God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great (53 page)

I tried to tell Alexander that. Twice.

The second time was worse. He looked at me – he had his helmet under his arm, and he was about to take the Prodromoi south to make sure our retreat was clear.

‘Are they children, to be cosseted?’ he asked. ‘See to it.’

‘Can we set a date for marching home?’ I asked. I managed all this under the guise of the sacred Military Journal.

Alexander was looking at the entries for the last few days, and carefully running the spatulate end of the stylus across the casualties for Pine Island. ‘Yes,’ he said. He was taking this seriously. He was no fool, and if I’m giving that impression, wipe it from your mind. He was as far above me as I am above most men. He just couldn’t think like them, and they were mysterious to him. He looked at me under those blond eyelashes and he gave me that rare smile – the look of his full attention.

‘How long do I have?’ he asked quietly.

‘Three weeks,’ I answered, because I’d prayed he’d accept my guidance and so I had an answer ready. ‘If I let it be known this morning, I think you’ll find the men a great deal more willing to try the Danube crossing. They think . . . they think we’re going to march off the edge of the world.’

‘How well they know me,’ he said with a gentle smile. ‘Let it be done.’ He looked at the Military Journal again and furrowed his eyebrows. ‘Every ambassador is going to end up reading this, Ptolemy. Keep that in mind when you write. I don’t ask that we seem perfect.’ He grinned. ‘Merely invincible.’

I must have grinned back. To be honest, I was relieved, myself – first, because we were not wintering here, which I had feared he’d try to do, and second, because
this
was the Alexander I loved. He’d been hard to find since the victories started to come.

That morning I summoned all my adjutants and gathered the entries for the day before, and then I passed the word – three weeks. The Feast of Demeter in the Macedonian festival calendar, and we’d march for hearth and home.

Ever work yourself to exhaustion?

And then eat a meal? And you can
feel
the power going into your limbs – you can feel the lifting of the fatigue? Eh? That’s how it was after I dismissed my adjutants. I could feel the change.

We loaded men into the boats. The cavalry went on the triremes, a trick we’d learned from Athens, and the infantry went in the canoes and fishing boats. It took us all day to cross the river, and we spent the night just offshore, a fleet of vulnerable dugout canoes overladen with men, armour and long spears. In the morning, we landed with the dawn, and marched inland through fields of oats and wheat that stood almost as high as a man, and we marched at open order, with every infantryman carrying his spear parallel to the ground so that the glinting heads wouldn’t give us away. The cavalry was last ashore, inside a great square protected by the infantry, and we got on our horses without incident. I led my squadron out to the right. Cleitus had the left squadron.

We came out of the fields about three stades from the riverbank, and we could see their fortified camp in the distance. Our element of surprise was total, and we swept towards them quickly, the cavalry well out on the flanks in extended lines, only two deep and ten horse lengths between men, looking for ambushes.

There were none.

We captured an undefended horse herd, and we overran the little makeshift port where they’d been supplying the island. We took four days’ supplies for the whole army and another two hundred small boats. The men loaded up with food and bad wine.

The Getae came out of their camp when we set fire to the boats.

Alexander rode along the line, his cloak billowing behind him, and we roared his name, and charged. It wasn’t a complicated battle. In fact, there was very little fighting, and we chased them into their camp.

We milled about outside their log rampart, and then I started to call insults to the men on the walls in my best Thracian.

They sent out a warrior.

That’s the trouble with challenging men to combat. Sometimes they take you up on it.

Alexander came over to me while I had my sword arm rebandaged. ‘You up to this, my friend?’ he asked.

The Getae warrior was sitting on his horse under the walls, shouting insults. On our side, my friends were offering me their swords, their spears and their horses.

I settled my helmet on my head, flexed my fingers and vaulted on to Poseidon’s broad back.

‘I am, Lord King.’ I think I was grinning. I was afraid and elated.

‘You’ll need to do better than last time,’ he said, with a grin. He had a point. Kineas had put me down.

