The Macedonian

by Nicholas Guild

  Philip looked around the camp with narrowed eyes. The wind already carried sharp little flakes of snow that stung a man’s face. They had perhaps another month before winter would put an end to the campaigning season. In Lynkos the Illyrian advance had already bogged down under nearly a cubit of snow. Korous was right to be anxious.

  “Playing in the dirt with some visitors from the south,” he answered. “I had hoped the old bandit would hang on a little longer—what do you suppose he expects in the netherworld that he hastens so to abandon his life?”

  But Korous either did not hear the jest or did not appreciate it.

  “Lyppeios will have finished his seven days of mourning tomorrow.” He too looked as if he had felt the snow’s burning lash and had read its meaning. “He will be upon us then. He can field perhaps as many as seven thousand men. Have you thought about that, Philip?”

  “The thicker the wheat grows on the ground, the more the scythe takes at a stroke.” The king of Macedon smiled bleakly. “Besides, what choice do we have?”

  “None, but a man can’t help worrying.”

  At dinner that night Philip received a more complete account of events in Paionia.

  “It seemed Aias’s decline was quite sudden. The heir was out of the country and only returned after his father had lapsed into a coma. It is taken as a bad omen that he missed the old king’s blessing.”

  “Aias has been reported dying for the last five years at least,” Philip said, shrugging his shoulders as he chewed a piece of flatbread. “It had attained almost the status of a tradition, but I think Lyppeios may be forgiven for not hanging about at court. Where was he?”

  “In Illyria, it is reported—courting. He has been there several times in the last few years. No doubt he dreams of an alliance.”

  “What he dreams of, people say, is old Bardylis’s granddaughter. They say she has him bewitched.”

  “She is his great-granddaughter.” There was an edge in Philip’s voice that caused Lachios and Korous to exchange a glance. “Her name is Audata.”

  “You know something of this girl?”

  “I met her when I was Bardylis’s hostage. She was only a child then.”

  Something in his face made Lachios decide to change the subject.

  “Well, Lyppeios is home now—and king, with or without his father’s blessing. If he is eager for an alliance with the Illyrians, he will want to make a show of strength at the very beginning of his reign.”

  “That serves our purpose,” Philip responded, nodding grimly. “I don’t want this campaign to degenerate into a series of raids. I want to meet the Paionians straight on. Nothing will serve but that we humble them before the whole world.”

  He lapsed into silence, staring at the fire as if he had forgotten his companions’ existence. One could not even guess what he was thinking.

  * * *

  Eight days later, on a windswept plateau where even late into the morning the ground was still hard with frost, the two armies came within sight of one another. It was almost as if they met by appointment—there had been skirmishes between their advance parties for almost three days while Philip and his antagonist engaged in a cautious, dancelike series of probings, each trying to assess the other while they searched for some advantage in the terrain of what was soon to become their battlefield.

  Now at last they faced each other, across perhaps five hundred paces of almost featureless earth rendered strangely lifeless by the cold.

  “Notice how he has concentrated his cavalry on the left,” Philip observed to his commanders. “The ground there is uneven enough that I would not care to lead a charge across it. I think he made his plans too far in advance and does not now have the presence of mind to change them.”

  “He must have something like five hundred horsemen,” Korous observed with a grudging respect.

  “When you make your attack, go straight for the center. I don’t care if he has five thousand horsemen—if we can separate them from his infantry, we can cut them to pieces at our leisure. I will be with our infantry, on the inside pivot of the right wing.”

  “Are you mad, Philip? When the Paionian cavalry reach our lines…”

  “Yes, I know. They will go straight for the inside pivot of the right wing. But we will have the advantage of terrain.”

  “If you are killed in this battle, Macedon is finished.”

  Philip’s laughter had in it something of the quality of relief. “If we lose today, it will not matter if I am killed. If I am to command, I must be at the crux of the battle.”

  “In war, a king should take better care of his life.”

  “In war, a king’s first duty is to win, Lachios.”

  He then dismissed the subject with a twist of his body as he made a sharp gesture toward a point in the Paionian infantry lines.

  “Hit them there,” he said. “Crack the spine and watch the legs fold.”

  Half an hour later Philip was in the front rank of his infantry, watching the approach of the enemy cavalry.

  A charge is useless unless it can be executed at a full gallop, and at that pace the formations of Paionian horsemen were spreading out over the broken, stony ground like a flock of birds in a rainstorm. By the time they reached the Macedonian lines they would have lost all focus and their attack would have little more force than a child pushing against a stone wall. Whether they realized it or not, they were riding into a massacre.

  When the Paionians were a hundred paces away, Philip crouched to the ground and angled his spear forward. All three front lines followed his lead, giving the archers behind them a clear field. There was a throb of bowstrings and the first flight of arrows, so thick that for an instant one could see its shadow on the ground, whistled over their heads. One … two … three … Philip discovered himself counting as he watched the arrows rise and then begin to curve down toward the earth. Four … five … six … He was almost to ten before the first of the Paionian cavalrymen fell from his mount. The man had not even hit the ground before perhaps one in seven of the enemy horses were riderless.

