God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

by Christian Cameron

  Nothing like that happened. We entered the mountains and the arms of our ‘W’ came in closer and closer to the column, and eventually we halted and switched roles, with the hardy Illyrians out on the wings, climbing the ridges above us, and the cavalry close in.

  Kineas loved it. He loved scouting and careful, professional cavalry work – he excelled at little details of tactics, such as keeping a file of horsemen over the crest of a ridge so that they were invisible as they moved. He was a keen hunter on horseback, and he used the skills from hunting very well.

  Up and up, ridge after ridge, switchback trails on which the horses had to go two abreast – sometimes one abreast. And cold. A taste of winter.

  Where in Hades are we going?

  Up and up, and then down into a high valley – a magnificent valley that rolled away into an infinite distance – a hundred stades of high valley, with magnificent hills on either side, some already snow-capped, and beautiful farms laid out all along the valley floor.

  The valley had a side door – a spur of the valley floor that ran off to the south, back towards the coast.

  Locals called it the land of Herakles, in their own tongue. It looked remarkably like the best parts of Macedon, or southern Illyria.

  We marched up the road, and came after two days of climbing to the mountain fortress of Alinda, reputed to be the strongest place in Caria, and perhaps in the world. The entire fortress was of stone – two outer walls, each the size of Pella, and separated by a bowshot, so that men on the high inner wall could support troopers on the outer wall, and then, towering over the inner wall, a great citadel like the stern of a ship rising over the so-called Carian Gate, itself protected by a pair of towers and with a magnificent carving over the lintel of an enormous lion snarling at visitors, very reminiscent of the stone over the lintel at Mycenae.

  From the plain, we looked up and shuddered. I could see from the valley floor that the walls were too high above the plain for even our largest one-talent machines to reach them with enough force to dislodge stone.

  ‘What’s he thinking of?’ I asked Thaïs, who rode between me and Kineas.

  Thaïs smiled. ‘He isn’t going to lay siege to it,’ she said. ‘He’s going to make love to it.’

  She was at her most witty when she was enigmatic. So I smiled at her and kept my scouts moving.

  I needn’t have bothered. Not a Carian mountaineer troubled us. The most excitement we had was when the Agrianians smoked a nest of bandits and we massacred them – good fun, but hardly a contest.

  We camped below the citadel, and every Macedonian lord – certainly all the highlanders – looked up at it with something like lust. Alinda, the fortress, was a fine hold, and the man who had it would be comfortable, safe and powerful for ever.

  It turned out that Thaïs and Alexander had been negotiating with the commander for weeks. Not quite the commander – rather, the semi-exiled queen of Caria, Ada. She had a few troops – all mercenaries – and she held the lower two circuits and had the Persian commander holed up in the citadel.

  Thaïs took me with her when she and Alexander went to meet her. She was in her late thirties, and she had brown-grey hair, fine eyes – really startling, widely spaced and large – and was athletic rather than beautiful – slim-hipped and small-breasted.

  How can I tell this?

  Alexander fell in love with her. Right there, before my eyes.

  She did have something of Atlante about her. She wasn’t shy, and she was not particularly feminine – she’d been in the field much of her life. She rode well, walked with purpose, and the word among her troops was that she was a fine sword-fighter and a good wrestler. She was twice the king’s age, or near enough.

  I’ve done Alexander a disservice if I’ve made him sound like an effeminate. No Macedonian army would have tolerated such a man, and he was not, except in the propaganda of farts like Demosthenes.

  Nor did he prefer boys to girls. The truth – a hard truth that men never wanted to believe – is that he was above such things. He didn’t particularly fancy anyone. Oh, a perfect beauty like Calixeinna moved him to possession and sexual satisfaction – but that was really a conquest, not a lust. He didn’t look.

  I know. Despite being besotted with Thaïs for years – for most of my life – I look at every woman I see. If a woman bends over to pick up a basket, I’ll look at her breasts. If a woman walks away into the sun, I’ll look at the whole outline of her figure. Really – it is one of the joys of life. Women are always beautiful.

