God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great (54 page)

W
e marched back over the Shipka Pass with our herds and our loot, and forty days’ worth of messages caught up with us all at once, and all the news was bad. The whole western border of Macedon was in arms – the Illyrians had risen, and were coming at us, to a man. Cleitus of Illyria – don’t blame me if everyone has the same name – had fifteen thousand men, and he had made a federation with two of the wilder northern tribes – the Autaratians and the Taulantians. According to our intelligence, the two northern tribes were coming down on our route of march.

Let me add that the best of our intelligence was from Thaïs. Thaïs had a stream of couriers, now – letters from Athens, letters from Pella, messages from the Triballians behind us.

‘It keeps me busy,’ she said. ‘It’s really no different from organising a party.’

I had to laugh. We were good at tactical intelligence collection – the Prodromoi and the hypaspitoi and the new Agrianian Psiloi were all excellent scouts, and they collected information and passed it back by couriers with professional competence, but at the next level we were still barbarians. Philip had some excellent sources, but they had all been intensely personal – his own friends in Athens and Sparta and Thebes and Persepolis, who sent him news. Alexander didn’t run his life that way, and we had to have new sources.

I hadn’t even seen the need. But Thaïs lived in the world of exchange of news. She bought news when she was a hetaera – now she merely bought more. And ran some of the sources herself.

Langarus, the King of the Agrianians, met us at the foot of the Shipka Pass. He’d covered our rear for two months, and now he was nervous. He had about four thousand men, and superb men at that – but the Illyrian actions meant that his neighbours might just choose to plunder him on their way to Macedon.

He was, I have to say, a fantastic ally. He stayed and watched that pass while his own crops burned. I’m not sure another ally so loyal existed in all the bowl of the world.

I read all Thaïs’s news during a long afternoon while the tent flapped in the early autumn wind, and then I took a stack of scrolls, tally sticks and small notes on papyrus to Alexander. He was sitting with Langarus and Perdiccas and a new man, who was introduced to me as Nicanor, son of Parmenio. He’d come from Asia to take command of the hypaspitoi, and to represent his father.

He glanced at me as I came in and then went back to talking to the king.

Alexander heard him out – he was discussing a point about Asia, of course. And then his eyes met mine.

‘It’s worse than it looks,’ I said. ‘I think the Illyrians are getting support from within Macedon.’ I started to synopsise the reporting, but Nicanor (as yet unintroduced) cut me off.

‘I’ll read them when I have time,’ he said. ‘Carry on.’

I looked at him. And laughed. It was becoming my new way of dealing with everything. ‘And you are?’

‘Your new strategos,’ he said. ‘I am Nicanor son of Parmenio.’

Alexander shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Nicanor,’ he said. ‘I have promised your father that you can command the hypaspitoi, but you will not be strategos. I’ll command myself.’

‘With all due respect,’ Nicanor said, ‘this is a time of real peril – not a time for boyish heroics. Pater sent me to put down the Illyrians. Riding about hunting Thracian refugees is not going to help you beat the Illyrians. Lord.’

I didn’t have to force a laugh. I could see this would be entertaining, and I sat down.

Nicanor turned and looked at me. ‘Who the fuck are you to sit down in the presence of your king?’ he asked.

Alexander settled his shoulders against the tent wall and smiled gently.

So be it. ‘I’m Ptolemy,’ I said. ‘If it has escaped your notice – I’m the largest landowner in Macedon after the king. I’m somatophylakes to the king. I grew up with him. And I have no idea who you are.’

‘Your insolence is astounding,’ Nicanor said.

I turned to Alexander. ‘May I smack him around, lord?’ I asked.

Alexander shook his head. ‘No. But Nicanor, most of the men in this army have earned their rank, through years of hard campaigning. To them, you are a newcomer and you will have to prove yourself. You will command the hypaspitoi under my supervision and direct orders until I say otherwise.’

Nicanor turned red and then white and then red. ‘Lord,’ he said. He took a deep breath. ‘You have been ill advised, if you imagine that you and your boys are ready to face the Illyrians in a campaign.’

Alexander didn’t explode. He nodded. ‘Would you care to place a wager?’ he asked.

When Nicanor stomped out of the tent, Alexander sent Nearchus after him.