Men slapped my back and told me I was lucky, and then I was trotting over the turf towards my adversary. I took a pair of heavy longche from Polystratus, rather than my usual lance.

I trotted forward and waved to my adversary, thinking we would agree on some rules.

He wasn’t interested in discussing anything. He came right at me, drew an arrow to his eye and loosed.

At sixty paces, that arrow went right into Poseidon’s chest.

Bless my dear horse, he paused and then sprang forward.

The Thracian was controlling his horse with his knees, and he turned away, fitting another arrow to his bow.

Poseidon was running with an arrow three fingers deep in his chest, but he ate the ground between us as the Thracian turned his smaller horse. I closed – fifty paces, forty paces – and then he turned at a gallop and headed due west, along the front of our army.

Poseidon turned to cut his path.

He turned and shot. It was a beautiful shot, and hit my helmet just above my eyes, but the slope of the bronze and the skill of the maker saved me. Two inches lower and he’d have won that fight, and I’d never have been King of Aegypt.

At ten paces he brought the bow up again, and I threw my javelin. Ten paces is nothing to a trained man, and Poseidon, the best horse I ever had, felt my throw coming and flowed into it, so that I threw on his off foot. I hit my target – his horse – in the neck with a heavy spear, and that horse died before I reached him, and my adversary was tangled on the ground with his broken bow.

The Macedonians cheered.

The man came up out of the wreck limping, and he had a sword. He stood his ground, and I slapped him in the head with the spear-point and knocked him unconscious. Then I dragged him by his own saddle rope, tied round his feet, across the front of our army to where the king sat on Bucephalus.

‘Was that better, my lord?’ I asked.

Alexander’s eyes sparkled. He handed me a cup of wine, embraced me and let me bask in the congratulations of all the other Hetaeroi. Say what you will of the former pages – we all respected success, and no one was ever petty enough to conceal admiration for a deed well done. Cleitus was smothered in it after the Woods Battle, and now it was my turn.

I untied the man and turned him over to Polystratus. ‘See if you can revive him,’ I said. ‘A drag across the turf shouldn’t have killed him.’

In fact, my head hurt, and Polystratus took my good cavalry Boeotian, shook his head and showed me the bowl. There was a dent as deep as a man’s thumb in the front just above the cranium, and the helmet was ruined. It had saved my life three times.

I lay down for a while but Thaïs, quite wisely, didn’t let me sleep, but prattled at me and made me walk about and fed me water and honey. When I could see straight and talk well, she let me have a nap.

When I woke, the Thracians had surrendered, and the sound of the army’s cheers brought me back to earth.

They didn’t actually surrender. But the Thracians on Pine Island agreed to evacuate and surrender one half of their herds, and the Getae agreed to allow them to come over the Danube to resettle, and Alexander forced them to agree that the lands between the pass and the Danube were his to dispose of.

I suspected that this agreement would be nullified the moment they couldn’t see our spears, and I was right, but it made Alexander happy – and we’d shown them that they wouldn’t be safe
anywhere
, and that was worth something. To be honest, I’m not sure that it was worth the body count. We lost fifty-eight cavalrymen – mostly Hetaeroi – and almost four hundred pezhetaeroi and hypaspitoi. They were fine men in the peak of training. They died, and we got very little in return.

And yet – looked at another way, we got everything in return, because we were building the reputation for invincibility that was better than ten thousand men.

And we did receive an amazing amount of loot and tribute. When we marched for home, we looked more like a nomad nation migrating than a Macedonian army on the march, and Alexander ordered us – the cavalry – to patrol aggressively, because he feared we were so overladen with beasts and gold that we’d be easy pickings for an Illyrian raid. It had happened to Philip years before – when he fought the Sakje of the Great Steppe. He beat them, but they weren’t beaten, and they ambushed him on the road home and took his gear and his cattle.

I’d forgotten – look here, it’s in the Military Journal – I’d forgotten the Keltoi. Our last day on the river, when all the deals had been made and all our men were glutted with spear-won beef, and Thaïs and I were, in fact, rutting like a stag and a hind in season in our tent, Cleitus came to our tent – he had the worst timing – burst in and turned as red as a Tyrian cloak. Thaïs was astride me, hands locked under my neck, mouth pressed against mine, and I could see Cleitus . . .

