God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

by Christian Cameron

  There were Persian noblemen everywhere. They had come, not to fight, but to make submission.

  Four thousand recruits and mercenaries reached us from the coast, having come up the road from Susa. Cleitus went back to Susa with the return messages, because he was so sick.

  The word was that Darius was going to hold the Caspian Gates against us, up north, almost to Hyrkania. He was raising Hyrkania now, with Bessus. But increasingly, the Persians told us that Bessus meant to make himself king. Remember – Darius had faced revolt in the east before we ever came over the Hellespont. Now, after three lost battles, the east had had enough of him.

  Alexander read the dispatches that came in from Greece and Antipater, and for the first time in a long time, I shared them, standing in yet another superb palace, under tapestries made so beautifully that you might have thought the figures would turn and speak to you. The kind we’d burned at Persepolis.

  He frowned.

  ‘Antipater has defeated the Spartans,’ he said.

  Hephaestion’s eyes widened. ‘Wonderful!’

  Alexander’s eyes narrowed. ‘Nothing wonderful about it. We’re conquering Asia, and Antipater is conquering mice. Sparta is nothing.’

  I winced. Nothing was allowed to compete with the king’s accomplishments, lately.

  Thrace was in revolt. Under a Macedonian.

  Zopryon, the satrap for Pontus, was, without consulting Antipater, or just possibly with his connivance, marching north to the Euxine coast.

  ‘Idiot,’ Alexander said. ‘He’d better win. If he loses I’ll have his head.’ It wasn’t clear whether Alexander meant Antipater or Zopryon.

  After a three-day pause to move up some baggage carts and collect water and pack animals, Alexander left the rest of the army – just marching in through the western gates of the city – and we were off again.

  We raced north and east, across the low hills to the east and down into the saltpan and dust of the Iranian plateau.

  It was a nightmare. We never had enough water, and our horses suffered. My ‘new’ Medea died on the saltpan, and I had to switch to a country mare – the ugliest horse, I think, that I ever rode. But she got me to Rhagae, where we heard from Kineas, who’d managed to sweep north despite the lack of water, that Darius was three days ahead and going hard into the mountains of Hyrkania.

  There was a Persian royal stud at Rhagae, and Polystratus looted it for me while I rode in on my hideous horse. By the time we had organised water and I’d gone back with fifty Hetaeroi to rescue the stragglers in the saltpan, Alexander had pressed forward, got lost in the mountains and come back – another day lost. I rode in on my mare, angry to have been left behind but happy enough to have found seventy men alive.

  That’s when I discovered that I had Barsine’s sister riding with me.

  I’d had a long day, and one of my troopers was sitting in the agora of the dusty town, while all the rest of them – aristocrats every one – dismounted and watered their horses.

  I tossed my reins to Polystratus and walked over to the one man too proud to water his own horse. I need not mention at this point that although we all disdained trousers, every man of us now wore light Persian cloaks and headcloths against the sun.

  ‘Are you lazy, or stupid?’ I asked.

  The man turned his head away.

  ‘Lazy or stupid! Get down from your mount this moment or I’ll throw you off.’ I put a hand under the rider’s foot. I meant business.

  The rider turned back to me. ‘If I get down, every man here will know who I am,’ Banugul said. Her face was wrapped, so that only her eyes showed. Those eyes.

  ‘You!’ I said, or something equally witty. Now that I could see her legs, her sex was obvious, and I couldn’t believe I had been fooled.

  Her eyes smiled. ‘Me,’ she admitted. ‘You know that we are Hyrkanians, eh?’

  In fact, I didn’t. I might lust after her body – it was impossible, despite my deep love for Thaïs, not to look at Banugul without some lust – but I’d scarcely noticed her otherwise.

  ‘The king needs a guide. I need some help from the king, too, so I’m hoping we can arrange an exchange of favours.’ Her eyes smiled again, and I tried not to imagine what she might have in mind.

  ‘I will take you to the king,’ I said carefully. ‘But I cannot guarantee his reaction.’

  ‘I would be in your debt,’ she said. Her voice was level, and offered no seduction.

