Alexander (Vol. 3) (Alexander Trilogy) (9 page)

E
VEN THOUGH TWILIGHT
had descended, it was clear there was no one on the other side of the river. For as far as the eye could see there was no living soul and neither were there fires or any other signs of human presence. The air was completely still and a few herons glided lazily along the banks of the river in search of young fish and frogs.

Alexander let Peritas and Bucephalas drink, but occasionally he pulled on the horse’s reins to stop him from filling his stomach too much. Then he gathered some water into his cupped hands and threw it over the horse’s belly and his legs to refresh him slightly. Shortly afterwards all the cavalry battalions up – and downstream of the ford came to a halt and each horseman took his mount to the water to drink.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Seleucus as he approached and looked across to the other side.

‘I thought they’d all be lined up ready for battle on the opposite bank,’ added Lysimachus as he took off his helmet and started unlacing his breastplate.

Ptolemy too had taken off his helmet, filled it from the river and was emptying it over his head, savouring the cool water, ‘Ah! That’s wonderful!’

‘Well . . . if you like it that much . . . here you go!’ shouted Leonnatus as he prepared to fill his own helmet and throw its contents over Ptolemy, but all of a sudden he stopped and said, ‘Hold on! Hold on! Here comes Mr Secretary General. Everyone ready for my signal, alright?’

Eumenes approached just at that moment in full combat dress, his helmet adorned with ostrich plumes.

‘Alexander,’ he began, ‘listen to what I have to say. I have received news that—’

He didn’t manage to finish the sentence because Leonnatus started shouting at the top of his voice, ‘Ambush! Ambush!’ and everyone let fly with helmetsful of water, soaking him from head to foot.

‘I am sorry, Mr Secretary General,’ said Alexander, struggling to stifle the laughter, ‘but this was an ambush that took us all by surprise and even I wasn’t able to prevent it.’

Eumenes was completely drenched and his ostrich feathers were in a sorry state. ‘What a lovely joke,’ he grumbled disconsolately as he took off his helmet and studied what was left of his fine plumage. ‘Bunch of idiots, bastards and arseholes . . .’

‘You must forgive them, Mr Secretary General,’ Alexander sought to bring him round, ‘they’re just lads. But weren’t you about to tell me something?’

‘It matters not,’ said Eumenes, ‘I’ll tell you some other time.’

‘Come on, don’t take it like that. I’ll see you in my tent. And I’ll see you lot as well!’ he shouted at all the others. ‘Hephaestion. Go and gather a team together to patrol the other side – I want news of their whereabouts before supper.’

He went off followed by Peritas towards the place where his men were pitching the royal tent, hammering in the pegs with mallets.

Eumenes arrived shortly afterwards wearing dry clothes and the King invited him to sit down with him while Leptine and the other women busied themselves preparing the tables and dining beds for supper.

‘Well then, what is this news you spoke of?’

‘It won’t take long to explain. Eumolpus of Soloi has received a message. The Great King’s army is about five parasangs from here towards the southeast, more or less on the road that leads to Babylonia, not far from a village by the name of Gaugamela.’

‘That’s a strange name.’

‘It means “the house of the camel” and it derives from an old story. Apparently King Darius the Great, fleeing from an ambush astride a camel, reached safety thanks to the extraordinary speed of this particular animal. Out of gratitude, he had a stable built with every possible facility and awarded the animal the village’s income for the rest of its life. That is how the village acquired its strange name.’

‘A day’s march away . . . strange. He could have nailed us on the riverbank and blocked us there for who knows how long.’

‘It appears to be a deliberate strategy. Have you noticed what the terrain is like on both this and the other side of the Tigris?’

‘Rolling, with potholes and the occasional rock protruding from the ground.’

‘Exactly. It is not suitable ground for the scythed chariots. The Great King is waiting for us on perfectly flat terrain,’ he said, passing his hand over the smooth surface of the small table before him as he spoke. ‘He has had all the potholes filled and the rocks cleared and flattened so that the chariots can reach maximum speed.’

