God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

Other men’s moments of heroism may fuel their lives, but I didn’t have time to hear the tale, just then. We had horses for them, and we got them mounted – even the wife, who rode like a sack of grain, or worse.

Then we cut cross-country, right from the edge of the town – across dykes and north on the edge of the river, where there was a bridle path. Before rosy-fingered dawn strode long-legged across the murky sky, we had gone twenty stades. We were cold, wet and scared. Alexander was silent.

But we were safe. We’d crossed the river four times, with Polystratus guiding – he was elated that night, and doing better than his best. No pursuit was going to find our trail after that – not even with dogs.

Mid-morning, and we ate a cold breakfast at our horses’ heads.

‘What will I do for money?’ Alexander asked me, suddenly.

Hephaestion laughed. Opened his leather bag. ‘I don’t have onions or sausage,’ he said.

Instead, he had almost all of Alexander’s personal jewels.

Alexander kissed him. And then he kissed me. ‘I think you two have saved my life.’

I don’t remember what I answered – it was so unlike him.

Noon, and the yard of my manor house. Our horse barn could hold fifty horses – and now it had twice that. I had nobly born royal companions sleeping in the hayloft and in the smokehouse.

Heron was a prominent man now, and had a great deal to lose.

Such men can be suddenly fickle, or disloyal.

Not Heron. I never even suspected him – who betrays a hundred years of family loyalty?

‘That’s the prince!’ he hissed at me. ‘What’s happening?’

I led him outside, and then out beyond the barns. To the top of the family hill.

‘I’m going into exile,’ I said. ‘Philip is going to change the succession – bastardise Alexander. Get a new heir on Attalus’s niece.’

‘Gods!’ Heron said. ‘He’s insane!’

I had to admit that that’s about all I could think. ‘Attalus has worked for a year to poison his mind against Alexander,’ I said after a moment’s silence.

Heron shrugged. ‘Your father hated Philip,’ he said.

I nodded. I suspected as much and really, really didn’t want to know. And having the old family retainer tell me the secret of my birth was just a little too much like a Menander play. So I raised my hand. ‘Speak me no treason,’ I said. ‘I’m going with my prince. Attalus hates me – it’s a long, stupid story – and he will attack you here.’

Heron looked down at the farms. We held more than twenty great farms right here – the core of our wealth – but we had sixty more farms spread all the way across Macedon, and up into the hill country of the west. We were highlanders and lowlanders.

I could read his mind. ‘You can’t defend it,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘I’ll need money,’ I said. ‘Other than that – feel free to betray me.’

‘Betray you?’ he asked.

‘Seize the lands in your own name,’ I said. ‘Tell Attalus to sod off, you are the boss here, now. I’ll wager you gold against iron he’ll make an accommodation rather than sending raids.’

Heron made a face. ‘Men will spit on my shadow,’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘Not for long,’ I said. ‘I have no heir, and if Alexander fails – well, it’s all yours anyway. But I’ll need money and horses. I’m going to take every horse you have, and all the coin, and all the men who can fight.’

Heron shook his head. ‘I need ten fighters and horses and armour for them.’

That was good sense. I couldn’t strip him bare – even for the week until he could get reinforcements from the outlying farms.

He scratched his jaw. ‘Going to take the prince to Epirus?’ he asked.

‘Zeus! Is it that obvious?’ I said.

Heron nodded. ‘Best place for him. His mother will protect him. Get him an army, if required.’ He scratched again. ‘Take twenty men and forty horses. Make up the difference at the northern farms – strip them, not me. And use them as stopping points. And while you’re at it, take the slaves and send all the farmers here for protection. Then I don’t have any hostages up there.’

‘And all the farmers know that you are secretly loyal to me.’ I saw right through him.

He shrugged. ‘Yes. No one in the family is going to believe I’m a traitor.’

‘Attalus will believe.’ I hoped it would at least slow him down. He was going to have other fish to bake over the next few months. I had to hope that, or I was going to return to find my people butchered and my estates burned or worse.

Loyalty is the most valuable thing in the world. You do not spit on it. When a loyal man says he wants something – especially when he wants his reputation protected – you had better listen.

Besides, I liked his idea of closing the northern farms – most of which were pretty marginal, spear-won properties still subsisting on frontier rations. And most of our best fighters were up there. And Heron was right – I could ride right through them.

We were the size of a small army when we rode out the next morning – fifty royal companions, more than a hundred retainers and grooms, ten baggage carts, grain, pork, jars of wine, casks of silver. But we were getting away clean, and any idea of pursuit was a day late. We slept in the open that night, and on one of my northern farms the next.

I think it was three days into our exile that we were all sleeping on the floor of the ‘hall’ of my poorest farm – a timber hall shorter in length than my great hall at home was wide. Our companions were packed in like salted anchovies from the coast. I sent twenty grooms ahead under Polystratus with all the slaves from the northern farms, to clear the road over the mountains, buy food and prepare the way.

It was pouring rain. Some of the slaves were weeping – their lives were hard already, and being driven out into the winter was pretty cruel. Of course, they didn’t know the half of it. If Attalus came here . . .

But the women wept. The rain fell. And Prince Alexander was sleeping on the floor of a frontier farm. He was between me and Hephaestion. I was lying there in my cloak, listening to the rain, and thinking – I remember this very well – of Thais. Not Nike. Such is the power of lust and time. I was imagining . . . well, never you mind.

Alexander was weeping.

I’d never heard him weep before.

So I tore myself from Tais’s imagined embraces. ‘My lord?’

‘Go away,’ he whispered.

Hephaestion was sound asleep and no help.

‘Lord, we’re almost to the mountains and safety,’ I said.

‘Thanks,’ he said. Dismissively.

‘Lord—’

‘Fuck off,’ he hissed.

I rolled over, so that we were eye to eye. Once, I’d have let him go. But we had put too much behind us – together. ‘Talk to me,’ I whispered.

‘I’m going to die some fat old fuck at someone else’s court!’ he said. ‘I’ll wash up in Asia or Athens, and men will point at me and say – there’s the victor of Chaeronea. What happened to him? Fuck Philip! Maybe he isn’t my father. I should have killed him while he lay there. Then I’d be king. Now I will be no one.’

Well – what do you say to that? Eh?

‘You know what exiles are like? Hatching useless plots, to feel alive? Fondling slaves, because no free person will be with them? They become like family retainers, or old slaves – drones, feeding off the fat of the house and contributing nothing, with no excellence, no arete – nothing to offer.’ Alexander knew what he was talking about, because there were generations of exiles around the fringes of the Macedonian court – Persians, Athenians, even a Spartan. And we’d seen more of them in Athens. Thracians, Persians, even a Scythian prince from the far north.

His voice was thick with unshed tears.

I reached out, squeezed his shoulder hard – and said, ‘You don’t sound like Achilles, to me.’