Of Merchants & Heros (43 page)

‘Ready,’ I said.

‘Then go and see what’s up there, will you? I don’t want this cursed mist to lift and find him bearing down on us.’

I gathered my men, and we set out, up into the mist, ascending into rolling, grassy upland wet with long tracts of collected storm water.

No birds sang. In the mist there was no echo. Every sound was muffled and died around us.

As dawn turned to morning the sun appeared only as a cold white blur in the east. The men marched in silence, serious-faced and uneasy, scanning the muddy goat-tracks and turf for traces of the enemy.

I tried to ascertain the nature of the terrain around us. It was difficult, when I could not see even to the end of our line of men.

Sometimes the land rose and fell in rolling, grassy undulations; at others it flattened out into open ground. But how wide these clearings were I could not tell.

We trudged on, keeping to one side of a low valley.

I heard footsteps. One of the men came up at the double through the mist. Keeping his voice low he said, ‘Sir, Decimus says he heard something, over there.’

He pointed to a ridge on the opposite side of the valley. Its higher part was lost in the mist.

I looked but could see nothing. ‘What did he hear?’ I asked.

‘He wasn’t sure. Maybe a bird cry. Maybe a man’s call.’

‘Did you hear it?’

‘No.’

I looked again, and listened.

The only sounds were the footfalls of the men in the mud, and the rustling of their equipment.

‘Pass the order to halt,’ I said. ‘Battle formation. We’ll go and look.’

We spread into a defensive line, and mounted the far slope. The mist encircled us, sometimes thinning, so that it seemed to be lifting; then, with a stirring of the breeze, it would close once again around us.

The man beside me – the one who had got the thigh-wound at Korinth – cursed under his breath and spat.

‘What do you think?’ I said.

He wiped his nose on the back of his hand and scanned the terrain.

‘Something’s there.’

I nodded. I sensed it too, like distant heat through a chill, though still I had seen and heard nothing.

I fingered the hand-grip of my sword and walked on.

Presently the ground flattened into a broad grass-covered plateau, the edges of which I could not see.

At the limit of my vision, on a piece of higher ground, a clump of tall pines stirred the fog. All of a sudden something caught my eye, a flash in the gloom; and then, a cubit in front of me, a spear sliced into the sodden turf.

I started back, and stared at the quivering ashwood shaft. Then I yelled, ‘Shields up!’ and all along the line the men’s shields snapped up, just as the first volley rained down upon us out of the mist.

Then they came, surging out from the tree cover, crying out the paean.

We locked in battle. They were peltasts – light-armed infantry; they must have spied us as we entered the valley below, and lain in wait.

Around us the mist stirred and tore and momentarily cleared, and I saw that what I had taken for a plateau was no more than a step, with higher ground around it. The Macedonians had caught us in a basin, and were coming at us from three sides.

I dispatched a runner to summon help. We were forced back into the low ground, where the damp, sucking earth hindered us.

The mist was thinning at last, but what I saw brought no comfort.

Macedonians were streaming along the upland flats. All along the hump-backed ridge that Phaineas had called The Dogs’ Heads their battle-lines were forming. I realized that this was no mere skirmish.

‘Sir,’ cried a youth beside me. It was the messenger back from the camp, saying that Titus was bringing up the whole army, and we must hold till he arrived.

‘Tell him we’ll be here waiting for him,’ I cried, and sent him off.

Beside me the old veteran grinned, showing his black teeth.

‘They are twice as many,’ he said.

Another said, ‘More than that.’

‘And we,’ I said, ‘are Romans.’

He laughed. ‘Then we’d better set to work.’

And after that there was no time for laughing, for the front line of the Macedonian peltasts was upon us, and the battle was joined in earnest.

We were pushed back, but the Macedonians were not yet ready to bring all their force to bear, and our line held.

Then, at last, the reinforcements began to arrive – first the Aitolian cavalry, then cohorts of the allied infantry. Through the breaking cloud low sunlight shafted through the mist, glinting on the approaching standards. All along the valley trumpets sounded.

The ground mist parted and dispersed, and I saw then, on the top of the hill, a figure appear, a rider in a gilded sunburst breastplate and purple cloak, mounted on a splendid white horse trimmed with gold.

I could not see his face. I did not need to. As he came into view, a cheer rose up from the Macedonian line. He acknowledged it with a high salute; then, urging his horse, he took up position at the front.

The battle-pikes descended. From his horse, in a clear, steady voice, Philip sounded the note of the paean, and it was taken up by the whole line, a clamour like rolling thunder that echoed down the valley. The king raised his arm, then let it fall, and with a roar of men’s voices the whole phalanx began to advance.

Our forces met. I saw, in the distance, our left wing falter and buckle. Then, from the right, the men opposite us charged, and I had to concern myself with my own business, as the Macedonian infantry crashed into our line.

Our company fought in a close-knit band. What we had suffered at Korinth, fighting at bay in the breached wall while Lucius deserted us, had forged a bond between us, and now we fought with one mind. The Macedonians were trying to drive us down the ridge, into the low ground where they could overwhelm us. We did not give way. For a long time, as it seemed, we fought, neither advancing nor retreating.

Presently, as happens in battle, there was a brief lull around us as the heat of the battle moved elsewhere. We paused to get our breath.

The veteran beside me said, ‘Isn’t your lover fighting with the Athenians?’

I looked at him. He had used the crude army term he was familiar with; but I saw he meant no offence by it.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Why?’

But by then I had followed his gaze, and could see the answer for myself.

The right wing of our line had driven the enemy from the high ground. But at the same time our left wing had fallen back.

Everywhere men were locked in close fighting, and in the midst of it I saw the Athenian colours surging forward, falling into a trap they were unaware of, which was closing about them even as I watched.

