God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

squabbles, and how many women were raped, how many children burned in the endless cycle of wars? How many died when Athens and Sparta danced?

Thebes never had an empire. Thebes never thought beyond the narrow confines of the plain of Boeotia. Of the great cities, only Thebes allied with Persia – over and over. When Thebes defeated Sparta, they did nothing to pick up the reins of Sparta’s overseas commitments – and the cities of Ionia, liberated by Athens and supported by Sparta, went right back to Persia. Thebes raped Plataea – the first city of Greece ever destroyed by other Greeks. Thebes had a calendar of sins going back to ancient times, and Thebans were the most selfish, grasping and mercenary of all the Greeks.

I never shed any tears for Thebes. Don’t you, either.

After the herald’s answer, we opened siege lines. The Thebans were cocky, and to be fair, their hoplites were superb. Epaminondas wasn’t so long in his grave that their tradition of victory was dead. They raided our lines with panache, took prisoners, put three lines of palisades around the Cadmea to wall the Macedonian garrison off from any support – they were active, brave and professional.

Our siege train arrived, and we set it up. We had engineers – military mathematicians whose work consisted of evaluating defences and planning – scientifically – to reduce them. Calixthenes was the best man – he was young, dark-haired, weedy and small, and he looked like a child in a breastplate, but he was brilliant both at sighting his engines and at predicting enemy counter-measures.

The third day, they released a cavalry sortie, and I captured half of it. It was one of my best actions – one of those actions that make you feel like a god.

When I came on duty, just after sunrise, I set a pair of ambushes well back from the two gates where they might sortie. My ambushes were both subtle – bah, I’m bragging. But I put men in hayricks near one, and in a dry watercourse by the other, with orders to let anyone who emerged go right past them.

Both gates had a small cavalry force at hand, whose sole job was to fake an engagement and then get routed.

The main body of Theban horse galloped out of the Plataean gate a little after dawn and raced for our foragers in their distant fields. My ‘small force’ of cavalry pretended to attempt to engage them, and then fled before contact, and the Thebans gave chase, pursuing my handful of desperate victims across farm fields, across a dry watercourse . . .

Into the main body of the Hetaeroi. We charged them down a low hill and broke them in one charge, and then we hunted them all the way back to their gates, and the Agrianians who had been hiding in hayricks emerged and picked beaten men off tired horses as they fled.

More than fifty of their cavalry broke the other way – towards Athens.

Poseidon was fresh, and the power was on me. I gave chase with anyone who was following me.

One by one, we caught them and captured them, or killed them – ten, twenty, thirty.

Darkness fell, and we were still running them down. None of us had horses to change.

Horses started to die. You can ride a horse to death, if you go long enough and you are sufficiently stupid – or desperate.

They were.

Poseidon ran on. He was magnificent – like a god himself. I overtook man after man, and these their vaunted best horsemen – and they would either beg for quarter, or make a cut at me with a sword or a spear, and I’d ride them down. One man, I remember well, I caught, and all I had to do was grab a fistful of his chiton and pull on Poseidon’s reins – Poseidon checked, and I pulled him right over his horse’s rump. I left him for slower men to take, and rode on.

Most of their horses foundered all together – ten or twelve in a bunch, the poor animals blowing blood out of their noses where their hearts, shattered by too long a run, had forced it.

They might have run into the woods on Parnassus and avoided me easily enough, but they stood like deer caught in torches and surrendered.

But one man rode on, and I stayed with him. He had the best horse. He was only a blur ahead, and we were riding in moonlight, and Poseidon had been moving for twelve hours, and I became afraid for him. I was not galloping, or even cantering – in fact, I moved at a walk and then a trot, and I got down as frequently as I dared to give him a rest.

I needn’t have worried. He was like a horse of the gods, and as we climbed Parnassus, he seemed to become more powerful, larger, faster . . .

I caught my foe at the top of the pass. He turned his horse, raised his sword and charged me.

I wanted his horse. Poseidon felt my weight shift, and he danced a little to the left, and the darkness betrayed us, and we were down – just like that – and a branch hit me on the head as I fell.

I came to and had no idea how much time had passed.

But I had a vast feeling of fear – of impending danger.

Poseidon gave a scream – not a neigh, but a long, loud call.

I got a foot under me, tripped over a root behind me and fell back so fast that the sword meant to cut me missed entirely. The will of the gods – no doing of mine. I fell backwards into the gully that caught the run-off from the narrow track, and hit my head again, and the earth trembled as in an earthquake.

On the other hand, the pain helped steady me, and I could see my enemy against the moon. He cursed.

I tried to get to my feet. The point of my hip felt as if I’d taken a spear or an arrow. It would support my weight, but I wasn’t going to execute any brilliant throws from pankration.

I started to climb the gully. I could hear Poseidon, and I aimed my climb at him. He had both my spare javelins, and I assumed that with a javelin in hand I could stand off my attacker.

He moved along the top of the gully and laughed grimly. I could hear his horse – breathing like an ironsmith’s bellows. He had his sword in his hand.

‘Come up, lackey of the tyrant, and I’ll gut you,’ he said.

I didn’t bother talking.

He came right to the top of the gully.

I whistled.

Poseidon kicked him, and he gave a cry and fell, clutching his thigh. I took his sword and cut his throat.

Glorious, eh?

He had a magnificent horse – a bay I called Ajax. Big as an elephant. His sons are still in my stable – mixed with Poseidon’s sons.

But both my horses were done in, and I had to walk back to camp, limping all the way.

As soon as I was back, Alexander sent for me, congratulated me and ordered me to Athens with a small escort of cavalry.

‘Take Thais,’ he said. ‘The city likes you, and loves her. I don’t care what you do – see to it that Demosthenes cannot raise an army to break my siege.’

Alexander was never bloodthirsty. Far from it – in his mind of wheels and gears, everyone and everything had a purpose and he could never see why people wasted time on anything so inefficient as hate.

And he said outright that if we had to lay siege to Athens, we’d never conquer Asia. ‘Athens could take us six months,’ he said. ‘Thebes I can surround. Athens – we’d need to go home and build a fleet, contest the seas with Lycurgus – at least a year wasted. Perhaps the whole war wasted.’ He shook his head and drank more wine. ‘I hate fighting Greeks. I’m beginning to hate Greeks.’ He looked into his wine cup.

‘Macedonians are better?’ I asked.

‘Amyntas is dead,’ he said. ‘There will be no more trouble in Macedon.’

I shrugged. ‘Unless Parmenio or Antipater decides to take the throne himself.’

Alexander smiled. ‘If I die. Not until. Or am defeated repeatedly in the field.’ His smile widened. ‘Which is never going to happen. I’m invincible.’

I took my grooms under Polystratus. Thais and I had an abbreviated reunion. She did not want to go to Athens.

‘I do not want to be treated as a traitor,’ she said.

‘You have a unique opportunity to save lives in Athens,’ I said.

She hit me. It was the only time she ever struck me, but she did it with venom. She meant to hurt me.