God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great (21 page)

There was a third troop of horse – Thessalians under Erygius – and they smashed into the flank of the melee, bowling Athenian Hippeis right over with their long lances, and suddenly the whole pack of them was in flight, and the hypaspists cheered us.

I could see Philip, just a few horse lengths away. I saluted with my sword, and he waved. A handsome boy came running from his side.

Up close, I could see it was Attalus’s pretty cousin, Diomedes. To me, he looked more like Ganymede.

‘The king thanks you and orders you back to the left,’ he said.

I saluted, and my trumpeter started blowing the recall.

It was all going according to plan, until the hypaspists slammed into the Athenians and the Athenians rolled them right back down the hill.

My lads were just behind them, crossing back from our right to our left by the shortest route, and we felt it when the hypaspists went into the Athenians. Not for them the sarissa – they had the hoplite spear, the dory and the bigger, heavier hoplite aspis. But they were not all individual athletes like the Athenians, and nor did they have a front rank in leg armour, sometimes arm, face and hand armour – a rich Athenian can look like a bronze automaton.

I heard all the excuses that night – there was a line of animal holes, men fell, the Athenians had dug pits in front – for whatever reason, our front rank stumbled and the Athenians gave a great shout and pushed, and our best were stumbling back.

We companions had to hotfoot along to get clear before they slammed into us and all order was lost. Laodon turned back at this point – against orders, I’ll add – and manoeuvred to cover the flank of the hypaspists, in case the enemy light troops got brave. It was a smart move.

Whether Philip had intended it or not, his extreme right – his hypaspists – had engaged first, so that the entire army was echeloned from right to left, with the best troops leading the way and the worst following well behind. I’ve done this on purpose, but on that morning, I still think it was the result of the king being on the far right when he gave the signal to advance, so that the rightmost files stepped off first and started a sort of marching cascade.

It scarcely matters why – except that the whole army
saw
the king and the hypaspists recoil. And the Athenians raised a great cheer, sang the paean, and their whole line moved forward.

I couldn’t rein in and watch – bad for discipline. But it didn’t look good.

I kept turning my head and looking back as we rode – and the hypaspists were driven down and down the ridge, even as our rawest troops were marching forward into the Thebans.

When I reached Alexander, he was alone except for Hephaestion, well in front of all the cavalry.

‘What in Tartarus is happening?’ he demanded.

What exactly do you say? ‘The hypaspists seem hard pressed, lord,’ I said.

Alexander nodded sharply, eyes everywhere.

With a pots-and-pans sound audible even from a stade away, the centres met. The allies had the smaller town contingents and some dubious mercenaries in the centre. We had foot companions. Ours were better, and almost instantly they started to push the allies back.

Why?

The smaller a town is, the smaller its phalanx. Some towns have as few as three or four
hundred
hoplites. That means they’ve never served in a bigger phalanx – they usually don’t form deep enough, and they aren’t used to the terror of a dozen spear-butts with long bronze points licking around their heads. Oh – the rear ranks can be difficult.

But the worst is that the danger spots in a phalanx are always the joins – the places where two contingents line up – say Athens and Thebes. Those two files don’t know each other – don’t trust each other, don’t lap their shields or anything like it. In fact, believe it or not, men from different towns or nations will often leave a gap, even though they know –
they know
– that the gap is a death warrant. Their distrust for other men is so physical they cannot close that gap. I’ve watched contingents of Medes and Persians do it, watched Aegyptians do it – and at Chaeronea, the centre of the allied army had a dozen little contingents and they had more joins than an old pot that’s been thrice repaired.

In our army, of course, we had contingents of about two thousand – every one the same. All Macedonian, or like enough. We drilled them together. We had
no
joins. Our pots never needed repair.

Their centre fractured, as an old pot will when it takes a blow.

That transformed the battle, but it didn’t give us a victory. The hypaspists and our right were still reeling back – the Athenians scented victory, and who could blame them? Traditionally, when an army’s strong right was broken, the game was won, and the hypaspists were barely hanging together. They were still plodding backwards. The noblest thing I can say about them is that they didn’t break, and I think anyone else would have.

