God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

Alexander’s intellectual whims came with spear-points of iron and a will of adamantine, and there was nothing effeminate about them. Only lesser men ever thought so. What happened was that Alexander would finish a subject – often inside his head, with no reference to friends or other company – and move on. If you were up to his speed, you could reason out where he’d gone. If you weren’t, he left you behind all the time, and eventually stopped trying to talk to you.

In this case, all he’d done was share his passion for Isocrates first, and then remember that he hadn’t told me the reason for his visit to Antipater’s rooms. My pater was dying or already dead. I was requested.

‘Take all the time you want,’ Alexander said. ‘I know you love him – I’ve seen the two of you together.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I am envious.’

What do you say to that? He was envious. He and his pater were locked in a competition when they ought to have been pulling in harness like matched chariot horses.

‘I am lucky, lord,’ I said. ‘Pater has treated me as a man – since before I was one.’

‘Men say Philip is your father,’ Alexander said. He didn’t mean it to hurt. ‘Yet despite the slur, your father sees you as a . . . a person.’ He shrugged.

‘Lagus is my father.’ I was on dangerous ground here.

‘I agree. If Philip was your father, you’d be better-looking.’ Alexander smiled. ‘You are the only one of my close friends with his own estates and his own power – and yet you are completely loyal. Why?’

Chasms were opening at my feet, and legions of Titans preparing to rend me limb from limb. He had that look in his eye.

‘Habit?’ I answered, with a wink.

Alexander stopped, and his face became still for a moment, and then he barked a laugh. ‘By Herakles my ancestor, Ptolemy. Get you gone. Send your pater my respects, if he is alive to hear them, and tell him his son is somatophylax to the prince.’

‘I am?’ I said. I was delighted – for all his moodiness, he was my prince, and I wanted to serve.

He put a gold ring in my hand. ‘You are.’

I still wear the ring. I earned it a thousand times, and I never betrayed his trust. Until I killed him.

Pater was still alive when I arrived – on the mend, it appeared. So we dined by the hearth, all the old servants happy to have me home – Pater was an excellent master, had freed all the good slaves already and paid them wages, and men competed to go to our estates. It always baffled me that men had other ways of dealing with their slaves and serfs than Pater’s – he was hard but fair, quick to reward. Who thinks that there’s another way? I think it is like raising children. Good estate management takes a few more minutes than bad estate management, just as a little time and a few words are the difference between a good child and a bad one.

We had a good dinner, and I showed off my ring, and Pater beamed at me with approval. I saw him to bed, kissed him and gave him Alexander’s respects, and he frowned.

‘Your prince is mad,’ he said. ‘Steer a careful course, my son. He is no Philip.’

I didn’t lash out – I only said, ‘My prince is worth ten of Philip.’

Pater shook his head. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But Philip is already looking to be rid of him.’

That was like icy water down my back. ‘What?’

Pater shrugged, coughed and drank off a huge dollop of poppy juice. ‘I’ve said too much,’ he whispered. ‘But people tell me things – and I have some of Attalus’s slaves – they’ve run from him. He’s a dangerous man – more like a felon than a general.’ He nodded.

‘Where are these slaves?’ I asked.

Pater smiled. ‘Safe. Ask Heron.’ Heron was his steward. ‘You are an excellent son. Get a wife and make some more! That’s my only advice, lad. You have the rest in your hand. Oh – and don’t forget to breed Narcissa in the spring.’ Narcissa was a big mare – beautiful and wilful and not very interested in boys, but the largest, heaviest, fastest mare we’d ever had.

I held his hand, found myself choked with tears, reminded myself that he was going to be there for a few more nights at least, and let the nurse have him.

He was dead in the morning. He stayed alive for a few days on poppy and willpower to speak to me one last time.

I’m going to cry now.

The gods know I cried then. I wept for a couple of hours, and then I got up and went riding. I rode over our home farms – three farms that had been in the family for ever, since we were smaller men, I suspect – it was winter, and the leaves were off the trees and it was pissing rain, and I didn’t care.

I rode up the hill – we had a big hill in the middle of our property, with an ancient ruined stone tower from the old people at the top. I looked out over all of it – my land as far as my eyes could see, or close enough.

Then I rode back down and buried my pater. He was never a king, or a general. He spurned the court, and mostly he was interested in breeding horses and dogs and cattle and pigs. But he was an excellent father and husband and lord to his people.

Heron understood that there had to be changes. So I spent two weeks – right through the winter festival of lights – sitting in my pater’s chair. I dispensed some justice, walked some boundaries and talked to Heron about the future of the estates. The problem was that most men like me had some brothers or sisters – even bastards – to hold the home fort, so to speak. I was a close friend of the prince, and in twenty years I had every expectation of being a general, or a King’s Councillor, or something better. Satrap? Really, when I was seventeen, I saw no limit to my ambition.

Pretty accurate, as it turned out.

So I wasn’t going to run my estates myself.

Menander and all the ‘New Comedy’ is filled with bad stewards and rapacious managers stealing from lord and peasant alike. Those stereotypes exist for a reason. Heron didn’t want my unlimited trust. He wanted a system of checks and balances to keep him honest. He was a fair man, and he knew that if I rode away and ignored him – well, he’d be under strain.

So for two weeks we hammered out a new administration of my estates, with what was, in effect, a regency council. Heron ran the council, and I got his oldest son, Laodekes, a vacancy as a page. In effect, I ennobled Heron, and his son became my hostage.

That’s Macedon, friend.

At some point in my time at home, I met Nike. She was a house servant – by no means a slave, but rather the daughter of one of Heron’s closest friends, brought in to learn the management of a house before she had her own. She was fifteen, with Aphrodite’s figure and a nose that aimed at the outright conquest of her face. She was pretty sharp – she knew exactly the border between humour and disrespect to her lord, and she walked it carefully, teasing me a little, trying to get me to smile.

I was not doing very well, those weeks after Pater died.

But I liked her for trying, and all of a sudden, in less than a week, I was following her around the house while she did her work. She was the only person I really wanted to see. I’d never been in love before, so the whole thing rather took me by surprise.

I don’t remember how long into the week it was, but I remember standing on the terrace behind the kitchen. She had on a good chiton – good linen – with a zone of braided silk. She always looked like a lady – but the lines were not as clear, then, and her people were not peasants.

She had an apron on, and a scarf in her hair, and a heavy bronze knife in her fist. And what I remember is the moment she turned on me, knife in hand. ‘Shouldn’t you be working?’ she asked. ‘Your father worked all day on these estates.’

I didn’t know what to say, and so, in the best tradition of seventeen-year-old boys, I stammered a great deal.

She laughed – I remember watching her laugh, and there and then, I understood. I wanted her. Up to that moment, somehow I had thought I wanted us to be friends. Or just sought her good opinion.

‘I’ll go and work,’ I muttered – or something like it.

‘Good.’ She nodded. Then, almost sly, out of the corner of her mouth, with the slightest glance out of the corner of her eye – ‘I like to ride – when the work is done.’

A woman who liked to ride? Clearly the gods had made her for me.