My Paeonians were beginning to ford the river behind me. The Prodromoi were hard on their heels, and behind them came the Hetaeroi and their Persian equivalents.
There was an element of humour, sitting there with the king, watching them come. We were the first two across, and had the enemy been alert, Alexander’s conquest of the world could have ended in ignominious capture on the banks of the Hydaspes river.
But the rain was letting off, and the show of heaven’s wrath. Already, it was possible to hear the creak of oars. Already, men were singing the paean from the boats. The Paeonians and Prodromoi crossed and I sent them off into the darkness. The rest of the Agrianians crossed, and I followed them into the last of the rain. Behind us, the barges of the hypaspitoi and the pezhetaeroi were nudging the shore.
We were across. We had fourteen thousand men, to fight a hundred thousand men and two hundred elephants.
As the rain settled, Alexander took on a glow; never had I seen him so sure of himself. Suddenly he was everywhere – with Seleucus, getting the hypaspitoi moving off the riverbank, and forward with me, asking me for a report. My pathfinder Agrianians, who had been across for days, came in as soon as I lit the patterned signal fires in the locations I had briefed them on – men came from as far as four parasanges, men who had laid the trees at the edge of Porus’s camp, reporting on his troop movements. Now they told us that Porus’s son, Porus the younger, with two hundred chariots and two thousand cavalry, was coming at us out of the rain.
We manoeuvred in silence in the growing grey light. There was almost no cover, but we moved the Paeonians as far forward on the left as could be managed, and Hephaestion took the royal Hetaeroi forward on the far right, with Demetrius’s men forming the centre well back. There weren’t enough infantry across yet to make a difference.
The king himself insisted on leading the centre, and then we could see the Indians coming. They’d formed well – they probably formed right outside their camp, fearful of our speed, which shows how competent they really were. Young Porus was in a chariot, and he drove it across the front of his force, haranguing them. Then he charged our centre, and we charged his flanks. He was young and foolish, and he died. We killed or captured his entire force in about as long as it takes to tell the story, because they hadn’t expected us to outflank the ends of their line. Thorough, but not good enough. They had not faced Spitamenes, or Memnon.
We had.
When I rode up to the king, he was weeping, standing beside Bucephalus, who was putting his muzzle into the king’s hand. The old horse had four huge arrows, almost the size of javelins, in his body, and another in his neck. Even as I watched, he subsided to his knees with a sigh.
A white charger was brought up, and the king paused and kissed Bucephalus on the head. ‘Good horse,’ he said.
Better than Cleitus got.
Then he remounted, and we were off, southward.
We pursued the broken Indians as hard as we could, until we had three of the fords that the Indians had been holding for three weeks in our hands. The water was high, but Meleager and two other taxeis got across, the men soaked, their pikes unaffected.
The phalanx was starting to form.
Ahead, Ariston was watching Porus, and sending a stream of messages to the king. Porus had begun to form his battle line to our front, and he’d left adequate forces to keep Craterus bottled up across the river.
Alexander rode forward to see for himself, and I followed him. The sun was just emerging from the clouds – the first sun we’d seen in days.
I thought of Issus.
Scouts led us to a stand of acacia, where the king sat on his new charger with Ariston, Perdiccas, Coenus, Hephaestion and me, and watched Porus form his army, a seemingly endless crenellation of bow and long-sword-armed infantry as the wall, interspersed with elephants as the teeth.
Alexander sniffed. ‘There goes another one,’ he said. He meant messengers, but none of us got that. Yet. Porus was sending quite a few, and Alexander was watching them, but we hadn’t noticed.
At the flanks, Porus’s cavalry shifted. They didn’t seem to form well – especially on their right, our left, they kept moving – forward, back – it drew the eye.
Alexander watched under his hand. ‘You have to assume that his son was his most trusted commander,’ he said. ‘And hence, that he commanded the right-flank cavalry.’
He looked around, and his eyes glittered.
