God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great (124 page)

I watched the two mighty lines close on each other. I waited for one or the other to flinch.

No one flinched.

When they met – when they met, it turned out that Alexander was wrong about the efficacy of the pike.

A lot of our men died, in the front rank. Veterans – men who had crossed the Granicus, men who had stood their ground at Chaeronea, stormed Thebes, crossed the Danube . . .

The men who made us what we were.

They died because elephants cared nothing for age, skill, armour, shields or the length of the spear. They snapped the spears, and their great feet crushed men, and their trunks grabbed men from their ground and lifted them high in the air, and their tusks, often sawn short and replaced with swords, swept along like the scythes on Darius’s chariots.

The taxeis were not in the same state of high training they had once been. The ranks were full of recruits and foreigners. When the phylarchs ordered whole files to double to the rear to make lanes, some taxeis, like that of Perdiccas, executed this flawlessly, and the monsters walked on, doing no harm. But in other taxeis, the attempt to manoeuvre in the face of the beasts led to chaos.

And collapse.

Meleager’s taxeis broke first. It didn’t run – because the better men weren’t capable of running. But the lesser men hesitated, the files fell apart and then suddenly the pikes were falling to the ground and men were falling back, or running, leaving their phylarchs and their half-file leaders to fight alone.

Attalus’s mob broke next. They unravelled faster, and by the time they started to go, I was in motion. I looked back for the king, and I couldn’t see him, so I acted on my own.

I led the Prodromoi forward into the flank of the Indian line. It wasn’t really a
line
so much as a thin horde. They were having trouble with their bows, which probably saved a lot of Macedonian lives, but they didn’t have any trouble with their long swords, and they were using them to batter through the front of the spear wall, where the elephants caused any hesitation.

Right on the end of their line, closest to me, was a hard knot of elephants – five of the brutes.

We charged them.

Our horses baulked.

A mahout swung his animal to face us, the men on the animal’s back showering us with darts and arrows. Above us in the swirl of a cavalry fight, they had a superb advantage. It is very hard to throw a javelin
up
. Especially when trying to control a panicked horse.

Indian cavalry had taken refuge with their elephants, and their horses weren’t panicked by the monsters – a matter of habituation.

An old Thracian, Sitalkes – I’d sat around a hundred fires with him – downed a mahout with his javelin. Most of the Paeonians saw it, and the cry went up to kill the drivers – because no sooner did the mahout fall from between the giant beast’s ears than the animal came to a dead stop.

But it was easier said than done, and most cavalrymen had only two or three javelins, and most had spent them in the cavalry fight. Before long, we were riding in among the animals, but doing them no harm – washing about their feet as the ocean washes against the pilings of a pier.

I rode clear of the fight.

There was the king, rallying his household Hetaeroi.

I rode up and saluted. He bellowed at his trumpeter, Agon – the same man who refused to summon the guard the night that Cleitus died, a fine man and a hero many times over – bellowed for Agon to sound the rally again.

He looked back at me.

‘We’re not having any effect,’ I shouted. ‘We need javelins.
You
need javelins. And the beasts panic our horses.’

Alexander watched the melee behind me for the space of twenty heartbeats.

‘Not true,’ he said. ‘Your men have pulled five elephants out of the line. That’s something.’

‘What do we do?’ I asked.

Alexander backed his beautiful white horse – his fourth mount of the day – and fought the stallion’s desire to fidget. ‘I’m thinking,’ he said.

From any other man, that would have promoted panic.

I turned my horse, intending to go back into the melee. Not because I wanted to. Fighting elephants is pure terror – fighting them on horseback is fighting the monster, fighting your own fear and the fears of a dumb animal who controls your fate.

Alexander grabbed my shoulder. ‘Stay,’ he said. ‘I need you.’

So I waited.

I had never had leisure, in the middle of a fight, to watch him. I had seen him at the height of battles – but never at the height of a battle in the balance.

He rode back and forth in front of the Hetaeroi. He was learning his mount – he walked, he trotted, he sat back, he rolled his hips. Meanwhile, his men were collecting javelins from the ground, and from corpses, and the last slackers were rejoining.

