Alexander's Legacy: To The Strongest

by Robert Fabbri

  Olympias choked down her nose in disgust. ‘A very shrewd observation, dear Nephew. I suggest you start with Hyperides in Athens and Demosthenes currently in exile on Calauria.’

  ‘They were at the very top of my list, dearest Aunt.’

  ‘The odious little shit,’ Olympias hissed as she and Kleopatra walked from the audience chamber. ‘Pretending that he had already thought of the idea in order to save face.’

  Kleopatra waved a dismissive hand. ‘I don’t care how he couched it; the important thing is that he’s doing as you asked.’

  ‘Without you having to force him.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Olympias was curious. ‘Tell me, just how would you have forced him?’

  Kleopatra turned to her mother and smiled. ‘That’s just the point, I couldn’t. It was an empty threat but Aeacides is frightened enough of me to believe me capable of anything.’

  Olympias put her hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh. If only you had been born a man, Kleopatra, then we would not be in the state we now find ourselves; we would have the most suitable heir to Alexander. A frown slowly developed on her brow as her scheming mind churned. Wait, perhaps there might be a way; a way which would have the advantage of me getting back to the centre of power without having to wait for the eastern bitch’s whelp, if it is a boy. Again, Olympias played through the scenario in her head. Yes, that could work and it could also spell the end of Antipatros. It’ll need good timing and I must keep it from Kleopatra as she won’t like it, not one bit.

  PHILO, THE HOMELESS

  WITH THEIR SECOND volley, the mounted archers perfected the range; arrows thumped with staccato reports into the round hoplon shields hastily erected into a protective wall and roof for the two-hundred-and-forty-strong unit of Greek mercenaries.

  ‘Hold fast, lads! Hold fast!’ The shout was muffled by the press of bodies, the front rank kneeling as the second, third and fourth crouched behind, all heaving ragged breaths of hot, dry air infused with sweat and garlic.

  Another succession of juddering impacts hit the shields; a solitary scream rose and faded into a gurgle.

  ‘Keep tight and close that gap!’

  ‘We are keeping tight!’

  ‘Save it for the horse-fuckers, Demeas!’

  ‘We never get a chance to have a go at them before the cunts run, Philo!’

  Philo did not bother to answer Demeas, crouching next to him in the front rank of the defensive formation, for he knew he could not argue with the man’s assessment of fact. He would, however, be disciplining him for answering back as soon as they returned to Alexandria Oxiana, the mud-brick town on the Oxus river that it had been their misfortune to garrison for the past five years since Alexander had doomed them to spend the rest of their days so far out in the wilderness. Curse the arrogant young pup for leaving us here. He braced himself as three arrows from the next volley thudded into his shield and then risked a peek through a narrow gap. Fifty paces away, swarming about on small, hardy mountain ponies, the Bactrian tribesmen released another ragged volley, as much aimed at the hoplites as at the caravan sheltering at their rear. Behind their double-humped Bactrian camels, loaded with goods, cowered the twenty merchants Philo and his men had been escorting along the Persian Royal Road, since it had crossed into Bactria from the satrapy of Sogdiana. Not that borders make any difference out here in these wild fringes of empire, Philo reflected, resealing the gap as a black speck suddenly grew into a shaft hurtling towards him. His shield bucked as the arrow cracked into its rim where his eye had been a heartbeat before. Such is the randomness of life and death.

  ‘They’ll soon tire of this, lads; they always do,’ Philo shouted, to boost his men’s morale as well as his own. But it was true: the tribesmen always did tire of peppering the caravan escorts with arrows and withdrew into the arid, treeless fastness whence they had appeared; it was the way of things as they would never dare to charge close formation hoplites with their long thrusting-spears, even though they were caught out in the open. Nor did they have the patience nor the ammunition to gradually whittle them down; and so they would make one or two more false charges and rallies, releasing arrows forwards and backwards, whilst some of their number would salvage anything they could from the few camels that they may have brought down in their initial attack, provided they were far enough away, which, today, they were not. Three camels, one still writhing and screeching with pain, lay just twenty paces from the hoplites, their loads strewn about them. The bastards will let us go soon enough so that they can get at that haul, Philo reflected with relief.