‘Watch the cavalry on the right. They are under an inexperienced commander, and one that Porus does not really trust.’ He smiled, watching intently.
I’ll be honest. I didn’t see anything like that. I saw a well-formed army, waiting to repel an invader. And I saw us about to fight a truly unnecessary battle.
I looked at the king. ‘How do you know the king mistrusts him?’ I asked.
Alexander laughed aloud. ‘Look! Watch!’ He looked at the battlefield. ‘And another one.’
Seleucus solved the riddle. ‘Messengers!’ he said.
‘Well reasoned!’ the king said. ‘Since I arrived in this patch of woods – no great time – Porus has sent five messengers to his right flank. Now, why does the right flank keep shifting?’
We were all silent.
Alexander slapped Seleucus on the back. ‘Some day, you will be a great general, lad. Listen, friends.’ He laughed – the sheer joy of his face made him seem like one of the deathless gods.
‘Porus is planning to pull all his cavalry off his right and use them all on the left, under a commander he trusts,’ he said.
Lysimachus grunted. I made a similar sound. He was the greatest military genius I’ve ever known or heard of, but it was an absurd conclusion to draw from the evidence.
‘Coenus – take your hipparchy and Demetrios, and all of you ride wide round our left. If Porus’s left-flank cavalry stand fast – charge them. If they cross his rear, follow them, ignoring the line of archers and elephants, and charge the rear of their cavalry.’ He nodded. ‘That’s what will happen. The right will ride around his rear to the left.’
Seleucus grinned. ‘Care to wager?’ he asked.
‘My career against yours?’ the king said, and Seleucus turned grey.
But Alexander laughed. ‘Your turn will come, young man.’
It was the first time he’d ever used that phrase in my hearing. Young man.
He turned to me. ‘Left of my line. Form your Hetaeroi, and put the Paeonians and Prodromoi behind you.’
I nodded. He was going to charge from the right in a cavalry column. As it turned out, we formed six squadrons wide and three deep – a formation not entirely unlike a wedge, except that it was more flexible.
As we came through the trees and formed, we were the only troops Porus could see. By the time the king’s squadron was forming, Porus was sending messengers to the flanks – right and left.
I had Cyrus with me, chewing on onion sausage, and Polystratus and Theodore and Laertes.
Even as we watched, squadrons from Porus’s right-flank cavalry began to wheel about and vanish behind his line of elephants and infantry.
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘I’ve known him all my life,’ I said aloud. ‘He still—’
Polystratus started to laugh, and then his face closed. ‘Company coming,’ he said, and then Alexander was there on his magnificent new white horse, almost as tall as my Triton. He had a dozen Persians around him, and no other Macedonians, and he wore the diadem on the crown of his helmet, but otherwise, he seemed himself.
He beckoned, and as I started forward, he turned his horse – merely by moving his hips, because he was part of any horse he rode – and I followed him.
When we were all together, Alexander pointed at the gathering mass of Indian cavalry.
‘As I may have mentioned,’ he said with insufferable smugness, ‘Porus is now moving all his cavalry to face me. The power of reputation and a really fancy helmet. Listen, my friends,’ he said, leaning forward, and his face was as
open as I had ever seen it. ‘This is the last army between us and the ocean. The gods have graciously given me this one last great day – against great warriors and giant beasts, the like of which no Hellene has ever faced.’
He looked at us all. ‘I didn’t mean to make a speech,’ he said with a sudden flash of his rare humour. ‘I just wanted to say – if this is the last one, let’s make it magnificent.’
I know I grinned back at him. It’s facile to say we wanted the battle. I, for one, knew perfectly well that we were fighting an army that was merely defending its homeland. We didn’t even need to fight – the gods knew, we weren’t going to conquer all of India with sixty thousand men.
But he was infectious, like one of Apollo’s arrows, and I was infected. I wanted to be my best.
