Fire From Heaven (30 page)

‘What was it you told me,’ said Parmenion, ‘about the Prince slipping off for a jaunt among the tribesmen, after you’d sent him back to school? I well remember you swearing when you heard.’

‘That’s so, that’s so. It slipped my memory. A crazy escapade, he was lucky not to have had his throat cut. I don’t take hostages from tribes I think are safe. Guest-friend! Well, let’s see.’

‘Having heard you were in the east, he sent me word that the Maidoi were in the upper Strymon valley, laying everything waste. They had invited his people to join them in the war; but King Teres respected the oaths exchanged when you returned his son to him.

‘Wouldn’t burn his fingers. But it was the boy who sent the message. How old will he be now? About seventeen.

‘He advised me to march quickly up river to Rushing Gate, as they call the steep throat of the gorge, and reinforce the old fort there, before they came down into the plain. I therefore decided not to lose time myself by going to Amphipolis, but to send Koinos with my orders to bring on the troops from there; I would lead the men I had straight up over the Krousia range by the trackways, and ford the Strymon at Siris, where Koinos would meet me with men, fresh horses and supplies, we ourselves travelling light. When I told the men what kind of dangers threatened our colonists in the plain, they made good going; the tracks being difficult, I went on foot with them, encouraging them to hurry.’

Philip looked up. ‘Some secretary polished this. But touches of nature show.

‘We crossed over Krousia and forded Strymon by noon on the third day.’

‘What?’ said Parmenion staring. ‘Over Krousia? It’s sixty miles.’

‘He moved light, and encouraged them to hurry.

‘Koinos met me promptly with all orders carried out. This officer acted with speed and address, and I commend him highly. Also he talked sense to Stasandros commanding at Amphipolis, who thought I should have wasted three days marching out that way and asking him what to do.

‘Added,’ said Philip with a grin, ‘in his own hand.

‘Through Koinos’ good management of his mission, I got the forces I had asked for, one thousand menÉ’

Parmenion’s jaw dropped. He did not attempt comment.

‘Which, though it left Amphipolis undermanned, still seemed to me most prudent, since for every day the Maidoi went undefeated, the chance grew greater of their being joined by other tribes. I had lookouts and beacons between me and the coast, to warn me if the Athenians should attack by sea.’

‘Ah,’ mused Parmenion. ‘Still, I wonder he got a steady man like Koinos to take it on.’

‘But before we reached the Strymon, the Maidoi had already overrun the fort at Rushing Gate, had reached the plain and begun to ravage the farms. Some had crossed the Strymon westward to the silver mine, killed the guards and slaves, and carried home the bar silver through the river pass. This decided me that it would not be enough to beat them off the farmlands; their own settlement ought to be reduced by war.’

‘Did he know,’ asked Parmenion incredulously, ‘where it is?’

‘When I had looked over the troops, I sacrificed to the appropriate gods, and to Herakles, and was given good auguries by the diviners. Also, one of the loyal Paionians told me that while hunting early, he had seen a wolf as it fed upon a carcase, taken by a young lion. The soldiers were pleased with the omen, and I rewarded the man with gold.

‘He deserved it,’ said Philip. ‘The shrewdest of the diviners.’

‘Before starting my advance, I sent five hundred chosen hill-men to go under cover of the woods and surprise the fort at the Gate. Lambaros my guest-friend had advised me that it would be held by the worst of the enemy, since none of their foremost warriors would forego his share of the loot to secure their rear. My men found this to be true. They found also the bodies of our garrison, and saw that our wounded had been maltreated. As I had ordered should this be so, they threw? the Maidoi down the cliffs into the rapids. They then manned the fort and both flanks of the gorge. Kephalon led; an energetic officer.

‘In the valley, some of our colonists had sent off their families to safety, and stayed themselves to fight off the enemy. I commended them for their courage, issued them with arms, and promised them a year’s tax remission.

‘Young men never know where money comes from,’ said the King. ‘You can be sure he never thought to ask what their tax was worth.

‘I now led all my forces north up the valley, with my right flank advanced to deny the high ground to the enemy. Where we came on dispersed bands looting, these we destroyed; the rest we worked north-east, worrying them like herd-dogs getting the flock together, lest they should scatter off into the hills without giving us battle. Thracians trust everything to their first headlong rush, and do not like to stand.