To our front, the elephants were surrounded by the Paeonians and the Prodromoi. Men were trying to cut the elephants with their swords, and failing. They were brave.

They were dying.

Beyond them, the elephants were pressing forward. Closest to me, Seleucus and the hypaspists were retiring slowly, in perfect order. A dead elephant testified to their prowess, and the Indians let them go.

They were retreating because the phalanx was
gone
. The five taxeis were huddled in the scrubby trees.

Porus and his elephants rumbled to a stop. His Indian infantry didn’t leave the shelter of the great beasts. They reformed their line and began to loft arrows at the hypaspitoi, the last infantry on the field.

Alexander grabbed my bridle.

‘Go to the centre and rally the phalanx,’ he said. ‘Get them back on to the field. They will not want to come. Make them move.’ His eyes glinted like polished silver, and he was smiling inside his helmet. ‘Look at the five monsters you charged.’

One elephant had simply wandered away, its mahout dead. The other four had stopped. They were confused by all the horses, by the pain of a thousand minor cuts, and now they were baulking at their mahouts’ commands, turning and moving away, into the flank of the Indians. Killing their own men.

‘Get the centre back,’ he said. ‘I’ll defeat the elephants.’

He sounded very, very happy.

I rode to Seleucus, first. He was on foot – his horse had dumped him as soon as the elephants closed, a young horse and not fully broken.

He looked stricken. ‘We . . . we’ve lost?’

I managed a smile. ‘Look at the king,’ I said. ‘Does he look beaten?’

Seleucus nodded. And grunted.

‘I’m going to try to get the pezhetaeroi back on the field,’ I said. ‘Retreat slowly, and when the centre comes back, go forward.’

Alectus laughed. ‘Forward, is it?’ He pointed at a pair of elephants, tusks dripping. They had a hypaspist – both had their trunks around him – and they were both pulling. Pulling him apart. Like cats playing with a mouse.

‘Forward when I come,’ I said.

I spurred Triton, who was delighted to ride
away
from the beasts.

Back among the scrub, there was a sight I had never had to see. The pezhetaeroi were angry, terrified and humiliated. Men were sitting on the ground, weeping, or staring dumbly. A few phylarchs were trying to form the men, but most were standing, watching disaster without any idea how to fix it. Rout was something that happened to other armies, not ours.

And a lot of our phylarchs were dead.

Meleager was at the rear of the mess, out on the open ground north of the woods, hitting men with the flat of his sword, herding them back into the woods.

I rode to him. ‘Alexander says get them back into the field,’ I said.

Meleager looked at me. ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘They’re not going, and neither am I. Why don’t you go and face the elephants, and see how you like it?’

‘I already have,’ I said. ‘I can’t pretend I like it. But I’ll do it. And so will you.’

Meleager spat. ‘Fuck off,’ he shouted.

I left him to his despair and rode to Attalus.

Attalus had the nucleus of his taxeis formed
behind
the woods, and more men were joining the ranks, and the surviving phylarchs were appointing new file leaders. The awful truth of a rout like that is that the best men
die
. They’re the ones who stand. The lesser men run, and survive.

‘Alexander orders you back on to the field,’ I shouted.

As soon as men heard me shout, they started walking to the rear.

‘Are you insane?’ Attalus screamed at me. ‘It’s all I can do to hold them here!’

I rode on.

Just beyond the wreck of the phalanx, behind the centre of the woods – open oak woods, here – stood an island of order. Briso, with the Psiloi – the archers, the Agrianians. Right where I had left them.

‘Trouble?’ Briso asked.

Three hundred archers and six hundred Agrianians. And sixty of Diades’ own specialists, the bowmen carrying gastraphetes and oxybeles, the two-man crossbow, under Helios.

I motioned to Attalus – the Agrianian Attalus, not the Macedonian one. I slid from my horse’s back, and my muscles screamed in protest. There’s nothing worse – to me, because I am just a mortal man – than leaving combat, and then having to return to it. I had been in a mortal fight, survived, triumphed, faced the monsters and survived again. And now I had to steel myself to go back.
Again
. I had to lead other men.