‘That may well be, but the fact is that no one has disturbed our approach, we have had no trouble finding supplies in the villages and now we could easily cross the Tigris.’

‘Apart from the current.’

‘Apart from the current – it must have rained up in the mountains.’

Just then the other friends arrived and Nearchus was with them as well.

‘I see that Mr Secretary General is in a presentable state again,’ said Leonnatus as he came in. ‘What a metamorphosis! Only a few moments ago he looked like a drowned rat!’

‘Enough!’ said Alexander. ‘Sit down. There are important matters to discuss.’ Everyone sat down and even Peritas took up position at the King’s feet, chewing on his sandals as he had done ever since he was a puppy.

‘It appears that the Great King is waiting for us on a stretch of level ground a day’s march from here.’

‘Good!’ exclaimed Perdiccas. ‘Let’s go then, I wouldn’t like him to get bored.’

‘The news, which reached us via Eumolpus of Soloi, comes from Persian sources, so we cannot exclude its being a trap for us.’

‘Right! Let’s not forget Issus,’ moaned Leonnatus. ‘That son of a bitch was about to sell us all out just to save his own arsehole!’

‘Cut it out!’ Perdiccas shut him up. ‘I wonder what you would have done. What motive does he have to betray us? I trust Eumolpus.’

‘So do I,’ said Alexander, ‘but this does not mean that we have to believe the information – it may well have been sent to draw us into a blind alley.’

‘What do you plan on doing, then?’ asked Lysimachus as he poured some wine into his companions’ cups.

‘Tonight Hephaestion will let us know if they are really so far from the river. Tomorrow we will ford the river, we will proceed in the direction of the enemy army and after two or three parasangs’ march, we will send a group of reconnaissance soldiers to see how things stand. At that stage we will hold a war council and we will attack’

And the scythed chariots?’ asked Ptolemy.

We will put them out of action and then we will throw everything into the centre. Just as we did at Issus.’

We win, they lose. Asia will be ours,’ Nearchus gave his view succinctly.

‘That’s easy to say,’ said Seleucus, ‘but just try to imagine what things will be like when they set off with those chariots across that plain – the dust, the din of the wheels, the scythes glinting in the sun as they turn at such high speed. I think they will seek to take out our central units while the cavalry will attack our flanks.’

‘Seleucus is right,’ said Alexander, ‘but there is no point in trying to lay out a battle plan now, before the fact; as for the chariots, we will do just as the “ten thousand” did at Kunaxa. Remember? The heavy infantry opened up, creating corridors through which the chariots passed without causing any damage and then the archers turned and attacked the drivers and the charioteers from behind. I’m worried instead about the dust – if there is no wind then as soon as the battle starts there will be such a thick haze that we won’t be able to see beyond our noses. We’ll have to use the trumpets to keep the divisions in touch with one another. But let us eat and enjoy ourselves now – there is no reason for us to fret in this way, we have always won and we will win again this time.’

‘Do you really think there will be a million men waiting for us down there?’ asked Leonnatus, visibly worried. ‘By Hercules, I can’t even imagine it! But how many men are there in a million?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ said Eumenes. ‘It means that each one of us will have to kill twenty for us to win and they would still have some left over.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Alexander. ‘To feed a million men in constant movement is almost impossible, not to mention all the water and so on necessary for the horses. I think . . . I think there will be about half that number, just a few more than we faced at Issus. Anyway, as I said, we will wait and see how things really are when we make direct contact with the enemy.’

The servants began bringing the food and Alexander had some interesting ‘companions’ come in, freshly arrived from Greece, to cheer his friends up a little. Among them was an Athenian girl of truly striking beauty, dark-haired and with burning eyes and a firm, solid body – a goddess.

‘Look at that!’ exclaimed Alexander as soon as she appeared. ‘Is she not stupendous? Did you know that this girl posed nude before the great Protogenes, for a statue of Aphrodite? Her name is Tais and this year in Athens she has been declared the
callipygia.’

