God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

FIVE

In spring, we marched.

In fact, it was still late winter, and there was snow everywhere, and our farm-boy recruits got to march through it in Iphactrian sandals that made the snow pack in under the soles of the feet – I was wearing them myself.

Camping an army in snow is dreadful. First, because everything is wet. Snow is water held close to the ground, ready to turn back to water the moment you are comfortable. In higher areas, it stays snow for a while and you are merely cold, but in spring – water, waiting to happen.

Second, because everything wet is cold. Even wood has to be warmed and dried before it will ignite.

There’s no casual forage for animals. The grass – old, tough and useless – is under the snow. Animals use energy getting at it.

And the process of freezing and thawing turns roads to mush. In late summer and early autumn, a good dirt road has a surface like builder’s concrete or better, and can shed water from a long rain. But in early spring, there is no surface, and every wheel rut is a potential spiked pit of death for carts or hooves. I was ready, this time – in fact, I was merely Antipater’s aide, and didn’t bear the full weight of the responsibility, although I’d done a great deal of the work. I had spare wheels in every other cart, my carts were the pick of the litter and not the runts and my draught animals would have been chosen as cavalry horses in most armies.

We had two thousand infantry, almost all recruits. We had all the former pages over sixteen years old, three full troops of fifty, each with three chargers and a fully armed groom. Most of us had three or four grooms, although only one was armed and armoured. Polystratus was mine.

We stopped in Thessaly and picked up two hundred young noblemen. We looked at them with some amusement as they flailed around being miserable, camping in the snow – they were as tough as nails, but this was outside their experience. A man can camp in the snow with his pater and a pair of retainers while hunting and still not have a clue how to keep clean and neat and warm in the midst of four thousand men.

At any rate, we crossed the high passes in temperatures that made all of us bond. I was widely envied for my foresight in bringing my own bed-warmer – Nike came. I was an officer – I could get away with it. And her talent for organisation – and her willingness to win Polystratus as an ally – made her perfect for the life. She had food ready when my duty was over – not just for me but for my mess. Don’t imagine she cooked it herself. She simply organised all the servants in our mess like a little military unit and had them rotate all the duties. She got them tents, too. Our little corner of the companions’ camp went up in no time, and had a central street, with our tents on one side and the servants’ tents on the other and the fires in between. Before we were out of the mountain passes, this had become the pattern for all the younger companions, and we all lived better for it, with our fires and our weapons closer to hand. Not all these ideas were Nike’s – some were mine, some Philip’s, some Alexander’s, some Polystratus’s. But we implemented them all on that march, and we had a better, tighter, more defensible camp with happier camp servants and warmer men as a result.

We marched down on to the coast road where Leonidas made his stand at the Gates of Fire, and Alexander stopped and made sacrifice there. Hephaestion made a great show of pouring an enormous and costly libation. The rest of us shared an ox, slaughtered it and feasted over the Spartan dead. Nearchus read the poem by Simonides.

We knew we were the invaders and not the defenders. But our hearts were with those Spartans standing at the wall.

Spring came after we passed the Gates of Fire – or rather, what was late winter in Thessaly was early spring in Greece, with jasmine blooming like yellow fire on the hills. The Thebans were holding some of the passes, and the Athenians the others – over by Delphi – and their mercenary army, ten thousand professional soldiers, held the coast road.

Two nights before we marched into Philip’s camp, he stormed the mercenaries’ positions. It was his first great victory in years – and one of his best. I wasn’t there, but I heard about it in detail from men who were. It was, in some ways, the pinnacle of his achievements – the storming of an impregnable position against superb soldiers, done in bad weather, through a mixture of bribery and audacity. He hit the mercenaries so hard that he drove them off their dry-stone walls in the first charge, and he’d moved a dismounted force of his own companions and a pack of Agrianian javelin men – the fruits of his latest barbarian marriage – across impossible terrain to close the pass behind the mercenaries, so that they could not rally against him, or seize another pass to hold. In fact, he virtually exterminated them.

We arrived within an hour of his return to his base camp from the bloody pursuit. He embraced his son – as the victor in a recent battle, he was all love – and he reviewed us the next morning, pronounced us fit to be royal companions and confirmed all of Antipater and Alexander’s promotions, including mine.

