God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great (14 page)

We made excellent time that day – gravel roads, better carts, and we were already better at marching. Polystratus found a camp, and we were almost in the highlands. The rain let up for a few hours, and the tents went up on dryish ground – I put half the army out to cut pine boughs and gather last year’s ferns and any other bedding they could find, and I strung the pages across the hillsides as guards.

I had halted well before dark, having learned my lesson the night before. Besides, I was tired myself.

Gordias was so useful I began to suspect that my pater had sent him to watch me. Polystratus, too – he reminded me of things every minute, like a wife. But I was getting it done – I could see beef being butchered in the army’s central area, and the cooks collecting the beef in their kettles, and already I could see local farmers coming into the camp with produce to sell, which we’d missed the night before by making camp too late. It was all running well, and as I watched, the first fire leaped into being in the cooking area of camp, and there were lines of men carrying wood and bedding down the hillsides . . .

Down the valley ahead of us, more fires leaped into being, and they weren’t ours.

I had to assume that was Alexander and the pages and Thessalians. But at the same time, I’d be a fool not to act as if those fires were enemies’.

The headman of the Thracians was called Alcus. That means something like ‘Butthead’ in Thracian. But Alcus and Polystratus got along well enough. I sent Polystratus for him, and after a delay that seemed eternal, he rode up and I showed him the fires to the north and west.

He nodded, tugged his beard, looked at Polystratus.

‘You want us to go and look,’ he said finally.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think you are the best suited for it, you know this country. Besides . . .’

Gordias put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Don’t explain,’ he whispered. ‘Just tell them what to do.’

Sigh. So much to learn!

‘Go any way you think best, but tell me who set those fires,’ I ordered.

Alcus pursed his lips, blew out a little puff and pulled his elaborately patterned cloak tighter around his shoulders. ‘Boys won’t be happy,’ he said.

I was freezing cold, I hadn’t slept in two days and I was scared spitless that I’d run into a Thracian army.

‘Fuck that,’ I snapped. ‘Get your arse down the valley and get me a report.’

The Thracian officer looked at me for a few heartbeats, spat carefully – not a gesture of contempt, more like contemplation – and said, ‘Yes, lord,’ in a way that might have been taken for an insult.

When he was gone, Gordias laughed. ‘Not bad, lord,’ he said. ‘A little temper goes a long way, as long as you control it and it doesn’t control you.’

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that Pater had hired this man as a military tutor. I never again ran across a mercenary so interested in teaching a kid.

An hour passed in a few heartbeats. In that time, I had to decide whether or not to keep the firewood and bedding collection going, or to call all the work parties in. If it turned out to be the prince up the valley, I’d look like a fool, and as the rain had started again, my men would have a miserable night. On the other hand, if five thousand Thracians were sneaking along the hillsides towards me, I’d lose my whole command when they swept us away in one attack – I had fewer than fifty men on guard in camp, and nothing else except the pages, and most of them were unblooded teenagers.

Command is glorious. I thought some hard thoughts about my prince, I can tell you.

I decided to keep my work parties at it. I sent Gordias to keep them going as fast as he could. In fact, he withdrew a third of the men and put them under arms.

I took the pages, spread them across the hillsides in a skirmish line facing north, and started probing.

It was a standard hunting formation, and I told every boy that I didn’t want them to fight, just to report if they saw Thracians, and then we were moving. It was last light, the sun was far off in the heavy clouds, and if we’d been in the bottom of the valley it would already have been night. It was horrible weather, too – sheets of rain. Our cloaks were soaked and sat on our shoulders like blankets of ice.

But the pages were trained hard, and now it paid off. We crossed a ravine in pretty good order – I remember being proud of them – and then the lightning started, and by the light of it – the Thunderer was throwing his bolts about pretty freely – we moved across the swollen watercourse at the bottom of the ravine and up the other side.

I found a trail running right along the top of the ridge. Not unexpected – if you spend enough time in the wild you get a sense for where animals and men like to walk. Trails are hard to find in the rain, but this one had some old stones along the north side, as if there had once been a wall.