But the crushing of the centre halted the Theban advance. Or perhaps the Thebans had never intended to fully support Athens. That, too, was part of Greek warfare. Leaving an ally to die was an old tradition – especially with two allies who hated each other.

Alexander was chewing his lip. His eyes went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth – like a caged lynx I had seen once at Pella. A desperate animal.

On our right, the foot companions to the left of Philip’s elite began to bleed men from their rear rank.

‘How can this be happening!’ asked Alexander.

Hephaestion looked at me. I didn’t have an answer.

It looked to me like a race between two men ripping sheets of linen. Would our centre blow through theirs? Or would our right collapse? I feared with every heartbeat that the call would go up that Philip was down, or dead.

Alexander’s eyes stopped darting about and fixed on the centre.

‘Here we go,’ he said.

Remember, he was eighteen, and this was his first battle.

He saw it, he made the call and he led it. And by the gods, he never flinched once he made the call.

‘Wedge on me!’ he shouted. I pulled in at his back – not my normal position, but I was right there and we were doing this thing right then, I could see.

He grabbed Hephaestion’s bridle.

‘Go to Erygius – tell him to take four troops from the left and
fix the Sacred band in place.
’ He looked at his best friend. ‘Do you understand?’

Hephaestion never really understood. ‘I can take the message,’ he said.

Alexander had an eye to the men forming behind us and another on the battle in front of us.

‘Do you understand, Ptolemy?’ he asked.

I knew exactly what he needed. But I wanted to charge with him. To glory. I saw what he had seen – minutes too late, but I knew, now, that Alexander was about to win the battle.

But being a loyal servant of a great prince is not all wine and gold. ‘Yes, lord,’ I said. In that moment, I hated Hephaestion, as the bitch had a look of triumph – I was sent away, and he was to stay with his lord.

‘Take command of the left of the cavalry and do it,’ Alexander said. Never one to do things by halves.

I saluted, gathered my reins and rode for it.

Erygius was busy packing his men into the prince’s giant wedge when I rode up.

‘Erygius – Alexander says I’m to take all four flank troops and go for the Sacred Band.’

If the old Lesbian was angered to be supplanted, he didn’t make a fuss. His trumpeter called and the men behind him began to move – cursing to have to change and change again, something all soldiers hate – and Erygius turned his horse.

‘We’re going to charge the Sacred Band? Is he insane?’

‘All we have to do is pin them in place,’ I said.

Then Erygius nodded. ‘I see.’ He knelt on his horse’s back and peered under his hand through the thick dust.

‘I’m going to go ahead with . . .’ I looked around, found that Polystratus had followed me. My men, of course, were part of Alexander’s great wedge. ‘Polystratus here. Bring the whole body in a column of troops around the left – see the big fir tree by the river? Make that your left marker. I’ll meet you there – or just keep coming up the stream. See?’

Erygius peered and nodded. ‘Ten minutes,’ he said.

I leaned forward on to Poseidon’s neck, and we were off like a bolt from a stone-thrower.

We went across the back of the army – by coincidence, across the backs of the two taxeis that I had helped to raise and equip. The indecisiveness of the Thebans had probably saved their lives, and they were clamouring to fight. In front of the Thebans, three or four men in brilliant armour were arguing.

The Sacred Band – the finest soldiers in the world – were standing in confident ranks, at the far left of our line. Just three hundred men. Three hundred Olympic athletes, more like. Even a stade away, they looked noble.

More important, they were about to move to my right – opening a gap.

This is war. What is as plain as the nose on your face becomes complex and fraught with peril. Men make decisions in haste, with limited information, surrounded by death. The Thebans decided to move the Sacred Band to the place that was threatened – an absurd decision. Philip decided to take his best troops uphill into the enemy without support – then was too proud to ask for help . . .

Alexander identified the one weakness in the enemy line, worked through a way to exploit it and acted.

Erygius reached the foot of the hill by the tree, two hundred companions in a tight column behind him.