And then we were off like hounds from a leash – all the cavalry under Alexander, racing down the newly captured passes and into the plains of Boeotia, turning the flanks of the whole alliance and leaving them with nowhere to go but back, abandoning Delphi to us and all the mountain states. With no further fighting, we were in behind them.

Chares, the Athenian strategos, had received a great deal of wine-inspired criticism for his campaign, but in fact he did a brilliant job with the tools he had. The Athenians needed only to endure – their fleet was out on the seas, busy wrecking our commerce. And we could endure only so long, while Athens gathered momentum and threatened to do things like take Amphilopolis behind us.

So Chares held his line of mountains, and when he was turned out of them, he had a plan for that, too, and both armies – Thebans and Athenians – retired in good order. My first taste of combat with professional opponents was in late spring – all Boeotia was a garden and a farm, already tawny with grain, and we came cantering down the passes. Our greatest advantage besides sheer training was that every one of us had three remounts, and we could move for days, changing horses as we went. So we did.

The Thebans had little cavalry to speak of, but the Athenian Hippeis were good – not as good as we, but too good to trifle with. They bloodied our noses in our first skirmish – Philotas charged them as if they were Thracians, and they scattered down a Boeotian road, and Philotas pelted after them, and it was a trap – we lost six men.

But after that, we had their measure, and we’d unfold from our road column into a fighting line at the gallop, racing for the flanks the moment the Athenians were spotted, and after that we flushed their roadside ambushes the way a hunter flushes birds from hedgerows.

And so started the most glorious of summers. The sun was warm, Greece was beautiful and kind, the peasants and free farmers mostly welcomed us as liberators because Thebes is hard to love. We marched to the gates of Thebes and drove in their pickets, then turned and went for the passes to Athens – but Chares, as I say, was no fool, and he took ground at Chaeronea like a dozen strategoi before him.

And there our lightning offensive stopped. Chaeronea has been the scene of a dozen battles for a reason. And it is not for nothing we call that area ‘The dance floor of Ares’. It is flat, good going, for stades in every direction. The ground rose towards the Athenian position. They had an excellent view of our camp night and day, without even sending their horse out as scouts. Their backs were to the passes over Parnassus to Athens, and yet they had three roads into the countryside around Thebes, so that we were hard put to watch them all, and in fact, contingent after contingent joined their army without our being able to stop them.

We were in the saddle for days at a time.

I loved it. I had a great deal to learn, and I learned it – I fought skirmishes where I might have gathered information, I ignored heavensent opportunities to grab enemy supplies, or I grabbed supplies that didn’t matter . . .

I got to visit Plataea, and was received as a hero. They hate Thebes, even the shepherds. Probably even the sheep. Philip was already declaring his policy of dismembering the Theban League, and towns that had known independence, such as Plataea, were already ours.

The main army camped opposite the allies at Chaeronea, and Philip made peace offers. He meant them, too. He had the plain of Boeotia and that’s all he needed to negotiate – time was now on no one’s side, and as long as he could absorb the farm produce of the great plain, Thebes was the city that was in the most trouble.

But Thebes had delusions of grandeur, and so did Athens. They were perfect reflections of each other – living in past glories, even past glories where they’d been enemies. Philip told us one night at dinner that they were like two people who are each spurned by a third and use that as a basis for marriage.

I remember it as a golden summer. Alexander was happy – he led us on raids and long tours in person, and he was brilliant at such stuff – always a step ahead of the Thebans and the Athenians – and then back to camp, tired but happy after three days on the road, to the unstinting praise of his father.

We were shutting the enemy cavalry in a box and dominating the countryside. The Athenian Hippeis had done well against Macedonians in the past – we’d got our fingers nipped by Phokion a few times. It was heady to be better than they in every skirmish. And the Theban cavalry were a sorry lot, and we bullied them. The Athenians never got bullied.

After one encounter, where we chased the Thebans twenty stades and captured a Boeotarch, Philip allowed that, in his son, he might have discovered a second Macedonian general after Parmenio.

Now that’s flattery. And Alexander loved him for it, gave him a leg-up when he went for a ride, held his horse when he dismounted, waited on him with a cup in his hand, and was the dutiful son that he secretly longed to be.

Both of them were better men when they were successful, together.