Half a dozen pages huddled in behind me. The trail was so much easier than the hillside – it was natural enough.

There was a long peal of thunder, a brilliant double strike of Zeus’s heavy spear, and I was in the midst of fifty Thracians. They were all in a muddle, gathered around something on the trail.

A bearded man in a zigzag-decorated cloak had his helmet off. He looked at me in another lightning flash.

Athena inspired me.

I know a few words of Thracian.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ I bellowed over the rain. It’s something you say to slaves quite a bit.

That puzzled them.

‘What the fuck are you doing here!’ I bellowed again. And then I turned my horse and rode away, waiting for the feel of a javelin between my shoulder blades. I got my horse around, got back to the lip of the ravine, and my half-dozen pages were right on my heels – I prayed to Hermes that the Thracians hadn’t seen what a beardless lot they were. We slid down the ravine and our horses got us up the other side – it was full dark now, and in dark and rain your horse is pretty much your only hope to get anywhere.

Below me on the hillside, I heard the unmistakable sound of iron ringing on iron.

The closest page was Cleomenes, no longer quite a child. I grabbed him by the hair, got his ear close to my head – the thunder was deafening, or so I remember it – and ordered him to get back to camp and tell Gordias to stand to.

‘You know where camp is?’ I yelled.

He pointed the right way.

I let him go.

I rode off down the hillside, trusting to Poseidon to get me to the fighting. He picked his way, and I had to take deep breaths and wait. Patience has never been my strongest virtue. It seemed to take an hour to go half a stade, despite the fact that we were going
down
the hillside and that it was almost clear.

After some minutes, I was suddenly flat on my back – cold water running down my breastplate and under my back. I had thought I was wet – now I was in a stream or a rivulet and I was colder and wetter and everything hurt.

We’d gone over a log and Poseidon had missed the fact that there was a ravine on the other side of the log. By the will of Ares, he didn’t break a leg, but it took me another cold, wet, dark eternity to find him and get him on his feet – eyes rolling in the lightning flashes, utterly panicked.

Down again, now with me walking in front of him, holding the reins. There hadn’t been fighting in . . . well, I’d lost track of time, and was worried I’d been unconscious when I was thrown.

So much to worry about!

Down and down. And then . . .

The first Thracian I found was a horn-blower – he had the horn at his lips, the lightning flashed and I put my spear through him. The next flash showed scarlet leaking past his lips – he coughed. And died.

I crouched. I couldn’t hear a thing, and I couldn’t see anything, either. But that man I’d killed – I was queasy with it, but too busy to throw up – he’d been ready to blow a horn call. An attack?

They must be close around me.

So I froze, moved carefully to a big tree, stood with my hand over Poseidon’s mouth.

A long time passed. As the lightning played around us, I began to see them. I counted five men around me. But there had to be more – there may have been a thousand in the lightning-lit forest, with huge old trees that could hide an elephant.

Time in a crisis passes in its own way. You think of the most incongruous things. I remember thinking of kissing my farm girl at the Gardens of Midas. Her lips had a certain firmness that defined good kissing to me then – and now, for that matter. And I remember thinking that Philotas owed me a fair amount of money from knucklebones and would be delighted if I died here.

I also thought how many things I’d done wrong, including . . . well, everything. I was alone on the hillside with a bunch of Thracians and not in my camp with my army, for example.

I can’t even guess how long we were all there, and then the lightning storm began to pass over the ridge and the sound and intensity seemed to go with it. I think – it seems to me, without hubris – that we were in the very presence of the gods, because the air around me seemed charged with portent, and the noise and light were mind-numbing. When they went away, it was merely dark and cold – and I hadn’t really been cold for all the time the lightning played.

And suddenly it was
dark.

I curled up against Poseidon. He was warm. Actually, he was cold, but he kept me warm.

I remained as still as I could.

Time passed.

Then I heard them. Two men were talking. They were very close indeed – maybe two or three big trees away, except that in the darkness, such things can be deceptive.