  And thus was life on the eastern frontier of Alexander’s so-called empire. Philo always failed to suppress a smile when the concept of empire crossed his mind, for, to him, an empire was a united entity and what he was witnessing most certainly was not; here there was no central government, no sense of identity, nothing but barbarism and despotism. He and his men were the only link to what any Greek would consider as being civilized and, despite his profession, Philo considered himself to be civilized in a most refined way.

  Educated to the highest degree on his native Samos, he and his family had suffered from Athens’ annexation of the island, forty years previously, and exiled. Homeless, rather than seek the charity of others, at sixteen, Philo had left his wandering kin to sell the one thing of value that remained to him: his strength of arm. Selling the last of the possessions that they had managed to escape with, he and his family had raised just enough to purchase the hoplite panoply of helmet, hardened-linen cuirass, hoplon, sword and greaves and with that he had gone to serve in the army of Darius, the third of that name, the Great King of Persia. Life had been good and pay regular for thirty years, thirty years in which he had managed, with his earnings, to see his family settled in a fine house in Ephesus, just across the water from their stolen island. Thirty years in which he had risen to be a chiliarch of hoplites in the pay of the Persian empire and had become accustomed to the finer things in life that service to the Great King could bring. But then the arrogant pup had come to turn his world upside down for a second time, brushing aside the Persian army at the River Granicus and then again three years later at Issus where he, Philo, had been captured.

  ‘Get ready to make a move, lads,’ Philo shouted as he felt the incoming missile-hail lessen; he risked another quick look through a gap and, sure enough, the tribesmen were beginning to draw back as their quivers emptied. ‘How many casualties, Lysander?’

  ‘One dead, sir,’ Philo’s squat second-in-command on this mission shouted from the back of the formation, ‘and four injured, one seriously.’

  ‘Bring them all with us when we go. No one’s to be captured alive or dead, these horse-fuckers impale anyone.’

  For a captured mercenary the choice between death or enlistment on the same terms in the victorious army is an easy one; and so Philo found himself serving Alexander, the man who would push the limits of glory further than they had ever gone before; but those limits were only for himself and his Macedonians and not for the thousands of men of different blood who marched with them doing the hard, dirty work, the thankless tasks deemed too menial for the invincible soldiers of Macedon. So, throughout the campaign, guard duty, punishment raids showing no mercy to all alike, convoy escort and other dishonourable and unenviable assignments had been the lot of Philo and his men. When, at last, Alexander had caught up with the fleeing Darius, high in the Persian uplands at Guagamela, the Greek mercenary hoplites had been placed in reserve, showing just what contempt the Lion of Macedon held for them. It had been this display of contempt that had infused the men’s minds so that, as they came to Bactria and Sogdiana, they had decided that they had had enough and now was the time for returning home; home to the sea.

  But Alexander had other realms to conquer and, as he set out to cross the mighty Indus river, he had refused to release the disenchanted mercenaries, distributing them instead amongst the new towns he had founded for the Greek colonists flooding east
in the hopes of bringing Greek civilization to barbary. And yes, the plays of Euripides had been performed on the banks of the Oxus; and yes, Homer was read in Alexandria Oxiana; and the drachma was the accepted currency in the bazaar of Zariaspa; and the ideas of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle were discussed at symposiums in Alexandria Margiana and Nautaca; but a monkey reciting philosophy is a monkey no less and Philo felt nothing but contempt for the airs and graces of the colonists.

  Knowing who Aristophanes was does not mean that you can appreciate his verse, however Greek your blood is, for it was, in general, the poor and uneducated, those who had struggled back in the west, the meek, who had made the hazardous journey east in the wake of the all-conquering army. And the meek make the worst masters, Philo had observed time and time again as the colonists, who now found themselves on top, clashed with the indigenous tribes over rights, land ownership and status. So it fell to him and his men and many others like them, scattered far and wide over the eastern satrapies, to keep the peace and preserve the law. The satraps themselves were not going to do it unless there was a profit or some other gain in it for them because the satraps were the very warlords who had ruled the area before the coming of Alexander and, once he had departed east, they went back to how things were before. So it was that these tribesmen attacking Philo’s command were men who should have been fighting alongside him, for they were Batricans loyal to Oxyartes, the local satrap of neighbouring Paropamisadae and father-in-law to Alexander himself.

