“Are you sure?” said Hephaestion.
“No,” replied Eumenes. “I’m not.”
“Then why—”
“The bodies don’t look like any tribesmen I’ve ever seen. They’re not Dardanians or Cicones—not like anybody we were expecting to find along this section of the river. They’re altogether exotic.”
“Really?” said Hephaestion. He sounded altogether skeptical.
“Philip himself fought them, didn’t he? And Herodotus discusses them in detail—”
“Fuck Herodotus,” said Hephaestion. “I’m sick of you quoting that Greek to paper over the fact that you don’t know what the hell’s going on out there.”
“That’s enough,” snapped Alexander. “The Scythians are real. Let’s not pretend they’re not.”
“Doesn’t mean that they’re right on top of us,” said Hephaestion. “We’ve got scouts out in force, Alexander. Eumenes is acting like the woods are full of bogeymen.”
“I said nothing of the kind,” snapped Eumenes. “All I’m saying is that we have Scythians in the vicinity and we should be prepared for further incursions.”
“We should assume further incursions,” said Alexander, waving his hand languidly. “Power abhors a vacuum, no? We emptied the whole eastern portion of the Danube, so no surprise that some of the more fearsome tribes from the north might have been moving down to take advantage of the disruption.”
“But surely they’d be moving in behind our path of march,” said one of the officers. “Into that vacuum—rather than directly against us. Who would try that?”
“The Scythians would,” said Eumenes.
“And that’s why we’re on the alert and ready for anything,” said Alexander. He looked at the messenger, who had been standing there awkwardly this whole time. “Who’s this?”
The messenger drew himself up straight and saluted. “I bring word from your father, sire.”
Your father: the wrong thing to say, but the courier was too tired and too low-ranking to be sensitive to such nuance. Alexander stood up, face darkening—gestured at the courier’s satchel.
“Open it.”
The messenger hesitated. “He was most insistent that only you do that, sire.”
Alexander looked at Hephaestion, who was shaking his head. Eumenes knew what they were thinking—some kind of trap. But if that was the case, there were better ways to spring it. Subtler ways, and Alexander knew it. Still, why take chances…
“I said open it,” repeated Alexander.
The messenger nodded, broke the seal, slowly removed the lid….
And jumped backward as though he’d been bitten by a snake.
For a moment, Eumenes thought that’s exactly what had happened—that the messenger would collapse and start frothing at the mouth and Alexander would turn the entire army around and march back to Pella for a final reckoning with his father. But the messenger was still standing there, breathing a little heavily—then stepping forward again to pull out the contents of the satchel.
A human head.
Withered by whatever preservative agent it had been steeped in prior to being placed into the satchel, its features almost unrecognizable. But Alexander recognized them anyway: his eyes went wide. Then he looked at the messenger.
“At least your return trip will be easier,” he said quietly.
The messenger gazed at him, confused. Alexander signalled to two of his bodyguards, who grabbed the man and forced him to his knees. He began begging for mercy.
“Spare you?” said Alexander. “Spare us”—gestured with one hand. Another bodyguard stepped forward, grabbed the messenger’s hair and swung his sword, hacking off the head in a single stroke. Blood sprayed across the floorboards. The bodyguard placed the freshly hacked head in the satchel.
“Throw that box and body overboard and let them drift down the river,” said Alexander. “That’s my answer to the king. And you”—this to the junior officers and remaining bodyguards—“all of you, get out.”
The bodyguards saluted and dragged the corpse out of there, the white-faced officers following, pulling the tent-flaps down behind them. Now it was just Alexander, Hephaestion and Eumenes—and the shrivelled head sitting on the table. Alexander regarded it calmly.
“It was worth a try,” he said.
Eumenes finally remembered where he’d seen the sightless face staring up at them. It was one of Philip’s own bodyguards. He realized that Alexander and Hephaestion were both staring at him, as though awaiting his reaction. He looked back at them evenly, decided that boldness was the best course.
“So what was the plan?” he asked.
“There were two of them,” said Hephaestion.
“Two plans or two men?”
“Men.”
“Both bodyguards?”
“The other was a page.”
“With access to Philip’s bedchamber?” said Eumenes.
“Yes. It’s not clear what went wrong.”
You were in charge of it, thought Eumenes. He could see it loud and clear on Alexander’s face: Hephaestion had failed his prince. Which was why Eumenes had been ordered to stay behind, to help clean up the mess. Eumenes recognized it as a subtle increase in his own standing, but now Hephaestion was going to hate him more than ever. And being dragged into a plot when it had already failed was never the most salubrious of propositions. Eumenes looked from the anxious face of Hephaestion to the far-too-calm face of Alexander. He chose his next words carefully.
“Philip has that palace locked up tight,” he said. “He’s set everyone to watch each other. Maybe the page betrayed you, maybe another of the bodyguards suspected something.”
“Not like it matters,” said Alexander. “We’ll never know.”
“No,” said Eumenes. “You won’t. But if you were going to try this again, I’d recommend it be done outside the palace.”
“Philip never leaves it,” said Hephaestion.
“He would if you burned it down.”
Alexander stared at Eumenes. A slow smile crept across his face.
