God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great (93 page)

My back foot, my right, was on a corpse.

The Aegyptian marines made
another
rush. I needed to be sure of my footing and glanced down, and saw that I was standing over Alexander. He had an enormous spear – I learned later it was the bolt from a ballista – in his shoulder. He was screaming, eyes blind, and the ground was wet with his blood, and there was a
pile
of dead hypaspitoi around him. Perhaps as many as fifteen or twenty. Even as I looked, a man grabbed his ankles to pull him, he screamed and the man with his ankles got an Aegyptian spear in his guts and fell atop him.

Zeus Soter
, I thought.
He’s going to die right here
.

Yet even as that thought tickled my mind and the marines hit us again, my phalanx fell on their rear. There was a moment – a flurry of blows, an unendurable pressure on my chest and my shattered shield, my blows seeming too feeble to make a difference – and then they were running, abandoning their magnificent hide shields to run down the hill, and my men killed fifty of them in as many heartbeats, and we had held.

Even as the Aegyptians broke, the hypaspitoi had lifted the king. His shield – a full-sized aspis – had taken the ballista bolt. It had struck through his shield – through all seven layers of bull’s hide, wood and bronze – into the meat of his left shoulder and out the back, so that when they lifted him I could see the red-black shimmer of the metal like some obscene thing projecting from the pturges of his arm armour.

He was done screaming. His eyes were open, and they locked on mine, just for a moment. He
smiled
. In that moment, he was a god.

And then he screamed with the pain, again.

Philip of Acarnia removed the ballista bolt, cutting the head off and then oiling the shaft with olive oil – pouring the oil right on to the wound – and then pulling it through. Then he slathered the king’s wound with honey and bandaged it. I watched, and held Alexander while he screamed, cried and shat himself. I helped clean him, and I helped carry him to his bed. He weighed very little.

The doctor filled him full of opium, and he went off into a drug-hazed sleep. I sat in his chair and watched him for a while, with Perdiccas and Hephaestion and some of the others.

He looked small and vulnerable and very pale.

Later that night, a pretty girl with hennaed hands and feet came to Thaïs to ask for news of the king in a very shy voice.

Thaïs came for me. ‘Memnon’s women sent her. They must be terrified – if Alexander dies, all that seductiveness has been wasted.’ She smiled, a somewhat catlike smile. ‘I feel for them. They’re likely to be passed from hand to hand if he dies,’ she said. ‘Will he die?’ she asked suddenly, her voice changed.

‘You are kind to them,’ I said. And whispered to her, ‘I fear for him. But we must not say it.’ Thaïs kissed me and nodded.

I went to the girl, who threw herself on the ground and hid her face. ‘Great lord!’ she said.

‘Tell your mistress,’ I began.

The serving girl shook her head. ‘Please come, lord. Please?’

Well – it is always pleasurable to have beautiful young women call you
great lord
. I followed her to her tent, and met a queen, sitting quite calmly on a couch.

‘You remember me, Ptolemy?’ she asked, voice husky, without preamble.

Banugul must have been eighteen or perhaps nineteen. I hadn’t been alone with her.

I almost couldn’t breathe.

I had Thaïs in my bed every night – widely accounted the most beautiful woman in the world.

How do we measure these things?

Banugul had, as I have described, skin and hair the colour of honey, green eyes that slanted a fraction from her nose to her temples, and fine, arched feet. The rest of her was robed in splendour.

And the only thing I could smell was spikenard.

I managed to tell her that the king would recover. She thanked me very prettily, and I left the tent, still alive.

Thaïs laughed at me for most of the next day. I would have laughed, too, except that war was everywhere, and Ares, not Aphrodite, had us in his fist.

Hephaestion led the second assault. I watched them go up the hill, in the first light of dawn, watched the engines and the boiling oil kill their share, and watched Amyntas and Philotas race each other like heroes at Troy to make the northern breach first.

They lasted about the same length of time we lasted. Perhaps an hour.

Batis met them inside the town and killed them. On the south side, his men actually held the breach – the assault never penetrated into the town. This time, according to Amyntas, who was wounded twice, Batis had concealed pits, ditches and spiked caltrops waiting for the assault troops, and local counter-attacks to cut the lead elements of the assault off from the reserves.

