God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

‘I thought you had your doubts about fighting,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘You should listen more carefully,’ he said.

I had to whisper loudly to get words out. ‘We need to sweep the ridge.’

Alectus nodded. He walked out along the ridge and raised his big spear. ‘Hypaspitoi!’ he called in his barbaric accent. ‘Not finished yet, philoi! Take a deep breath, think of happy things and get your helmets back on.’

Not exactly like my speeches, but it did the job.

Alectus led, and we followed. Whatever fire had run through my veins was gone, and I was washed clean – and empty. I couldn’t think, and I couldn’t form words. Which was fine. Alectus spread us out in a skirmish line across the ridge, as if we were Peltastoi ourselves – perhaps the terrain, or perhaps it was just the Agrianian’s way. And we walked slowly, and the remaining Peltastoi and Psiloi simply popped up like hares in a hunt and fled, and we let them go. They wasted some stones on us, and we didn’t trouble them with our javelins.

Now, in truth, we lost three men for every one the Athenian mercenaries – that’s what they were – lost to us. And in truth, we outnumbered them by at least two to one when all our men reached the hilltop.

But if you ever ride through the Vale of Tempe, look up at Mount Ossa, and tell me it wasn’t one of our finest hours. We pushed them off the ridge.

And after that, they weren’t going to make a stand anywhere. Maybe they thought we were insane. And perhaps we were.

We camped that night at the southern end of the ridge, overlooking the Thessalian camp. Behind us, the whole Macedonian army was coming up the steps cut by the slaves.

That night, Marsyas came to me. I had no tent – the baggage was still down on the plain. I was eating more sesame and honey, and my heart burned with the sting of it, but Polystratus had found milk, and warm milk and honey is a fine meal on a cold night in the mountains.

Marsyas came to our fire and flopped down next to me.

‘Hail, Achilles, Lord of the Myrmidons!’ he said. ‘Alexander is beside himself with jealousy. Just so you know.’

I laughed, but I knew my king, and I knew I was in trouble.

Marsyas shrugged. ‘I have your song. And I think your corps have earned a song, don’t you?’

‘Slaves and Peltasts?’ I said, because that was the Macedonian way. ‘On a little hill?’

‘If that’s a little hill, then Aphrodite has little tits,’ Marsyas said. That seemed really funny to me, too.

He had Polystratus fetch my lyre – a little-used instrument, I promise you. He made ‘tsk tsk’ noises while he tuned it, and then he played.

Well, you know what he played, I’m sure.

By the third time through, Philip and Alectus and even Cassander were singing along.

By the next morning, enough men knew it to make a decent sound as we marched past the king, down the high pass and into the plains of Thessaly, leaving the Thessalian army standing like fools.

Marsyas asked me for a job that morning. As I said, we’d never been close, because of our year groups, but I liked him, and I needed some good officers – and any boy who survives being a royal page is a good officer. So I gave him the first ten files. He dismounted and marched, and later in the day, his slave brought him an aspis.

At any rate, we came down the pass with the Thessalians behind us. Of course, they were between us and home, but we, on the other hand, were between them and their homes.

We halted at midday, ate a small and hasty meal and formed for battle. Remember, they outnumbered us two to one.

Alexander rode out, then. He rode across the front of the army, helmet off, Tyrian purple cloak streaming behind him, and he looked like a god. I think – I may be wrong – I think it’s the first time I saw him like that.

He galloped across the front and the roar was like a physical thing, right to left across the whole army, a shocking sound.

And then he pulled his horse up in a little display, half a stade in advance of his whole army. And he used his spear to salute the Thessalians, who were pouring out of the pass behind us.

The sound of our cheer rose to the heavens, climbing the pass to Olympus and to Ossa and then bouncing back in a mighty ripple of echo.

The Thessalian army shuddered to a halt.

They started to sort themselves out, and Alexander ordered us forward.

We marched forward about a stade. Our line wasn’t perfect, but it was adequate. Later, Macedonian armies did this kind of display all the time, and our drill was magnificent. That summer day, it was enough that we kept our places in line and no gaps opened.

The Thessalians, it was obvious, weren’t going to get formed in time. They were just a mob.

A delegation was spat forth from the mounted part of the mob.

Alexander raised his arm, and we halted.

He rode forward by himself.

I know that the Prodromoi started forward, and my squadron of the Hetaeroi. He waved them back, but the Prodromoi shadowed him, moving anxiously . . .

They needn’t have worried.

The Thessalians surrendered.

In retrospect, you just nod, boy, because what army of barbarians could even look at a Macedonian army without fear, eh? But that was not yet come to pass. We weren’t ‘Alexander’s Macedonians’ yet – an army that, by wonderful irony, was always at least a third Thessalian.

I count that day as Alexander’s first battle. At Chaeronea, he did what he could with a dull plan. Philip was a brilliant strategist and a fine fighter, but a dull tactician. Alexander . . . was Alexander.

Had we rolled forward into the Thessalians, we would have killed a great many of them – and been at war for years. Alexander took a terrible risk. But the circumstances – when every province in the empire was in revolt, and we had no friends – required risk. Or that’s how the king saw it, and he was the king.

And Thessaly was ours. The best cavalry in Greece, the finest horses and a nation that immediately offered two years’ tribute as recompense for hesitation.

In one day, Alexander had changed the game.

Heh. Alexander, with the help of the hypaspists. And not for the last time, either.

ELEVEN

I imagine that Greece offered many strategoi who could have turned the flanks of the Thessalians and beaten them without a battle. Old Phokion could have done it – it was very much his sort of victory. Philip – well, I suspect Philip would have forced the battle and the massacre, and taken the consequences.

But Alexander wasn’t done.

We picked up a thousand noble Thessalians – aristocratic cavalrymen, men who were in almost every way just like us. After all, they’d been our allies, almost our subjects, right up until Philip’s death – and the only men who’d died on the slopes of Mount Ossa had been Athenian mercenaries. And hypaspists. I lost fifty-five men on Mount Ossa, a number I’ll never forget. I didn’t even know all of their names. More Agrianians died than Macedonians, because the Agrianians got to the top faster. But, cruel as it sounds, there were enough corpses of both races to bind them together.

We buried them on the plains of Thessaly, in five barrows of eleven men each, and the king came and poured the libations at the edge of night, and fog rolled down from the hills to cover the newly turned earth, and men said that the ghosts of Hades had come to lick the blood of the sacrifices and the wine of the libations.

I was tipsy. I remember that. I’d fought hard, and fighting on foot is exhausting – cavalrymen really have no idea. But I’d also made decisions that killed men, and it was, perhaps, the first time I faced the consequence of glorious victory – the sad, sick feeling afterwards, the same feeling you get when you know you’ve paid far too much for wheat in the marketplace, except ten times worse. And somehow, the rain of unforced congratulations from my peers only served to make it worse.

Of course, I bore it all with smiles, backslapping, coarse humour – I’m telling the truth here, and the truth is that it never does to show weakness with Macedonians – or any other human animal, eh, lad? But I was hurt, inside