread as they charged, so that just before impact you could see the sunset between their men.

  Alexander did his job as ‘wedge leader’ perfectly, taking the point of the wedge into the widest gap between enemy files – and he ducked the first enemy lance, a beautiful piece of horsemanship, perfectly judged, so that the lance-point passed a hand’s breadth over his back, and then he rose and his spear took the Phrygian on his right just below the throat – killing him and ripping him from his horse in one movement. The king’s spear snapped from the impact, and Alexander swung the butt of the spear into the next lance, parrying it off to his left across his horse’s head and then cutting back with his whole weight behind the staff – thunk, into the head of the second man on the left, and the man collapsed from the saddle – the king dropped his spear haft and unsheathed his sword, his body flat along the neck of his horse to evade the third lance . . .

  It was beautiful. It made my heart ache to watch him.

  And then I was fighting.

  I was on the left, and the king had left the front-left man for me – I parried his spear with mine and ran my spearhead along his shaft, so that it slammed into his thorax and he was gone. I kept the spear, turned it and caught the next man with the butt close in – a clumsier blow than the king’s, but my man fell too. My horse’s haunches bunched and expanded and I was into my third man – Poseidon hit his horse, breast to breast, and knocked it to the ground, and Amyntas son of Amyntas struck me from behind – these things happen in a melee – and we got tangled, and the wedge was slowing – but the king was still pushing ahead, and I put my heels into Poseidon despite the ringing in my ears. I pushed forward into the press – the Phrygians were thickening like lentil soup in the pot, because another squadron had thrown themselves into the fight.

  The king had three of them around him. In the glance I got, I saw him thrust his sword into one exposed side, and then, quick as a cat, draw back and flick a cut at the second and carry it around to the third.

  He was like a god.

  But he needed help.

  Poseidon did his bit, pushing forward with heavy, massive, powerful surges from his hindquarters, so that I seemed to be rowing forward.

  We were suddenly so close to the Phrygians that we were no longer threading between their files – now we were pushing in close, knee to knee, face to face, horse against horse, and now the horses began to fight each other, and I had to keep my knees all but locked and hang on with my arms to stay with my mount, because he was kicking, biting and pushing.

  Hipposthismos, I remember thinking, in that way that your brain wanders off in moments of critical danger. Blows hit me – Persian spears – I got a slash across the top of my thigh, below the line of my tassets, and my bridle hand took its usual abuse – that’s why it looks the way it does, eh?

  Othismos is the pushing and shoving and vicious infighting of the closest-packed melee. So you can guess—hipposthismos is the mounted version.

  I came up against an officer – a high officer, with superb embroidery on his cloak and a sword with a hilt of gold – a sword I got to know very well, because he cut at my head, and I parried – sword to sword. Our blades cut into each other – that’s why you don’t use a sword to parry, lad! – and we bound up, and our horses pressed in, and there we were in a pushing match, hilts in front of our noses, legs crushed together, and I could smell his breath – and he mine.

  I reckon he was a good officer, because as we struggled, he looked past me – trying to figure out, as I was, what in Hades was happening in the melee.

  I dropped my reins, reached across my body with my left hand, put it under his right elbow and pushed – he twisted to keep his balance and his seat, and I got my hilt free and punched him with it . . .

  And he was gone in the melee, and I was almost to the king. A blow rang off my backplate – I assume my erstwhile opponent backcut at me as the melee carried us apart – but it did me no damage, and I was almost there.

  I had two or three heartbeats to look around – an eddy in the fight – and the Persians were coming at us from every side.

  Alexander was putting Persians into the dust with almost every blow,
but some of the feline grace was gone from his back and hips as he rode. Grace is the first thing to go as a man tires – we start to make slightly larger motions with the arms, the pelvis – anything to help the muscles work. Alexander was showing the very earliest sign of fatigue.

  I got up to him as he caught a Persian spear in his bridle hand, pulled it from its owner’s grip and stabbed him with the butt-spike – all in a heartbeat.

  My sword was bent. I hadn’t noticed it, but my fine Keltoi long sword was bent from the pushing match with the Persian officer, and it had a deep nick – almost a gouge – in the thick metal near the hilt.

  I rang it off a Phrygian’s helmet, and it snapped.