And all the plots fell to pieces. No one at court was going to plot against rampant success. Philip, the best general in Greek history, had a son who bid fair to be his equal. We were headed for glory. Attalus took a fraction of the army and marched off to reduce Naupactus, just to keep Athens at the bargaining table, and after he left, the camp was like paradise.

Sophists and priests like to tell people that war is a terrible thing, and indeed, it can be – dead babes, children starving, horses screaming for a man to come and put them down. Horrible. But war in the summer in Boeotia, between Greeks, men of education, courage and principle, was merely the greatest sport man could invent, or the gods. Those who died, died in the flower of youth and vigour, and we feasted every shade. And those that lived were better for having eaten at danger’s table and survived. And that is the other face of war – the contest of the worthy.

It went on for months, and while we faced the allies across the dance floor of Ares, we skirmished with their cavalry every day, we rode in races, we wrestled, we ate well and every night Nike took me in her arms. And Alexander ate with our mess once a week, when he wasn’t in the field. And Nike began to organise the camp girls – not that she was one of them, but neither did she put on airs.

Good times. I never tired of her. I captured a beauty one day – captured is too strong, but my patrol snapped up a dozen boys and a girl headed into the enemy camp, and the girl was my share. Hair like honey, big tits and a tiny waist – I sent her home. I had what I wanted. And I did it as a sacrifice to Aphrodite.

The wheat was ripening in the fields and the barley was golden when it became plain that no matter what we offered, Athens intended to fight. The last straw was Naupactus, a vital Athenian naval base. Attalus took it – he was a good soldier, despite being a total shit of a man – and at that point, Athens should have wanted peace. Instead, they marched their ephebes over the mountains, brought up four hundred more Hippeis, and the cavalry war heated up.

The new Athenian cavalry were better – the best we’d faced, with excellent horses and better discipline. Of course, they were the real aristocrats, most of whom were politically in favour of Philip – members of Phokion’s party to a man. Whatever their ethics, they had superb horses and they were crafty devils.

That’s the first time I saw your pater, sprig. He was a troop leader, like me, and we tangled twice in a row, honours even. His troop was excellent – not as rock hard as my boys, but better mounted. He caught me flat-footed at the edge of the hills over towards the Kerata Pass, and I caught him the next day, his troop tired and too strung out on the road – but while the men were tired, the mounts were fine, and I got one prisoner, a scruffy peasant boy named Niceas – he was allowed as he was a hyperetes, which with us is a servant, and I slapped his arse and told him to stay out of the fighting. More fool I. Among Athenians, that made him an under-officer, the troop leaders’ right hand.

Laugh at me, will you?

It was that night, though, that Philip called all the officers together and told us he was going to attack. He didn’t make a speech – we’d lived it. We knew that we’d done our bit, and that if Athens and Thebes held us here until winter, we’d have to go home and start the whole thing again next summer, storm the Gates of Fire or some other damned pass – on and on.

So he outlined his battle plan, which was simple – that his foot would defeat the Athenian foot, and force the Thebans to open their ranks, and then the Macedonian cavalry would ride them down. And Alexander would command the cavalry.

All the younger men were silent after he announced his plan. Philip was the best general of the day – but we were going uphill into a larger army, an army with the Sacred Band, the most feared taxeis of soldiers in the world; a regiment of pairs of lovers, each bound to the other by ties stronger than steel. You know the Plato—Phaedrus speaks in the Symposium and says:

And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at each other’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?

The Thebans built their regiment just that way. And they were unbeatable.

And behind or alongside them were the deeply ranked professional Theban hoplites who had beaten the Spartans, and the Athenian hoplites who, whatever their failings, were reputed as the most tenacious in the Greek world. It has become fashionable to view the Athenians as second-class soldiers. Don’t ever confuse your own propaganda with the truth. And the younger men had grown to manhood on tales of Athens’ greatness.

It didn’t sound like a great plan to us.

And the older men didn’t like it any better, because Alexander, not Parmenio, had the cavalry. Parmenio wasn’t there – he was busy holding the Chersonese and keeping the Thracians at bay – but even Antipater got a subordinate command. Alexander had all the cavalry – all the Thessalians, all the Thracians, all the scouts and skirmishers and, of course, all the companions.

Philip left his horse and went to serve on foot, leading his precious hypaspists. Demosthenes said that Philip had fucked every man in the hypaspists, and Philip retorted that Demosthenes had an extra arse instead of a face.

