God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

reality. That somehow, we were becoming Persians, with their elaborate rituals and their empty honours.

When I entered Hephaestion’s tent, he wasn’t there, and his servants gave me a cup of wine and did not offer me a place to sit.

I waited for a long time.

It is odd how waiting affects you. I grew angrier and angrier, of course – who does not? But the oddest part was my inability to decide whether I should sit or not. The only place to sit was on Hephaestion’s bed, and it was not at a good height for sitting. I couldn’t help but think what I’d have done to Hephaestion if he’d kept me waiting when we were young.

But I remained standing.

My knees grew tired.

My hips hurt.

Eventually, he came into the tent, reading a scroll. He looked at me. He was puzzled, and then shook his head. ‘Oh – Ptolemy. Of course. I can give you two minutes. What do you want?’

We were only a few feet from Alexander’s great red-purple tent, and suddenly I heard the king’s voice. He was angry.

‘What do you mean, you will not?’ he shouted.

I knew that tone. He was enraged.

‘I am the Great King. I demand that you hold the spring festival.’ He was spitting – I could hear it.

Hephaestion glanced at me. ‘What do you want, Ptolemy?’ he asked brusquely.

I had had an hour to consider how I was going to put this, but all my good resolutions fell away.

‘I want the king to get his head out of his arse,’ I said.

That got Hephaestion’s attention.

‘Some of Parmenio’s men – most of the phylarchs in the four senior taxeis – are on the verge of mutiny,’ I said. ‘Do you know about it?’

Hephaestion froze.

‘The king has taken all the loot of Asia that you may remember he promised to the troops – soldiers don’t forget that sort of thing.’ I stepped across the tent towards him, and the bronze-haired bastard flinched. ‘He’s fucking around with some Persian festival and he’s bribing the magi – the Persian priests – and he’s all but told the army that we’re marching east, not west.’ I was close to Hephaestion now. ‘And none of you useless fucks seems able to tell him. They’re going to refuse to march. And the troops will back them.’ I was looking into his eyes. ‘Someone might decide that the easiest way to go back to Pella is over the king’s corpse.’

Hephaestion looked at me, took a breath and behind him the king screamed, ‘You will have the spring festival, and I will walk in it and take the part of the Great King, or by all the gods we both hold sacred, I will destroy you.’

‘The king has other troubles just now,’ Hephaestion said blandly. ‘Leave my secretary a list of the ringleaders and I’ll see it’s dealt with, and see to it you get appropriate credit.’

There is a difference between living a story and telling it. Even as I tell you this tale, I know that I foreshadow, I embellish and I explain. So that moment, when Hephaestion treated me as a minor court functionary – I have probably made it seem natural. I have probably prepared you for this, and you nod, and say, yes, the king has started to behave as a tyrant.

But I was stunned. ‘Hephaestion – there are no ringleaders.’ I remember shaking my head. ‘We are talking about – I don’t know – a thousand men. The very heart of the army.’

Hephaestion took a deep breath, and released it. ‘Very well,’ he said. He met my eye. ‘You tell him.’

And so I did.

Hephaestion took me to the king’s tent. The magi were nowhere to be seen. He was on his couch, staring at the roof.

‘Patroclus, why do the gods send me fools—’ he began. And then he saw me.

‘Ptolemy has news he deems serious,’ Hephaestion said carefully. Hedging his bets.

‘Achilles, sulking in his tent,’ I said.

Alexander sat up. He opened his mouth.

I shook my head. ‘Your veterans are on the edge of mutiny,’ I said. ‘Pay is late, and you have just seized all the gold of the empire – a mountain of gold. You made them help load the mules – they know to the talent how much you gained.’ I looked at Hephaestion, but he was no help. ‘They are talking mutiny in the streets.’

‘I asked him to give me the names of the ringleaders,’ Hephaestion said.

‘There are no ringleaders,’ I said. ‘Nor are there any dissenters.’

Alexander nodded, once, decisively, as he did on the battlefield. He assimilated what I was saying, matched it to other data and agreed that I must be right – as ruthless with his own notions as with enemy troops.

‘I see.’ He nodded. ‘Yes. And you will, as usual, tell me that I have been blind,’ he said, looking at me with a disarming smile.

But by the gods, a false smile, like an actor in a mask, or worse.

He nodded again. ‘Very well. We shall give them a bone, and perhaps send a warning to other quarters at the same time.’

‘A bone?’ I said. ‘You need those men. They are the officers and file leaders of your army.’

Alexander shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t need them. I can buy any army I want.’

‘Didn’t work for Darius,’ I said.

‘Darius was not me,’ he said. ‘Your concern is noted. Gather an army council, son of Lagus. And you have my thanks for this timely warning.’

It was still winter in the mountains. Hephaestion gathered all the spears of the army – all the Macedonian citizens. They came with spears, and with torches. They came ready, I still believe, to mutiny.

Alexander stood before them in the white and gold of a Macedonian king. He’d had a few hours to prepare, and he had with him on the besa a half-dozen of the disfigured Greek veterans.

‘Men of Macedon,’ the king said. ‘The time has come to avenge these men. Look at them well. Professional soldiers – men of Amphilopolis and Pella, of Athens and Sparta, of Ionia and Aeolia. Tortured and mutilated by the Persians. Look at what Persia really is.’

Even as he spoke, the poor miserable things shuffled through the crowd, and more of them emerged from behind the king to stumble or push themselves or drag themselves in among the Macedonians.

‘Don’t flinch!’ the king said. ‘Look at them. Had we been defeated at Issus or Arabela, we would have shared this fate. I would be dead, or I would have no lips and no ears. That is the peace we would have earned from Persia. Ask a Euboean. Ask an Athenian!’

He had them, and they had never even voiced their discontent.

‘Persepolis is the richest city in the empire,’ he said. ‘I give it to you, my loyal troops. I reserve only the temples and the treasury and the palace. Take the rest. Kill the men, and take the women for your own, and let every house be looted and the spoils shared as is the custom of the army.’

We had lived among these Persians for six weeks. Eaten their bread. Laughed at their children and tickled them.

But these men were Macedonians.

They roared.

And then they went and raped Persepolis.

I helped massacre the population of Tyre. I did not help at Gaza. But at Persepolis, I actually stood aside.

The hypaspitoi moved into guard positions around the treasury, the palace and the temples. The magi were carefully protected, as was our growing camp of collaborators.

Every other man in the city was butchered. Perhaps some escaped. I never met any.

It must have fallen like a bolt from Zeus. As I say, we’d lived among them for six weeks. And then, one night, with no warning, their town was sacked.

There was an orgy of destruction. I did not watch it.