“It isn’t going to be much of a surprise if you’re telling us about it now,” Perdikkas observed.
Alexandros shook his head. “Nah, the surprise will be on them. We’ll actually extend our line, so it’ll be more than three miles long. We’ll add an extra leg beyond our right end, angled back, so it’ll be ready to catch anything that comes down from the hills. Plus, we’ll put our best men on the right side.”
“How many troops do they have?” Parmenion asked.
“Well, that doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s how you use ‘em that counts. But to answer your question, they’ve got their Immortals, so that’s a myriad. And then, they’ve got more than ten thousand in the damned mercenary corps.”
“More than ten thousand mercenaries?”
Alexandros nodded. “Yes, that’s what I counted. And I think they’ll put them all on their left side, as the shock troops that will hit our right.”
“So, between the Immortals and the Greek mercenaries, they’ve got as many heavy infantry as we have,” Parmenion observed. “And I imagine they’ve got some other troops as well.”
Alexandros laughed. “Of course, they’ve got myriads and myriads of Persian Pussies but their job will be to get in the way of their own army and then to lead the flight from the field, once we hit them.”
“What about cavalry?” Parmenion asked.
Alexandros grew serious for a moment. “They got twice as much cavalry as we do but, as I said, the terrain will limit their utility. Unless they can break through our infantry line, they’ll be pretty useless.”
“Nobody breaks through our infantry line,” Hephaistion called out. The men who would actually command the infantry line kept their silence.
“Alright, here’s the plan. We march out in a column and then, as the valley opens up, we spread out into a line. Parmenion, you’ll be in overall command of the left side. I’ll give you half the hoplites but they’ll be mostly allied troops. Perdikkas will be in overall command of the right side; he’ll get the Silver Shields. I’ll be in charge of the cavalry, with Philotas reporting to me and the rest of the cavalry commanders reporting to him. Parmenion, you’ll also get all the new recruits on your side, so Krateros, Lysimachos, and Koinos will all be serving under you, but I suggest you hold their units in reserve until we see how the situation develops.
“Ptolemaios, you’ll be an infantry commander for the day. You’ll be under Perdikkas but I have a special assignment for you. You’ll be in charge of the units forming the dogleg on the right. It’ll be your job to catch anything coming down from the hills.”
I snapped to attention. “Yes, sire!”
“The Agrianians and other light infantry will operate under their own commanders. We’ll see as the battle develops how best to use them. Speaking of which, everything I just said is tentative. Be ready for new orders once we see how they’re actually deployed.
“And now, let’s observe the solemnities.”
*******
Our entire army assembled at the mouth of the pass. Aristandros, resplendent in his white robe, appeared as usual to do his shtick. Animals were slaughtered and their viscera inspected. Aristandros announced that all the signs were propitious. “You will win the battle today, led by the decisive stroke of your great leader, Alexandros Aniketos,” he called out to the troops. Choice cuts of meat were burned on the altar and appropriate offerings made to all local deities, as well as any gods who might have had regional jurisdiction. In a special and somewhat unusual touch, a spectacular chariot, which we had captured at Halikarnassos, drawn by four matched horses, was driven into the bay and the unfortunate animals drowned, in order to appease Poseidon and also, presumably, forestall any untimely intervention during the battle by the Persian navy.
With the religious rites out of the way, and with the Persian army massing in orderly ranks on the far side of the Pinaros River, Alexandros invited the troops to a sumptuous meal, complete with hot vegetable dishes, cooked meat, plenty of bread and olive oil, and accompanied by fine, albeit strongly diluted, wine. As we were finishing our repast, Alexandros mounted a wagon and addressed the troops.
“Look ahead, men, to that river in the distance. If you look really hard, you can see greatness there, awaiting us. By the time this day is done, we’ll have once again wiped out the barbarian horde. All the auguries this morning were favorable but I didn’t need any auguries to know that our arms are irresistible. The last time our brethren marched across this land, some seventy years ago, there were but ten thousand of them, yet the combined might of all the Persian Empire couldn’t stop them. And there are a lot more of us today. We’re hardened, battle-tested, undefeated, invincible!” The cheers built gradually after each adjective until the entire army was on its feet, roaring.