I could hear them talking, but I couldn’t understand even a single word.

Mutter mutter mutter.

Mutter.

Mutter mutter.

Growl. Mutter.

And then that stopped, too.

My hand was clamped so hard over Poseidon’s head that my wrist hurt.

I was ashamed of myself, afraid and I needed to piss.

Time marched on, one heavy heartbeat at a time.

I convinced myself that I had to move.

Of all the concerns on my shoulders, it was having to piss that made me move. Let that be a lesson to you. I looked and looked at where I’d heard the voices, and then I had the discipline to turn a circle.

And then the rain came. I’d thought it was raining before, but this was like a wall of water.

A wall of noise, too.

I took Poseidon by the halter and I moved. We stepped on branches and we slipped in mud, but I kept going. And by luck, or the will of the gods, in a few moments I caught a glimpse of my own fires – two stades away across open ground. I was right at the edge of the trees on the hillside.

I mounted before I thought it out, and Poseidon was away – stumbling, because although I didn’t know it until morning, he had a strain from the cold and rain and the fall. He wasn’t fast. And no sooner were we moving than a javelin struck me square in the back.

That’s why rich kids like me wore bronze. But it scared me and knocked the wind out of me. And when I reined in for the sentry line, I was shaking like a leaf.

One of the footsloggers materialised under Poseidon’s chest, his spear at my throat. But before he could challenge me, he knew me.

‘Lord!’ he said. ‘We thought you were lost!’

I rode into camp. Half the men were standing to in wet clumps with their sarissas in their hands. The rest were huddled around fires – enormous fires. The tents had mostly blown down.

War is so glorious.

My tent was one of those down. Polystratus took Poseidon, made sounds indicating that I was a fool and he was a mother hen, and he took me to
his
tent, which had a front and back wall of woven branches and a stool. He got my cuirass off, towelled me dry and told me that there were Thracians down the valley.

Nichomachus handed me a cup of wine. I drank it.

‘I
know
!’ I said, trying not to sound whiney. Gordias pushed into the tent.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Get lost?’

I drank more wine. ‘I got caught on the hillside with the Thracians,’ I said. ‘Did Cleomenes get to you?’

Gordias shook his head. ‘Which one is he? One of the pages? No – I had no word. And not all the troopers here are mine – I had some trouble giving orders.’

That’s the moment I remember best of the whole evening. I’d sort of collapsed on arriving in camp – acted like a cold, wet kid rescued by his servant. Polystratus was towelling my hair when I discovered that my message hadn’t got to camp.

‘Gordias, there’s Thracians within a stade of camp. An ambush on the road north, more coming across the ridge. Where are the pages?’

Gordias shook his head. ‘There’s twenty of the youngest here in camp. I thought the rest were with you?’

‘Ares’ prick,’ I swore. It was my father’s favourite oath. ‘Put my cuirass back on. Polystratus, get us both horses.’

Polystratus didn’t squawk. I put my sodden wool chiton back on – noticing that the dye had run and stained my hips. Gordias got my cuirass closed on me again – say what you will, the bronze is a good windbreak. Mounted on Medea, with Polystratus by me, I went back out into the remnants of the storm. Dawn wasn’t far away, and there was a bit of light, and if you’ve done this sort of thing, you know that the difference between a bit of light and no light is all the difference in the world. I got us up the ridge, found my game trail and there were a dozen of my pages, shivering like young beeches in a high wind – but all clutching a spear close to them, behind trees.

‘Good lads,’ I said – an old man of seventeen to young men of fourteen. ‘Back to camp now.’

‘They are
right there
,’ Philip Long-nose said. ‘Right across the ravine!’ He pointed, and an arrow flew.

‘Been there all night,’ said another boy.

Polystratus whistled.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Get back now – hot wine in camp.’

The pages started to slip backwards. This was the sort of thing we practised in hunting – observe the quarry and then slip away.

But one of the youngsters made a mistake, or maybe the Thracians were coming anyway. And suddenly they were scrambling across the ravine – fifty or a hundred, how could we know?