  ‘Where is Philotas?’ Alexander asked, his tone almost conversational.

  Here’s one of the differences between a normal, intelligent Macedonian and Alexander. I’d forgotten that Philotas existed. I was busy fighting for my life – Philotas was on a different plane of existence.

  Alexander pulled on his reins and our horses lined up, head to head. But the Phrygians were done – they weren’t running yet, but they were falling back, riding clear of the melee or simply getting shy of combat.

  Cleitus came up on Alexander’s left side.

  He looked across at me, ignoring the king. ‘We need to get him out of here,’ he said.

  I looked over my shoulder. We had Medes – or Persians – behind us, between us and the river – I could see their high hats and their bows.

  And their arrows. Arrows were falling on the rear ranks of the wedge, and horses were screaming.

  I think that until then we’d lost very few men, if any. We had good armour and excellent helmets – far better than the Phrygians or the Medes. And our horses were big – as big as theirs, if not as good as the Niseans. Our men were better trained in arms – the Persians don’t wrestle, and that’s a terrible disadvantage in a cavalry melee.

  But we didn’t have bows, and their arrows were falling on the rumps of our horses. Horses were dying and their riders were left on the ground in a cavalry melee – a terrible place to be.

  Had the Phrygians held on for another few minutes, they would have had us. As it was, they fell back, and Alexander ordered us to wheel around – easy enough for a small group of horsemen who had ridden together all their lives, and desperately hard for anyone else. The Medes never imagined we’d wheel – but the whole wedge spun on Alexander, men riding to the flanks in good order, as if this sort of fancy riding in the face of the enemy was an everyday thing. Which it was, for us.

  We charged the Medes, and they came right at us – the Medes are the bravest nation on earth, except for ours, and they are never shy about a scramble. Our horses were blown and theirs were fresh, and they shot a flight of arrows at us from close in, and men fell – but nothing touched Alexander, and he had his spear two-handed, the butt clamped under his right armpit, and he wrenched it high just before contact, beating his opponent’s spear aside and thrusting. He must have missed – one of his few melee misses, I must admit – and the man’s spear rode down Alexander’s spear, skipped off Bucephalus’s coat and popped up into my line. I got a hand on it, slapped it clear of my body – and my opponent unhorsed himself, because he wouldn’t let go of his spear – a juvenile mistake.

  Another Mede shot me from arm’s length – I had time to put my head down and my crest into his shot – it was like being punched in the head, and blackness came before my eyes – a haze at the edges, and another blow rang against the side of my helmet, and then I could see, and my spear had rammed through his chest and my spear-point was out through his back, and the weight of him broke the staff.

  And then I was through, Poseidon gathering speed, and Alexander was trying to turn his horse to go back into the melee.

  I gave Poseidon his head and gathered the king’s bridle in my hand as I trotted past – Bucephalus trumpeted his displeasure as his head was snapped round, but he had to follow Poseidon.

  Alexander slammed his spear-butt into my side. ‘What . . .’

  We were in the river. Persian cavalry was coming at the Hetaeroi from all directions, and men were down – at least a dozen, all king’s friends. Amyntas son of Amyntas was down, and Lagus son of Perdiccas, and other men I knew.

  And Pyrrhus – young Pyrrhus, one of my own. I could see immediately that he was missing from my file, because when I burst out of the back of the melee, all my file followed me like good troopers, and there was Nearchus, and Cleomenes, but Pyrrhus was gone. Damn the boy.

  But he was not the king.

  I rode through the ford, and Alexander was screaming at me, but I had his reins.

  Why, you ask?

  Because in my one glimpse across the river I’d seen Philotas. He was sitting on his war horse, and he wasn’t moving to our aid. And I thought of Thaïs, and what she had said, and I made the decision – right or wrong – that it was my job to keep the king alive.

  The Hetaeroi followed me.

  The Medes didn’t pursue. They’d lost their prize – the king – and they could claim to have had the best of the melee, in that they held the ground. Another way of looking at it was that we’d broken through the Phrygian cavalry, whirled about and shattered the Medes, but perhaps that’s my bias speaking. Heh, heh.

  I got Alexander up the Macedonian bank of the Granicus, and I turned to him – well short of the waiting squadrons of Hetaeroi, who looked angry, even at this distance. There was the margin of victory – six full squadrons, fifteen hundred Macedonian cavalry. Sitting.