“And they, they’re still the same cowardly, barbarian savages they have always been.” At that point, Alexandros beckoned the six maimed veterans up to the wagon. It took a moment for the soldiers to figure out what they were looking at but when the realization finally sunk in, utter pandemonium broke out. The men snatched up their weapons and were ready to rush down on the enemy right then and there. With some difficulty, Alexandros finally managed to quiet them down.
“Let’s maintain our discipline today,” he yelled. “Listen to your commanders, follow your orders, protect the man next to you, and do what you do best. Now let’s go kill the bastards. Fall in!”
Alexandros mounted his horse; the maimed veterans waved their blackened stumps; their comrades saluted them; and the pan-Hellenic army set off for its appointment with destiny.
By the time all our units were assembled in a long, orderly column, the sun was nearing its zenith. The Persian troops had been standing in their serried ranks for hours, while we feasted, mustered, and finally marched, at an easy pace, into the steadily widening valley. As the foothills receded, our column gradually transformed itself into an ever-widening line. It was a beautiful, sunny, peaceful, late autumn afternoon.
Even though I had been given command of an infantry battalion, I was on horseback, trotting alongside my troops on my trusty Pandaros, straining to see the entire battlefield. Alexandros, astride Boukephalas, surrounded by his royal cavalry squadron, was not too far behind us, unmistakable in his gleaming armor and large white plume. I was jealous to see Kleitos riding close by his side. We were all trying to discern whether the Persians had in fact deployed as Alexandros had predicted but it was hard to tell. Dareios sent a screen of cavalry and light infantry across the river and their movement obscured whatever dispositions the emperor had made behind his defensive palisade.
Their screen melted as we approached, their horsemen and light infantry scrambling back over the river to join their own units. Alexandros halted our advance, while still well out of archery range, and inspected our line, riding back and forth in front of us, making small adjustments with a nod of his head or the wave of an arm. At the same time, he was keeping an eye on the enemy. They were not lined up as he had expected. The placement of their units was beautiful, orthodox, symmetrical, perfect for a parade-ground review. How effective it would prove to be in a dynamic engagement remained to be seen.
The emperor’s personal bodyguard, with their splendid armor and gold-butted spears, was stationed precisely at the center of the line, surrounded by the ten thousand Immortals. Behind them, Dareios himself was standing tall, atop his large, ornate, ceremonial chariot, partially shielded by his chariot driver on one side and his head steward, waving a large palm frond to keep him cool, on the other. Flanking the Immortals on either side were the Greek mercenaries, split into two equal, 6,000-men divisions. Completing the rest of the right side of their line, all the way to the shore, was the Persian heavy cavalry, both the men and the horses gleaming in their silver armor. The left side of their line (that is, the side of the line opposed to the units commanded by Perdikkas, including my battalion) was made up of Persian infantry and Persian light cavalry. The conscript infantry bat
talions were held back, behind the front line, for use as reserves, Dareios’s opinion of their fighting abilities being evidently as low as our own. Archers were stationed immediately in front of their entire line and we could see some light infantry soldiers lurking in the woods above us.
Parmenion has his work cut out, I thought. It was clear to me that the heaviest Persian thrust would come on the seaward side of the front, not the mountainside, as Alexandros had anticipated. And the threat of troops descending on us from the woods behind our line seemed to have been exaggerated. Alexandros made some quick adjustments. He sent the entire Thessalian and allied Greek cavalry back to Parmenion to support the left end of our line, making sure their movement was concealed behind the infantry phalanxes making up Parmenion’s end of the line. However, he kept the entire Companion Cavalry for himself, hidden and massed behind Perdikkas’s end of the line. He reinforced the middle of our line, across from the Immortals, using all the available reserves, under Krateros’s overall command. They would not have an easy time of it either. Finally, he dispatched two companies of Agrianians, along with some other light-armed troops to deal with the soldiers trying to get behind the right end of our line up in the woods.
