God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

by Christian Cameron

  I was at that meeting.

  Thaïs hated to be defeated, but none of her agents had emerged from Halicarnassus to report. She’d sent three or four. We had friends in the town – by then, every town in Ionia had a faction who wanted Alexander to liberate them.

  That night, Parmenio had another try at reasoning with the king. I was starting to change sides, by then. There was a nip in the air – autumn was coming. It had rained intermittently all day, and as usual we were ahead of our tents, so that our men were camping in fields – wet.

  ‘It takes three years to make a good soldier,’ Parmenio said, after dinner. We were in the local Temple of Ares, using it as a headquarters. ‘It takes three nights of rain to kill him. Lord, it is time to call it quits. Ada was a brilliant conquest. You will be lord of Caria in no time – well done. But let’s get back to Ephesus and get the troops under cover. You’ll want to send all the pezhetaeroi home for the winter – it’s their right – and you must be as tired as I am.’ Parmenio chuckled smugly.

  Alexander shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not tired, and I’m going to take Halicarnassus from Memnon.’

  Parmenio shrugged. ‘As you will, lord. But the weather is turning and this is not a fertile area. There’s not much fodder here, and little wine and less olive oil. What will the army eat, while we lay siege to Halicarnassus?’

  ‘We have a magazine at Miletus,’ Alexander said. ‘We can send convoys along the coast road.’

  ‘For water?’ Parmenio shot out. ‘You’ve never been to Halicarnassus. I have. There’s no water – all the water’s inside the town. We have thirty thousand men. They drink a great deal of water.’

  Alexander looked around at the rest of us. ‘Anyone else of the same mind?’ he asked.

  His voice gave away his opinion. He wasn’t asking. He was looking at dissent.

  No one spoke up.

  That made Parmenio angry.

  ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Tomorrow, when we head up the coast, we’re going up against Memnon. He’s not some hill chieftain. He’s not the commander of a soft confederation and he’s not going to make any easy mistakes. He’s going to meet us on a battlefield of his own choosing, where he has a fleet at his back and an army of mercenaries – expendable men. You’ve sent our fleet away. He can get reinforcements – and food – whenever he likes. And if he doesn’t like the odds, he can sail away. And you won’t be able to stop him.’

  Alexander took a deep breath. He nodded very slowly.

  Some of the older officers began to let out their long-held breaths in relief.

  ‘I guess we’ll just have to be on our best game, then,’ Alexander said. ‘Because in the morning, we march for Halicarnassus.’

  Philotas had the advance guard. His version was two hundred Thracian Peltastoi and a hundred Thracian cavalry, well spread out in front, backed with two full squadrons of Hetaeroi and two hundred archers. Philotas didn’t like my ‘W’, and he used a more linear advance-guard formation.

  We entered the mountains again at Bargylia, with Mount Lyda on our left and the sea below us on the right – a road well cut, an old road, and one that offered no cover at all. Twenty stades south of Bargylia we left the sea and started overland on the last leg of the road, through a valley pass that climbed slowly, and was at least broad enough for the advance guard to shake out into formation.

  It was raining. I felt old – my hand throbbed, and all my wounds hurt as if they were new, and Thaïs and I had had a fight – about Queen Ada. A stupid fight.

  I was riding with the royal escort, well back in the column, and Parmenio was well behind us – pouting, or so it seemed. Seleucus was finally healed from his wounds at Granicus, and he was back with us, in armour. Nearchus was there, and Marsyas, and most of the rest of the old guard. Kineas was with us.

  ‘I wish Ada could see this,’ Alexander said.

  ‘Aphrodite’s tits, I’m tired of Ada,’ Hephaestion said.

  ‘You know I do not like blasphemy,’ Alexander said coldly. ‘Or vulgarity.’

  ‘Ada has tits,’ Hephaestion said reasonably. ‘I assumed that you’d want to hear about them.’

  Alexander turned to glare at him.

  ‘Well, she does!’ Hephaestion insisted with his usual foolishness. ‘I mean, they’re not much bigger than mine, but she does have tits.’

  Nearchus started to laugh, and Black Cleitus, and Alexander reined in.

  ‘Shut up!’ he barked, and raised his hand.

