God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

another – that you withdraw the term bastard.’ I had expected Hephaestion to be delighted by my fall from grace, but he looked stricken.

‘My king, I deeply regret my show of anger, this morning,’ I said. ‘I withdraw the term bastard, and offer my apologies.’

Alexander turned around. ‘And trying to make me alter my policy?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry, Alexander. But if you won’t give in on this, you will eventually die as your father did.’

Yes, I said that.

It was true. I loved him, and he was about to make a capital mistake at the very start. If he let Attalus live – do you see it, young man? If he let the bastard live, Cleomenes and Nearchus and Pyrrhus and Marsyas would begin to feel the germs of doubt. The kind of doubt that ends with a King of Macedon surrounded in bed by a ring of daggers held by men who were once his friends.

That’s the way it is, in Macedon.

Alexander had allowed himself to forget it. Not for the last time.

But he shook his head. ‘If I kill Attalus,’ he said through clenched teeth, ‘I have to give everything to Parmenio. I have no counterbalance to him. I hate Attalus – but that’s not important! I am king! I must do what is best!’

I shrugged. ‘I am not king,’ I said. ‘I will be sorry not to command the hypaspitoi. And I will – without any disloyalty – do my best to kill Attalus myself. To spare you.’

‘Do not do this!’ Hephaestion spat. ‘Do not seek to bend him to your will.’

Alexander nodded to himself. ‘Very well. I need a man I trust to go to Athens. You will go with the envoys we picked up at Delphi. I do not demand the head of Demosthenes, but I would very much like him to present himself to me as the ambassador of Athens.’

Even through the tension, I had to smile at that image.

‘Go and be my ambassador to Athens. They know me there. And you weren’t to keep the hypaspitoi, anyway. They love you too well, and they are my spear.’ He nodded coolly. ‘And I’ll no doubt have to give them to one of Parmenio’s sons.’ He grimaced. ‘Go to Athens for me. Get their agreement that I am the hegemon. Tell them that I require five hundred of their best cavalry. Get your friend Kineas.’ He was speaking a little wildly, trying to stumble back from the brink I’d brought us to.

That’s when I learned how much Alexander loved me. A little too late. And I burned some of that love, buying Attalus’s death.

Worth it.

Only a handful of men knew what had happened – the public story was that I was to return to command a squadron of Hetaeroi, and that while I held the ambassadorship to Athens, Philip Longsword would command the hypaspitoi. There was no punishment in public or private, except, in the days before I left for Athens, a certain distance with the king.

I missed the hypaspitoi the way a father misses his daughter, and I wept the first night I was back with the Hetaeroi.

Polystratus told me I was a fool.

I took my grooms and three Hetaeroi. Diodorus rode with me as if he were my hyperetes, and the other two envoys cowered in the rear. Despite their presence, we made excellent time across Parnassus, and on the second morning we were at the gates of Athens. I requested permission to enter, made sacrifice as a foreign ambassador and was allowed entry. Demosthenes was still in shock – Athens had known for less than a week that the Macedonian army was just two hundred stades away. Suddenly, all the tough talk ended.

I sought permission to lodge with your grandfather, Kineas’s father, and was accepted. I wish I had not. It was my fault that he was exiled later – my enthusiasm for his company, and his for mine, and Kineas’s open pleasure at having me in the city all conspired to seal his fate.

I should have been in the throes of exile and anger myself. I had been ill used by the very king I was striving to serve – had I not?

In truth, I was so sure that I had done the right thing – the good thing – that I was unconcerned by the result. Only young and naive people can act this way, but I was convinced that the king would see it my way in the end.

So I set myself to enjoy Athens. And that began with a visit to Thais.

I dressed plainly. It was late afternoon – her public receiving hour. I tipped the slave at her gate, and was escorted to her solar, a big, sunny room with a loom and a set of couches and chairs.

At the sight of her, a thrill ran through me, better than the thrill of a cavalry charge or the racing rush of a galley. How well does Sappho say it? I had not seen her in more than a year, and her immanence was like a breath of incense to a man working in manure.

Her smile was like sunrise. Or noon. Or something nice and poetic. It was beyond artifice, and that was the good part.

She flirted effortlessly with half a dozen of us, and I noticed that most of the men present were quite young – twenty, just free of their ephebe duties – and long-haired boys at that, aristocrats who cared nothing for Athenian virtue.

Diodorus had, indeed, suggested that Thais was past her most popular.

I could find no visible flaw – nor, when she sang, could I hear an audible one. But fashions change, and Thais represented a freer, more self-confident Athens – not the narrow world Demosthenes wanted – a prude whose sole justification was his hatred of Philip. And now, of Alexander.

But the boys were afraid of me. One made bad jokes at my expense, as if my Greek were so bad that I couldn’t be expected to understand. He was doing it from sheer bravado, and he bored me, and angered Thais, who asked him to stop.

‘Perhaps Demosthenes is right,’ the boy said, flipping his hair like a girl. ‘Macedon is a land of effeminate poseurs, and this Ptolemy with the barbarian name hides behind Thais.’

I sipped some sweet wine. ‘Dear Thais, if I break the little one, will you forgive me?’

She made a face. ‘Yes. But only if I can watch.’

That stung the brat. He sat up. ‘Well – if that’s all the thanks I get for my wit, I’ll go.’

I smiled. ‘Don’t hurry, laddy. We’re going to wrestle first.’

Thais clapped her hands.

The boy waved for his cloak. ‘I’ll decline to wrestle with a barbarian, however well connected.’

‘Well,’ I said, still smiling, ‘then I guess I’ll just break your neck.’ I caught him by the shoulders, locked an elbow, put him in a hold and threw him out of a window. The window was open, and it was less than the height of a man above the garden.

The garden was a little thorny.

‘His father is quite important,’ Thais said.

‘My master is the King of Macedon,’ I said. The other boys hurried out. As soon as they were gone, I bent down over her kline and kissed her.

And she let me.

It was quite a long kiss, and without meaning to, I had a hand under her chiton, on one lovely breast and then the other.

I could hear the boy in the garden arguing with his friends. But I didn’t care what he decided to do.

My hand drifted over her belly, which was as taut as my own, and stroked her – down and down. My fingers parted her. And then I was inside her.

It all took a deliciously long time. And her slaves must have been remarkably well trained.

And at some point, she was astride me, and she pulled her chiton over her head without unpinning anything, shucking it off as a useless encumbrance. ‘Sex should be naked,’ she said. ‘Like athletics – the participants need to show their bodies.’

I took the hint, although I remember giggling as I tried to wriggle out of my chiton while pinned to the couch.

Am I shocking you?