‘Watch him,’ Alexander said. Then he turned and sighed. ‘So it begins,’ he said. ‘Parmenio will never see me as an adult – nor forgive me for outmanoeuvring him. Eventually . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Never mind. Give me Thaïs’s gleanings.’

I ran through what we knew, or guessed, about Cleitus of Illyria.

Hephaestion and Langarus had sat through all of this, and when I finished, Langarus made a face. ‘I think you should let Ptolemy here take Nicanor’s head,’ he said. ‘That one will make trouble.’

‘Perhaps in Pella,’ Alexander said. ‘Ptolemy, am I right in thinking he’ll make no trouble here?’

I nodded. I was glad he was asking my opinion about how the men felt – he needed the help – but in this case he was right. We’d just rolled over the Thracians – the men were worshipping their king like a god. Nicanor was not going to get anywhere with them.

Langarus smiled like a wolf. ‘Well – never mind him, then. I’ll take the Autaratians – I’ll head north in the morning along the old road. You go and take Cleitus, and we’ll crush this thing before it spreads.’

Langarus was, as I have mentioned, a pearl among allies.

We sent almost half the infantry home with all our loot and all the baggage. We kept about a third of the beasts – all cattle – to be able to drive our food with us, and we marched before the sun was up in the morning, heading west. We were in top physical shape, and we had just won a string of victories. The defeats of Pine Island were forgotten. We were invincible, and we raced across the Paeonian Mountains at a speed that was unheard of for an army with so many infantry. We’d marched three thousand stades in a month – now it was high summer, and even the high passes were comfortable.

Alexander’s goal was to turn Cleitus’s flank by rapid marches before he’d heard of us. He wanted to invest Cleitus’s capital at Pellium before Cleitus could gather reinforcements – especially from Glaucias of the Taulantians. It was an ambitious plan that required that we march eighty stades a day through mountains, and while we could do it, the cattle could not. Our carts started to break down, and our animals were dying – baggage animals cannot be pushed.

But neither could Alexander. He ordered all the baggage animals slaughtered. We ate for two days. Then everyone shouldered as much food as he could carry – officers and Hetaeroi included – and we marched without baggage. My whole camp went from a tent and three slaves and a cook pot with other pots nesting inside – to a bear fur robe that rolled on the crupper of my saddle, two cloaks and some spare chitons. I kept Ochrid to make my food and sent my other slaves home.

In truth, we looked more like a defeated army than a victorious one, and I worried every day about the weather. Five days of hard, cold rain in the mountains, and we’d have been in trouble. Even as it was, I knew – as keeper of the Military Journal – that we were losing men to desertion and exhaustion.

I had another run-in with Nicanor. There was no report from the hypaspists three days running, and when I approached Alectus, he simply made a face.

So I went to Nicanor.

‘You understand the Military Journal?’ I asked him, without preamble.

He shrugged. ‘Send it to me and I’ll show you how to keep it,’ he said. ‘You do it wrong, and it is full of information it doesn’t need to have.’

‘I keep it as the king commands,’ I said. ‘You need to send an officer with your reports.’

Nicanor didn’t even look at me. ‘No. When you serve under my father, you will learn your place. For the moment – don’t imagine you can give me orders. I have heard how you fucked up the hypaspitoi and had to be replaced – eh? Don’t play with me, boy.’

He had never served in the pages, and in many ways, despite his years of service under his father, he was soft. I threw him to the ground and rotated his left arm until he made a mewling noise.

‘I am not a boy. Next time you call me that, I’ll kill you and stuff your dick down your throat, understand? Your father is not worth shit here, understand?’ I was angry, and spit flew from my lips. ‘Your father is all but a convicted traitor, and if you so much as breathe in the wrong way with these troops, you will cease to be.
Do you understand?
’ I wrenched his shoulder with every word.

He said nothing. He was going to tough it out.

So I wrenched his shoulder harder, and he screamed. I had a knee in his back, and his Thessalian bodyguards were just a little too late – and Alectus was there, and so was Philip Longsword.

The two Thessalians were induced to stand perfectly still.