  Hephaestion, always happiest with an appreciative audience, ignored the king. ‘And arm muscles! Bigger than mine!’

  Alexander struck him. He had a riding whip – as long as his legs – in his hand, and he hit Hephaestion in the mouth – not hard, but fast. ‘Shut your foul mouth and listen,’ Alexander said.

  Hephaestion put both hands to his mouth. ‘You bastard,’ he spat.

  By now I could hear what the king was hearing. ‘They’re fighting!’ I said.

  Alexander put his heels to his riding horse. None of us was on war horses, but we raced up the top of the pass, crowding around the hypaspists and the second Hetaeroi squadron.

  ‘Arm!’ I shouted as we pushed by. ‘Shields! Armour!’

  Only the advance guard marched armed for battle.

  We went over the top of the pass, and below us we saw Philotas entangled with an ambush.

  There were enemy hoplites, immediately identifiable by their big, round shields, in among Philotas’s archers, and farther ahead, archers were dropping arrows from high above on the Prodromoi and the Thracians.

  The Thracians panicked and broke, running back along the column, just as Alexander and Seleucus and I started to get a counter-attack together. It was my squadron of Hetaeroi, after all. They were to hand, and they were good, if I don’t say so myself.

  Alexander watched the Thracians break, five stades away. He looked around.

  Calm as a man in his andron – calmer – Alexander looked off to the north. ‘Philotas was not ready for this. Now, if Memnon is the great man people say he is, he’ll have cavalry. And cavalry can only be . . .’

  Alexander was looking right at the low hill that dominated the craggy heights to our left, and as sure as cats make kittens, just as he said this, fifty Greek cavalry emerged from behind the hill.

  I had maybe twenty of my own men, and Polystratus and a few grooms.

  The Greek cavalry didn’t come at us pell-mell. They formed in a neat rhomboid a stade away, and Cleomenes had time to buckle his breastplate.

  ‘They look professional,’ Kineas said. He pulled the cheek-plates down on his helmet. Quietly, he said, ‘Shouldn’t the king go to the rear?’

  I smiled. ‘He should,’ I agreed. ‘But he won’t!’

  They came forward at us, and we had about the same numbers.

  Alexander took the point. There was no stopping him. He saw Kineas and smiled. ‘More Athenians over there than here,’ he said.

  ‘Quality over quantity,’ Kineas said. He grinned at the king.

  Alexander threw his head back and roared. ‘By the gods, you are a man after my own heart,’ he said. He tossed his javelin in the air and caught it. ‘Oh, I am alive.’

  As soon as we started forward, I realised that the big man with the dark skin who was coming right at me had to be Memnon himself. And these cavalrymen would be his Theban exiles.

  We smashed together at a fast trot. Neither side had time to get to a gallop. But because we were so slow, both sides were perfectly ordered, and we crashed together as if we were hoplites on foot.

  Fights like that aren’t about skill, but about horse size and riding ability. We were evenly matched, and we were suddenly in our hipposthismos, pushing and cutting, and my spear was broken – I can never tell you how, it always just seems to happen.

  I was sword to sword with Memnon – or rather, he cut at me with his kopis, and I blocked with the ash staff of my busted spear. I forced him to parry high, and I got my bridle hand on his
elbow and started to push, and quick as a viper he put his head down and rammed my face with the crest of his helmet. But my nasal held, and he didn’t break my nose or my face. I went for my dagger, rammed it into his side and missed my blow – he caught my dagger in his bridle hand and disarmed me.

  He was good.

  ‘Let me at him!’ Alexander shouted at my right hip.

  I’d have laughed, if I hadn’t been so busy.

  Memnon now had my right wrist and I had his. I had his with my left thumb down, so I started to rotate his hand by main strength and leverage. My riding horse didn’t help – too small and light for this kind of work, but she had lots of heart, and as she backed away from Memnon’s bigger stallion and took a bite to the face, she reared, and for a second I had the purchase, and I stripped the sword from Memnon’s hand, getting a slash across my neck in exchange.

  He slashed a dagger at the back of my off leg, and scored deeply. When I tried to throw him to the ground, he punched me in the neck, under the helmet, and by luck, his instinctive punch was with the pommel of the dagger and not the blade, or I’d have had to end this story right there. I sagged back, and suddenly – without warning – the whole lot of them were cantering away from us, and it was all I could do to sit on my horse and breathe.

