by Ben Bova
Chapter 13
The army was on the move again, this time heading south, toward Attica. Long columns of troops winding along the roads, stirring up clouds of dust that could be seen for miles. Cavalry flanking the roads, moving up along the hillsides where there was grass enough for the horses. Threading through the narrow mountain passes, the cavalry went first and the foot soldiers ate dust. In the rear was the long train of mules and ox-carts, laden with armor and weapons and supplies.
It felt good to be out of the palace, away from Olympias' grasp. Once again I breathed the crisp clear air of the mountains. Even with the dust and smell of the horses and mules it tasted like nectar to me.
I was assigned to Alexandros' guard and rode along with his Companions. They bantered good-naturedly about Thunderbolt and even compared my mount favorably to Alexandros' own Ox-head—but never when he was within hearing.
Alexandros was a young man of moods. I could see that he was being torn up within himself. He admired his father and hated him at the same time. Olympias had filled his mind with the central idea that Philip did not love him and did not truly accept him as his son and heir. Still, Alexandros wanted his father to admire him; yet he feared that such a desire was treason to his mother.
Young, ambitious, uncertain of his abilities or his acceptance by his own father, Alexandros did what so many frightened, self-conscious teenagers do: he went to extremes. He boasted that his true father was Zeus himself, or at least Herakles. He claimed that he wanted to be like Achilles, who chose glory over a long life. He had to be braver and more daring than anyone else. He took risks that others would blanch at.
My job was to keep him alive.
"He's a young hothead," Philip told me the day we began our march southward. "And his Companions are completely in awe of him. They even shave their faces clean, just as he does. It's up to you to see that he doesn't break his foolish neck."
No easy task.
When the cavalry had to forage in the hills of Pieria, Alexandros took it upon himself to raise fresh recruits for the army by galloping his Companions into each miserable little village along the way and giving a speech from Ox- Head's back.
"We march to glory!" he shouted in his thin tenor voice. "Who will come with me?"
Inevitably some of the village youths would step forward, faces burning with visions of fame and honor—and loot. Just as inevitably the village elders would tug them back into the crowd. Or worse, their mothers would while the rest of the villagers laughed. Still, Alexandros got a handful of newcomers along the way.
As we approached Thessaly, though, the responses became decidedly more hostile. At one of the mountain passes the local sheep herders even tried to ambush us.
All they saw, I'm sure, was a gaggle of beardless lads on horseback, all of them richly adorned. The horses alone would be worth a fortune to a man who spent his life scrabbling out a living on those rocky hillsides.
Our job was to scout the pass, make certain it was safe for the main body of the army to come through. We knew full well that a handful of determined men could hold up an army for days or even weeks, as Leonidas had at Thermopylae long ago. Philip wanted to get to Thebes before the Athenians could bring their army up to unite with the Thebans. To be held up in these mountain passes could be disastrous.
The local hill folk held scant allegiance to Thebes or anyone else except their own villages. To them, the world was bounded by their mountains and valleys. They knew nothing of the impending war. So when they saw a half-dozen young dandies riding through one of their passes, they thought they had received a windfall from the gods.
They chose their spot well, where the rocky mountain walls nearly touched one another and a rider had to nose his horse carefully around the boulders strewn along the trail.
Alexandros was in the lead, as he usually insisted on, with Hephaistion close behind him. Strung out further behind were Ptolemaios, Nearkos and Harpalos. Ptolemaios was singing a bawdy song, enjoying the echo of his own voice against the mountain walls. I brought up the rear, constantly searching the rugged crests of the mountains and looking behind us for any signs of peril.
I heard the danger, rather than saw it. A rumbling, crunching sound. Looking up, I saw a boulder bouncing down the steep mountainside, kicking up more rocks as it fell.
"Look out!" I bellowed, pulling up on Thunderbolt's reins.
Alexandros heard it too. With a single glance upward he kicked Ox-Head forward, Hephaistion right beside him.