‘They collected where I had hoped, in a tongue of land where the river makes an elbow with the lake. They reckoned, as I thought they would, on the river securing their backs; I reckoned to push them into it. There was a ford at their rear, known for being deep and treacherous. By the time they had wet their bowstrings and lost their heavy arms, they should be ready to make for home through the pass, not knowing that my men held it.

‘This, then was the order of battle..,’

A workmanlike summary followed. Philip muttered through it, forgetting to recite aloud to Parmenion, who craned forward to hear. Lured out, rolled up, and thrown into confusion, the Maidoi had duly struggled off through the river, into the iron trap of the gorge. Alexander had returned to Amphipolis most of its borrowed garrison, in charge of his many prisoners.

‘Next day I pressed on up river beyond the pass; a number of the Maidoi had crossed the mountains by other ways, and I did not want to give them leisure to re-form. So I came to the country of the Agrianoi. Here Lambaros, my guest-friend, met me with a troop of horse, his friends and kinsmen. He had asked leave of his father to ride to war with us, in fulfilment of a vow. They showed us the easiest passes; later they did very well in battle.’

‘Teres saw which way the cat was jumping,’ said Philip. ‘Yet the boy didn’t wait. Why? A child when he was at Pella, I can’t even remember what he looked like.’

He muttered his way through the breakneck mountain campaign that followed. Guided by his allies to the enemy’s craggy nest, Alexander had attacked its main approach, while his mountaineers crept up the sheer side left unguarded.

‘The men of the valley, wanting to revenge their wrongs, were about to kill everyone they found; but I ordered them to spare the women and the children, who had injured no one. These I sent to Amphipolis; do with them as you think best.’

‘Sensible lad,’ said Parmenion. ‘Those strong hill-women always fetch good prices; work better than the men.”

Philip skimmed on, through rounding-up operations and commendations (Hephaistion son of Amyntor, of Pella, fought with great distinction) his voice fading to the murmur of routine business. Suddenly, making Parmenion jump, he shouted, ‘What?’

‘Well, what, then?’ asked Parmenion presently.

Philip, looking up from the roll, said in a measured voice, ‘He has stayed on there to found a city.’

‘It must be the clerk’s writing.’

‘The clerk writes like a book. The Maidoi had some good grazing-lands, and the footslopes will grow vines. So he is refounding their city, in counsel with Lambaros, his guest-friend. I reckon they can notch up thirty-three years between them.’ ‘If as much,’ Parmenion grunted. ‘He has considered suitable colonists. Agrianoi of course; loyal Paionians; some landless Macedonians he knows of, andÉYes, wait. An afterthought, this. Have I any good men I would like to reward with a gift of land? He thinks he could take twenty.’

Parmenion, deciding that only a fool would open his mouth, cleared the back of his throat to fill the pause.

‘Of course he has named the ?city. Alexandropolis.’

He stared down at the parchment. Parmenion looked at the shrewd, scarred, ageing face, the grizzled black brows and beard; the old bull snuffing the new spring air, tilting his battle-frayed old horns. I’m getting on too, Parmenion thought. They had shared the Thracian winters, stood together through the Illyrian battle-rush; they had shared muddy water in drought, wine after the battle; they had shared a woman, when they were young; she had never known for sure which had fathered her child; they had shared the joke. Parmenion cleared the back of his throat again.

‘The boy’s for ever saying,’ he brought out brusquely, ‘that you’ll leave him nothing to do, to make his name on. He’s taking what chance he can.’

Philip brought down his fist on the table. ‘I’m proud of him,’ he said decisively. ‘Proud of him.’ He pulled a blank tablet towards him, and with deep quick strokes sketched the battle. ‘That’s a pretty plan, nice dispositions. But let them get out of touch; let a gap open, now, say, here, and where would he have been then, eh? Or if the cavalry pressed on out of hand? But no, he kept his hand on everything, there in the front line. And when they broke the wrong way, he changed his movement like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘We shall see things, Parmenion, with this boy of mine. I’ll find him those twenty settlers for his Alexandropolis, by God I will.’

‘I’ll ask about, then. Why don’t we drink to it?’ ‘Why not?’ He called for wine, and began rolling up the letter. ‘What’s this, wait, what’s this? I never finished it.’