  Alexander was bathing. Two slaves were attending to him with sponges.

  ‘What do you want?’ Alexander spat at me.

  ‘I have recovered the stragglers, as you ordered,’ I said. ‘I also picked up Barsine’s sister, who wishes to see you.’

  ‘Splendid,’ Alexander said. ‘Send her in.’

  Another man might have leered, or made a gesture, but Alexander didn’t see the world that way. I doubt that he ever flirted in his life. His own nudity was neither here nor there.

  ‘She is Hyrkanian,’ I said. I’m not sure why I was inclined to help her – perhaps the oldest reason in the world.

  Alexander turned to me for the first time. ‘By Zeus Amon my father! Of course she is! Well done, Ptolemy son of Lagus!’

  No thanks for a day in the desert, chasing water mirages and finding men near dead of thirst. But for bringing him a guide for his latest pothos . . .

  And of course, I had done nothing.

  ‘Your servant, Great King,’ I said. I was mocking him, and he didn’t acknowledge it. Or perhaps even then, he took it as his due and missed the mockery altogether.

  Banugul entered. She made a noise.

  ‘Greeks don’t worry about nudity,’ I said. Everyone’s friend, that was me.

  She unwrapped her hair and face, and fell on her knees, and then did the full proskynesis.

  Alexander nodded. ‘You may rise, sister of Barsines. How may I help you?’

  ‘Reconquer my kingdom for me, lord. And I will guide you through the mountains.’

  ‘Are you bargaining with me?’ he asked, voice silky.

  ‘Never, lord. I answered your question. I will guide you, regardless!’ She sounded breathless, insistent, and very, very intense.

  But Alexander’s horses were wrecked, and the hypaspitoi were at least a day behind us across the saltpan.

  Alexander looked at Banugul – the coolest, most appraising look I suspect she had ever received, from a man. ‘How long to Hecatombion?’ he asked. That’s where our scouts and the Persian turncoats reported Darius to be.

  Banugul pursed her lips. ‘Four days. Better to travel at night.’

  ‘You could guide me at night?’ he asked.

  She simpered – you could see on her face that she was reaching for the sexual innuendo, and then realised that he meant none, and her face changed – a fascinating glimpse into her mind. ‘I could guide you blindfolded,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘Ptolemy?’ he asked, without taking his eyes off her.

  ‘Lord?’ I answered.

  ‘I need you to fetch in the hypaspitoi. Go fast. Take your pick of men and horses. I’m sending Coenus south for water and remounts.’ He finally turned. ‘I need to leave here tomorrow night. But I need men, animals and water.’

  As he ordered, it was done.

  I rode out before the sun was up, with twenty men – Polystratus and my own former grooms, most of them now remounted on the best Niseans, fresh from the royal stud, as well as Cyrus the Persian and ten of his best men. Kineas went north, with fifty of his men, and Philotas took the very best of the Hetaeroi and went due east.

  I found six more men alive, on the trail, and left a party to bury three more I found dead. Before the sun was high, I’d made fifty stades, and I found Nicanor. I had forty water bags, and his men shared them – forty bags among a thousand men – and we marched.

  I spent the day riding up and down the column, telling desperate men that they had a few stades to go and no more.

  And falling in love with m
y new horses. Tall, strong, beautiful Niseans, both steel grey, both tall like goddesses, fast – I had never been so well mounted, though it was disrespectful to Poseidon to say as much. And there in the desert, when I stopped to change – for the tenth time – I spread my arms wide and sang the whole hymn to Poseidon, and cut a lock of my hair and burned it.

  Cyrus watched me. He made me uneasy – he was so silent – but despite that, I was prepared to like him.

  The column had escaped while I made my prayers, and we rode along at a fast walk – anything faster might have endangered the horses, in that vast and dreadful desert – moving as fast as we dared to catch up.

  Cyrus turned to me after a few minutes. ‘That was religious?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  He frowned, but nodded.

  ‘This is the first time I have seen a Hellene pray,’ he noted.

  I shrugged.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. After a stade, we caught up to some stragglers sitting, defeated, in the desert, and I swore at them and got them moving.

