We were south of the Jaxartes, in the brownest country I have ever seen. Thirty of us were lying on portable klines by a bonfire – it was the little Heraklion, and we’d had a day of contests. I hadn’t won anything, but I had that pleasant level of fatigue that comes with the agon.
Hephaestion came and lay down on my couch. I had avoided him since the torture of Philotas. He knew it. But he lay down.
‘Philotas was never one of us,’ Hephaestion said.
And at some horrible base level, that was true. I knew what he meant. He meant that he didn’t owe Philotas the kind of emotive loyalty that he owed me, or any of the other men who’d survived childhood at Philip’s court.
It was an olive branch.
‘No,’ I said. That was my dove back to him.
He nodded. His head was on his arms, and he was watching a trio of lewd slave girls writhe. They weren’t any good – they’d been used too hard, paid too little and they assumed men were brutes. It is one of the delightful, horrible complexities of the human condition – soldiers want girls who want them, not whores. They’ll take whores, but only if the whores behave as if they want the soldiers.
Makes you laugh, in a nasty way, doesn’t it?
Ares, you’re thirteen. My apologies, lad.
At any rate, he watched them. And then he grunted. Rolled over.
‘I need help,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to manage the king all by myself. He needs . . .’ Hephaestion made a sign of aversion – the peasant sign, with two fingers.
‘O phile pais, I’ve known Alexander since he was five,’ I said. Hephaestion had seldom asked me, or anyone else, for help before. So I put an arm around his shoulder and he let his head sink on his arms. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘The matter?’ Hephaestion looked at me, and his eyes held more rage than sorrow. ‘He’s fucking cut himself off from everyone, and doesn’t know how to get back.’
‘Does he want to get back?’ I asked.
Hephaestion hid his head. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘He just wants to be god.’
Hephaestion must have manipulated the king, one way or another, because I was promoted from king’s friend to the Persian equivalent of somatophylakes a day later, and suddenly Alexander wanted me to ride with him.
We were on the Oxus, and the day before I’d met a Sakje while on patrol and bartered a fine mare for a superb bow and fifty arrows in a gorytos. I’m not much of an archer, but I loved a thing well made and I’d just determined – back then – to write a book about my travels. I had my journal and the Military Journal, but I was not so different from the king, and I, too, wanted to know – Is this all there is? The idea of writing a travel book made me happy.
Perhaps you have to be fifteen thousand stades from home for this to make sense.
And the conversation with the Sakje man made me happy, perhaps because he met me with a grin, chose to trust my patrol and no one was killed. I had become so inured to killing every fucking stranger I came across that sharing the white horse milk that the Sakje think is delicious was fun. He ate our onion sausage, we ate his deer meat and he rode away richer by two horses and without one of his bows, and Cyrus, who was at my side the whole time, actually laughed. Out loud.
Never mind. You have to make war for a long, long time for a man’s laugh to seem alien. But these are the things that stick in my head.
I left my squadrons with Polystratus. He was an officer, now – increasingly, a trusted officer. No one doubted that he was an aristocrat. Think of it! From Thracian slave to Macedonian cavalry officer! Mind you, he was a superb officer – but such a thing would never have happened if our lines hadn’t been so long. Ochrid, my steward, now routinely gave orders to fifty slaves. He often helped me with the logistika and would casually order out a patrol for forage. No one doubted his place, although he had started out as my slave. What seemed like a lifetime before.
I rode along with the king, and he affected to be delighted to see me. By luck, his latest passion – dice – had burned itself out.
‘Nearchus is on his way to us,’ I said. I was handling the incoming letters. Eumenes was trying to establish even the most basic level of intelligence collection in Sogdiana and Transoxiana, and he had – in one of those role reversals impossible to enemies and simple to friends – asked me to run the Journal for a few days while he tried to get a network of agents in Marakanda.
‘Nearchus?’ Alexander looked at the mountains to either side for as long as it takes a man to breathe three or four times. ‘Ah! Nearchus!’