The rest of us turned our horses around, away from the rock slide.
The boulders thundered down and crashed to the floor of the pass in a shower of gritty dust and flying pebbles. Our mounts shied and whinnied. Thunderbolt would have taken off altogether; it took all my strength to hold him where he was.
Eerie war cries echoed through the canyon and I saw men racing along the top of the cliffs. A spear came flying toward me. I saw it in slow-motion, flexing as it glided through the air. Men were scrambling down the rocky face of the cliffs on both sides of us.
And Alexandros was on the other side of the boulders that they had rolled down.
I ducked under the spear and let it fall clattering to the bare ground. Ptolemaios, Harpalos, and Nearkos were being swarmed under by more than a dozen half-naked men armed with spears and staves, but they had their swords out and were slashing at their attackers from horseback. I urged Thunderbolt through the melee, bashing a few heads with my own sword as I approached the rock slide.
The boulders formed a barrier that I could not ride past. I could hear shouting and swearing from the other side, and the scream of a man in death-agony. Swiftly I climbed onto Thunderbolt's back and leaped atop the nearest boulder, then jumped to the next one.
Alexandros and Hephaistion were on their feet, back to back, surrounded by hill tribesmen with murder in their eyes. Two half-grown boys were leading Hephaistion's horse down the canyon. Ox-Head was nowhere in sight.
With the greatest roar my lungs could give I leaped from the boulder onto the mass of men attacking Alexandros. Spears snapped and bones crunched. I rolled to my feet and slashed the nearest man almost in two. They were all moving with languid dreamy slowness. I ducked a spear and thrust my sword into the man's belly, dodged sideways as I yanked the sword out and grabbed the next man's spear with my left hand. I cracked the spearman's skull apart with an overhand swing of my sword just as another spear pierced my leather corselet and sliced into my ribs.
I hit the spear with a backhand sword thrust and it pulled free of my flesh. I felt no pain, only the exultation of battle fever. Alexandros killed the man who had speared me and suddenly the attackers broke and ran.
"The others!" I yelled and started scrabbling up the boulders that separated us from Ptolemaios, Harpalos, and Nearkos.
They were still on their horses, although Nearkos' mount was bleeding in half a dozen places. We roared down on the hill men, slashing and killing until they tried to escape our fearful swords, but Harpalos rode down two of them as they ran in blind panic along the canyon trail. Alexandros pulled down another who was scrambling up the rocks and took his head off with a single blow. I saw one climbing madly up the cliff face. I took half an instant to calculate the throw, then flung my sword at him. It struck him squarely between the shoulder blades. He screamed and fell face-first at my feet with a wet thump, the sword sticking out of his back.
Turning, I saw that Hephaistion held the last of the hill men by the hair. He could not have been more than thirteen: dirty, clothed in rags, on his knees, eyes bulging at the bloody sword Hephaistion held in his other hand. His mouth was wide open but no sound came from it. He was petrified with fear, looking at his death inches away.
"Wait," Alexandros commanded. "These dogs have taken Ox-Head. I want him to lead us to their village."
The boy did as he was told. We wound through the narrow pass, out onto a wider trail, and then up a rocky hillside where sheep had cropped the grass almost to its
roots. Beyond the second row of hills, nested in the cup of a wooded valley, was the boy's village.
All the way there, Alexandros raged and fumed about Ox-Head. "Steal him from me, will they? I'll roast them alive, each and every one of them. They'll curse the day they were born. If they don't return Ox-Head to me I'll kill them all with my own hands!"
I saw that his hands were shaking: the aftermath of battle. He had nearly been killed, although he actually suffered nothing more serious than a few nicks and bruises and a bad fright.
We must have made a grim sight, six bloodied warriors, three of us on foot. I had given Alexandros my mount to ride. Nearkos walked beside me, slim and small, silent and dark as a shadow, leading his bleeding horse with one hand, his sword in the other.