  I was afraid that if I rode past them, they’d collapse again. One of them was one of my men from the first days – Amyntas son of Philip – and I was not going to let him die.

  So we rode slowly behind the three men.

  ‘You worship the horse?’ Cyrus asked.

  I shook my head.

  He looked at me, annoyed. ‘What, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Poseidon,’ I said. ‘Lord of horses. I had a wonderful horse. A godsent horse. He died in battle. These are the first good mounts I’ve had since the battle, and I was thanking the god.’

  We rode on for as long as it takes a man to make a brief oration.

  ‘That is good,’ Cyrus said. He rubbed his beard. ‘Yes.’

  I left him to watch the three end men, and I rode up the column, and I felt as if I were on a Persian flying carpet – one of their legends. The pace – the gait – of the Nisean is like flying.

  I found Nicanor, also by the end of the column. He looked terrible – grey-faced and tired, and he admitted to me that he spent far too much time vomiting. Like Cleitus. There was something nasty going around. Apollo had shot his deadly shafts into our army, and men were dropping fast.

  But when I told him we were less than five stades from the town, he showed his mettle, pulled all his men together and made them march. Men who had been shuffling their feet, barely alive, suddenly raised their eyes and saw the town at the edge of the heat shimmer.

  They began to sing. Bubores was there, at the head of his company, and Astibus.

  Have you any idea

  What we’re like to fight against?

  Our sort make their dinner

  Off sharp swords

  We swallow blazing torches

  For a savoury snack!

  Then, by way of dessert,

  They bring us, not nuts, but broken arrows, and splintered spear shafts.

  For pillows we have our shields and breastplates,

  Arrows and slings lie under our feet, and for wreaths we wear catapults

  We marched into Rhagae like the elite veterans we were. Alexander emerged from his tent, and smiled.

  He gathered all his officers an hour later. Nicanor looked as if he was going to die. The rest merely had sunburn. Water had restored them.

  ‘I have twelve hundred good horses. I need to go for six to ten days with no sleep and very little food so that we can carry enough water to keep going.’ He looked around. His eyes glittered with excitement – he was deep in the game he loved, overcoming tasks with Herculean strength and daring.

  ‘I need the very toughest men. The very best. Nicanor – three hundred of your best. And Ptolemy – choose me three hundred of the Hetaeroi. We will leave in four hours, and ride at night.’

  I thought he made sense. Craterus and Philotas thought the risk was insane, but chose not to say so aloud.

  I did not find this idea insane. Burning Persepolis – yes. Chasing Darius – well, we were close to the end. We were going to finish the last act, and be finished with Asia. We wanted to catch Darius, and our latest turncoats said that Darius’s army was on its last legs. Mazaeus’s son – Mazaeus, who was already a satrap for us in Mesopotamia – had come in while I was in the desert, surrendered, offered the proskynesis and told us that Darius had been deposed by Bessus.

  Alexander had the oddest reaction to this. The fight between them – Darius and Alexander – had been very personal. Darius had wounded Alexander at Issus, and Alexander had sought across the battlefield at Gaugamela to avenge that – because he was living in the Iliad, if you ask me.

  And now he vowed to avenge Darius, on Bessus.

  It was difficult to credit, really. I couldn’t decide whether it was an act for our growing force of Iranian nobles, or whether Alexander had some deep fellow-feeling for Darius, or a mixture of both.

  It’s worth mentioning how Cyrus’s arrival among us symbolised, to me, the change in the Persians. Up to a point, despite our victories, the Persians who came over to us were opportunists – traitors. Scum. And then – starting with Mazaeus, to be fair – they started to represent a different type of man altogether. The true Persians resented Bessus and his easterners. They didn’t all prefer Alexander but many did, and for a while we benefited from an ancient division – an east/west split in the empire – and the westerners – Lysians, western Persians, Phrygians – began to side with us of their own free will.

  At any rate, just before darkness fell, we were off – six hundred men, twelve hundred horses. We had twenty carts with virtually every water skin the vanguard possessed, and we moved fast.