  I’d never been hand to hand with another man who could wrestle on horseback as I can.

  Kineas had a long cut down his sword arm, but he’d taken a prisoner.

  Alexander slid from the saddle and picked up the sword at my horse’s front feet. ‘Memnon’s sword!’ he said. ‘An omen if ever there was one.’

  Aristander proclaimed the omen throughout the camp that night, which was good, because the omen I saw was that Memnon’s ambush had killed a hundred archers, as many Thracians and more Hetaeroi than died at the Battle of the Granicus. And we found six bodies of his men, and Kineas took a prisoner. The worst of it was that his tiny cavalry force had only charged us to cover the rest of his ambush as they broke contact. I wasn’t an old veteran, back then, but I knew enough to be chilled at the professionalism of an ambush force that struck – and vanished. They didn’t hang around to let us bring up reinforcements – the failure of most ambushes.

  Kineas’s prisoner was a Megaran aristocrat, and thus, by League law, a traitor to be executed. But all agreed he’d fought well – even when unhorsed – and Macedonians, unless their blood is up, don’t really hold with killing prisoners.

  Kineas bowed to the king that night. ‘Lord, I can’t make him a slave. He’s a gentleman.’

  Alexander nodded. He’d enjoyed the fight, and his mood was much better. ‘Recruit him, then,’ he told Kineas.

  And that’s your friend Coenus, young man.

  Fighting Memnon was the best training that the Macedonian army ever received. He was like a slap in the face – a lesson from a particularly nasty teacher.

  It was good for Alexander. At the time, it was a nightmare.

  We set our camp for the siege, and that night a hidden battery of engines rained rocks on us for half an hour while our camp dissolved into chaos. Memnon’s Greek engineers had time to break the machines down, burn the wood and carry the bronze parts back into the city. Only about a dozen Macedonians were killed – twice that many wounded and twice again in slaves lost – but the panic was incredible.

  The second day, Memnon sent a daylight sortie – a daylight sortie. Everyone knows that you only sortie at dawn, dusk and in the light of the moon. The besieged – brave but doomed – sneak out a postern gate and try to set fire to a siege engine or two. It never works.

  Memnon had two of Athens’ best commanders – Ephialtes and Thrasybulus – in his service. Thrasybulus took the picked hoplites of the garrison, waited for our noon guard change to be about one quarter complete and charged out the main gate.

  I was a stade away, sitting on horseback with Kineas and Cleomenes. We were off duty, and we’d decided to go for a hunt in the hills. I’d never seen such a barren place, and I was minded to find another campsite – a place where the cavalry could camp closer to water, for example.

  We’d just left the camp when the assault started – the noise alerted us. I saw the Greek hoplites teem out of the gate and slam into the pezhetaeroi, who were strung out over five stades of ground in no kind of formation. Guard duty was a formal thing. No one worried about fighting by day, in a siege.

  They had fire in pots, and in moments a half-built siege tower was engulfed in flames, and a row of torsion engines went next. Cleomenes cursed. Those were all the machines we had. The Athenians and the transport fleet had the rest of the siege train, way north at Miletus.

  Kineas laughed. ‘That’s Thrasybulus!’ he said. We were close enough to see helmet crests. Yellow with two red side plumes. Thrasybulus. ‘Alexander ordered him executed.’

  I must have made a face.

  Kineas shrugged. ‘Would you want a Macedonian exile to prove a coward?’ he asked.

  The pezhetaeroi were completely defeated, and the Greek hoplite force formed up and marched back into the city, singing a hymn to Athena.

  That stung.

  Next day I took my grooms and rode cross-country to Miletus with orders for the fleet. The fleet, which consisted of twenty Athenian triremes and forty transport ships, against roughly four hundred Persian warships.

  Nicanor, the fleet commander, made a face. ‘The Athenians don’t love Alexander,’ he said, as if I needed to be told that. ‘And all those oarsmen have relatives serving on the walls at Halicarnassus.’

  ‘The king needs the siege train,’ I said.

