Really, I had a dozen opportunities to realise that I was being an idiot and call the whole thing off.
I led them along the face of the first dyke wall – over the berm, and down into the evil surprise of smelly waste water on the far side. Disgusting. And up, now smelling like a latrine – over the next dyke, and again I saw their fires. I was off by a stade, already turned around in the berms.
But now the system of dykes worked in my favour – we were inside the outer walls, and we moved west along the north side of a long earth wall, and there was no way a sentry could see us, unless he was right atop us.
I was right at the front, moving as fast as I could.
So, of course, I began to outpace all my troops, until Polystratus and Gordias and I were alone.
We stopped at the end of a long wall – almost a stade long. We didn’t need scouts to know that we were there – we could hear drunken Thracians calling one to another.
I poked my head over the berm.
There was the sentry, an arm’s length away. He roared, I stabbed at him, missed, his counter-thrust tangled in my cloak and I got my left arm around his spear, shoved it into his armpit, lifted it and slammed my fist into his face six or seven times, and he was down. Gordias killed him.
But every Thracian awake in that corner saw me, and there was a growl from the camp.
Gordias roared for the men to cross the dyke and charge.
I watched my beautiful plan fall to rubble. But since there wasn’t any alternative, I drew my sword and ran headlong into the Thracians at the foot of the dyke.
It was dark. I think I wounded or killed two or even three men before they began to realise what was happening.
There were Macedonians coming over the dykes. Just not all that many.
I still don’t know how many were still with me at that point. A hundred? Two hundred?
They made quite a bit of noise, though.
Gordias crashed into the knot of men where I was fighting, and Polystratus – who had had the sense to bring a shield – stood at my shoulder, and most of the men we were facing were awake enough, but they had eating knives and dirks – all their gear was somewhere else. (Try to find your gear in the dark when you are drunk.)
And of course they were drunk. They were Thracians.
This is a story about Alexander, not about me – but I love to tell this story, and it touches on Alexander in the end. That fight in the dark was perfectly balanced – a hundred fully armed Macedonian infantrymen against two thousand sleepy, drunk, unarmed Thracians.
Just when they should have swamped us, Drako swept over the wall behind us with fifty horsemen, looking like fiends from the Thracian hell, and they broke and ran off. Alcus bit into another group and then both my cavalry leaders – neither one of whom made any attempt to find or communicate with me – swept off into the dark. They got the pony herd and some stolen beef and headed back to camp.
By now, the sun was coming up, somewhere far to the east, and there was a line of grey on the far ridge and eye-baffling half-light. And more and more of my missing infantrymen were coming in – most of them from the wrong direction. By sunrise I had half a thousand men and full possession of their camp.
They formed in the middle of the valley – a dejected band of beaten men, most of them without spears. They knew they had to take the camp back, and their leaders were haranguing them.
My cavalry had begun to harass them with javelins.
I lined the dyke closest to them – every minute brought me more light and two or three more men, as they scrambled up the earth walls behind me. Most of my lost infantrymen had gone too far north in the dark.
The Thracians were game. They put their best-armed men in front, formed as tight as they could and swept forward to the base of the dyke, where they stood, roaring, getting their courage up. They still outnumbered my men four to one, and we didn’t have our sarissas – they were in camp. We had javelins – a good weapon, but not as useful in stopping an angry Thracian as a pike as long as three men are tall.
I walked up and down in front of my men – manic with energy, elated by my success, terrified of the next few minutes. I was at the right end of my line when a helmetless man leaped off his horse and ran lightly up the berm.
‘Well done,’ he said, and threw his arms around me. ‘Hold their charge and we have them.’
He gleamed like a god come to earth. It was, of course, Alexander.
‘We will, my prince!’ I said – torn between relief and annoyance. But relief won. It’s like being angry at your lover – and then seeing her after an absence. Suddenly, at the sight of her, you care nothing for her infidelities – you’re too young to know whereof I speak.
The Thracians came up to the base of the berm.
We stood at the top.
A chief roared something – I think he called, ‘Who are we!’
And they roared.
Three times, and then they came in silence, rushing up the dyke faster than I could imagine.
Gordias, on the other hand, kept his head.
‘Ready?’ he called. ‘Throw!’ he roared, and five hundred javelins swept like birds of prey on the huddled mass of unshielded, unarmed men.
And that’s as far as they got. So many men fell in the shower of spears that they turned to run, and Alexander was on them with the older pages and the professional cavalry – Alcus was there, and Drako, and all the younger pages from camp.
We were all around them, then, and with numbers, too. And weapons and armour.
Maybe a hundred of them lived. I doubt it, though. We offered no quarter, and Alexander meant to make an example in his first battle. The cavalry went in again and again, and they had nowhere to run – even our shield- bearers and camp slaves were out, with slings and rocks, lining the forest edge, so that if an armed man burst free of the melee, they shot him down.
Hephaestion said that Alexander killed the chieftain, and that’s possible, but when he went down, the rest as good as fell on their swords. All the fight went out of them, and we took fifty prisoners.
And then there was nothing but the vultures and the corpses and the stink of men’s excrement, and we went back to camp. We didn’t form and march back – nothing so organised. That level of efficiency came later. Instead, men simply couldn’t stand looking at the dead any longer – or men snatched up a gold ring or a torc and left, or wandered blank-eyed for a while and found themselves by a fire.
Gordias got some slaves organised and started collecting the rest of the loot. I found Philip the Red and got him to help me organise collection of the wounded – we had a few. We killed their wounded. I found that I was turning my head away.
It was horrible. But you know about that – I can see it in your eyes. And the animals – the dogs, the carrion birds.
Luckily it was daylight.
By noon, we had most of the army in camp. It was a young army, and most of the men simply sat, slack- jawed. Older men guzzled wine.
Alexander paced, like a caged lion.
‘We need to be at them,’ he said.
Laodon put an arm around his shoulders. ‘Sire, there is no “them” to be at. You have destroyed them.’
Alexander shrugged off his arm. ‘Do not be familiar, sir. And their villages are open – right now. Not for long – other tribes will protect them.’
Laodon shook his head. ‘Your army is exhausted.’
Gordias backed him up. ‘My men have been up all night, and fought two days in a row.’
Alexander flinched – a visible shudder. I knew him well, and knew that he was fighting off a temper tantrum.
Instead, he managed a smile. ‘Well, then,’ he said. He caught my eye. ‘Not bad for the baggage guard, eh?’ he said.
I grinned.
He grinned back.
‘I expected to find you besieged,’ Alexander said.