For a moment, you see, the king didn’t know of whom I was speaking.
‘Remember shooting bows, lord?’ I asked. My false innocence was glaring to Hephaestion, and he looked at me, but Alexander noticed nothing.
He glanced at me.
‘Look at this,’ I said, and held out my new bow.
He all but snatched it from my hands.
For nine days, we shot everything that moved. I gave him my fine bow, and Cyrus, bless him, took a patrol north of the Oxus and exchanged a dozen local horses for five good bows, so that the inner circle all had them.
The king had a dozen Sakje hostages, and he brought a woman out to see her shoot. He was intending to mock her, and he was already shooting well, although his forefinger and thumb were bleeding from the Sakje release, which Cyrus taught us. Cyrus used a leather thumb ring and had a thumb callus as deep as a coin, but Alexander was above such things.
‘Amazons!’ he laughed, as we rode along.
The woman who joined us, between two guards, was heavily pregnant. She was beautiful – in a deadly, feral way, and pregnancy neither softened nor diminished her. And she rode like a satyr – which is to say, the horse seemed part of her. The king had met her a dozen times, and she’d famously threatened to geld Hephaestion, which made her a bit of a favourite among the inner circle.
She spoke beautiful Greek – accented, but pure Athenian. Well, we both know why, don’t we?
The king had set a dozen targets by the trail – we were well in advance of the army, moving south along the Jaxartes. The first was about ten horse lengths from the rocky road, the next was a little farther, and so on, until the last was easily a hundred paces to the south of the road.
The king came up to the Sakje woman with her two guards – both, as it happened, men from Philotas’s former squadron.
‘My apologies, lady, but the guards say you begged to be allowed to ride.’ He smiled. ‘I thought perhaps you could show us some shooting.’
Hephaestion was smirking. This was for him – she was being humiliated to please the bastard.
Well, I know she was your mother, but at the time she was just some barbarian captive, and if that’s what it took to keep the king happy, I was willing enough.
She looked at Alexander with contempt. I suspect that wasn’t a look he received often. I wonder if the novelty of it drew him to her. She held out her hand for the bow he carried.
He held it out, but snatched it back, and we all laughed at her eagerness. Macedonian humour.
‘You want to kill us all,’ he said. ‘Please remember that we have your other ladies. They would not survive any dramatic performances. And neither would you.’ He pointed to where a pair of the army’s engineers stood with their crossbows.
She shrugged. He gave her the bow, and she flexed it. ‘Heavy,’ she said. And held out her hand for his quiver.
Alexander gave it to her with unaccustomed hesitation. ‘You will shoot the targets, and only the targets,’ he said. ‘Let’s see how many you can hit. Show us how the Sakje shoot. And perhaps – perhaps I’ll send you back to your husband.’
He smiled at her. He was used to the responses of men who lived and died at his whim, so his smile was expectant.
She laughed. ‘It amazes me that a man so foolish could have conquered so much,’ she said. And took his quiver.
She put her heels to the barrel of her horse the moment the strap of the gorytos touched her pa
lm, and her horse – a small gelding – went straight to a gallop. And she screamed – a long, ululating yell. As she rode, she twisted her body, and the quiver fell down her arm and she buckled it into place, riding at a full gallop with no hands, the bow pinned under her right knee, and then it was back in her hand and an arrow leaped from her bow and shot through the king’s first target.
At that point, we’d been shooting that bow mounted for a week. None of us had even considered loosing arrows at a gallop.
Her second arrow went into the second target.
Her third arrow went into the third target.
She hit every target.
Then she turned her horse and rode back to us. Men were applauding, and Hephaestion had the good grace to join them.
She was coming at us at a gallop. I noticed that she had arrows in her fingers.
Suddenly, she angled her horse a little to the north, turned – remember, she was eight months pregnant.
She was shooting backwards.
