God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

She was shooting backwards.

Her first arrow was shot at the most distant target.

She drew and loosed, drew, loosed, drew and loosed, so fast that I couldn’t follow all the movements of her arm. She was still riding away from the targets at a dead gallop.

Drew and loosed and drew and loosed.

Her horse turned under her – a sudden turn on her bow side – and she loosed the arrow on the bow and drew and loosed again.

And again.

I was holding my breath.

Her first six arrows struck. She’d shot from farthest to closest, so that they all struck at the same time.

She cantered her gelding across the rocky slope, to the side of the king.

‘Good bow,’ she said, and handed it to him.

Later that same afternoon, a Corinthian athlete offered to demonstrate his skills as a hoplomachos. He’d made a claim about what a good fighter he was, and the king was in a foul mood, overheard the boast and ordered the man to dismount right there, strip and fight.

He looked around, and his eye fell on Coenus.

One of our very best.

Coenus dismounted and summoned a slave to help him take off his armour, but Alexander spat. ‘If he’s so very good, this Greek, he can fight naked with a club. Like Herakles. And you can wear your armour.’

The Greek was all but weeping with frustration. He was prepared to apologise, but the king was in no mood. The archery had ruined his day – he’d ordered the woman and her companions to be taken to Marakanda under escort.

Coenus was uneasy. He could be a brute, but the Greek – despite a superb physique – was not a big man, and he looked inoffensive – naked, with a club. Coenus looked at the king. The king shook his head. ‘Just kill him,’ he said.

The naked man was an Olympic athlete who had come all this way to train Alexander’s soldiers.

Coenus – our Coenus, not your father’s friend – wouldn’t have lasted this long if he hadn’t been absolutely obedient. He turned, drew his sword and set his shield.

The naked boy came forward, edging crabwise.

Coenus struck, thrusting his shield into the man’s body and cutting hard, overhand.

The Greek slid inside the cut, broke his arm and knocked him unconscious with his club in one blow.

Fight over.

Alexander drew his bow from the gorytos, nocked an arrow and shot the Greek. The arrow went in just over his kidneys, and he fell screaming.

His screams pursued us down the ridge.

Hephaestion looked at me, and I just shook my head at him. I couldn’t think of what to say, or do, but for the first time, I considered two things.

Riding away from the army and taking my chances with the king ordering me killed.

Or killing Alexander.

That night, six of us had a secret meeting. It was a conspiracy – we all knew we could be killed for having the discussion. I swore never to repeat what we said, or who was there. It was a desperate hour, and a desperate oath. So I won’t tell you – except that we discussed options.

When we were done, Hephaestion held me back. ‘Barsines or her sister,’ he said. ‘Bagoas turns my stomach, but he’d do, too.’

Well, it was better than regicide. I nodded. ‘But we have to get through the weeks until he finds a sex toy or we can import one,’ I said.

Hephaestion shook his head. ‘We need something as good as the bow was. And we need it to stay beautiful.’ His bronze hair glittered in the firelight. It was already cold in the mountains.

‘Horses? Playing Polis? How silk is made?’ I was talking to hear myself. I wanted Thais. I wanted to drink wine with Polystratus and Cyrus, or Marsyas. I wanted to stop being afraid.

Hephaestion shook his head. ‘He’s close to the edge,’ he said. ‘What do we do?’

I didn’t have an answer.

I went to bed.

Polystratus wakened me while the stars were still turning overhead. ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘The king wants you.’

I got out of my cloak, wrapped it back around me and ran for his tent – terrified, in a sleepy, cold way, that he’d done something. Killed Hephaestion.

But they were sitting together.

He was smiling, his face easy and unlined, his eyes glittering.

‘Listen, Ptolemy!’ he said. ‘Spitamenes is in revolt, and he’s slaughtered all seven of our new garrisons.’

Hephaestion looked at me. His eyes said everything.

Alexander went on, ‘He’s raised the whole province while we were playing at archery – and he’s cut us off from the main army. We’re surrounded. And our supply lines are cut.’ He fingered his beard. And smiled.

Hephaestion smiled.

Hades, I smiled myself.

Alexander looked up from the dispatch. ‘Gentlemen, I think we might have a war on our hands,’ he said.

We were saved.

THIRTY-FIVE

Alexander’s reaction to Spitamenes was planned in one night and ran like lightning over the plains. He sent a relief column to break Spitamenes’ siege of Marakanda. Alexander placed Pharnuches, a skilled speaker of Persian and several of the Bactrian tongues, as commander; he got a troop of Hetaeroi, three hundred Macedonian pezhetaeroi mounted as cavalry, and two thousand mercenary infantry – good men, mostly Ionian Greeks. Alexander also gave him all the Amazon captives to escort into Marakanda. Spitamenes had sold them to us in the first place, and Alexander thought they might be useful as bargaining counters. He expected that Spitamenes would negotiate.

We marched for the Jaxartes. And we went hard and fast.

We took four forts in three days. In each case, we took the fort by storm, and the garrisons were slaughtered in the storming action. Alexander made it clear to the Bactrians that there were to be no survivors.

In every case, Alexander led the storming party in person.

This was not misplaced Homeric heroics. We had added thousands of barbarian auxiliaries to the army, and we were so short on ‘Macedonians’ that Illyrians and even Thracians had begun to seem like close friends. And morale among the Macedonian troops was low. Alexander made it clear that we were to lead from the front, and when the assault parties went in, the entire front rank of a taxeis might be, for instance, Hetaeroi officers.

That’s what it was taking to get our men into combat.

It was bloody work, but the Bactrian levies did their part, and that meant that they were ours. After killing their cousins in Spitamenes’ service, they weren’t going to go back to the steppe or join the revolt.

The Bactrians were better soldiers than any of us expected. They had enough tribal feuds and remembered hatreds to get them going, and they were still in awe of us. The problem was that as the Bactrians began to outperform the Macedonians, the bad feeling, already present, began to escalate.

There’s a belief, common among the sort of generals who fight their battles in the baths or lying on a comfortable kline at a party, that men who have fought in a number of battles are veterans and thus better soldiers. In the main, this is true. Veterans don’t die from preventable accidents. Veterans get fewer diseases, know how to dig a latrine and know how to find food. So they can indeed wager on how new recruits will die, in the field.

Veterans have learned a few things, and one of the things they learn is that people