God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great (70 page)

I was impressed. Even Thaïs was impressed. Ada could dance, and she had the kind of mind that perfectly controlled her body.

‘Is she a woman-lover?’ I asked.

‘How would I know?’ Thaïs said – with the slightest downturn of her lips. Indicating that this was none of my business.

Ada stamped, turned, clashed her spear on the king’s shield – and launched into doing the dance in opposition, the way I’d have done it if I was dancing with the king, so that instead of two dancers in perfect unison, now she thrust when he ducked, parried when he thrust, leaped in the air when his spear whirled low.

He was drunk, and she was untrained, and they were magnificent. They were so good that the musicians began to play faster.

Alexander seemed to grow with the music – he began to stretch himself. He was a superb warrior, and he knew the dance intimately, and now he began to embellish every movement with subtle additions – the sort of things that old Cleitus used to encourage us to do, to help us remember what the Pyricche was for – to make us better fighters. So Alexander began to make his cuts steeper and more dangerous – rolled his hips to snap his shield forward.

Ada copied him, and added a sinuous martial element of her own.

I only ever saw one other woman who struck me as being a real warrior – a fighter, the way I am. Perhaps there would be more if women weren’t so busy making babies, but Ada was the real thing, and she was breathtaking to watch.

I was afraid one of them would be killed. They were competing, now, to strike harder and faster, and the music was
flying
. Everyone was clapping. Sweat was pouring off them both, and their spears left trails of fire in the air. Remember that he had taken a cut to the head that bit into his skull at Granicus, and that we’d been marching for days.

I walked over to the musicians, my heart in my mouth, and made a spear-point with my fingers. The flautist nodded sharply.

They played through the tune once more at speed.

The pipes whirled, and they played more slowly, and then more slowly, the tide of the music rising to compensate for the decreased speed, and both the dancers drew back together; both cocked their spears back, together . . .

And as the music ended, they fell together, giggling, in a clash of armour. Thaïs took my hand. ‘Come,’ she said.

I followed her, and we caught the king and Ada, still leaning on each other, and we led them to the tower’s guest chambers. Slaves had taken the king’s clothes when he put his armour on, and they lay on a cedar chest.

I got his thorax off while he laughed, and his greaves, and I towelled him myself as if I were his slave. He ruffled my hair.

‘That was pretty good, wasn’t it?’ he said.

I hate being cast as a sycophant. On the other hand, it had been . . . magnificent. Almost unearthly. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ I said. Then I thought – Athena sent me the words –
be generous. It was magnificent
. ‘It was magnificent,’ I said.

‘What I love best about your praise,’ the king said, ‘is how unwillingly you give it.’

He had new bruises where his thorax bit into the top of his pectoral muscles.

A voice at the door said, ‘Wine for the king.’

I turned to find Thaïs, handing me wine. ‘Come!’ she said. ‘Leave him!’

So I handed him the wine. ‘I’m sure you can dress yourself,’ I said.

Thaïs reached through the door and pulled at my arm, and I fled, but not before I’d seen Ada come in the other door of the chamber, naked. Alexander had stopped noticing me, by then.

‘You are a wicked, wicked matchmaker,’ I muttered to Thaïs.

She laughed. ‘He’s not going to marry her – so what’s the harm?’ She laughed. ‘Wine makes men randy – even the King of Macedon.’

‘Even Ptolemy,’ I said, catching her against a wall hanging. I loved the feel of her naked hips under her chitons – there was something about lifting her skirts that always made me wild, even when I could have her naked. I was hard in a deep breath, and we were as busy as the king and the queen in another.

She laughed into my mouth, my busy little plotter.

And the next day, we marched for Halicarnassus down the high passes. We had to climb the mountains behind Ada’s castle, and we made Labraunda by dark the first day, Mylasa the second – days were getting shorter. The third night we were at Iasus on the coast, which had submitted to our Athenian flotilla, and where Alexander guaranteed their ‘ancient rights’ (the ink was not yet dry), and we met a young man who was considered a prophet of Poseidon. He was sixteen, and he could talk to the dolphins – they swam up to him eagerly. I saw this with my own eyes. One dolphin in particular followed him all over the town’s inner harbour. And my horses adored him – when he came (at my invitation, as Poseidon is my special god) to my tent for a cup of wine, Polystratus hurried in to see what had happened, because all the horses had begun to whinny.