  I’ve even seen beautiful men – a few. They don’t move me the same way, but there’s something truly admirable about a good body – hard and well trained and ready for war. Not as interesting, perhaps, as a woman’s body – but worth a look.

  Alexander never looked. You could see it in him, if you took the time. You could parade hetaerae by him all day, and he’d only react to the beauty with a certain fascination – never with an obvious head-turn of the man. He was not a man.

  He was more, and he was less.

  But Ada, in her slim-hipped, hard-bodied, older and wiser way, pierced him.

  There was an element of rich comedy to it from the first. She was a practical, unromantic woman, as hard as a sword blade, deeply suspicious of this foreign conqueror. Her face was more handsome than beautiful, aside from her eyes – her nose was too long, slightly curved in an Aramaic way, her skin was dusky and her lips were thin. She kept Alexander at a distance, distrusted the lot of us and tried to negotiate.

  Alexander gave her anything she asked for.

  Since she was neither romantic nor yet a tease, she had no idea of the effect she was having, and his besottedness confounded their negotiations.

  Thaïs and I laughed ourselves to sleep, that first night.

  Thaïs grabbed me and put a finger on a very sensitive place. ‘You have to help him,’ she said, stifling a giggle. ‘The goddess has him, and he can’t think.’

  The things I’ve done for the king.

  Next morning, I had the duty anyway. My little command had been broken up – we were clearly camping in this rich valley for a few days, and Philotas had the next turn on point. So I was back to bodyguard duty. I presented myself in armour.

  Hephaestion was in a pout.

  Alexander was having his hair brushed. ‘I want to look my best,’ he said to me as I came in. ‘Hephaestion’s being difficult, Ptolemy. And you could look better – when did you last polish that thorax?’

  I made a face. ‘I think I was fourteen,’ I said. ‘Since then, I’ve had slaves to do it.’

  That got me a smile.

  ‘Thaïs told me to have a talk with you,’ I said.

  Alexander nodded. ‘She’s the most intelligent of women. Although Ada . . .’ He smiled again. ‘I keep saying her name.’

  Hephaestion rolled his eyes.

  I made a small motion with my thumb. Hephaestion read it and got to his feet. ‘I’m going to go and curry my horses,’ he said sulkily.

  It’s funny. As I tell you this story, I keep insisting that Hephaestion and I were never friends, but I find that we cooperated awfully well – at least in the early days.

  At any rate, he went out to the horse lines, and Nearchus – who was becoming the kind of yes-man who stands too close to the man in power, so close that the term ‘henchman’ comes to mind – Nearchus got the message and went out, looking back all the way, hoping to learn whatever deep secret was about to be related.

  I took a cup of herbed wine and water from the duty slave. ‘Go and have a rest,’ I said. ‘Don’t come back for ten minutes.’

  The slave beamed. And vanished.

  Alexander looked around at his suddenly empty tent. ‘This is about Ada?’ he said, ready, I think, for a quarrel.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Thaïs says I should tell you that this is falling in love, and you have no defence for it, and she’d like to take over the negotiations, please, before you make her Queen of Persia.’
/>   Alexander spluttered.

  Really, it was like talking to a stranger. He spluttered, he stammered, and he hadn’t a thing to say.

  I put an arm around his shoulders. Alexander wasn’t much for human contact – but he submitted to my embrace. ‘She’s quite . . . handsome,’ I managed. ‘And I think she likes you.’

  ‘Really?’ he asked. ‘I feel like a buffoon. I talk too much, and she must think I’m a boy.’ He looked at me. ‘She’s so . . . mature. Almost godlike in her wisdom – when those eyes fall on me, I’m afraid I’ll babble.’

  There was a gentle tap at the tent door, or rather the poles to support the door, and in came four slaves, all Hyrkanians, carrying two bronze kettles. They bowed very deeply, lifted the lids and the oldest man proclaimed, in a sing-song voice –

  ‘The queen sends these, the best food of her table, to her young friend. Eat, and be joyful!’