  When we left Rhagae, Darius and his army were six days ahead of us, already through the Caspian Gates at Hecatombion.

  We rode for three days. The less said about them, the better. We moved fast, and men died, and horses died. I looked after my own.

  On the fourth day, we came across a dozen war bands still in a camp that had obviously held an army. They surrendered to Alexander as soon as he rode in, and told us that this was the camp where the king had been betrayed by Bessus. The Greek mercenaries had stood by Darius and offered to protect him. The irony of this threatened to make me vomit.

  Kineas picked up the Great King’s interpreter, who was seventy years old and badly dehydrated. He told us the story of the betrayal.

  Alexander grew angrier and angrier.

  I began to think that, at some level, he identified with the king. Was it their shared role? Was Darius his other self ? Priests talk of such things. I cannot fathom them.

  But we rode on. We were making a hundred stades a day through mountains and salt desert, and now, without resting, we went straight on, all day, reminding me powerfully of the Year of Miracles. Men who hadn’t been there commented that we were attempting the impossible, but Hephaestion and I laughed. Even Alectus, by now one of the oldest men in the army, laughed.

  By noon, when we stopped to change horses and drink water, there were fewer than two hundred men with the king.

  I decided that it was time somebody spoke to Alexander. I left my horses with Polystratus and walked to him, where he lay between Banugul and Hephaestion.

  ‘The raven of misfortune,’ Alexander said, ‘come to croak at me.’

  I shrugged. ‘You know that we’re down to two hundred men,’ I said. ‘You know that, ten days ago, Darius had twenty-five thousand men.’

  Alexander shook his head. ‘His army is breaking up – running for cover, like fish from a shark,’ he said. ‘I can feel it. No one will stop and fight now.’

  I rubbed my chin. I had stubble at the edges of my beard, my face itched and, perhaps worst of all, Banugul looked every bit as perfect, tanned, fresh and beautiful lying in the dust beside the king as she did in a tent on the Syrian plains.

  ‘Lord, if they turn on us, your capture loses us everything.’ I shrugged. ‘I had to say it. I won’t shirk. I won’t stop. I’ll go where you go. But this is past daring.’
>
  Alexander grinned – not at me, or Hephaestion, but at the Persian girl. ‘I know exactly what I’m doing,’ he said.

  So we were off again.

  Three hours later, we were sixty men on a hundred horses.

  When darkness fell, we were fifty men on sixty horses, and Banugul stopped and threw up.

  My two Niseans paced along, light as air. Poseidon bless and keep them.

  Polystratus kept up, and Cyrus, and Kineas and Diodorus.

  I had the strangest thoughts. I watched Craterus carefully, and Philotas, because it occurred to me that with this few men, anyone could kill the king.

  At dawn, we were in a valley and we had a stream to water our horses. We had forty-six men left and one woman.

  At noon, we came to a village. Bessus had come this way – the villagers had seen him.

  Alexander sat on his charger, dejected – that rarest of his moods.

  I saw Banugul master herself and ride to his side.

  In five minutes, we were moving again. I had missed what had passed, but we turned off the road, with its sad trail of broken wagons and dead animals. Bessus’s retreat was easy to follow, and, exactly as Alexander predicted, the enemy army was disintegrating.

  I could barely think. I drank a cup of water that a village elder offered me, filled my two canteens and rode off after the king.

  We rode all night.

  When the sun rose, we crested a ridge – our fourth ridge of the night. We had, by then, perhaps twenty Macedonians with us. But as we rode down the east side of the knife-back, we could see Bessus’s army spread before us on the plain . . .

  Thousands of men.

  Tens of thousands of camp followers, beasts and wagons.

  From the height, we could see that they had come around the flank of the ridge and split into three columns. And we could see all three, extending from our very feet to the far horizon.

  I reined in, took my canteen and drank. Spat. My water tasted of mud and defeat. We had failed. Darius had escaped – again. As with Issus, as with Gaugamela, as at Ecbatana. We couldn’t pursue into the plains with twenty men.

  Alexander rode up beside me. Looked over the plain, sat straight and smiled.