He was a very special young man. His name was Barsulas, but we all called him Triton. I took him into my household as a priest. He could read and write, and to get ahead of myself, Thaïs had me send him to the Temple of Poseidon at Sounnion in Attika, and we sent our young foundling, Olympias, with him. We trusted the boy, and with good reason. They were, in many ways, like our family. We sent him to Sounnion to be trained as a priest of Poseidon, and we sent her to the Temple of Artemis to learn all the dances of the Bear. I made good donations to both temples, and they were only too happy to admit my ‘children’ and Thaïs’s.

Our daughter was eight months old, and Thaïs had a pair of nurses for her, because running Alexander’s special intelligence section was now a full-time job. And at Iasus, we were one day’s march from Halicarnassus, and she had no report to make.

I was at that meeting.

Thaïs hated to be defeated, but none of her agents had emerged from Halicarnassus to report. She’d sent three or four. We had friends in the town – by then, every town in Ionia had a faction who wanted Alexander to liberate them.

That night, Parmenio had another try at reasoning with the king. I was starting to change sides, by then. There was a nip in the air – autumn was coming. It had rained intermittently all day, and as usual we were ahead of our tents, so that our men were camping in fields – wet.

‘It takes three years to make a good soldier,’ Parmenio said, after dinner. We were in the local Temple of Ares, using it as a headquarters. ‘It takes three nights of rain to kill him. Lord, it is time to call it quits. Ada was a brilliant conquest. You will be lord of Caria in no time – well done. But let’s get back to Ephesus and get the troops under cover. You’ll want to send all the pezhetaeroi home for the winter – it’s their right – and you must be as tired as I am.’ Parmenio chuckled smugly.

Alexander shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not tired, and I’m going to take Halicarnassus from Memnon.’

Parmenio shrugged. ‘As you will, lord. But the weather is turning and this is not a fertile area. There’s not much fodder here, and little wine and less olive oil. What will the army eat, while we lay siege to Halicarnassus?’

‘We have a magazine at Miletus,’ Alexander said. ‘We can send convoys along the coast road.’

‘For water?’ Parmenio shot out. ‘You’ve never been to Halicarnassus. I have. There’s no water – all the water’s inside the town. We have thirty thousand men. They drink a great deal of water.’

Alexander looked around at the rest of us. ‘Anyone else of the same mind?’ he asked.

His voice gave away his opinion. He wasn’t asking. He was looking at dissent.

No one spoke up.

That made Parmenio angry.

‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Tomorrow, when we head up the coast, we’re going up against
Memnon
. He’s not some hill chieftain. He’s not the commander of a soft confederation and he’s not going to make any easy mistakes. He’s going to meet us on a battlefield of his own choosing, where he has a fleet at his back and an army of mercenaries – expendable men. You’ve sent our fleet away. He can get reinforcements – and food – whenever he likes. And if he doesn’t like the odds, he can sail away.
And you won’t be able to stop him
.’

Alexander took a deep breath. He nodded very slowly.

Some of the older officers began to let out their long-held breaths in relief.

‘I guess we’ll just have to be on our best game, then,’ Alexander said. ‘Because in the morning, we march for Halicarnassus.’

Philotas had the advance guard. His version was two hundred Thracian Peltastoi and a hundred Thracian cavalry, well spread out in front, backed with two full squadrons of Hetaeroi and two hundred archers. Philotas didn’t like my ‘W’, and he used a more linear advance-guard formation.

We entered the mountains again at Bargylia, with Mount Lyda on our left and the sea below us on the right – a road well cut, an old road, and one that offered no cover at all. Twenty stades south of Bargylia we left the sea and started overland on the last leg of the road, through a valley pass that climbed slowly, and was at least broad enough for the advance guard to shake out into formation.

It was raining. I felt old – my hand throbbed, and all my wounds hurt as if they were new, and Thaïs and I had had a fight – about Queen Ada. A stupid fight.

I was riding with the royal escort, well back in the column, and Parmenio was well behind us – pouting, or so it seemed. Seleucus was finally healed from his wounds at Granicus, and he was back with us, in armour. Nearchus was there, and Marsyas, and most of the rest of the old guard. Kineas was with us.

‘I wish Ada could see this,’ Alexander said.

‘Aphrodite’s tits, I’m tired of Ada,’ Hephaestion said.

‘You know I do not like blasphemy,’ Alexander said coldly. ‘Or vulgarity.’