Alexander’s wedge was formed. He raised his sword. I waved to Erygius. He led the cavalry up the hill in a column. And he was smart enough to start echeloning them forward into line even as he came.

I rode over to the left file of the newest taxeis. ‘I’m about to take my cavalry through here,’ I said. ‘Can I have another half a stade?’

The file leaders started to call out.

The taxeis commander ran towards me.

The Sacred Band commander noticed me. He looked right at me. We were three hundred strides apart, but I swear I saw his eyes widen.

Alexander’s charge struck the gap in the centre. I saw it happen – in some ways, I saw more of it than I would have seen if I’d been at his shoulder.

Erygius had the line formed.

The taxiarch came to my right boot. ‘No orders in an hour! What’s happening?’

‘Alexander has just won the battle,’ I said. ‘All we have to do is keep the Thebans from winning it back. When my horse goes forward, you come with me. You hit them in front.’

‘They’ll
kill
my boys.’ He looked at me – curiously; he was speaking as one veteran to another.

‘Only for a minute,’ I said.

Erygius was almost up to me. ‘Stay with the horse!’ I roared to the infantrymen. They all knew me – I’d handed most of them their first helmets. ‘Hold the Sacred Band for a minute, and your names will live for ever!’

One of my best speeches. They roared, and to our front, the Sacred Band commander realised that he’d just given up the safe ground on the flank and now his army had no place to make a stand.

I got my horse into my place on the right of the centre troop. ‘Rhomboid left!’ I roared, and my trumpeters called it.

The infantry started forward – just fast enough that the Sacred Band no longer had time to march back on to their ground.

When you are sparring, there comes a moment when you miss a parry – it can be dreadful, because there can be several heartbeats during which you know how much pain is coming. When two boys who hate each other are fighting with wooden swords, there can actually be time to cringe. I’ve done it.

That’s how the Sacred Band must have felt.

Our phalanx was well ordered; morale was good, the troopers down behind their small shields, their long spears licking away at the enemy, and they marched forward briskly, with flutes playing to mark the time.

My cavalry were slow off the mark – the product of too many formation changes and wheels, so that the slower men were behind the manoeuvre and the best men were annoyed by the apparent indecision. Erygius had swung them from a column of troops into line, eight deep – now we needed to pass the gap to the left of the phalanx, and that meant forming column on the leftmost troop, and it looked to me as if the order was given before some of the flank men had got into place from the last manoeuvre.

There’s not enough papyrus growing on the Nile to give me space to write everything I want to say about the drill of cavalry, but all the priests in the world couldn’t describe the depths of my ignorance at seventeen. I didn’t know then that there’s a moment in a real fight where all manoeuvre goes out of the window, and the good men fight and the poor men cower behind them.

So instead of ignoring the debacle, I rode over, halted the column and gave them time to form.

It was the sort of decision young people make, when they are determined to do a thing well – correctly. The way they’ve been trained, and know it should be done.

It was a decision that cost a hundred men their lives. Because when our eager, well-formed, well-drilled farm boys hit the Sacred Band, those killers cut them down as a slave cuts weeds in the garden. I have never, before or since, seen anything like it. Our front ranks rippled and moved – rippled and moved – and it took me a moment to realise that the file leaders were being cut down, replaced by the men behind them, cut down in their turn . . .

I’m sure it didn’t happen this way – but in memory, there’s a fine mist of blood over the whole thing. A man was dying every time my heart beat, and my heart was beating pretty fast.

I can make an argument that my delay with the cavalry gave us the battle – the Sacred Band focused on the Macedonian pikemen in front of them, and ignored the much greater threat of my four troops of companions.

But that’s what Aristotle called a ‘false rationalisation’. After the fact, one can excuse anything – and weak men do. But here, beneath his tomb, in the comfort of the gods, I say that I got a generation of Pellan farm boys killed because I wanted my ranks dressed more neatly, and I knew it. No one ever mentioned it to me. I never even saw an accusation from them, the poor sods. They saw me as a hero.