With the adjustments carried out, we resumed our slow advance, singing loudly. Alexandros halted us once again, just outside archery range. We were now close enough to see the faces of the enemy and to scream insults at them. The Persians yelled back at us. Neither side understood the words of the other but the meaning was unmistakable. We waited, hoping they would abandon their strong defensive position and attack us. Dareios was too good a tactician to allow them to charge and they were disciplined enough to await his command. It was getting to be late in the afternoon and the two armies were still standing there, yelling at each other. If we wait another hour or so, the sun will sink into the gulf on our left and we can all return to our respective camps.
Finally, Alexandros nodded his head, the trumpets sounded, and Krateros’s phalanxes in the middle charged.[20] The men started at a slow run and picked up speed as they reached the river. The sky above them darkened with incoming salvos of arrows, most of which they were able to catch on their shields. However, once in the swiftly moving current of the river, they found it impossible to maintain the precision of their ranks and they started to clamber, willy-nilly, up the opposite bank. It was difficult going. The bank was five or six feet tall, slippery, and topped by a palisade. Waiting behind the palisade were the Immortals and the Greek mercenaries. They were tough, experienced fighters. Neither the Persian Immortals nor the Greek mercenaries expected any quarter from Alexandros. They would either prevail or die on the battlefield. At the moment, however, most of the dying was being done by our infantrymen, fighting uphill, with poor footing, without the support of an organized line, trying to kill, in hand-to-hand combat, hardened enemy soldiers protected by a wooden fence.
As soon as the middle of the line engaged, the Persian heavy cavalry poured across the river and fell upon Parmenion’s end of the line, made up mostly of allied hoplites. Our Greek warriors maintained the cohesion of their ranks and resisted the heavily armored men and beasts but the weight of numbers began to tell. Small gaps developed here and there and became more and more difficult to plug. The Thessalian and allied horsemen tried to help where they could but were no match for the Persian cavalry.
At the same time, on our end of the front, at the foot of the mountains, we charged the Persian infantry opposed to us. However, as we ran, we opened a corridor between units wide enough for squadrons of Companion Cavalry to ride through. Before we even had a chance to engage the enemy, our cavalry, led by Alexandros, roared through, leaped over the palisade and scattered the Persian Pussies standing in their way. It was no contest. In minutes, the Persian infantry was fleeing the field. Alexandros didn’t take the time to pursue them, veering instead to his left and riding straight for Dareios’s chariot. The presence of thousands of Greek mercenaries, Immortals, and the emperor’s personal bodyguard between the two kings didn’t detain Alexandros. The Macedonian cavalry wedge, with Alexandros at its point, was irresistible. Dareios’s defenders fought fiercely and well, dying where they stood, but dying nonetheless. They were getting slashed, pounded, and trampled under the hooves of the Companion Cavalry. Alexandros, ignoring a dagger wound in his thigh, came close enough to look into Dareios’s eyes. Dareios, snatching a javelin from one of his bodyguards, hurled it at Alexandros and missed. The horses hitched to the chariot, unaccustomed to the violence of battle, spooked and reared. Dareios was in danger of being thrown to the ground. At the last moment, one of Dareios’s bodyguards offered him his horse. Dareios vaulted onto the animal’s back and sought refuge behind the lines. The Macedonian cavalry was continuing its slaughter, while our infantry units, at Perdikkas’s end of the line, did their best to pursue the fleeing Persians.
Alexandros, seeing Dareios in flight, turned Boukephalas, in order to give chase. Before he could move, however, a messenger from Parmenion reached him and informed him that the middle of the line, under Krateros, had made no progress trying to cross the palisade and that the seaward end of the line, under Parmenion, was in desperate trouble, unable to fend off the Persian cavalry. Reluctantly, but without hesitation, Alexandros broke off his pursuit of Dareios. Instead, he led the Companion Cavalry across the battlefield and charged into the back of the Persian cavalry, who suddenly found themselves trapped between Parmenion in front of them, Alexandros behind them, and the Gulf of Issos to their side. At the same time, they learned their emperor had fled the battlefield. Caught in two minds, unsure whether to continue their charge or to follow their leader and flee, they did neither. In short order, they were slaughtered where they sat.