Her first arrow was shot at the most distant target.
She drew and loosed, drew, loosed, drew and loosed, so fast that I couldn’t follow all the movements of her arm. She was still riding away from the targets at a dead gallop.
Drew and loosed and drew and loosed.
Her horse turned under her – a sudden turn on her bow side – and she loosed the arrow on the bow and drew and loosed again.
And again.
I was holding my breath.
Her first six arrows struck. She’d shot from farthest to closest, so that they all struck at the same time.
She cantered her gelding across the rocky slope, to the side of the king.
‘Good bow,’ she said, and handed it to him.
Later that same afternoon, a Corinthian athlete offered to demonstrate his skills as a hoplomachos. He’d made a claim about what a good fighter he was, and the king was in a foul mood, overheard the boast and ordered the man to dismount right there, strip and fight.
He looked around, and his eye fell on Coenus.
One of our very best.
Coenus dismounted and summoned a slave to help him take off his armour, but Alexander spat. ‘If he’s so very good, this Greek, he can fight naked with a club. Like Herakles. And you can wear your armour.’
The Greek was all but weeping with frustration. He was prepared to apologise, but the king was in no mood. The archery had ruined his day – he’d ordered the woman and her companions to be taken to Marakanda under escort.
Coenus was uneasy. He could be a brute, but the Greek – despite a superb physique – was not a big man, and he looked inoffensive – naked, with a club. Coenus looked at the king. The king shook his head. ‘Just kill him,’ he said.
The naked man was an Olympic athlete who had come all this way to train Alexander’s soldiers.
Coenus – our Coenus, not your father’s friend – wouldn’t have lasted this long if he hadn’t been absolutely obedient. He turned, drew his sword and set his shield.
The naked boy came forward, edging crabwise.
Coenus struck, thrusting his shield into the man’s body and cutting hard, overhand.
The Greek slid inside the cut, broke his arm and knocked him unconscious with his club in one blow.
Fight over.
Alexander drew his bow from the gorytos, nocked an arrow and shot the Greek. The arrow went in just over his kidneys, and he fell screaming.
His screams pursued us down the ridge.
Hephaestion looked at me, and I just shook my head at him. I couldn’t think of what to say, or do, but for the first time, I considered two things.
Riding away from the army and taking my chances with the king ordering me killed.
Or killing Alexander.
That night, six of us had a secret meeting. It was a conspiracy – we all knew we could be killed for having the discussion. I swore never to repeat what we said, or who was there. It was a desperate hour, and a desperate oath. So I won’t tell you – except that we discussed options.
When we were done, Hephaestion held me back. ‘Barsines or her sister,’ he said. ‘Bagoas turns my stomach, but he’d do, too.’
Well, it was better than regicide. I nodded. ‘But we have to get through the weeks until he finds a sex toy or we can import one,’ I said.
Hephaestion shook his head. ‘We need something as good as the bow was. And we need it to stay beautiful.’ His bronze hair glittered in the firelight. It was already cold in the mountains.
‘Horses? Playing Polis? How silk is made?’ I was talking to hear myself. I wanted Thaïs. I wanted to drink wine with Polystratus and Cyrus, or Marsyas. I wanted to stop being afraid.
Hephaestion shook his head. ‘He’s close to the edge,’ he said. ‘What do we do?’
I didn’t have an answer.
I went to bed.
Polystratus wakened me while the stars were still turning overhead. ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘The king wants you.’
I got out of my cloak, wrapped it back around me and ran for his tent – terrified, in a sleepy, cold way, that he’d done something. Killed Hephaestion.
But they were sitting together.
He was smiling, his face easy and unlined, his eyes glittering.
‘Listen, Ptolemy!’ he said. ‘Spitamenes is in revolt, and he’s slaughtered all seven of our new garrisons.’
Hephaestion looked at me. His eyes said everything.