  He bowed again, and withdrew.

  Alexander needed no second urging. He ate.

  I ate too. It was stewed antelope with raisins – delicious – and with wonderful bread.

  We ate well, and I had our slaves take the cauldrons around the duty Hetaeroi as well – there was food for forty.

  Thaïs met with the queen, using a pair of slaves as interpreters, and in two hours they hammered out an agreement. Ada became Alexander’s vassal, but more, she adopted him as her son.

  Thaïs smiled. ‘She wanted to marry him,’ she said. ‘I knew she would. And he’d have done it.’

  ‘Zeus, god of kings,’ I muttered. ‘A forty-year-old barbarian queen? Blood everywhere. Civil war.’

  ‘Adoption seemed better,’ Thaïs said.

  That night, we celebrated with a feast, and Alexander gave her two hundred men from the hypaspists to help her take the citadel after he marched away. She turned and kissed him.

  We had sword dances, and Queen Ada danced the Pyricche with some of her soldiers. She danced very well.

  Alexander drank far too much. I tried to stop him – he was drinking unwatered wine at the speed I was drinking it with three waters.

  Finally I took the cup from him. Ada was gazing into his eyes and laughing. Wine made her far more feminine.

  Alexander turned and looked up at me, and Ada rolled away and went decorously down off the dais – I assume off to piss. It was quite a party.

  ‘Give me my wine cup, Ptolemy!’ Alexander commanded, and then he giggled.

  ‘Planning to take her to your bed?’ I asked.

  He blushed. Here’s how fierce his blush was – even in firelight, you could see it.

  ‘You can get drunk, or you can get laid,’ I said. ‘But you will almost never get drunk and do a good job of getting laid.’

  Alexander shook his head. ‘So vulgar. Wine . . . has truth in it! Makes me happy. Please give me my wine.’

  ‘Let’s dance!’ Ada said, returning.

  Some of the men were none too happy to see women at a dinner – Philotas, for example – and he spat. ‘The King of Macedon does not dance!’ he said.

  Alexander would not have danced, otherwise. But he got up – barely able to walk.

  ‘I will dance,’ he said.

  Then nothing would do for him but he must dance the Pyricche, and in his own equipment. So Ochrid was sent for his harness and spears, and then Ada admitted, coyly, that she had her own harness – gods, it was all I could do not to giggle and retch at the same time.

  Philotas got up. ‘You’re making a fool of yourself with this old hag,’ he said. And stumbled off to bed. Macedonians had a habit of speaking their minds, especially when drunk.

  But the musicians struck up the Pyricche, and although the Macedonian version was very different – and far more practical – Ada learned it as fast as I can describe the movements to you. She was imitating the king by the third cycle of the dance – leaping, ducking, menacing with her spear, hiding behind her shield – which was itself full-sized.

  I was impressed. Even Thaïs was impressed. Ada could dance, and she had the kind of mind that perfectly controlled her body.

  ‘Is she a woman-lover?’ I asked.

  ‘How would I know?’ Thaïs said – with the slightest downturn of her lips. Indicating that this was none of my business.

  Ada stamped, turned, clashed her spear on the king’s shield – and launched into doing the dance in opposition, the way I’d have done it if I was dancing with the king, so that instead of two dancers in perfect unison, now she thrust when he ducked, parried when he thrust, leaped in the air when his spear whirled low.

  He was drunk, and she was untrained, and they were magnificent. They were so good that the musicians began to play faster.

  Alexander seemed to grow with the music – he began to stretch himself. He was a superb warrior, and he knew the dance intimately, and now he began to embellish every movement with subtle additions – the sort of things that old Cleitus used to encourage us to do, to help us remember what the Pyricche was for – to make us better fighters. So Alexander began to make his cuts steeper and more dangerous – rolled his hips to snap his shield forward.

  Ada copied him, and added a sinuous martial element of her own.

  I only ever saw one other woman who struck me as being a real warrior – a fighter, the way I am. Perhaps there would be more if women weren’t so busy making babies, but Ada was the real thing, and she was breathtaking to watch.