  The second flight of arrows seemed to have an even more devastating effect.

  “They are hill savages,” Philip whispered to himself. “They have never known battle against disciplined infantry.” Somehow the thought came to him as a kind of grief.

  After the fifth flight of arrows, when the enemy’s lead horses were no more than forty paces away, Philip stood up, balanced his spear in his hand and hurled it. Then his line melted into the line behind them. There was time for all three rows of javelin throwers to have a turn, then Philip was back in the front line with his long pike and his shield, ready for the shock of the Paionian assault.

  “Fight now to stay alive!” he shouted to his soldiers. “Hold your ranks together, for we have already beaten them!”

  One can say what one likes, it is still a terrifying experience to have a horde of cavalry galloping straight for one. It takes courage to stand one’s ground and face that charge. But Philip had fought beside these men before and knew that they would not break if he did not. He felt their wills behind him like a wall so that even the threat of death lost its terror.

  The first Paionian horseman to reach their lines came straight for the inside corner, as if he knew whom he would find there. He tried to squeeze through the line of pikes, but Philip’s point caught him just under the ribs, tearing him from his mount, breaking the pike’s shaft with his fall, and spilling his guts out over the ground as if someone had emptied them from a basket. While he died, another made it through, close enough that Philip could hear the whistle of his sword slashing at the man next to him, who lurched over without a sound, his skull split open. Philip had to wipe the blood from his eyes. But the horse stumbled, going down on its knees, and before it had a chance to scramble back up five or six pairs of hands reached up to pull its rider from its back—the man was dead before he had a chance to scream. That was how it went.

  And in a quarter of an
hour it was over. The first attack had spent itself, and there would not be another. Macedonian cavalry cut through the ranks of the Paionians, most of whom had seen how the battle was going and had already fled. One had only to stand and watch as the battle ground down into a series of pointless skirmishes.

  “Bring me my horse,” Philip said at last.

  He rode about the field, receiving the reports of his commanders, trying to assess his victory. In his mind he was already considering how best to exploit it.

  “Lyppeios has fled,” someone told him. “We have reports from several prisoners that he left the field as soon as our infantry broke through his lines. Our pursuit cavalry is not far behind him, but he got away. He has lost half his army, either dead or captured.”

  “He might have saved more of them had he stayed. And the rest will not be eager to fight for him again.”

  Philip shook his head in disgust. He thought what it would be like for Lyppeios when he had to face the men he had deserted. It would be better to lie here, a stinking corpse, honorably dead.

  Nevertheless, it would be necessary to reach an understanding with the man.

  “Are there any nobles among the prisoners—or did they all run away?”

  “Perhaps a few,” Korous answered when he could make himself heard above the laughter. “We haven’t had time to sift through them.”

  “Find one.”

  * * *

  He was Lyppeios’s cousin but seemed to have a bit more spine, since he had neither surrendered nor run away. He had been knocked unconscious by a fall from his horse and had almost killed the soldier who, thinking he was dead, had tried to strip him of his body armor. It had taken another crack on the head to subdue him. But the bravest men are not necessarily the cleverest and this one, upon being brought into his conqueror’s presence, apparently assumed that he was going to be put to death as part of the king of Macedon’s victory celebration—the Paionians were notorious for their harshness to prisoners—and was quite intemperate in the abuse he heaped on Philip, who merely smiled politely, the way one does in the presence of an unruly child, and offered him a cup of wine.

  “You are the Lord Dekios?” he asked, merely as a token of respect. “And you are the second son of the Lady Aletheia, the king’s father’s sister?”

  Dekios, who was perhaps twenty, darkly handsome with a neck like a bull, sat staring at his interrogator as if trying to remember where he had seen him before.

  “You are unarmed,” he said at last. “I could kill you with a blow—what is to prevent me?”

  “Nothing, except that you might not succeed. I am not quite as harmless as I look. Besides, my guards would come rushing in at the first sound and kill you, and then you will not be able to go home and speak to your cousin for me. But you have not tasted your wine.”

  The second son of the Lady Aletheia looked at the cup on the table in front of him, considering it and, perhaps, the interesting possibility that he might after all survive the evening, and then picked it up, weighed it for a moment in his hand, and took a swallow.

  “What would you have me tell the king?” he asked suspiciously, as if the matter were one in which he had some choice.

  “Merely that he and his soldiers are of no use to me dead,” Philip replied with unsettling calm. “I have no ambitions in Paionia, but I have no intention of leaving it until I am sure it will never threaten me again. An arrangement, on suitable terms, would therefore be useful.”

  For some reason this suggestion seemed to anger the Lord Dekios.

  “Lyppeios still has an army at least as large as your own,” he said hotly, setting the wine cup back down with sufficient force to spill half its contents onto the table. “He has merely to regroup and he will attack you again.”

  “You think so?” Philip raised his eyebrows speculatively. “I think he is beaten. I think he knows he is beaten. Half his army is dead or captured—if he cannot conquer with seven thousand men, how can he with three?”

  “We were merely unlucky today.”