“We’re not in a position to do that,” said Hephaestion.
“Not yet,” said Eumenes. “Wait till this expedition’s done. What’s the hurry?”
“The hurry is I’d like to be king,” said Alexander.
“You can proclaim yourself that anytime,” said Eumenes.
“Macedonia can’t have two kings,” said Hephaestion.
“Not when it was a tiny kingdom. But now it’s a world-spanning empire. Perhaps it needs two kings. I could certainly draw up a reasoned treatise proposing that. Release it in the name of some anonymous philosopher, get them all arguing.” Alexander looked thoughtful. “Wait till your next great victory,” added Eumenes. “Preferrably one that has allowed the army plenty of looting.”
“That could be some time,” said Hephaestion. Alexander shot him a look but Hephaestion wasn’t backing down—he was still the one man who could talk back like this to Alexander: “Why not? It’s true. It’s hard to rack up historic victories in the middle of nowhere. And in any event, the problem isn’t whether or not you’re king. The problem is what to do about Philip. Not to mention what he’s going to do about you.”
“Nothing,” said Eumenes.
“Nothing?” asked Hephaestion with more than a tinge of disbelief.
“What can he do?” Eumenes was smiling now. If there was one thing he knew, it was how the mind of the King of Macedon worked. “More than half the army is under arms on this river, under the crown prince. Even if someone arrived with orders to arrest or kill Alexander, how precisely would they do it?”
Hephaestion didn’t reply. Alexander looked as though he’d expected Eumenes to say exactly this. Eumenes had the odd feeling he’d been asked to stay in order to settle an argument. He warmed to the task, gesticulating for emphasis. “The fact of the matter is that professional assassins wouldn’t be professional if they didn’t want to survive the deed. There’s not a one o
ut there who would try his luck in the middle of this army. And—more importantly—why would Philip even want to kill his son? Who else offers a chance of leading this army to victory? Any move the king makes either leaves this army without its best commander or else results in that army going back to Pella to tear down everything the king has ever built.”
Hephaestion nodded slowly. Alexander stood up as though the matter was settled.
That was when they heard it.
Distant shouts—a far-off din, followed by a nearer uproar, a maelstrom of shouting and screams—and then the clanging noise of all the bells atop the masts of fleet, all of them sounding the alarm. An almighty yell went up from all directions—all too much of it the product of voices echoing in from outside the Macedonian perimeter.
The tent-doors to the pavilion flew open. A bodyguard stood there, a grim expression on his face. Before he could open his mouth—
“Bring me my armor,” said Alexander.
Chapter Ten
Charging through the flaps of the tent, Eumenes found himself looking out upon a sight that made him wonder if his eyes had rebelled against his mind. The fleet had just rounded a bend in the river to behold a barrier that stretched from shore to shore less than half a mile ahead. It was as though the Danube was a harbor with a boom stretched across it—and as Eumenes looked more closely he saw that it was a tangle of boats and wood and metal and all manner of debris, all of it chained together to form a barricade propped in place against the river’s current. Tribesmen armed with bows and slings crouched behind a makeshift wall of spikes and wood that stretched across that barricade; as Eumenes watched they began firing at the foremost ships in the fleet.
But Alexander never stopped moving. His bodyguards were strapping on his armor while he bellowed orders. Signal flags ran up the masts of the flagship even as the oarmasters beat a faster time on the drums—Alexander’s ship sped up toward the barricade, the rest of the fleet following suit. The soldiers on the shore began running, keeping pace with the fleet.
Alexander stared at them for a moment, frowned—then reeled off another string of orders with an impatience that made it seem he would shove the signal officer aside and run those flags up himself. As he strapped on his rams-head helmet, more flags were going up along each shore, relaying his directives down the chain of command. The squares of infantry and cavalry stopped and began forming up, facing outward, away from the river. Adopting a defensive formation, Eumenes thought… against what?
And then he saw it.
Flames had appeared all along the tops of the hills bordering the river on both sides: a line of fire that blossomed into full-on incandescence and began rolling downhill. They were wagons that the tribesmen had set alight; as hordes of screaming warriors charged in behind the careening wagons, the full extent of the Macedonian predicament became terribly apparent. Trumpets sounded along the river; the infantry squares along the river clustered into an integrated phalanx and then began advancing up the hills toward the oncoming wagons. Alexander had given his orders, deciding in the instant that the situation called for eschewing defense and going straight into an attack formation. Eumenes could only guess as to why. Perhaps so the soldiers could put as much distance between themselves and the river-bank behind them as possible. Perhaps because that was always Alexander’s instinct, regardless of the circumstances. The burning wagons would be hitting the phalanxes on both sides of the river within the next thirty seconds.
But the men on the flagship had more pressing concerns. The ships and barges and skiffs now formed the two sides of a V behind Alexander’s ship, stretching out toward either bank. The scene on the deck of the flagship was one of controlled chaos. Marines pushed the pavilion overboard, setting up mantlets in its place. Eumenes and Hephaestion crouched behind one such barricade. The latter was ashen-faced. He seemed to be in a state of near-shock.
“You were right about the Scythians,” he muttered.