‘The finest pair of buttocks in the whole city, isn’t that right?’ laughed Leonnatus. ‘But do you think we’ll get a chance to see them?’

‘Everything in its just time, my fiery young goat,’ said the girl with a wicked smile.

Leonnatus turned to Eumenes with a puzzled look on his face, ‘No woman has ever called me “fiery young goat” before. I don’t know whether to take it as a compliment or an insult.’

‘Don’t expend too much energy thinking – you might do yourself an injury,’ replied Eumenes. ‘In any case, “fiery young goat” doesn’t sound too bad to me. I think you’ve scored.’

Other ‘companions’ entered, all of them very attractive and they stretched out near the diners as supper was served. Ptolemy, in his role as leader of the symposium, had decided that the wine would be cut at a ratio of one to one, a decision that met with general approval.

When they had all finished eating and were all quite merry, Tais began dancing. She wore only a short
chiton
and was completely naked underneath – each time she turned she offered generous views of what she had been rewarded for back in Athens and what had led Protogenes to chose her as model for Aphrodite.

Suddenly she grabbed a flute from a table and began to play it, accompanying her own dance with the instrument, and the music seemed to dress her body which continued to turn and ripple ever more quickly before suddenly stopping in a cascade of sharp, almost strident notes. Tais crouched on the ground like a wild beast about to pounce – breathless and shining with sweat – and then she started to play again and her melody left the tent and travelled to the edge of the camp, reaching the guards standing motionless on their watch. The sweetest melody accompanied her more gentle, softer and sinuous movements now as she made gestures akin to more ardent lovemaking.

The men stopped laughing and joking and the King himself seemed to be transfixed by her movements as they picked up speed with the music, ever more rhythmic and incessant, drawing close to the climax. The small space in the tent seemed to be completely filled by the presence of Tais, impregnated with the smell of her skin and her hair with its blue sheen. It was as though her dancing had unleashed some irresistible energy, a powerful charm, and in a flash Alexander remembered another moment in his past life – the notes of the flute his mother Olympias played in the depths of a forest in Eordaea, instigating an orgiastic dance in the middle of the night, the
komos
of Dionysian pleasure.

When Tais fell exhausted and breathless, everyone’s eyes were burning with desire, each expressing an irrepressible sexual drive, but no one dared move, waiting for the King to take his prerogative. The whinny of a horse and the noise of galloping suddenly broke the tension of the moment – Hephaestion burst into the tent, covered in sweat and dust, ‘Darius’s army is half a day’s march from here,’ he said, struggling for breath. ‘There are hundreds of thousands of them – their fires burn in the night like stars in the sky, their war horns call out in the night from one end of the plain to the other.’

Alexander stood up and looked around as though he had been abruptly wakened from a dream, and then he said, ‘Go and rest now. Tomorrow we will ford the river, and tomorrow evening at sunset we will hold a war council within sight of the Persian army.’

T
HE
T
IGRIS FLOWED
very quickly even at the ford, and the infantrymen who were the first to attempt the crossing soon found themselves in trouble: at the very centre of the river the water came up to their chests. Their shields were cumbersome and if they kept them low in the water then they caught too much of the current and were ripped from their arms; if they held them high then the soldiers themselves soon lost their balance and were dragged off downstream together with the shields.

Parmenion gave orders for two ropes to be tied between the two banks and for two double rows of soldiers to be lined up, without shields, across the river – one upstream of the ford, to break the flow, and one downstream of the ford, to catch those men who fell into the water and were carried away by it. The General had the rest of the heavy infantry pass through the sheltered corridor provided by the human barrier. The cavalry were the last to cross, followed by the carts with the supplies, baggage, the women and the children. It was early afternoon when the leading components came into sight of the enemy positions, but the tail end was still on the banks of the Tigris and it took what was left of that day for the last of them to join up with the rest of the army.