The village elders came out to meet us, trembling visibly. A pair of half-naked boys, silent and round-eyed, led Ox-Head and Hephaistion's mount toward us.
The elders stopped a few paces before us, dithering and jittering, glancing uneasily at us and each other.
Before they worked up the courage to say anything, Alexandros spoke. "Where are your young men?"
The elders looked back and forth among themselves.
"Well?" Alexandros demanded.
One of the elders was completely bald, but had a white beard that ran halfway down his chest. His fellows nudged him forward.
"Our young men, lord, are dead. You have killed them all."
Alexandros snorted. "Don't lie to me, grandfather! We allowed ten or more of them to escape. I want to see them. Now! Else I will burn your miserable village to the ground and sell your women and children into slavery."
"But, brave sir—"
"Now!"
"Sir, they have run away. They fear your wrath and they have hidden themselves in the hills."
"Send your boys to find them. Have your women prepare a meal for us. See to it!"
They jumped to his command. It struck me that half a dozen men could be swarmed under if the whole village attacked us at once. But they were cowed, terrified. The boys scampered out toward the hills. The women bustled around their cook fires. The elders led us to their village's central green, where a feast was prepared for us.
By nightfall, seventeen young men stood sullenly before Alexandros, firelight flickering on their grimy, frightened faces. Several of them wore blood-soaked bandages on their arms or legs.
We had eaten a decent meal of roast lamb. The local wine was thin and bitter; Alexandros had made certain that we drank no more than one cup apiece.
Now he strutted up and down before the failed ambushers, fists on his hips, firelight glinting off the jeweled pommel of his sheathed sword. The meal seemed to have taken the edge off his rage. That, and the fact that Ox-Head had been returned unharmed.
Turning on the white-bearded village leader, Alexandros demanded, "What retribution should I exact on men who tried to kill me?"
The old man had recovered some of his courage, too. "You have already slain enough men to keep our village in mourning for the rest of the year, young lord."
"Is that your answer?"
He bowed his head. "You may take whatever vengeance you desire, my master."
"I will take, then, these young men."
"You would slay them all?" Beyond the fire's dancing shadows I sensed a stir among the villagers.
"I will not slay any of them. They will join my army and fight against my enemies."
His army! I wondered what Philip would say to that.
"But, sir," said the old man, "if you take all of them we will have no one to tend the sheep, no one to defend our village from the marauders of the next valley."
"You would prefer that I hang them, here and now?"
"Hang me," said the old man, trying to draw himself up straight. "I am the leader of these people. I am responsible for their crime."
Alexandros stared at the white-beard. Then he broke into a wide grin. "You're right, old man. Your village has been punished enough." He turned to the waiting younger men. "Go back to your homes. And thank the gods that you have a man of courage leading your village."
The old man sank to his knees. "Thank you, brave lord! Thank you for your mercy."
Alexandros pulled him up to his feet. "There is one thing that I want you to do, however."
"What is it, lord?"
"Raise a statue to me and place it here, on this spot, as a reminder to your people to cease their thieving ways."
"I will have it done, lord. But I don't know your name."
"Alexandros of Macedon."
"The son of Philip?" The whole village gasped.
Alexandros' smile vanished. "The son of Zeus," he answered.
When we returned to the main body of the army we received more bad news. The Athenians had already marched their army to Thebes and now the two armies, together with other allies from among the smaller cities nearby, stood ready to block our path to Thebes and Attica.
"Can we maneuver around them?" Alexandros suggested. "Take Thebes while they stand in the field waiting for us to appear from the north?"
Philip's one good eye widened. "Clever thinking, son."
We were huddled in Philip's tent, bent over a folding table that bore a map of the area. Alexandros stood across the table from Philip, who was flanked by Parmenio and Antipatros. Antigonos the One-Eyed stood beside Alexandros; Ptolemaios and the other Companions crowded behind them. I was at the tent's entrance flap.