“I’d rather not be,” replied Eumenes as a dart shot past him.
“But how—in Zeus’ name, how did they achieve such surprise?”
Eumenes shrugged. “They must have taken out all our scouts and outriders. Then moved in from all sides.”
“We were careless.”
Eumenes wasn’t about to disagree. Nor was he going to say anything out loud. Particularly when the man most responsible was within earshot: Alexander stood on the main-deck, totally exposed to the fusillade of Scythian darts and arrows streaking past. He was yelling at one of the siege-engineers, who in turn was gesturing frantically at some of his subordinates as they struggled with something below deck. Then Alexander turned to some marines crewing one of the ballistae, began pointing out the field of fire he wanted. Hephaestion looked aghast.
“Can’t he keep his fucking head down?”
“I think we both know that’s not his style,” said Eumenes.
“He could save the fleet right now.” Hephaestion was practically spluttering. “Just turn around and go back down the river to regroup.”
“But then he’d lose the army.”
“The army’s already lost,” spat Hephaestion—and as he said this, the wagons reached the phalanx. With practiced precision, segments of that infantry formation were already sliding aside like beads on an abacus: a last-moment series of orders opening up gaps in the phalanx through which many of the wagons passed, their fires hissing out as they plunged into the Danube.
But there were too many Macedonians and too many wagons for them all to miss. Men flew into the air while others were simply crushed. Wrapped in flames, others ran screaming for the river shore, leaping in as the smoldering wagons crashed after them. The phalanx was reeling; before its gaps could close, the mass of howling barbarians charged into it with a gigantic crash. A pitched battle raged up and down both sides of the Danube. As one, the latter ranks of the phalanx moved in to shore up the gaps torn in the front lines.
“They’re holding,” said Eumenes. But the phalanx was already in considerable disorder, fighting in conditions about as suboptimal as could be imagined—on ground that was far from level, with enemies already in amidst its ranks. In places, the forest of massed sarissae pikes was still intact, a hedgehog on which barbarians impaled themselves as though it were a gigantic pincushion. But in all too many areas, the sarissae were down, the swords were out, and hand-to-hand combat was underway. As more barbarians poured down the hills and into the fray, the Macedonians on both banks were gradually being forced backward, remorselessly, toward the river.
But Alexander had never lost a battle—and he clearly had no intention of starting now. Even if this particular fight had begun in the worst way possible, he continued to yell orders. More darts whipped past Eumenes’ head; the flagship had almost reached the barbarians’ barricade. Eumenes caught a glimpse of a jagged projectile streaking along the deck, just missing Alexander and skewering several marines behind him. More marines moved in to take their place, surging up from below-deck, getting ready to leap onto the barricade as soon as they reached it. Eumenes and Hephaestion led more squads forward from the mantlets to join Alexander. The air was filled with missiles as every barbarian within bowshot concentrated fire on that ship. Those aboard the boat screamed a war-cry—one that was taken up by the rest of the fleet. The barricade filled Eumenes’ vision—rows of barbarians along it, waving fists and brandishing weapons. The flagship put on one final burst of speed.
And then they hit.
A terrible, grinding crash: and Eumenes was knocked to the deck. Struggling to his feet, he saw a scene of total shock and confusion. The flagship had embedded itself in the barricade, but failed to break through. Alexander had already leapt over the railing and onto one of the barricade’s platforms, where he personally was battling it out with at least six Scythians. Alexander’s purple cloak and ram’s-head helmet left those tribsemen with no doubt who they were facing, leaving them mad for glory and the chance to end both battle and war right there. Even a
s Eumenes raced forward to help his prince, a thrown axe sailed past Alexander’s head. Alexander whirled aside and struck the man who’d hurled it a gigantic blow, cleaving through helmet, skull and neck in a single stroke just as Eumenes and Hephaestion and several marines reached him—Eumenes thrust his sword through the guts of a Scythian, withdrew it in a spray of shit and blood just in time to parry the blow of another tribesman that almost knocked him from his feet. The tribesman advanced for a second swing, only to be cut down by Alexander himself—who nodded quick acknowledgement at Eumenes before whirling aside, slicing off the arm of a Scythian about to unleash a vicious swipe at Hephaestion. Recovering from the collision, marines were pouring off the flagship, while barbarians simultaneously tried to fight their way onto the boat, sending up a howling cry that was echoed by their fellows along the riverbanks, pressing forward as they sought to drive the Macedonian phalanx to destruction in the Danube.
Then both deck and platforms shuddered anew as the ships to the immediate left and right of the flagship impacted. Men spilled off boats and barricade. The air was almost thick with stones, darts, and arrows. Eumenes took all of this in a moment—and then all the screaming and howling were drowned out by his prince’s voice:
“Get away from the flagship!” screamed Alexander. “Get distance! Get some fucking distance!” Still shouting, he led the way along the barricade, putting the flagship behind him even as barbarians continued to leap on board. Eumenes was starting to realize just how heavily outnumbered the Macedonians who had made it onto the barricade were. It was scarcely clear who was attacking who—whether the Macedonians were battling their way along the barricade or whether they were being chased away from their own boats.
The Pillars of Hercules Page 17