I took several breaths while I dismounted. Then, to goad myself, I took my helmet off – my beautiful Athenian helmet – and threw it away. I needed a clear head and good vision.

Ochrid had followed me all morning, and now he appeared at my side and I took my two best javelins from him. Their blue and gold magnificence steadied me. It sounds childish, but their octagonal ash shafts were friendly to my hands.

I nodded to my officers.

‘We’re losing,’ I said.

They all looked as if I’d punched them.

‘Don’t fool yourselves,’ I said. ‘If we don’t do it, the army is done. So we’re going to go right up the field into the teeth of the fucking monsters and we’re going to kill them – close up. With everything we’ve got. If we can get in close, maybe the gastraphetes can shoot the monsters. Helios, that’s your job – to get the machines as close as can be managed. Attalus, cover the archers and press forward – right into them. We’ll go in among their legs and try for the crews. The mahouts – the drivers – are vulnerable. Get them. But mostly, don’t let the beasts into the archers.’

I looked at them. They were scared. That was fair enough – no one had ever faced anything like this before. And I was about to lead a thousand men to do what twelve thousand had failed to do.

‘We can do this,’ I said. ‘The one thing I’ve learned today is that the beasts are slow, and tire easily. If we have to retreat – then we’ll run.’ I moved my eyes from face to face. ‘And go back. Until the king has his counter-punch ready.’

Briso nodded, and Attalus took a deep breath, and Helios looked thoughtful.

‘We’re all he has left,’ I said.

That stiffened their spines.

Attalus formed the Agrianians in a long skirmish line behind the woods, and the Toxitoi formed behind them – one long, long rank, three hundred men long, with a horse length between men, so that our whole front covered six stades – almost the frontage of the phalanx. The crossbowmen stood in knots, or as individuals, where Diades assigned them, well behind the skirmish line.

We moved through the woods – and the wreck of the phalanx – to the sound of the hunting horns.

My last act before we went forward was to send Ochrid to the baggage with orders to fetch more bolts, arrows and javelins. Then I remounted, so that I could see to give orders, and followed.

The phalangites in the woods were angry, and they jeered at the Agrianians and the Toxitoi, taunting them that they were going to their deaths.

At the forward edge of the woods, the better men crouched and watched the enemy. Most of these men still had their sarissas, and so had never entered the trees.

And there was Amyntas, son of Philip. He had a nasty face wound – the skin on his scalp was ripped and his helmet was gone. But he had his aspis and he had his spear.

I raised my javelins to him.

‘Dress the line,’ Attalus roared. The hunting horns gave their low, mournful call.

The Agrianian line trotted out of the edge of the woods. The Toxitoi emerged behind them.

Amyntas trotted to my foot. ‘You are going forward?’ he croaked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If you can form any kind of a line, follow us.’

He nodded. He never really looked at me. His eyes were on the enemy.

‘Alexander says we are not beaten yet!’ I turned to the men hesitating at the edge of the woods. ‘Follow us. Form the phalanx. Let the Psiloi hurt the elephants. Come and protect us from the Indians. Come and be men!’

Men looked at me, and looked at Amyntas.

And stood where they were.

My curse on all of you
, I thought.

And I went forward with a thousand men, to face the elephants.

It is very lonely, as a Psiloi.

There’s no comfort from your file mate, because he’s a horse length behind you. No comfort from your rank partners, your zuegotes, the men you are yoked to in the battle line. They’re too far away to touch, to look in the eye, to wink at or to moan at.

I had never realised how very brave the Psiloi were, until that day, against the elephants.

The Agrianians went forward fast, at a trot. The Indians made the same mistake we’d made. They thought that the battle was over. And they were probably contemptuous of the thin screen trotting down the field towards them.

I was huffing by the time we came within a long javelin throw of their line. The Agrianians, obedient to the shouts of Attalus, began to gather in loose clumps facing the pairs of elephants. They ignored the Indian foot soldiers and ran straight to the elephants.

The Indians began to loose arrows, but their aim was poor. Skirmishers are a difficult target for massed archery – especially skirmishers making a concerted dash forward.

The men they hit died, however. Their arrows were enormous.