  ‘Front rank, keep your shields up!’ Philo ordered as the last of the horsemen withdrew well out of range, ‘and left turn!’

  His men, all two hundred and forty of them, exercised the manoeuvre with tolerable proficiency, considering the circumstances, with the front rank rising to their feet, still presenting their shields to the enemy as the four lines turned into a column, keeping between the Bactrians and the caravan.

  Philo pushed his way through the formation to take a place at its head. ‘Forward at the double!’

  The column broke into a jog, ragged at first but then sliding into step as they picked up speed. To their left, the merchants goaded their camels into their long, ungainly strides so that the caravan kept pace with their protectors.

  ‘Stop them!’ Lysander yelled from the middle of the formation.

  ‘What is it?’ Philo shouted, turning to look back down the column.

  Two of the merchants were pelting back towards the three camels that had been brought down in the initial attack.

  Idiots. ‘Leave them, Lysander,’ Philo ordered, breaking from the formation and running back down through the caravan.

  Reaching their stricken beasts, the two merchants scrambled to gather up bags, slinging them over their shoulders, all the while glancing up at the column, now more than a hundred paces distant, which jogged away from them at a steady speed. Philo stood still, letting the caravan pass to either side of him, watching the two men and shook his head as he saw a group of horsemen whoop, kicking their mounts into a gallop. Seeing the incoming danger, the two men snatched up another couple of items and sprinted away.

  Philo turned, unwilling to watch the inevitable occur, as the riders closed with the merchants whose greed had just cost them their lives.

  ‘They pay dearly for goods that should cost no more than silver,’ one of the merchants commented to Philo as he walked back to his position at the head of the column.

  ‘Their choice.’

  The merchant, dark-skinned, hook-nosed and with sunken, but twinkling, brown eyes looking out from beneath a white headdress, inclined his head, one hand across his chest. ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps they had no choice as it was all they had and to lose it would mean ruin. In this life we can’t always make the choices we would wish to. Good sir, my name is Babrak of Cabura and we Pakthas have a saying which, if I translate it from our Pashtun language renders thus: There is a boy across the river with a bottom like a peach, but, alas, I cannot swim.’

  Philo looked at Babrak, wondering just what he was getting at.

  ‘Good sir, we cannot always have what we want and especially if we have deficiencies; it is not the fault of the river that I cannot reach the object of my desire but rather my deficiency in having never learned to swim. Those two men would have chosen life had they been able to afford the loss of their goods; but they couldn’t so they had the choice made for them by their own deficiency in coinage. We are not all lucky enough to get to have a taste of the peach.’

  It was with resignation to the way of things in the east that Philo sighted the walls of Alexandria Oxiana; the screams of the captured men echoed across the barren land as the sharpened points of stakes began the slow process of rupturing their way up through their innards.

  ‘Philo, there’s a messenger from Babylon,’ Letodorus, the garrison commander, said as the column trudged through the town gates into the agora, exhausted from their exertions.

  ‘Tell him to wait until I’ve bathed,’ Philo said, complete disinterest in his voice.

  ‘I think you’ll want to hear his message immediately, Philo; even stinking as you are.’

  Philo looked at Letodorus, twenty years his junior, and could see that he was in earnest; with a sigh, he turned to follow him towards the garrison headquarters.

  ‘Over a moon ago?’ Philo asked the question slowly, trying to digest the momentous news that had caused him to slump down into a chair and reach for the wine jug.

  ‘Yes, sir, of swamp fever, so they say,’ the messenger, filthy from travel, replied, eyeing the wine. ‘I saw the body before Perdikkas sent me out.’

  ‘So there is no doubt that he is actually dead?’ Philo could scarce control the excitement that was mounting within him. ‘There can be no mistake?’

  ‘No, sir; Alexander is dead and by now almost the whole empire must know.’

  ‘Gods be praised.’

  The messenger looked confused. ‘What did you say, sir?’

  Philo looked the man in the eyes. ‘I said: gods be praised. And I said it because the monster is dead and, perhaps, at fifty-six, my life can start again.’