  ‘Blame me,’ I hissed at Alexander. ‘Call me a coward, lord, but ask yourself, why is Philotas just sitting there?’

  Alexander rode past me. He trotted his horse up the bank and turned to look back.

  The Persians were still in disarray. But even as we watched, a magnificent regiment came up at a canter – a thousand noble Persians in fine armour – with scales, most of them, that gleamed like a million mirrors, like dancer’s bangles in the setting sun. Arsites in person, I assumed. They pushed their own Medes and Phrygians aside.

  But they halted at the riverbank.

  Our last files got across, pursued only by a handful of Mede arrows.

  ‘Not as easy as you thought, Ptolemy?’ Philotas shouted at me.

  The king was angry with me, and the army would think I’d been a coward, and Philotas – I should have flashed with rage, but something inside me was tired, and cold. So I rode up the bank and right up to him.

  Give him this much – he didn’t flinch or quail. I think he hoped I would strike him, so he could order me arrested.

  I rode right up close. ‘You’re right,’ I said. I was only as loud as I needed to be for him to hear me. ‘But I didn’t expect to have to do it by myself.’

  His eyes widened a little.

  I rode past him and had my Polystratus, now my hyperetes, sound the recall from our place in the Hetaeroi line. I didn’t think that the Persians would come across the stream at us, but it would have been foolish to allow my squadron to continue to mill about in confusion.

  We dismounted. All of the horses were blown – even Poseidon was tired.

  Alexander left Bucephalus and came over to me. ‘I wish to apologise,’ he said.

  I don’t think he’d ever apologised – at least to me. I just stood there with a foolish look on my face, no doubt.

  ‘But we put fear into them, did we not? Did you see me when I went through the front ranks of the Phrygians? I’ve never been so fast – I felt as if Achilles himself guided my arm.’

  I was so relieved to have his forgiveness that I pressed his hand. ‘You were . . . like a god,’ I said.

  Alexander’s eyes widened, just as Philotas’s had, but for the opposite reason. He positively beamed with pleasure. ‘Ptolemy! How unlike you!’ he teased me, and slapped me on the shoulder. ‘And then I missed my stroke against the Mede – did you take him?’

  I smiled. In truth, the king’s need to refight his actions and pr
aise himself was annoying – the sort of conceit you’d expect from a much lesser man. But I was relieved, strangely happy, even. ‘He unhorsed himself,’ I said. ‘I got his spear in my left hand and he fell off his horse.’

  Alexander threw back his head and laughed – a high-pitched laugh that sounded utterly false.

  He stopped mid-laugh.

  Darkness was falling. And as if he’d become another man, the king suddenly turned his head.

  ‘We should be marching south,’ he said. ‘Or we’ll never reach their flank by morning.’

  We’d lost more than twenty Hetaeroi, and in later years the king put up monuments to them. But we were alive, and the king was still king.

  If Parmenio had another plan, he didn’t try to press it on the king. In later years, he insisted to anyone who would listen that the plan to go south around the lake was his plan, not the king’s – that all the king wanted was to ride forward and challenge Arsites to single combat.

  Crap.

  The king loved to fight, but we went forward to try to steal the ford from the Persians, and we missed by minutes – minutes that Philotas and Amyntas had wasted. To my mind, Parmenio only sent us forward in the hope that we’d die.

  That said, though – the king propagandised his version, too. Look at what it says in the Military Journal. No mention at all of the battle at the ford. Eh? Nor any mention of Parmenio, even though it was Parmenio who marched the army off to the right behind the screen of hills and got them to the edge of the lake under cover of darkness – and into a cold camp without fires. When we rode into that camp, our horses were done, but there were grooms ready to take them, and men handed us cold food and wine and led us to our pallets to sleep – Parmenio had done a magnificent job.

  Pyrrhus rode in after dark with four men. He had a claim to having been the bravest of the Hetaeroi, and the king embraced him – it turned out that he’d ridden through the Medes and kept going – with just half a file – sweeping through the Phrygians before realising that no one was behind him. He’d escaped down the Persian bank of the river, and he admitted that he’d been unpursued. The Medes had been shocked by the cavalry action.