Alexander went on, ‘He’s raised the whole province while we were playing at archery – and he’s cut us off from the main army. We’re surrounded. And our supply lines are cut.’ He fingered his beard. And smiled.
Hephaestion smiled.
Hades, I smiled myself.
Alexander looked up from the dispatch. ‘Gentlemen, I think we might have a war on our hands,’ he said.
We were saved.
THIRTY-FIVE
Alexander’s reaction to Spitamenes was planned in one night and ran like lightning over the plains. He sent a relief column to break Spitamenes’ siege of Marakanda. Alexander placed Pharnuches, a skilled speaker of Persian and several of the Bactrian tongues, as commander; he got a troop of Hetaeroi, three hundred Macedonian pezhetaeroi mounted as cavalry, and two thousand mercenary infantry – good men, mostly Ionian Greeks. Alexander also gave him all the Amazon captives to escort into Marakanda. Spitamenes had sold them to us in the first place, and Alexander thought they might be useful as bargaining counters. He expected that Spitamenes would negotiate.
We marched for the Jaxartes. And we went hard and fast.
We took four forts in three days. In each case, we took the fort by storm, and the garrisons were slaughtered in the storming action. Alexander made it clear to the Bactrians that there were to be no survivors.
In every case, Alexander led the storming party in person.
This was not misplaced Homeric heroics. We had added thousands of barbarian auxiliaries to the army, and we were so short on ‘Macedonians’ that Illyrians and even Thracians had begun to seem like close friends. And morale among the Macedonian troops was low. Alexander made it clear that we were to lead from the front, and when the assault parties went in, the entire front rank of a taxeis might be, for instance, Hetaeroi officers.
That’s what it was taking to get our men into combat.
It was bloody work, but the Bactrian levies did their part, and that meant that they were ours. After killing their cousins in Spitamenes’ service, they weren’t going to go back to the steppe or join the revolt.
The Bactrians were better soldiers than any of us expected. They had enough tribal feuds and remembered hatreds to get them going, and they were still in awe of us. The problem was that as the Bactrians began to outperform the Macedonians, the bad feeling, already present, began to escalate.
There’s a belief, common among the sort of generals who fight their battles in the baths or lying on a comfortable kline at a party, that men who have fought in a number of battles are veterans
and thus better soldiers. In the main, this is true. Veterans don’t die from preventable accidents. Veterans get fewer diseases, know how to dig a latrine and know how to find food. So they can indeed wager on how new recruits will die, in the field.
Veterans have learned a few things, and one of the things they learn is that people die in war or are horribly mutilated, and that the way to avoid these fates is to be careful and not take risks. Sometimes, in combat, the raw, unblooded troops are the better fighters.
The fifth of Cyrus’s forts on the Jaxartes – the one we called Cyropolis – was the worst.
Alexander had been wounded the day before, storming the Dakhas fort. He’d taken an arrow right through the shin – Philip had it out in no time, but it left the king out of the next action, against a fort that had a garrison of seven thousand men.
So there I was, with most of my friends and my own retainers. I had set out from Macedon with twenty grooms, and I had six left. Polystratus was now a gentleman and an officer – a phylarch. His second, Theodore, was now a hetaeros, a half-file leader in a gold-plated helmet. Ochrid, who had begun our campaigns as my body slave, was now my steward, as I have noted, and about this time started to serve as my mounted groom, and usually fought with the Hetaeroi, and any day now, I was going to have to put him in the ranks and add him to my roster. This is not a complaint – Ochrid was, it turned out, a warrior to his fingers’ ends. Most men are, if they are well led. Rather I mean it as an example of how desperate our manning problems were. The lines between master and man, between ‘Greek’ and ‘Macedonian’, between ‘mercenary’ and ‘professional’, were hopelessly blurred.
As the numbers of Greeks in our ranks increased – even in the Hetaeroi – the older Macedonians grew less and less inclined to accept the Bactrians and the Persians, as if the line had to be drawn somewhere.
God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great Page 89