He rode that white charger to the middle of the line. Our infantry was just coming through the scrub – the Agrianians first, in skirmish order, and behind them the hypaspitoi in a long file on the right, closest to us, with the phalanx in the centre, and the left – empty. Coenus was out of sight beyond the line of poplars that seemed to demarcate the far left of our battle line.
The Indians thought we’d wait for our infantry.
I grabbed Laertes. ‘Ride to Briso with the archers. Tell him to pull all the lights back behind the phalanx and wait for orders. The Agrianians too.’
Laertes gave a nod and rode off into the grain fields. The soil underfoot was sandy, and despite days of rain, it was easy riding. And for the first time in my long military career, I was going to fight a battle with no dust.
Alexander raised his spear.
The Indians were not ready.
We were.
The king lowered his spear, and we rolled forward.
I remember a moment in that charge unlike any other charge I’ve ever been in, when I could see all the way across the front rank – remember, there was no dust. I could see Alexander, a little in advance of the line, his shoulders square, his posture relaxed, his spear-tip rising and falling a fraction with the canter of his great horse, and I could see Hephaestion just behind him, Lysimachus, far off on a magnificent bay – and our front rank, just at the edge of the gallop, was well closed up and the dress across the front was superb. The sun shone on our helmets and turned everyone’s armour to gold.
And I thought, This is all I want. And then I realised that I was seeing it as he saw it. Because I wanted something else entirely. I wanted home and a family, and he wanted – this. An eternity of this.
But in that moment, in the heart of the charge, I felt it, as one man may see, for a moment, why another man worships another woman or a god.
I had a long lance, for a change. I’d practised with it in Sogdiana, and now I held it two-handed, the way the Sauromatae use it, and we were moments from impact with a badly formed Indian squadron that compounded its doom by trying to cover more ground to our flank. They were only formed four deep, and their whole squadron vanished in a spray of blood, like an insect swatted by the hand of a god.
To resist a cavalry charge, enemy cavalry must be well formed, and, preferably, moving. Horses may well not charge a line of men – who can look like a wall or a fence, because horses are not smart – but a line of horses is merely a challenge to the manhood of a stallion. And a loosely formed line of horses is an invitation to a war horse. Like the king, our mounts lived for these moments.
We swept through their front-rank squadrons without losing our formation and crashed into their second line, which was better formed and moving forward, and I snapped my kontos gaffing a man who seemed to be wearing armour of solid gold, and used the butt-spike to smash another helmet, and then we were through them – I could see Cyrus’s squadron to my right, and Polystratus was at my heels, and I risked a glance back – full ranks at my back – and I put my head down, thumped Triton with my heels and we were pushing forward.
Alexander’s timing was, as usual, perfect.
We crashed into their third line of cavalry, and they held us – they were the right-flank cavalry, sent to finish us off, of course, and their ranks were no firmer than ours. And we were hopelessly intermixed with the enemy. The enemy cavalry began to press us back, and I could see the king killing his way forward, but he was virtually alone.
I was damned if I was going to let him go down alone.
I had my long kopis in my hand, and no idea when I’d drawn it, but it was a better sword than anything the Indians had – their steel was poor. And my horse was the largest horse in the melee.
So I pressed forward.
Behind me, Polystratus shouted ‘The king!’ and my Hetaeroi took up the cry, and then Cyrus’s men began to shout it, in Persian – ‘The king!’
We held them. Or perhaps they held us.
I had a rumble of thunder between my legs, the most powerful war horse I’d ever ridden, and this was his first real taste of the hipposthismos – the horse push. Suddenly, like a river freezing in deep winter, the melee began to gel, the friction of horse against horse slowing movement.
But like a strong swimmer against an adverse current, Triton pushed forward. And no horse could stop him. He bit, he strained, he kicked, and I was another horse length closer to the king.
And another.
I fought, but I fought to keep Triton alive, not to put men down. Alexander was truly alone. I have often wondered whether, having seen it was his last battle, he sought to die there. I only know he’d never outridden the line by so far. Perhaps his new horse was faster than he imagined . . .