‘Since I have been in the north, I hear everywhere of the Triballoi who live on the heights of Haimon, how they are unruly and warlike and a threat to the settled lands. It seems to me that while I am at Alexandropolis, I could carry the war up there, and bring them into order. I would like to ask your leave before drawing the troops I would need from Macedon. I proposeÉ’

The wine came and was poured. Parmenion took a great gulp, forgetting to wait for the King, who forgot to notice it. ‘The Triballoi! What does the boy want, does he want to push on up to the Ister?’

Philip, skipping the requisitions, read, ‘These barbarians might annoy us, if they come on our rear when we cross to Asia; and if they were subdued, we could push our frontiers as far north as the Ister, which is a natural defence wall; being, as men say, the greatest river on earth after the Nile and the Encircling Ocean.’

The two weathered men searched one another’s faces, as if consulting omens. Philip broke the pause, throwing back his head in a great laugh full of broken teeth, and slapping his knee. Parmenion joined in with the loudness of relief.

‘Simmias!’ called the King at length. ‘Look after the Prince’s courier. A fresh horse tomorrow.’ He threw back his wine. ‘I must get off his recall at once, before he starts to mobilize; I don’t want to disappoint the lad. Ah, I know. I’ll propose he consults with Aristotle over the constitution of his city. What a boy, eh? What a boy!’

‘What a boy!’ echoed Parmenion. He gazed into his cup, seeing his own image in the dark face of the wine.

Ê

The long train of men marched south, by phalanxes and squadrons, along the Strymon plain. Alexander led, at the head of his personal squadron. Hephaistion rode beside him.

The air was loud with sound; thin harsh crying and keening, deep creaks as of strained wood. It was the call of kites, hovering and stooping and fighting for choice shreds, mixed with the croak of ravens.

The settlers had buried their dead, the soldiers burned theirs on ceremonial pyres. At the rear of the column, behind the straw-bedded hospital wagons, a cart trundled along with straw-packed urns of local pottery, each painted with a name.

Losses had been light, for victory had come quickly. The soldiers talked of it as they marched, gazing at the enemy’s scattered thousands, lying where they had fallen to receive the rites of nature. By night the wolves and jackals had gorged on them; with daylig?ht the village pi-dogs, and the birds which clustered in a moving pall. When the column passed near, they rose in a screaming cloud and hovered angrily over their meal; only then could one see the raw bones, and the rags torn by wolves in haste to reach the entrails. The stench, like the noise, shifted with the breeze.

In a few days they would be picked clean. Whoever owned the land, the worst of the work done for him, would burn the bones in a heap, or shovel them into a pit.

Over a dead horse danced vultures, bouncing up and down with half-opened wings, scrawking at one another. Oxhead gave a smothered squeal, and shied away. Alexander signed to the column to proceed, dismounted, and led the horse gently towards the mound of reeking flesh; stroking his muzzle, going ahead to scare off the vultures, and, when they scolded and flapped, returning with soothing words. Oxhead stamped and blew, disgusted but reassured. When they had stood there a few moments, Alexander mounted and cantered back to his place. ‘Xenophon says,’ he told Hephaistion, ‘one should always do that with whatever scares a horse.’

‘I didn’t know there were so many kites in Thrace. What do they live on when there’s no war?’ Hephaistion, who felt sick, was talking to keep his mind off it.

‘There’s never no war in Thrace. But we’ll ask Aristotle.’

‘Are you still sorry,’ said Hephaistion dropping his voice, ‘that we didn’t fight the Triballoi?’

‘Why, of course,’ said Alexander, surprised. ‘We were halfway there. They’ll have to be dealt with in the end; and we’d have seen the Ister.’

A small cavalry detail on the flank cantered ahead at his signal; there were some bodies blocking the road. They were raked into a hunting-net, and dragged out of the way.

‘Ride on ahead,’ Alexander ordered, ‘and see it’s clearÉ. Yes, I’m sorry still, of course; but I’m not angry. It’s true, as he says, his forces are stretched just now. He sent me a very handsome letter; I read it too quickly, when I saw it was a recall.’

‘Alexander,’ said Hephaistion, ‘I think that man there’s alive.’

A council of vultures was considering something out of sight; bouncing forward, then recoiling as if offended or shocked. There came into view a feebly flailing arm.

‘So long?’ said Alexander wondering.

‘It rained,’ Hephaistion said.