  ‘But he was glorious; he led us to victory after victory.’

  Philo pushed the wine jug towards the messenger. ‘Did he? That may have been true for you but for me he did nothing but lead me and my men here, to this prison without bars in this desert land so far from the sea. Now he’s gone, we’re free.’ Philo turned to Letodorus, grinning uncontrollably. ‘I think we should call an assembly.’

  Letodorus grinned. ‘I think we should.’

  Philo looked down from the dais, set in front of the garrison headquarters at the edge of the parade ground, at the five hundred Greek mercenaries who made up the garrison of Alexandria Oxiana; sweltering in the heat that tormented them for months on end, their astonishment at the news was palpable. ‘And so now we have to decide whether our duty is to this wasteland, guarding it for no other reason than we’ve been ordered to as a punishment? Or do we do our duty to ourselves and march west to the sea?’ He paused to let the question sink into the men’s minds; scores of conversations sprung up, animated by the excitement that most of them had expressed when they had been told of the death of the man who had doomed them to this place.

  Philo indulged the talk for a few dozen heartbeats before signalling for silence. ‘We must not forget, Brothers, that we have had false news of Alexander’s death before, almost three years ago, when we heard that he had been hit in the chest by an arrow. We all know what happened to the garrisons who were caught trying to make it back to the sea then: they were executed almost to a man. However, a few were not caught and did get home, thus proving that it can be done. But the difference between then and now is that we know for certain that the tyrant is dead.’ He pointed to the messenger, standing with Letodorus to the rear of the dais. ‘This man saw his body laid out in state in the great throne-room at Babylon before Perdikkas sent him to us with the news. There can be no doubt that Alexander is no more.’ This b
rought yet another cheer from the assembly. ‘And what we must calculate is this: will his death make it easier for us to desert our posts or will whichever uncouth Macedonian who takes up the reins of power be as uncompromising in their treatment of us Greeks as the monster was. And even if they are, my brothers, it still comes down to this basic question: do you want to die here or do you want to die trying to get home to see the sea one more time? I know what I choose, now do you?’

  The roar was unequivocal; Philo smiled at the sight of hundreds of full-bearded faces now filled with a hope that had been absent for all the years stranded in the arid limits of the empire. Some were men like himself, homeless; whether from annexation of their lands as in the case of Samos, or from the destruction of their city, such as Thebes. Others were younger sons forced to seek a life of paid military service in lieu of inheritance and the rest were adventurers or outlaws. But all had one thing in common: a love of the sea; the sea that some had not seen for seven years since Alexander had left Egypt and headed into the heart of the Persian empire in pursuit of Darius.

  ‘The sea! The sea! Sea! Sea!’ The chant rose over the cheers and soon it echoed around the dun-coloured mud-brick walls of the parade-ground; the visions of a blue expanse of undulating water sparkling beneath a warming sun and cooled by salttanged air, or of a sandy beach with soft breakers washing over it or, even, just the thought of standing ankle-deep in its cooling waters and watching a ship sail by, gave volume to the shout until all chanted with one voice, punching their fists into the air in time to the rhythm.

  Philo raised his palms and appealed for quiet which came reluctantly, such was the men’s excitement. ‘Since the Exile Charter was read out at the Olympic Games last year forcing the Greek states to take back their exiles, many of us now have homes to go to. I, for one, am free to return to my ancestral home of Samos and those of you who are also exiles may do the same.’ Philo took a moment to compose himself into a sombre, concerned countenance. ‘But our homes are far away and we are few, my brothers; we would stand no chance, a small band such as we, trying to make it back over a thousand leagues. We would be prey to the first Macedonian garrison we came across and they would show us no mercy.’ That thought took some of the enthusiasm out of the faces of his audience. ‘So, therefore, we need strength in numbers. Do you imagine that we are the only garrison out here who yearns for the sea? There are dozens of them and each one is our size, or larger. I move that we should send out messengers to every one of them, suggesting that we go together in the spring. There will be thousands of us, an army. We will make Xenophon’s ten thousand seem like a trivial affair. We shall write a tale that will be told through the ages. So follow me, my brothers, follow me and we shall walk out of the desert and come to the sea.’