God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

Kineas nodded to the king. ‘I can attest that he came in of his own will, with fifty armoured horsemen and twenty more mounted archers. Diodorus met them and brought them to my camp under guard. They have not been any trouble.’

Alexander looked at Kineas. ‘You will vouch for him?’ he asked.

Kineas looked at Cyrus. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly.

Cyrus let out a breath.

Alexander turned to look at Hephaestion. ‘Aegema. And Kineas’s Athenians. Let’s grab Ecbatana and see what we get.’

He was elated.

He glanced at me. ‘I am the King of Kings,’ he said, and grinned. It was his old grin, but it had a new purpose, and one I could not like.

Alexander enjoyed seeing men bend their backs.

We rode like the wind. It’s a saying men use too often, but it was true of the race to Ecbatana. We had fifteen hundred cavalry on appalling roads. Every man – even the Athenians – had a pair of horses, and we moved two hundred stades a day despite the mountains and the treacherous rains.

We took Ecbatana by riding in. The treasury was looted, but the apples were in baskets along the road, waiting for the tithe-takers who never came. I remember stooping from the saddle and grabbing one, eating it as I rode under the marble lions.

There were Persian noblemen everywhere. They had come, not to fight, but to make submission.

Four thousand recruits and mercenaries reached us from the coast, having come up the road from Susa. Cleitus went back to Susa with the return messages, because he was so sick.

The word was that Darius was going to hold the Caspian Gates against us, up north, almost to Hyrkania. He was raising Hyrkania now, with Bessus. But increasingly, the Persians told us that Bessus meant to make himself king. Remember – Darius had faced revolt in the east before we ever came over the Hellespont. Now, after three lost battles, the east had had enough of him.

Alexander read the dispatches that came in from Greece and Antipater, and for the first time in a long time, I shared them, standing in yet another superb palace, under tapestries made so beautifully that you might have thought the figures would turn and speak to you. The kind we’d burned at Persepolis.

He frowned.

‘Antipater has defeated the Spartans,’ he said.

Hephaestion’s eyes widened. ‘Wonderful!’

Alexander’s eyes narrowed. ‘Nothing wonderful about it. We’re conquering Asia, and Antipater is conquering mice. Sparta is nothing.’

I winced. Nothing was allowed to compete with the king’s accomplishments, lately.

Thrace was in revolt. Under a Macedonian.

Zopryon, the satrap for Pontus, was, without consulting Antipater, or just possibly with his connivance, marching north to the Euxine coast.

‘Idiot,’ Alexander said. ‘He’d better win. If he loses I’ll have his head.’ It wasn’t clear whether Alexander meant Antipater or Zopryon.

After a three-day pause to move up some baggage carts and collect water and pack animals, Alexander left the rest of the army – just marching in through the western gates of the city – and we were off again.

We raced north and east, across the low hills to the east and down into the saltpan and dust of the Iranian plateau.

It was a nightmare. We never had enough water, and our horses suffered. My ‘new’ Medea died on the saltpan, and I had to switch to a country mare – the ugliest horse, I think, that I ever rode. But she got me to Rhagae, where we heard from Kineas, who’d managed to sweep north despite the lack of water, that Darius was three days ahead and going hard into the mountains of Hyrkania.

There was a Persian royal stud at Rhagae, and Polystratus looted it for me while I rode in on my hideous horse. By the time we had organised water and I’d gone back with fifty Hetaeroi to rescue the stragglers in the saltpan, Alexander had pressed forward, got lost in the mountains and come back – another day lost. I rode in on my mare, angry to have been left behind but happy enough to have found seventy men alive.

That’s when I discovered that I had Barsine’s sister riding with me.

I’d had a long day, and one of my troopers was sitting in the agora of the dusty town, while all the rest of them – aristocrats every one – dismounted and watered their horses.

I tossed my reins to Polystratus and walked over to the one man too proud to water his own horse. I need not mention at this point that although we all disdained trousers, every man of us now wore light Persian cloaks and headcloths against the sun.

‘Are you lazy, or stupid?’ I asked.

The man turned his head away.

‘Lazy or stupid! Get down from your mount this moment or I’ll throw you off.’ I put a hand under the rider’s foot. I meant business.

The rider turned back to me. ‘If I get down, every man here will know who I am,’ Banugul said. Her face was wrapped, so that only her eyes showed. Those eyes.

‘You!’ I said, or something equally witty. Now that I could see her legs, her sex was obvious, and I couldn’t believe I had been fooled.

Her eyes smiled. ‘Me,’ she admitted. ‘You know that we are Hyrkanians, eh?’

In fact, I didn’t. I might lust after her body – it was impossible, despite my deep love for Thais, not to look at Banugul without some lust – but I’d scarcely noticed her otherwise.

‘The king needs a guide. I need some help from the king, too, so I’m hoping we can arrange an exchange of favours.’ Her eyes smiled again, and I tried not to imagine what she might have in mind.

‘I will take you to the king,’ I said carefully. ‘But I cannot guarantee his reaction.’

‘I would be in your debt,’ she said. Her voice was level, and offered no seduction.

Alexander was bathing. Two slaves were attending to him with sponges.

‘What do you want?’ Alexander spat at me.

‘I have recovered the stragglers, as you ordered,’ I said. ‘I also picked up Barsine’s sister, who wishes to see you.’

‘Splendid,’ Alexander said. ‘Send her in.’

Another man might have leered, or made a gesture, but Alexander didn’t see the world that way. I doubt that he ever flirted in his life. His own nudity was neither here nor there.

‘She is Hyrkanian,’ I said. I’m not sure why I was inclined to help her – perhaps the oldest reason in the world.

Alexander turned to me for the first time. ‘By Zeus Amon my father! Of course she is! Well done, Ptolemy son of Lagus!’

No thanks for a day in the desert, chasing water mirages and finding men near dead of thirst. But for bringing him a guide for his latest pothos . . .

And of course, I had done nothing.

‘Your servant, Great King,’ I said. I was mocking him, and he didn’t acknowledge it. Or perhaps even then, he took it as his due and missed the mockery altogether.

Banugul entered. She made a noise.

‘Greeks don’t worry about nudity,’ I said. Everyone’s friend, that was me.

She unwrapped her hair and face, and fell on her knees, and then did the full proskynesis.

Alexander nodded. ‘You may rise, sister of Barsines. How may I help you?’

‘Reconquer my kingdom for me, lord. And I will guide you through the mountains.’

‘Are you bargaining with me?’ he asked, voice silky.

‘Never, lord. I answered your question. I will guide you, regardless!’ She sounded breathless, insistent, and very, very intense.

But Alexander’s horses were wrecked, and the hypaspitoi were at least a day behind us across the saltpan.

Alexander looked at Banugul – the coolest, most appraising look I suspect she had ever received, from a