Hephaestion returned covered in dust and other men’s blood. He was taller and better-muscled than Alexander, and looked more like I imagined Achilles to look than any man I ever saw.

He threw his aspis on the ground, grunted and went into his tent to drink and sulk – just like Achilles.

Parmenio appeared out of nowhere and took command of the army. He did it without fuss, without asking for anyone’s approval and there was no loss of momentum or discipline.

Groups of silent men gathered outside Alexander’s tent – every morning. They never fussed or made noise, merely waited to see if Philip would emerge and tell them something of the king.

On the fifth morning after his wound, the king came out into the sunshine in person, blinking in the sun.

The cheers started from the men by the tent.

Alexander smiled, and waved with his right hand, and the cheers spread as flame spreads in a dry field, until every man in that camp was roaring, ‘Alexander! Alexander the king!’

I was with Diades, watching slaves raise the battery platforms yet higher. As the cheers spread, and we understood their cause,
even the slaves began to cheer
.

About an hour later, Parmenio summoned me to the king’s tent. I expected the command council and found only the strategos and the king.

Parmenio nodded when I stood before them. There was something curiously formal about the situation, so I remained standing, battered helmet under my arm, and gave them a salute.

Alexander was as pale as lamb’s parchment, and Parmenio appeared like an automaton. No emotion at all.

‘Gaza will fall to the next assault,’ Parmenio said. ‘I want your troops to spearhead it.’

I looked back and forth between them.

‘Batis is losing men as fast as we are, and we have deeper pockets.’ Parmenio shrugged. ‘He can’t keep it up. I mean to fake an assault this evening and then pound the breaches for half an hour with stones to kill his defenders. Tomorrow I expect to move the batteries forward to the new platforms. Then I’ll pound the walls for two days while Diades pushes the ramps higher and makes the footing better.’ He looked at Alexander.

Alexander smiled.

‘Then I want to go in with all six pezhetaeroi regiments, all together.’ Parmenio nodded. ‘I want you to lead it. I can’t afford to lose Craterus, and Perdiccas is too young.’

It was, in many ways, the most sincere and heady praise I ever received.

So I did.

I won’t bore you. It was anticlimactic, like the ending of a bad play. Parmenio, the professional, had it just right. The endless barrage of the last two days had broken the garrison’s spirit, and our six assault columns coming up long, shallow ramps that were virtually paved with brick ate their souls. The men facing me shot their arrows and fled while my men were only halfway to the breach, and when we got to the rubble, the two ballistas there were smashed to flinders by our barrage. In the streets beyond, we went cautiously, linked up with the other columns at the wall and refused to be channelled. It was all very slow and methodical.

In the centre of the town, there was a big open square. We surrounded it – they had fortified the square like a reserve citadel.

Batis sent a herald asking for terms.

I was, for once, unhurt. I looked around at our men, and then I looked down into the square – I’d once again stormed a house to get into its tower for the view.

Batis had about four thousand men still prepared to fight, facing twice that. And he had little food and no water.

The herald was terrified. We were the evil enemy he’d heard so much about, and he wasn’t a real herald but some Persian nobleman’s son – proud, brave and polite.

I shrugged. ‘Tell the noble Batis that he will have to surrender without terms. I have him either way.’

The boy gulped. ‘I . . . I was charg-ged t-to say th-that—’

‘I won’t eat you, lad. Say your piece.’ Someone brought me a bunch of grapes and I started devouring them.

‘We will fight to the end-d if y-you won’t promise us our f-freedom.’ He stood straight. ‘W-we won’t be slaves!’ he said suddenly.

Alexander had enslaved all the Greeks after Granicus. All those he didn’t massacre. I nodded. ‘That’s up to the king, lad.’

Batis, after some deliberation, decided on the better course, and surrendered. I marched his men out of the city immediately, lest he change his mind – out of the main gate and down on to the plain, surrounded by Macedonians.

Batis led his men in surrender. He was a mighty figure and a noble one, unbowed by defeat. And what a defeat! Two months, toe to toe with our entire army. I found it difficult to hate him, now that he was walking behind me. He was canny, but not mean-spirited. He released to me all of our wounded that he’d captured – he hadn’t cut their hands off, he hadn’t blinded them. He’d seen to it they had doctors. He’d actually saved twenty of my own men – men I loved and valued.