‘This is not Asia,’ I said. ‘Your father is
not
the king. And if I rip this arm off,
nothing
will happen to me. Now – order Philip to have an adjutant send reports to the Military Journal, or by Herakles my ancestor, I will make sure the hypaspitoi need a new commander today.’

‘Fuck
youuuuaaheeh
!’ he said. And then he collapsed. ‘Do it – just stop!’

I stopped. Looked around. ‘This was a disciplinary matter, and nothing will be said about it unless the king asks,’ I said. I let Nicanor go, and stepped away.

As soon as he was with his bodyguards, he turned on me.

‘I’ll have you skinned alive,’ he said.

I walked over to him and his Thessalians, who understood better than he did, and did nothing.

He flinched.

‘Go back to Asia or learn our ways,’ I said.

Macedon, eh? Tough crowd. And I had a temper, back then. Really, Parmenio made a mistake in not sending his sons to serve as pages. Nicanor would have known better. He’d have been one of us.

He never did learn, and neither did his brother, but that’s another story.

Fifteen days over the mountains. Alexander took me to task for beating Nicanor, and I took his admonishment with good grace, since Hephaestion told me in private that Alexander had blessed my name.

We were bleeding men by the time we reached Pellium. We’d come too far, too fast, and we lost more than a hundred veterans in the mountains. Alexander didn’t care, and you couldn’t make him care. He was on top of the world.

We came down the valley of the Asopus like a torrent, and our cavalry patrols were like a thunderbolt. Cleitus thought we were a thousand stades away.

In fact, I nearly caught him myself. I was leading two files of Hetaeroi in support of the Prodromoi, because the king wanted us to be able to do their job, too – a brilliant idea, really. So we took rotations as scouts, and it was my day, and we were fifty stades ahead of the hypaspitoi when we heard screams.

We were at the head of the valley, and we could see the ripening grain all the way to the foot of the rocky ridge where the grim fortress lurked – a true robber baron, our Cleitus, with his impregnable fort on a high rock so he would never need to fear the revenge of his many foes.

Somewhere away on my right, a child was screaming.

I had fifteen of the best warriors in the world. So I turned my horse and rode to the sound of the screams.

We burst out of the trees to see a ring of richly dressed men – furs, good wool cloaks, gold-mounted swords – and a big natural stone altar covered with blood. There were two sheep’s carcasses, and three dead children – two boys and girl. I saw it all in a glance.

The priest had his copper knife at the throat of the fourth child.

In truth, had Thaïs not been pregnant, I’d have captured Cleitus. He was right there, watching the sacrifices to see if the campaign against Alexander would be propitious. But her pregnancy had awakened something in me. That girl – she might have been two – set something off, and my first javelin took the priest high in the breast. He never got to cut her throat, but fell away from her, and she stood there and screamed while Nearchus and Cleomenes and all my lads started to kill the Illyrians around the altar.

Had I been a little quicker, or not wasted my javelin on the priest, I’d have had Cleitus. I didn’t know who he was, but he was there – we took a dozen noble prisoners and they all blabbed. He must have run the moment the javelins flew, and he must not have been dressed very well.

We killed a few of them and took most of the rest. I carried the girl back to camp. We had very few camp followers, but Ochrid took her. And of course, as soon as we made camp on the plain below the fortress at Pellium, we acquired hundreds of Illyrian women. Women are attracted by successful soldiers. I picked up a woman old enough to know her own mind and purchased her services as a nanny for the girl, whom I called Olympias for her imperious way with Ochrid. She was a funny little imp, and I liked her.

The problem was, we weren’t really all that successful. We occupied the fertile valley easily enough, and when part of his army came down from the hills, we chewed them up. But the bulk of his forces outnumbered us, and he had a heavy garrison in the fortress.

Alexander sent to Pella for siege machines and specialists. A small convoy reached us right away – the light catapults we’d left in the Paeonians came almost immediately, and we assembled them.

But then, Glaucias arrived and occupied the high ground behind us in the passes.

It was, to be frank, one of the worst errors I had ever seen Alexander make. He’d said – back there at the foot of Shipka – that we needed to strike
before
the Illyrians combined.

We failed, and they combined.

They started to eat our foraging parties. Our Agrianians and our archers could hold their own, but the slaves – what was left of them – were taken or killed.