I looked back at the veteran. I do not know what my face must have told him, but my voice said, ‘They need help.’

He nodded. ‘Yes they do. Then what are we waiting for?’

He shoved his fingers in his mouth and gave a sharp whistle, and like a pack of hunting dogs the whole company looked up. I turned and looked again across the battlefield. The Macedonians had closed on the Athenian hoplites and I could no longer make them out among the general m l e of fighting men. I called on Mars to give me sight. I looked again. And then I saw what I needed to see.

The Macedonians, in their blind eagerness to pursue our flank, had failed to notice we still held the high ground on the right, and as they advanced a gap had opened in their line.

‘See there?’ I cried to our company, pointing. They nodded, and their eyes flashed at me through their helmet-slits. And then we charged, slicing through the breach in the Macedonian phalanx.

I recalled what Titus had said, and now I saw it for myself. The phalanx was locked in formation, and could not turn to face us. And so they did what any man would do. They threw down their long pikes and scattered before our charge, and as they did so the rest of their line buckled and collapsed behind them.

From his vantage point on the ridge, I saw Philip on his white horse, surveying the field. Then our hard-pressed left wing regrouped and charged, and before them the Macedonians took flight. Philip paused, one man alone against the cloud-clearing sky.

Then, with a switch of his gilded reins, he turned his horse and was gone, and from all along our lines a cheer went up.

And yet, during all this time, there was only one thing on my mind: Menexenos. What prevented me from breaking off and going in search of him I do not know. Perhaps it was no more than pride and shame, which holds a man together when much else has deserted him. That, and the men around me, to whom I owed a warrior’s loyalty.

But now I began to look about at the fallen bodies.

Halfway down the ridge the Athenian standard lay fallen. I picked my way through the dead and dying – Macedonians, Romans, Aitolians, and Greeks from other cities. Then, at last, I came among the Athenians.

I saw Ismenios first. He was lying on his back, with a spear lodged in his throat. It had cut through his neck from front to back, pinning him to the earth as he fell. Close by, face down, was Theodoros his lover, his arm stretched out before him. I wondered which had died first.

I walked on, my mind frozen with just one thought. And then I saw him.

His hair was matted with blood and sweat, and his helmet lay tumbled on the ground beside him. He was crouching down beside young Lysandros, cradling the boy’s head in his lap. As I drew near he looked up. His cheeks were glistening.

‘He fought bravely,’ he said.

The boy lay staring up at the sky. His eyes were open still; but his soul had fled.

I nodded and knelt beside him, and as I wiped the tears from my eyes, I smeared my face with the blood of the men I had killed that day.

When Philip had left the field, everyone thought the Aitolians had gone in pursuit of him.

But when, later that day, we reached the enemy camp, we found them there.

The Macedonians had fled north with Philip. The Aitolians had let them slip through their fingers; they were more interested in reaching the camp before anyone else, to have first pick of the plunder.

By the time we arrived, the camp was a smoking upturned ruin of burnt-out tents and charred wooden outhouses. Scattered among them, struck down as they ran, were the bodies of the innocent camp-followers: old men, women and children. Those the Aitolians had not murdered had been corralled into the horse-pens, to be sold as slaves. They crouched cowering, half naked, having been stripped of everything that was of value.

The Aitolians had discovered the wine-store – long before, judging by the state they were in. They were drinking out of whatever containers they came across – looted cups, an unwieldy silver krater, food dishes, even shards of smashed amphoras. As we made our way along the camp’s central avenue they staggered around us, calling out and singing, vaunting and red-eyed, waving their swords in the air, bellowing out to the disciplined Roman troopers how they had vanquished the greatest power in Greece.

Menexenos, who was walking beside me, regarded them with cold distaste. ‘The only victory here,’ he said, ‘is that of passion over reason.’

Just then we reached the remains of Philip’s great square pavilion. It had been looted and burned like everything else, but I recognized it from its position, and from a scrap of blue-dyed fabric on the ground, painted with the golden sunburst emblem of the royal house of Macedon. The bodies of serving-slaves lay all about, their throats cut.

Titus arrived, his blue eyes aflame with anger.

‘Curse them!’ he said. ‘Philip has not yet conceded, and they have let him get away.’

In front of us an Aitolian captain came staggering past, cradling in his arms a bulging sack from which a silver lampstand protruded.

‘You!’ Titus shouted at him. ‘Set that down, and bring Phaineas to me.’

The man paused. He glanced around him, and then at his bag of loot, and one could see the workings of his mind in his face.

His mouth twisted into a smirk. ‘Set it down?’ he sneered. ‘So you can take it from me? I found it first, and so it’s mine. You must think I was born with the day’s dawn.’

Titus took a step forward, and the Aitolian stumbled off.

‘This,’ said Titus, turning back to me and Menexenos, ‘is what mankind becomes when law and decency and order are taken away.

The price of war is more than blood. We should do well to remember it.’

FOURTEEN

WE PURSUED PHILIP NORTH
through Thessaly. At Larissa we were met by a herald seeking terms, saying the king desired a final settlement.

The peace conference met at Tempe; Philip, who had no choice now, agreed to withdraw from Greece, and provide sureties against his future conduct. Everyone agreed, except the Aitolians, who wanted to crush Philip into the ground.

Menexenos had travelled up with the Athenian delegation. When the conference was over we rode out along the banks of the Peneios, finding a secluded glade under the high cliffs, where flat rocks extended into the cool water, and here we stripped off our clothes and swam. Afterwards, drying off in the hot afternoon sun, we talked, while all around the cicadas sang among the laurels. The air smelled of summer flowers and the dampness of the rocks.