God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

I saw Spithrakes – I only learned his name later – another of their great nobles. He came up behind the king in the fight – rode past Nearchus, fighting two men, and put Marsyas down with a heavy backcut, and then he had the king – he drew back his arm and Cleitus cut it off – one of the greatest blows I’ve ever seen – that man had the king’s life in his hands, and Cleitus saved him with one perfect cut, as if he’d waited his entire life for that moment to save the king’s life.

But the Persians were pressing in – another Persian got past Nearchus and his spear blow – sloppy – caught the king in the back and tipped him on to the ground.

We had never imagined that the king could fall.

I had two opponents, and I was not fighting to take them down, but rather to block the path to the king. When he fell, my purpose in the melee changed. Or rather, everything changed.

I let Poseidon go forward, and he sank his teeth into an enemy mare’s neck and she screamed, and my sword sheared off the top of the man’s skull and with my backcut, I blinded the other horse and spilled its brains, and then, ignoring the press of Persians, I whirled Poseidon on his forefeet and got him over the king’s body – looked down, and he was already on his hands and knees, and Black Cleitus was beside me – flank to flank, his horse nose-to-tail with Poseidon, and we had Alexander between us, and we cut outwards into the press.

Bucephalus was the horse Alexander said he was. He pushed in between us to stand by his master.

I cut a man’s hands off on his horse’s neck, and then I was just trying to stay alive – the spear-points never stopped coming, and I blocked them – up, right, high, anything to clear the iron from Poseidon and the king. I have no idea how long Cleitus and I held them – ten heartbeats? A hundred?

I know that the gods could have made the earth and the heavens in that time, raised a new race of men and made a new golden age. It was that long. It was like the first pangs of love. Like the last moments of severe pain. The intensity and speed of it rose to an intense pitch – there were blades everywhere and my kopis flew through the blocks and parries – I got a spear in my left hand, taken from an enemy or put there by a friend, and I used it to block thrusts at the king, who was off his knees and on his feet by this time, but I couldn’t risk a look – or he was face down in the muck and blood and dead. Either way, I had no means of knowing, because to risk a glance would be to die, and I was the last wall between the barbarians and the king.

Faster, and harder. I had never fought so well in my life. I was fighting three men – perhaps four – and holding them.

Like a god.

And then the biggest of my opponents – a giant man on a big black horse with a huge spear – baffled my parry, and I had that sickening moment – the one you get in practice when you know you’ve missed your parry, and pain is to follow – except this was the end.

His spear-point seemed to come forward slowly – but my attempt to reparry was even slower.

And then a spear came over my shoulder from behind, and the blow meant for my face sheared off into the crest of my helmet.

I rocked back and lost my kopis, but just like that, the fight was over.

The Persians had thrown everything at us – all their cavalry reserve – and while we fought four thousand men, our pezhetaeroi and our hypaspitoi had shattered their centre and our cavalry was gaining both flanks. Their first line was fleeing. Their second line expected the cavalry to rally there – but they didn’t, and the only reason I can offer is that three of their senior officers were lying under our horses’ hooves.

I sat there, shoulders slumped, looking vaguely at the ground.

Cleitus got a hand on the king’s arm and hauled him up on to Bucephalus’s back.

His helmet was gone, and there was blood pouring down the back of his neck.

He was looking at Hephaestion, face down in the blood under our hooves. His jaw was slack. I hadn’t seen the king’s closest companion go down, but he was down, and his horse was dead atop him.

But the pezhetaeroi were cheering their lungs out, and the Persian army was broken. Only the poor bloody Greek mercenaries stood their ground. They could see the king, and they sent us a herald – requesting that they be allowed to surrender.

He picked a bad time.

Alexander raised his eyes from his best friend lying in the bloody dust, and he pointed out the Greeks to his pezhetaeroi, who were close behind us, having to all intents and purposes rescued us from the Persian nobles.

‘Kill them all!’ he said, his voice harsh.

The pezhetaeroi needed no further urging.

We don’t really like Greeks, we Macedonians.

As it turned out, of course, Hephaestion wasn’t as badly hurt as the king, who had a cut in his scalp that ran right into the bone. I’d say he missed grim death by the width of a sword blade. Hephaestion had been knocked unconscious.

The Persians ran, leaving their Greek mercenaries to die. But they lost a lot of their finest men. They lost Mithridates, widely reckoned their finest fighter – he almost got Alexander.

But I got him. Heh. And they lost Pharnakes, another of their best – Rhodakes, Spithridates, and two more satraps – great men, relatives of the king, trusted stewards of great provinces of the empire. If the king had lost Hephaestion, me, Parmenio and a dozen more like us, it would have been even.

I’ll tell you two things about that fight, lad. One is, we voted the king the palm for the bravest in the army. It wasn’t some empty compliment. Watching him fight – both days – was inspirational. Ask any man who was there – ask any front-ranker in the pezhetaeroi what it’s like to watch your king work his way through a dozen enemies, a sparkling haze of metal and blood as he kills his way to victory. That’s what a King of Macedon is supposed to do. That’s why farmers from Pella will march to India. It’s not for his boyish good looks or his leopard-skin cloak.

He did it with elan. He looked like a god.

And when that fight was over, and he got remounted, helmet gone, blood flowing down his back, they cheered their lungs out and Parmenio could not understand why. All Parmenio saw was a reckless boy, foolish, arrogant, who had risked an easy victory for personal glory.

The pezhetaeroi saw a god.

The other is that, in many ways, that fight – those few minutes on the banks of the Granicus – were the fight for the Persian empire. The King of Kings lost most of his closest, most trusted warriors. He already had problems in the east, and he’d just lost all the men he could trust.

One more thing.

It was the closest they ever came to getting the king. I hated the bastards – they were the enemy, the barbarians, the Medes I’d waited my whole life to fight, but by all the gods, when they came for us they were heroes, and we were heroes, and it was the fight for ever after, around every campfire, in every cushioned hall where the somatophylakes lay with the king.

Well – except for Halicarnassus. Halicarnassus was horrible. But mostly, we didn’t talk about those awful days. We talked about Granicus.

Which only makes what happened later all the worse.

SEVENTEEN

The morning after the Battle of the Granicus, Alexander was already master of western Asia.

We took their camp with our scouts after the battle. The Agrianians had superb discipline – remarkable, really, considering their origins – and were probably the only unit in the army that could be trusted not to loot the camp. We rode in the next morning, and discovered that we were masters of thousands of slaves (mostly very attractive women collected from all over the empire), tents, baggage animals (including camels) and a fair amount of gold. Enough gold to pay the troops, anyway.

Polystratus did well for himself, because Alectus and he were friends. Don’t imagine that the Agrianians were stupid – just careful, and only their closest friends got first pick of the loot. My share was a beautiful ear-dagger from Aegypt, fine steel and gold and ivory – I have it still – and a new sword in the Persian manner with fine green stone grips. It was beautiful to look at. The dagger was superb and a fine fighting weapon – the sword was pretty and broke in my hand, as I’ll no doubt tell you later. There’s a lesson there, if you like. A parable of some sort.