We moved our camp forward, and Alexander pitched his tent under an ancient oak, and we camped around him, street by street. It was a clear declaration that we were coming to fight – we knew it, they knew it and a hundred thousand men, more or less, had bad dreams, sharpened things, polished things and were afraid.

The allies tried to outflank us to the south, by the citadel, where the rising ground gave them a natural advantage. That’s where the fight started, in the first light of dawn, and I was still drinking hot wine and trying not to throw up my porridge. Luckily, I had other people to worry about – an excellent way of remaining brave.

Besides, Nike was watching me. She was right there – not a distant rumour of womanhood back in Macedon, but the living embodiment of feminine opinion, and she did a great deal to make us what we were. Young men will compete for a woman’s good opinion, if she is worthy.

Besides, as far as we knew, there was nothing of which she was afraid.

When Polystratus brought my charger, Nike held the bridle, gave me a stirrup cup, said the prayer of Aphrodite over me and poured wine on my sword – and on Nearchus’s and Philip’s, too.

She kissed me – not a long, lust-filled kiss, but a plain kiss on the lips. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said. And grinned. ‘So either way, you’re covered.’

She meant that if I lived, I had a child to raise, and if I died, an heir.

Not sure if that’s what every man wants to hear as he rides to battle, but for me, it was perfect. Something dropped away, and I rode to the prince with a light heart.

To our right, in the first true light of day, the phalanx was forming. In the best tradition of all Greek warfare, our best troops were on the right – the hypaspists and then the foot companions and then the phalanx, but all formed shield to shield in one long line sixteen deep and six stades long, covering the whole of the open ground from the rocks and scrubby ground at the base of the citadel hill, to the banks of the Cephissus river. Across the fields, just a few stades that a fit man could run before breakfast, the Thebans and Athenians formed, too. They had the Sacred Band on their right, so it was facing our rawest levies – not really all that raw.

I need to speak about phalanx warfare. Foreigners think that there’s something to be gained by experience – by spending more time in the storm of bronze and iron. If you are a cavalryman, there’s a great deal of truth to that assertion. Man and horse grow better every encounter – and when wounded, can ride away. It is a different form of war, on a horse’s back.

But down in the dust on a summer’s day in Boeotia, the advantage is often with the most fit, with the highest hearts. Older men who have seen battle may stay alive longer – but they also know the fear of the spear that slips past your guard unseen. Of the chance arrow. The fears of all the details that they survived the other times, when friends died beside them.

Sometimes, the bravest men are those who do not know what lies in store for them.

The Athenians were an army of veterans – most of their hoplites had made campaigns in the Chersonese, or as marines – against us, or policing their empire. The Thebans – they hadn’t seen much action since they carved up the Spartans. No one really wanted to take them on. And opposite me, up that hill, they’d formed twenty-five deep. That did not look good.

But our farm boys looked surprisingly tough, when facing two of the most famous armies in the world. They had a touch of swagger to them that made me nod in respect. Some of our men had been to Asia – most had fought in mountains and plains, in the dark, in storms . . .

They trusted Philip.

I sat my Poseidon by Alexander, and we watched them form.

‘He’s insane,’ Alexander said quietly.

That snapped me back to reality. ‘Who is, lord?’ I asked.

‘My father – Philip. He thinks that his hypaspists can go uphill into those Athenians and break them?’ He shook his head.

I was caught between loyalties. I was absolutely loyal to Alexander – but Philip was Philip. A force of nature. He could not be wrong.

‘If he throws it all away, here, we’ll never get to storm Asia, Ptolemy. We’ll be lucky to hold Macedon. We’ll be some kind of historical side-note, like Alexander I and the battle of the Nine Roads.’ His eyes were darting around – here, there, everywhere.

Hephaestion was mounted by now. He rode over to Alexander and they embraced.

A rider came from the king and ordered Alexander to send two troops around the army to watch the Athenian skirmishers on our right. Laodon got the nod, and I went with him. Troops cheered us as we passed behind them. They looked calm, as if on parade. I felt like I had a belly full of bees.

Laodon didn’t seem too concerned.

‘I don’t want to miss the main action because I’m chasing slaves,’ was all he’d say about being sent to the right.

When we arrived, we saw why we were needed – there was a stade-wide gap between the hypaspists and the edge of the bad ground, the product of a slight widening of the valley and just possibly a mistake on Philip’s part.