In the meantime, Perdikkas’s phalanxes also circled behind the Greek mercenaries and the Immortals and attacked them from the rear. With the resistance at the riverbank easing, the middle of our line was finally able to gain the palisade and a generalized slaughter of the Greek mercenaries and Persian Immortals ensued. The conscript levies that Dareios had kept in reserve watched the developments with interest and ran for their lives long before anyone attacked them.
In a matter of minutes, a closely contested fight turned into a generalized rout. Alexandros, accompanied only by a small squadron of riders, resumed his pursuit of Dareios. I held back my battalion momentarily to make sure our Agrianians had dealt with any remaining Persian elements in the woods above us. It became quickly apparent that the few enemy troops in the woods before the battle had by now joined the wholesale flight of the Persian army. With that threat removed, we hurried to catch up to the rest of Perdikkas’s line. Unfortunately, our progress was slowed by all the carnage under our feet. We reached a second river meandering across the plain, which had separated the battlefield from the Persian encampment area. The waterway, once a fairly deep and swiftly moving stream, was choked with dead bodies. My men were able to get across without getting their feet wet, skipping from corpse to corpse.
The rest of the hoplites under Perdikkas’s command reached Dareios’s camp before we arrived. Alexandros had left no orders concerning the treatment of any captives or the disposition of booty. The Macedonian infantrymen, remembering what Dareios had done to their comrades, took no prisoners. They looted the camp and killed any men they found. (Most of the men were actually eunuchs.) They raped the women, then killed some of them, while saving others for later use. Any children and domestic animals they tended to ignore, in pursuit of more valuable plunder. However, they refrained from invading the imperial precinct, scrupulously saving its contents as Alexandros’s personal share of the spoils.
Alexandros continued his pursuit of Dareios until well past midnight, attempting to pick up the trail of the escaping monarch in near total darkness, oblivious to the risk of ambush he and his men were running. Finally, near collapse from total exhaustion, Alexandros broke off the search and turned back.
*******
Where in Haide
s is he? I had checked in all the expected hiding places without success. Aristandros had vanished like a scorpion sensing an owl nearby. If his death was to appear as a casualty of the battle, I had no time to waste. And yet, here I was, riding aimlessly through what had been the Persian camp the night before.
The wreckage of the camp was brightly lit by countless fires, some set intentionally by our soldiers trying to keep warm and others caused accidentally by carelessly overturned lamps and braziers. The initial pandemonium had died down to a sustained uproar, punctuated by the occasional shriek or triumphant shout. Despite my ostensibly urgent errand, I was simply drifting, floating along on the softly narcotic afterglow of mortal combat. Amidst the fighting, I was not an outsider; I wasn’t worried about the Prime Directive; I forgot about timesickness; I didn’t wonder what the future held in store for me. I was simply trying to survive; trying not to make any mistakes that could cause the men in my charge to lose their lives; and, if I was honest about it, trying to make sure that our side won. I realized I wasn’t supposed to be partisan but it was becoming increasingly clear to me that, somewhere along the line, I had taken a side. I hated to admit it but I had enjoyed that feeling of camaraderie, belonging, and certainty of mission that only fighting in a battle could bring. The last thing I wanted to think about was Aristandros.
My reverie was interrupted by the eruption of a distraught, screaming woman from a tent a few paces in front of me. Her chiton was torn, her hair disheveled, her face blood-streaked. Two young Macedonian soldiers, whom I recognized as members of the battalion I had commanded earlier that afternoon, wearing nothing but loincloths, emerged from the tent in hot pursuit. In her desperation, the woman threw herself in the dirt right in front of Pandaros’s hooves. “Sire, please save us,” she pleaded, in perfect Greek.
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