"Can you find a route that the whole army could pass over without being detected by the enemy?" Philip asked Alexandros.
Barely glancing at the map, Alexandros replied, "No, not the whole army. We would be seen and reported on, no matter which route we took."
Philip nodded.
"But," Alexandros went on, "a smaller group of men, a striking force of cavalry with a phalanx or two of hoplites, could swing around the enemy army and take Thebes while they're still in the field awaiting your advance."
Parmenio blurted, "That's foolhardy! A small force could never take the city by storm and wouldn't be able to lay siege to it."
"We would have the advantage of surprise," Alexandros shot back.
"D'you expect the Theban garrison to drop dead of shock at the sight of you?" Parmenio quipped.
No one laughed. The tent fell deathly silent.
Philip broke the silence. "If you could take the city it would be a great advantage to us. But it would not eliminate the army that faces us. They'd still be there, and we'd still have to deal with them."
"And we'd be weaker," said Antipatros, "because your striking force would no longer be with the main body of our army."
Alexandros said nothing. He simply stared down at the map, his face red with suppressed anger.
"Do you understand the situation?" Philip asked gently. "We must defeat their army in the field. Seizing Thebes won't accomplish that."
"I understand," Alexandros said tightly, without looking up.
"The question, then," said Antigonos, "is where do we fight them?"
"And how many of them are there? What's their order of battle? Who's leading them?" Parmenio was full of questions.
"We'll get some information along those lines shortly," said Philip.
"From spies?" Antipatros asked.
Philip nodded.
"I don't trust spies," grumbled Antigonos. "They can lie to you as often as not. I prefer to see the enemy's dispositions with my own eye." And he put a forefinger below his one good eye.
"Perhaps you and I should scout out the enemy together," suggested Philip, pointing to his own single eye. "Between us we equal one whole scout."
Everyone broke into laughter, the king loudest of all.
"We need to scout them out," agreed Parmenio. "Even the best of spies doesn't have a military head. We need to find out exactly what we're facing."
"You won't like what you see," Philip warned. "They'll outnumber us by quite a bit."
"And the Theban Sacred Band is worth t
wo or three times its numbers," said Antigonos.
"We need some scouts," Parmenio insisted.
"I'll take a look at them," Alexandros said.
"No. It's too risky. You stay in camp."
"But I can do it!"
"So could I," said the king. "But I'm too valuable to risk on a mission that others can do as well."
"All our necks will be beneath the blade once the battle begins," Antipatros said, trying to make peace. "There's no sense taking risks now that we can avoid."
Alexandros raised no further objections, and the meeting broke up with the agreement that Parmenio would pick the men who would cautiously scout the enemy encampments.
But as I followed Alexandros and his Companions back toward their tents, Alexandros pulled me aside. Waving the others to go on, he walked me toward a small clump of trees near one of the horse corrals. I had become accustomed to the smell of the horses and their nervous snuffling when they were penned into the makeshift corrals. It was almost sundown and the horses were anticipating the arrival of the slaves with their bundles of hay.
"Orion," said Alexandros, in a low, confidential tone, "it is clear to me that my father and his generals need information from inside the enemy's camp."
"I'm sure—"
He cut me off, impatient to have his say. "Parmenio's scouts won't be able to glean the kind of information we need."
"Your father has spies in the enemy camp, though. Surely they'll bring out—"
"No, no! We need someone from the army to go into the enemy camp and see for himself how they are arrayed, who their leaders are, what their plans are."
I thought I understood what he was driving at.
"You want me to do this?"
He had to crane his neck to look up into my face. "Not exactly, Orion. I am going to do it myself."
"You!" I was thunderstruck.
"But since my mother told me I must not go anywhere without you," he went on, unperturbed, "you will have to accompany me."
"But you can't—"
"I can't let Hephaistion and the others know; they'll want to come with me."