‘Ada has tits,’ Hephaestion said reasonably. ‘I assumed that you’d want to hear about them.’

Alexander turned to glare at him.

‘Well, she does!’ Hephaestion insisted with his usual foolishness. ‘I mean, they’re not much bigger than mine, but she does have tits.’

Nearchus started to laugh, and Black Cleitus, and Alexander reined in.

‘Shut up!’ he barked, and raised his hand.

Hephaestion, always happiest with an appreciative audience, ignored the king. ‘And arm muscles! Bigger than mine!’

Alexander struck him. He had a riding whip – as long as his legs – in his hand, and he hit Hephaestion in the mouth – not hard, but fast. ‘Shut your foul mouth and listen,’ Alexander said.

Hephaestion put both hands to his mouth. ‘You bastard,’ he spat.

By now I could hear what the king was hearing. ‘They’re fighting!’ I said.

Alexander put his heels to his riding horse. None of us was on war horses, but we raced up the top of the pass, crowding around the hypaspists and the second Hetaeroi squadron.

‘Arm!’ I shouted as we pushed by. ‘Shields! Armour!’

Only the advance guard marched armed for battle.

We went over the top of the pass, and below us we saw Philotas entangled with an ambush.

There were enemy hoplites, immediately identifiable by their big, round shields, in among Philotas’s archers, and farther ahead, archers were dropping arrows from high above on the Prodromoi and the Thracians.

The Thracians panicked and broke, running back along the column, just as Alexander and Seleucus and I started to get a counter-attack together. It was my squadron of Hetaeroi, after all. They were to hand, and they were good, if I don’t say so myself.

Alexander watched the Thracians break, five stades away. He looked around.

Calm as a man in his andron – calmer – Alexander looked off to the north. ‘Philotas was not ready for this. Now, if Memnon is the great man people say he is, he’ll have cavalry. And cavalry can only be . . .’

Alexander was looking right at the low hill that dominated the craggy heights to our left, and as sure as cats make kittens, just as he said this, fifty Greek cavalry emerged from behind the hill.

I had maybe twenty of my own men, and Polystratus and a few grooms.

The Greek cavalry didn’t come at us pell-mell. They formed in a neat rhomboid a stade away, and Cleomenes had time to buckle his breastplate.

‘They look professional,’ Kineas said. He pulled the cheek-plates down on his helmet. Quietly, he said, ‘Shouldn’t the king go to the rear?’

I smiled. ‘He should,’ I agreed. ‘But he won’t!’

They came forward at us, and we had about the same numbers.

Alexander took the point. There was no stopping him. He saw Kineas and smiled. ‘More Athenians over there than here,’ he said.

‘Quality over quantity,’ Kineas said. He grinned at the king.

Alexander threw his head back and roared. ‘By the gods, you are a man after my own heart,’ he said. He tossed his javelin in the air and caught it. ‘Oh, I am
alive
.’

As soon as we started forward, I realised that the big man with the dark skin who was coming right at me had to be Memnon himself. And these cavalrymen would be his Theban exiles.

We smashed together at a fast trot. Neither side had time to get to a gallop. But because we were so slow, both sides were perfectly ordered, and we
crashed
together as if we were hoplites on foot.

Fights like that aren’t about skill, but about horse size and riding ability. We were evenly matched, and we were suddenly in our hipposthismos, pushing and cutting, and my spear was broken – I can never tell you how, it always just seems to happen.

I was sword to sword with Memnon – or rather, he cut at me with his kopis, and I blocked with the ash staff of my busted spear. I forced him to parry high, and I got my bridle hand on his elbow and started to push, and quick as a viper he put his head down and rammed my face with the crest of his helmet. But my nasal held, and he didn’t break my nose or my face. I went for my dagger, rammed it into his side and missed my blow – he caught my dagger in his bridle hand and disarmed me.

He was good.

‘Let me at him!’ Alexander shouted at my right hip.

I’d have laughed, if I hadn’t been so busy.

Memnon now had my right wrist and I had his. I had his with my left thumb
down
, so I started to rotate his hand by main strength and leverage. My riding horse didn’t help – too small and light for this kind of work, but she had lots of heart, and as she backed away from Memnon’s bigger stallion and took a bite to the face, she reared, and for a second I had the purchase, and I stripped the sword from Memnon’s hand, getting a slash across my neck in exchange.