  “You were more than unlucky.”

  “You expect me to advocate surrender?”

  “I don’t expect you to advocate anything. Merely inform your king that Philip of Macedon is willing to discuss terms.”

  “And if he refuses?”

  Philip allowed himself the slightest of smiles, as if the suggestion amused him but he would have considered it ill-bred to laugh.

  “He will not refuse.”

  * * *

  In the morning the Lord Dekios was given a good horse and told that he would have half a day’s start before the main body of the Macedonian force began its advance on Lyppeios’s capital, some three days’ march to the north. A man on horseback can cover that distance much faster than an army on the march, so the king of the Paionians would have perhaps as much as two days to decide between peace and annihilation.

  And Philip did not hurry. He allowed his soldiers a leisurely pace, sent out plenty of advance patrols, made very sure of himself. He did not want another battle, for all that he had no doubt concerning its outcome. Battles were expensive, and in his private thoughts he had already moved beyond this long autumn and the Paionians. The spring thaw would bring war with the Illyrians, and he must be ready for that.

  So it was a relief when, the day after his scouts had reported seeing the low granite walls of what, in this wilderness, must pass for a city, an emissary came riding into his camp with an olive branch tied to his spear, in token of truce.

  It was arranged that the two kings would meet alone on a stretch of open ground that was within sight of their two armies. Lyppeios was rather sulky and at first would not look his conqueror in the face.

  “I will accept suitable hostages and such tribute as will compensate my men for their sufferings,” Philip told him. “Beyond that, I will offer you a military alliance, which I suspect will be of service to us both.”

  Philip knew he had been right when he saw how the light changed in Lyppeios’s eyes—having lost his first battle, the man was now afraid of his own nobles. His power and probably his life were at risk, and if he wanted to keep them, he would need at least the tacit support of the Macedonian king.

  Very well, then, but he would have to pay for it.

  “You cannot, however, be both my friend and the Illyrians’,” Philip went on blandly. “You will have to choose.”

  From the expression of pain that crossed his face it was really possible to believe that King Lyppeios might be in love with old Bardylis’s great-granddaughter, for he had the look of one who had been asked to sacrifice his dearest wish.

  “Why did you attack us?” he asked, speaking for the first time and in a tone of injured innocence. The question, however, was merely an evasion, an excuse for putting off the inevitable. “You had sent tribute money to my father—why were you afraid of him and not of me?”

  “I was more afraid of you.”

  Lyppeios’s eyes narrowed slightly, as if he imagined himself insulted. He was doubtless under terrible strain, so his temper was unpredictable.

  “Your father was too old and enfeebled to take much interest in war,” Philip continued, as if he had noticed nothing. “But I knew you would move against me as soon as you were king.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “Because it is what I would have done.”

  This answer seemed to ease the tension between them, and Lyppeios was at last able to raise his eyes.

  “I was already marshaling my forces when word came that you had crossed the border,” he said, almost as if it were a boast. Perhaps it even was.

  “I know that. Otherwise you could not have fielded so large an army.”

  “They did me little enough good.”

  “War has changed,” Philip said, with the polite shrug of someone making a general observation. “Numbers count for less—this is something I learned as a hostage in Thebes.”

  For a moment the two kings faced each other in s
ilence, and suddenly Philip felt very old and tired. He was only twenty-three, and Lyppeios could not have been more than a year or two his junior, but the gulf between them seemed unbridgeable. It was not age that separated them, nor even experience, but Lyppeios seemed such a boy. There was a kind of innocence about him. Philip did not think he himself had ever been young in that particular way.

  But the moment passed and Lyppeios reined in his horse so that the animal took perhaps half a step back.

  “I accept your terms,” he said, “since I have little choice. An envoy with full powers will come to your camp tomorrow to work out the details.”

  Philip watched him ride away, and suddenly he discovered that he almost envied the king of the Paionians. You have taken a knock, he thought, but tomorrow you will still be alive, and a year from now you will hardly remember. Such a defeat would have destroyed me.

  42

  Philip and his army crossed into Macedon in the midst of a blinding snowstorm. It was only by the merest chance that the Lynkestian scout did not ride straight past them.

  “King Menelaos is but a few hours behind me,” the man said. “His escort numbers fewer than twenty men, and he craves a word with you, My Lord.”

  “Yes, very well, but not here,” Philip answered, gesturing at the snow that swirled around them like smoke. “There is a town not a morning’s ride to the south, where my soldiers will be able to sleep out of the snow. I will wait for my uncle there.”

  “I hope we will be able to find it,” the scout said, shaking his head. He looked rather scandalized when Philip laughed.

  “Menelaos will know the way,” he said. “In my father’s day he once raided the place.”

  And so it was that, seven hours later, in the dining hall of a house owned by a local noble of doubtful loyalty—the man did not know to whom he should bow lower, his own king or the king of Lynkos—Philip and his uncle sat in front of the fire drinking wine mixed with only two parts of water, trying to pretend that they met as kinsmen rather than as sovereigns, trailing behind them a long history of rivalry and mistrust.