  I was afraid one of them would be killed. They were competing, now, to strike harder and faster, and the music was flying. Everyone was clapping. Sweat was pouring off them both, and their spears left trails of fire in the air. Remember that he had taken a cut to the head that bit into his skull at Granicus, and that we’d been marching for days.

  I walked over to the musicians, my heart in my mouth, and made a spear-point with my fingers. The flautist nodded sharply.

  They played through the tune once more at speed.

  The pipes whirled, and they played more slowly, and then more slowly, the tide of the music rising to compensate for the decreased speed, and both the dancers drew back together; both cocked their spears back, together . . .

  And as the music ended, they fell together, giggling, in a clash of armour. Thaïs took my hand. ‘Come,’ she said.

  I followed her, and we caught the king and Ada, still leaning on each other, and we led them to the tower’s guest chambers. Slaves had taken the king’s clothes when he put his armour on, and they lay on a cedar chest.

  I got his thorax off while he laughed, and his greaves, and I towelled him myself as if I were his slave. He ruffled my hair.

  ‘That was pretty good, wasn’t it?’ he said.

  I hate being cast as a sycophant. On the other hand, it had been . . . magnificent. Almost unearthly. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ I said. Then I thought – Athena sent me the words – be generous. It was magnificent. ‘It was magnificent,’ I said.

  ‘What I love best about your praise,’ the king said, ‘is how unwillingly you give it.’

  He had new bruises where his thorax bit into the top of his pectoral muscles.

  A voice at the door said, ‘Wine for the king.’

  I turned to find Thaïs, handing me wine. ‘Come!’ she said. ‘Leave him!’

  So I handed him the wine. ‘I’m sure you can dress yourself,’ I said.

  Thaïs reached through the door and pulled at my arm, and I fled, but not before I’d seen Ada come in the other door of the chamber, naked. Alexander had stopped noticing me, by then.

  ‘You are a wicked, wicked matchmaker,’ I muttered to Thaïs.

  She laughed. ‘He’s not going to marry her – so what’s the harm?’ She laughed. ‘Wine makes men randy – even the King of Macedon.’

  ‘Even Ptolemy,’ I said, catching her against a wall hanging. I loved the feel of her naked hips under her chitons – there was something about lifting her skirts that always made me wild, even when I could have her naked. I was hard in a deep breath, and w
e were as busy as the king and the queen in another.

  She laughed into my mouth, my busy little plotter.

  And the next day, we marched for Halicarnassus down the high passes. We had to climb the mountains behind Ada’s castle, and we made Labraunda by dark the first day, Mylasa the second – days were getting shorter. The third night we were at Iasus on the coast, which had submitted to our Athenian flotilla, and where Alexander guaranteed their ‘ancient rights’ (the ink was not yet dry), and we met a young man who was considered a prophet of Poseidon. He was sixteen, and he could talk to the dolphins – they swam up to him eagerly. I saw this with my own eyes. One dolphin in particular followed him all over the town’s inner harbour. And my horses adored him – when he came (at my invitation, as Poseidon is my special god) to my tent for a cup of wine, Polystratus hurried in to see what had happened, because all the horses had begun to whinny.

  He was a very special young man. His name was Barsulas, but we all called him Triton. I took him into my household as a priest. He could read and write, and to get ahead of myself, Thaïs had me send him to the Temple of Poseidon at Sounnion in Attika, and we sent our young foundling, Olympias, with him. We trusted the boy, and with good reason. They were, in many ways, like our family. We sent him to Sounnion to be trained as a priest of Poseidon, and we sent her to the Temple of Artemis to learn all the dances of the Bear. I made good donations to both temples, and they were only too happy to admit my ‘children’ and Thaïs’s.

  Our daughter was eight months old, and Thaïs had a pair of nurses for her, because running Alexander’s special intelligence section was now a full-time job. And at Iasus, we were one day’s march from Halicarnassus, and she had no report to make.