God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

there we were in a pushing match, hilts in front of our noses, legs crushed together, and I could smell his breath – and he mine.

I reckon he was a good officer, because as we struggled, he looked past me – trying to figure out, as I was, what in Hades was happening in the melee.

I dropped my reins, reached across my body with my left hand, put it under his right elbow and pushed – he twisted to keep his balance and his seat, and I got my hilt free and punched him with it . . .

And he was gone in the melee, and I was almost to the king. A blow rang off my backplate – I assume my erstwhile opponent backcut at me as the melee carried us apart – but it did me no damage, and I was almost there.

I had two or three heartbeats to look around – an eddy in the fight – and the Persians were coming at us from every side.

Alexander was putting Persians into the dust with almost every blow, but some of the feline grace was gone from his back and hips as he rode. Grace is the first thing to go as a man tires – we start to make slightly larger motions with the arms, the pelvis – anything to help the muscles work. Alexander was showing the very earliest sign of fatigue.

I got up to him as he caught a Persian spear in his bridle hand, pulled it from its owner’s grip and stabbed him with the butt-spike – all in a heartbeat.

My sword was bent. I hadn’t noticed it, but my fine Keltoi long sword was bent from the pushing match with the Persian officer, and it had a deep nick – almost a gouge – in the thick metal near the hilt.

I rang it off a Phrygian’s helmet, and it snapped.

‘Where is Philotas?’ Alexander asked, his tone almost conversational.

Here’s one of the differences between a normal, intelligent Macedonian and Alexander. I’d forgotten that Philotas existed. I was busy fighting for my life – Philotas was on a different plane of existence.

Alexander pulled on his reins and our horses lined up, head to head. But the Phrygians were done – they weren’t running yet, but they were falling back, riding clear of the melee or simply getting shy of combat.

Cleitus came up on Alexander’s left side.

He looked across at me, ignoring the king. ‘We need to get him out of here,’ he said.

I looked over my shoulder. We had Medes – or Persians – behind us, between us and the river – I could see their high hats and their bows.

And their arrows. Arrows were falling on the rear ranks of the wedge, and horses were screaming.

I think that until then we’d lost very few men, if any. We had good armour and excellent helmets – far better than the Phrygians or the Medes. And our horses were big – as big as theirs, if not as good as the Niseans. Our men were better trained in arms – the Persians don’t wrestle, and that’s a terrible disadvantage in a cavalry melee.

But we didn’t have bows, and their arrows were falling on the rumps of our horses. Horses were dying and their riders were left on the ground in a cavalry melee – a terrible place to be.

Had the Phrygians held on for another few minutes, they would have had us. As it was, they fell back, and Alexander ordered us to wheel around – easy enough for a small group of horsemen who had ridden together all their lives, and desperately hard for anyone else. The Medes never imagined we’d wheel – but the whole wedge spun on Alexander, men riding to the flanks in good order, as if this sort of fancy riding in the face of the enemy was an everyday thing. Which it was, for us.

We charged the Medes, and they came right at us – the Medes are the bravest nation on earth, except for ours, and they are never shy about a scramble. Our horses were blown and theirs were fresh, and they shot a flight of arrows at us from close in, and men fell – but nothing touched Alexander, and he had his spear two-handed, the butt clamped under his right armpit, and he wrenched it high just before contact, beating his opponent’s spear aside and thrusting. He must have missed – one of his few melee misses, I must admit – and the man’s spear rode down Alexander’s spear, skipped off Bucephalus’s coat and popped up into my line. I got a hand on it, slapped it clear of my body – and my opponent unhorsed himself, because he wouldn’t let go of his spear – a juvenile mistake.

Another Mede shot me from arm’s length – I had time to put my head down and my crest into his shot – it was like being punched in the head, and blackness came before my eyes – a haze at the edges, and another blow rang against the side of my helmet, and then I could see, and my spear had rammed through his chest and my spear-point was out through his back, and the weight of him broke the staff.

And then I was through, Poseidon gathering speed, and Alexander was trying to turn his horse to go back into the melee.

I gave Poseidon his head and gathered the king’s bridle in my hand as I trotted past – Bucephalus trumpeted his displeasure as his head was snapped round, but he had to follow Poseidon.

Alexander slammed his spear-butt into my side. ‘What . . .’

We were in the river. Persian cavalry was coming at the Hetaeroi from all directions, and men were down – at least a dozen, all king’s friends. Amyntas son of Amyntas was down, and Lagus son of Perdiccas, and other men I knew.

And Pyrrhus – young Pyrrhus, one of my own. I could see immediately that he was missing from my file, because when I burst out of the back of the melee, all my file followed me like good troopers, and there was Nearchus, and Cleomenes, but Pyrrhus was gone. Damn the boy.

But he was not the king.

I rode through the ford, and Alexander was screaming at me, but I had his reins.

Why, you ask?

Because in my one glimpse across the river I’d seen Philotas. He was sitting on his war horse, and he wasn’t moving to our aid. And I thought of Thais, and what she had said, and I made the decision – right or wrong – that it was my job to keep the king alive.

The Hetaeroi followed me.

The Medes didn’t pursue. They’d lost their prize – the king – and they could claim to have had the best of the melee, in that they held the ground. Another way of looking at it was that we’d broken through the Phrygian cavalry, whirled about and shattered the Medes, but perhaps that’s my bias speaking. Heh, heh.

I got Alexander up the Macedonian bank of the Granicus, and I turned to him – well short of the waiting squadrons of Hetaeroi, who looked angry, even at this distance. There was the margin of victory – six full squadrons, fifteen hundred Macedonian cavalry. Sitting.

‘Blame me,’ I hissed at Alexander. ‘Call me a coward, lord, but ask yourself, why is Philotas just sitting there?’

Alexander rode past me. He trotted his horse up the bank and turned to look back.

The Persians were still in disarray. But even as we watched, a magnificent regiment came up at a canter – a thousand noble Persians in fine armour – with scales, most of them, that gleamed like a million mirrors, like dancer’s bangles in the setting sun. Arsites in person, I assumed. They pushed their own Medes and Phrygians aside.

But they halted at the riverbank.

Our last files got across, pursued only by a handful of Mede arrows.

‘Not as easy as you thought, Ptolemy?’ Philotas shouted at me.

The king was angry with me, and the army would think I’d been a coward, and Philotas – I should have flashed with rage, but something inside me was tired, and cold. So I rode up the bank and right up to him.

Give him this much – he didn’t flinch or quail. I think he hoped I would strike him, so he could order me arrested.

I rode right up close. ‘You’re right,’ I said. I was only as loud as I needed to be for him to hear me. ‘But I didn’t expect to have to do it by myself.’

His eyes widened a little.

I rode past him and had my Polystratus, now my hyperetes, sound the recall from our place in the Hetaeroi line. I didn’t think that the Persians would come across the stream at us, but it would have been foolish to allow my squadron to continue to mill about in confusion.

We dismounted. All of the horses were blown – even Poseidon was tired.

Alexander left Bucephalus and came over to me. ‘I wish to apologise,’ he said.

I don’t think he’d ever apologised – at least to me. I just stood there with a foolish look on my face, no doubt.