Oh, I’m a dirty old man. But I didn’t stop, and neither did Thaïs. She just grinned.

‘The king wants you,’ Cleitus said, staring at a hanging carpet.

‘I’m . . . a little busy, but I’ll . . . be along . . . shortly,’ I said.

‘Not too shortly,’ Thaïs said.

I used to make Cleitus blush just mentioning this incident – the best killer of men in the Macedonian army, the toughest bastard Alexander had, but he’d blush like a virgin. Hah! Fine man, Cleitus. But a little odd.

When I reached the king, he smiled and said, ‘I’ve been counting the minutes,’ and laughed. It was as close to a sexual joke as I ever heard him make, and all the officers around him laughed too.

The embassage of Keltoi was twenty men and as many women. They were tall – in fact, they were huge, many of them a head taller than me, and I’m not small. Most were blond, and all of them had beautiful long hair, wrapped and plaited in gold. The women had the largest breasts and the best figures of any race I’d seen – wide hips, tiny waists and blue eyes.

Their language was truly barbaric, but they had dignity and good manners.

They also claimed to rule an empire greater than ours, stretching all the way to Thule. I was derisive, but Alexander was fascinated.

They flattered him, lauding his victories over the Thracians, although they made it clear they’d smacked the Thracians pretty hard themselves.

Alexander nodded after listening patiently. ‘Are you, then, the overlords of these Thracian tribes?’ he asked.

The most noble-looking of the men, wearing a sword worth ten of my farms, shrugged. He spoke through a woman interpreter. She didn’t look like the rest of them – she was smaller and darker and very pretty, rather than displaying the normal somewhat ethereal beauty of the Keltoi. She smiled a great deal, too. She listened to him and then turned to the king.

‘He says – we are kings and lords to the Triballi, when we will it. Never the Getae,’ she added.

Alexander nodded. ‘I am now the lord of the Triballi and the Getae,’ he said.

All the Keltoi laughed.

Alexander snapped at her. ‘What are they laughing at?’

One of the Keltoi women pointed at the sky and said something and they all laughed again.

The interpreter looked as if she was afraid. The smiles were gone.

‘What did she say?’ Alexander demanded.

‘Nothing, lord,’ she said.

Alexander shook his head. ‘I demand to know!’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘She asked if you were also lord of the clouds.’

The Keltoi woman spoke again, with vehemence.

Alexander ignored her and turned back to the richest man. ‘Are you here to swear your allegiance to me?’ he asked.

There was much talk. Then the interpreter said, ‘They say – no.’ She shrugged.

Alexander pointed at his army. We, as an army, were not at our most impressive, as most of the infantry were busy loading spear-won wagons with spear-won loot, wool and hangings and carpets and furs and some gold.

‘You should fear my army, which I can march anywhere in the world,’ Alexander said.

The Keltoi talked among themselves, and then the interpreter shook her head and expostulated.

‘I think they are saying we should sod off,’ I muttered to Marsyas.

Marsyas grinned. In some strange way, it was entertaining to watch these rich barbarians be utterly unimpressed with us.

Finally, the dark woman stood in front of Alexander with her shoulders square as if she was ready to resist torture. ‘They say that if you brought an army this small to their lands, they might ignore it. If you brought a real army, they would bury it under the weight of their chariot wheels and the hooves of their horses and the steel of their swords. They say that you have no idea what is north of the Danube, while they know where Pella is and where Athens is. And Rome and Carthage, too, they say. And the queen asks – would you like to swear fealty to her? She says she will be a gentle overlord.’

I burst into laughter. I couldn’t stop myself. I slapped my thighs and roared, and Alexander looked at me. His anger dissipated, and he joined me. He laughed, and Perdiccas and Hephaestion laughed, and Marsyas laughed.

And all the Keltoi laughed.

Somehow it reminded me of the visit to Diogenes.

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