And then I was at his back. And Polystratus was at mine – Lysimachus came up, and Hephaestion, just as his white horse reared and fell and I caught him, so that he got his feet clear of the wreck of his mount, and in heartbeats he was mounted again, as Hephaestion killed a man and dumped his body from his saddle. The Indian mounts were smaller and bonier than ours, but good horses, as we had reason to know. Alexander was on one.
The enemy threw in their last line of cavalry, and the whole melee shifted again, and I was facing a sea of foes.
Elbow to elbow with an Indian – we both cut, and his sword bent, but my beautiful Athenian kopis snapped at the hilt. He leaned back to cut at me, and I got my bridle hand under his elbow and then punched my right fist and the stub of my blade at his face until the blood gouted and he was dead. He fell into the sea of horses and was swallowed up.
And then, with a roar like a river in flood, Coenus fell on their rear.
Obedient to the king’s orders, he had ridden all the way around our left, and around the rear of the enemy, and now he fell on the cavalry melee with the finality of a lion bringing down an antelope.
The Indian cavalry broke in every direction. And the battle was won.
Unfortunately, no one had told King Porus.
As Porus’s cavalry streamed from the field with the Hetaeroi and the Persians in pursuit, the phalanx, formed at last – we’d been stades ahead of them on to the field, and our charge had been swift – elected to advance. I assume that Perdiccas thought to take advantage of the chaos of our cavalry victory to press Porus right off the field.
Alexander had given the pikemen a brief pre-battle speech, or so Perdiccas told me later – on how invincible the pike was.
When you are a god, men believe everything you say.
The wall of pikes and shields pressed forward down the field.
Porus – a giant of a man, seven feet tall, on an elephant that towered almost a full head above all the other monsters on the field – didn’t even glance at the wreck of his cavalry. He raised his goad, and his bull elephant trumpeted – a sound that reached above the neigh and screams of horses and men – and his crenellated line began to move slowly down the field towards our advancing phalanx. I could see him, about two stades away, and he looked huge at that distance.
Let no man doubt the courage of the Macedonian phalanx. Faced with a line of monsters, they walked steadily forward. For the first time in years, they sang the paean – we
’d never had a field to sing on, in Sogdiana.
I was rallying my squadrons. I was never the strategos that Alexander was, but I had enough sense to see that our infantry might need help, and that help would have to come from the cavalry. But it was a mess – the Indian cavalry had mostly cut and run, but we were dreadfully intermixed, my front squadron had threaded through Coenus’s front squadron, and all the trumpets were sounding the rally. With the cries of the elephants and the tortured sounds of wounded animals, it took the will of the gods to get a man back to his place in the ranks.
I watched the two mighty lines close on each other. I waited for one or the other to flinch.
No one flinched.
When they met – when they met, it turned out that Alexander was wrong about the efficacy of the pike.
A lot of our men died, in the front rank. Veterans – men who had crossed the Granicus, men who had stood their ground at Chaeronea, stormed Thebes, crossed the Danube . . .
The men who made us what we were.
They died because elephants cared nothing for age, skill, armour, shields or the length of the spear. They snapped the spears, and their great feet crushed men, and their trunks grabbed men from their ground and lifted them high in the air, and their tusks, often sawn short and replaced with swords, swept along like the scythes on Darius’s chariots.
The taxeis were not in the same state of high training they had once been. The ranks were full of recruits and foreigners. When the phylarchs ordered whole files to double to the rear to make lanes, some taxeis, like that of Perdiccas, executed this flawlessly, and the monsters walked on, doing no harm. But in other taxeis, the attempt to manoeuvre in the face of the beasts led to chaos.
And collapse.
Meleager’s taxeis broke first. It didn’t run – because the better men weren’t capable of running. But the lesser men hesitated, the files fell apart and then suddenly the pikes were falling to the ground and men were falling back, or running, leaving their phylarchs and their half-file leaders to fight alone.
God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great Page 94