We marched out on to the plain of Gaza, and Hephaestion came with the king.

Amyntas, who was expert at currying favour, had brought some sample plunder out of the town. It was a rich town, and my troops were going through it with ruthless efficiency even as we accepted Batis’s surrender. But Amyntas found the prize – a royal chariot, possibly even one kept for Darius, sheathed in gold. He found a team to draw it, too. He led it down on to the plain, rather than driving it. And he presented it to Alexander when the king emerged from his tent.

Alexander embraced him carefully – his shoulder must have hurt like fire – and mounted the chariot. With a strange team, in front of twenty thousand men, he drove the chariot effortlessly across the sand to where Batis waited.

Batis stood as straight as an old tree. Other Persians fell on their faces. Batis looked at his conqueror with neither fear nor fawning.

Alexander stopped the chariot. Two files of hypaspitoi joined him.

He looked at me. ‘What terms, my friend?’ he asked.

That didn’t sound good. ‘No terms,’ I said. ‘But I would ask for their lives.’

Alexander nodded curtly. Now he turned and looked at Batis. ‘Say something,’ he said.

Batis locked his eyes with the king’s. He was a head taller.

He crossed his arms and stood negligently.

Alexander walked up to him. ‘I can order your garrison massacred – or sold into slavery. You are not a soldier of Darius, Batis – you are a rebel against me. You understand that? Darius is no longer King of Asia.’

Alexander was angry. His spit flew into the Persian’s face.

Batis didn’t even seem to blink.

‘I have summoned this town to surrender five times,’ Alexander said in a loud, clear voice. ‘And I was mocked each time.’

No one moved. Batis allowed himself the smallest smile of contempt.

Alexander made a motion with his hand, and the hypaspitoi seized Batis and threw him to the ground.

‘Strip him,’ Alexander said. He took a spear from another hypaspist – a dory, twice the height of a man – and snapped it in two in the middle.

Batis remained silent. Two hypaspists pinned him while a third cut his clothing off with a sharp sword. He bled. He began to struggle and Alectus slammed his fist into the Persian’s temple. Batis thrashed and Alectus hit him again.

‘When you resist, you waste my time,’ Alexander said. He took half the broken spear – the half with the head attached – and walked over to Batis. He thrust the spear into Batis’s leg, near the foot – I thought he was just prodding him, but then he leaned his weight on it, and Batis grunted, the cords in his neck showing like ropes as he struggled not to scream. He was a brave man.

Alexander punched the spearhead out through the other side of the leg at the ankle, and thrust again, against the whole weight of Batis’s thrashing leg, with superhuman strength, and his blow was sure. He penetrated the other ankle, at the back near the heel.

Batis moaned and gave a strangled cry.

Alexander looked up from his task. ‘You read about Achilles doing this,’ he said, conversationally. ‘But you have to wonder what it’s like to do it – and now I know.’ He kicked Batis’s near ankle and pulled the spear shaft through so that the spear penetrated
both
ankles, with several feet of haft emerging on either side.

A slave held a towel while the king wiped his hands. Hypaspitoi tied the spear shaft to the back of the chariot.

The king looked at what they’d done and shook his head. ‘You need knots
outside
the ankles,’ he said, conversationally. ‘Otherwise, he’ll slip off, and we’ll have to do all this again.’

He smiled at Amyntas. ‘My thanks for the chariot. A godsent opportunity.’

Batis coughed and choked – a very brave man struggling not to scream, knowing that when the first one came out, he’d never stop until he died.

In every life there are things for which we do not forgive ourselves. I cannot forgive myself for not stepping forward and putting my spear into Batis. He deserved a hero’s death.

Alexander smiled at Batis. ‘You wanted to be Hector. And now, you are!’

He cracked a whip and the horses moved, and Batis screamed.

And screamed.

And screamed.

Alexander drove up and down until the Persian was dead. Then he stopped the chariot in front of us, stepped down and nodded to Hephaestion and Parmenio, who stood as stunned as I was. The army was cheering him.