  Thaïs and Alexander and I had cooked up a plan. Each of us contributed something, although I’m sure that Alexander thought of it as his plan and I’m quite sure it was really mine.

  Thaïs arranged for a prisoner to escape with news that our fleet was going to raid Cos – a large island off the coast still loyal to Persia.

  Alexander tried to assault the walls four nights in a row. It cost him men, but it kept Memnon busy – too busy to brew mischief.

  Nicanor sent the Athenian squadron to appear off Cos and then sail south, as if going to Cyprus or Tyre or one of the other Persian bases.

  And then, naked as a babe, the transports sailed before dawn on the fourth day from Miletus with our entire siege train – nipped round Point Poseidon and landed at Iasos. Did our brilliant trickery play any role? Who knows. But the Persian fleet left Halicarnassus and sailed – to Cos – and our siege train moved down the coast unmolested.

  Day seven of the siege, and we were ready to start in earnest. We built the engines well to the rear, where no sortie could reach them, and the whole army spent two days moving earth – the miserable, sandy, scrubby soil of Halicarnassus – in sacks from the more fertile regions to the west. It was brutal, and because it was brutal, we all did it. Alexander made a point of carrying sacks of earth.

  Parmenio did not. He was openly derisive of the effort.

  Day eight – see here, in the Military Journal? At least this part is honest – four days of rain. Autumn had come, and the wind blew, and most of our precious soil was washed away. That taught us to keep our dirt and sand in sacks. Of course, the sacks for sandbags had to come from somewhere. Sieges are a delight, I tell you – a logistician’s dream.

  Memnon, damn him, had everything – bags, quarried stone, full magazines, water, oil. His engines were as good as ours and a little higher on the walls – our first earth platforms were too low, because we hurried. His engines had our range to the dactyl, and before a stone was launched we’d lost engines to his engines.

  But we were learning. We put all our earth in sacks, with every camp follower and whore in the army sewing like mad, and our next artillery platforms were higher than the walls and better sited, and in two more days (days eleven and twelve) we’d blown a breach in the wall.

  Day thirteen – an exhausting day bringing more earth from the west and north. Every piece of fabric between Miletus and Halicarnassus
was now in our earthworks, and Ada had sent us the whole cloth inventory of her realm – thousands of pieces of woven stuff, some quite costly.

  And it rained.

  And we built new mounds for the second battery.

  The thirteenth night of the siege, the rain stopped a little after midnight. There was no moon.

  Memnon came out with his picked men, all with their faces blacked, and they burned more than half our engines. The sentries were asleep. There was no one to punish, because they died to a man.

  See what I mean about training? It was as if Memnon’s job was to punish us when we failed. His scouting and intelligence were excellent.

  Thaïs began to worry that he had a spy in our headquarters. Her immediate suspect was Kineas.

  ‘Or you,’ I pointed out. ‘You are ideally placed, and Athenian.’

  She nodded. ‘If I’m a traitor, you’d already be dead,’ she noted.

  Both of us worried that Parmenio was so angry at the king that he’d sell us out just to get the campaign to end. It was hard to know what exactly Parmenio was playing for. I suspected him of plotting to be king, but if so, he was far more cautious a plotter than I would ever have managed. Thaïs felt that he only plotted to defend himself against the king – that he assumed that, in time, the king would try to kill him.

  Macedon, eh?

  The king moved our batteries to the south side of the city and we started all over again, with fewer engines tossing their stones against a narrower front of the wall. We worked all day on the fifteenth day and all day on the sixteenth, and on the morning of the seventeenth we started to pound the southern walls, and by nightfall we had four breaches.

  We stood guard all night, waiting for the inevitable attack, because we’d blown huge holes in the walls and Memnon had to do something.

  He did not.

  I smelled the rat, but no one would listen to me, and at dusk on the eighteenth day, we formed up to assault the breaches. Alexander was going in person, and I was going with him – all of us were, all the king’s friends.

  Dusk. The sun had burned all day, but in autumn, the evening has a bite in it, and the tireder you are, the colder it seems. My arms hurt, my abdomen hurt – I’m a cavalryman, by Poseidon! Not a dirt carrier. My thorax seemed to weigh fifty pounds, and my wrist bracers were like stones. My helmet weighed down on my neck.