We slotted into our place in time to watch some of our Psiloi get driven off the ground by allied skirmishers. It wasn’t a hot fight, but the enemy had cavalry mixed in with their Psiloi, and they were killing our lads in short rushes.

Laodon shook his head, pointing at the ground. ‘I’m not taking my knights into that,’ he said. ‘We’ll kill more horses then men.’

I had to agree – he was older, and I thought he was right.

But the Athenian cavalry was in there, and they were having a field day against our javelin men. Finally the whole pack of our light armed gave it up and fled. They ran right through us, and rallied behind us.

Then we got to endure arrows and javelins. We pulled back, found a better piece of ground and the Athenian cavalry formed to face us and just sat there. We hooted at them, they hooted at us – our numbers were even, and neither of us had anything to gain from a charge.

Our light armed were ready to go forward again, and their leader was talking to Laodon, when a man came galloping towards us from the Athenian ranks. He halted a few horse lengths from our line.

‘I am Kineas, son of Eumenes,’ he called out. He declared his whole lineage – how he was descended from Herakles via the heroes of Plataea. He had beautiful armour, and a pair of white plumes in his helmet.

He was challenging us to fight man to man.

Laodon spat. Looked away. Young enough to be embarrassed – too professional to accept.

Not me. I took my good spear from Polystratus. I gave Kineas of Athens a proper salute, and we went at it. We charged each other from about half a stade – a long ride, when you’ve nothing to do but contemplate mortality.

He got me. I won’t spin it out, you must have heard the story from your uncles – turned my spear, got his spear up and swept me off Poseidon’s back. The Athenian infantry at the top of the hill roared, and I was unconscious.

I knew he was the same man I’d faced twice in two days. So I got my sorry carcass mounted again as soon as I was able to think and see straight – he’d creased the top of my helmet so badly that I couldn’t get it on my head properly and had to discard it, and I had a lump like an egg.

I got back on Poseidon with Cleomenes holding his head, and that was just in time to see Laodon’s troop of companions crash into the nearest troop of Athenians – head to head, no manoeuvre. And their second troop was lining up, and there was no time to worry. My head hurt, but not enough to stop me doing my job.

The boys were quite kind, all things considered. I got some back slaps and some ‘get the bastard next time’ comments, and then I was in my spot at the head of the wedge. The Athenians were formed in a rhomboid, and they had some slope behind them.

And then we were off.

Troop to troop, same weight of horseflesh, same ground, not much to tell in skill – it might have been a bloodbath. It wasn’t. We smashed into them, and I never got sword to sword with Kineas – we struck a few horse lengths from each other, and I was into the Athenian ranks before I had time to think about it, cutting to either side, taking blows on my armour and a heavy cut to my bridle arm – see the scar? But I kept my seat and burst out the other side of their formation and found that old Philip had started his infantry forward.

There was a third troop of horse – Thessalians under Erygius – and they smashed into the flank of the melee, bowling Athenian Hippeis right over with their long lances, and suddenly the whole pack of them was in flight, and the hypaspists cheered us.

I could see Philip, just a few horse lengths away. I saluted with my sword, and he waved. A handsome boy came running from his side.

Up close, I could see it was Attalus’s pretty cousin, Diomedes. To me, he looked more like Ganymede.

‘The king thanks you and orders you back to the left,’ he said.

I saluted, and my trumpeter started blowing the recall.

It was all going according to plan, until the hypaspists slammed into the Athenians and the Athenians rolled them right back down the hill.

My lads were just behind them, crossing back from our right to our left by the shortest route, and we felt it when the hypaspists went into the Athenians. Not for them the sarissa – they had the hoplite spear, the dory and the bigger, heavier hoplite aspis. But they were not all individual athletes like the Athenians, and nor did they have a front rank in leg armour, sometimes arm, face and hand armour – a rich Athenian can look like a bronze automaton.

I heard all the excuses that night – there was a line of animal holes, men fell, the Athenians had dug pits in front – for whatever reason, our front rank stumbled and the Athenians gave a great shout and pushed, and our best were stumbling back.

We companions had to hotfoot along to get clear before they slammed into us and all order was lost. Laodon turned back at this point – against orders, I’ll add – and manoeuvred to cover the flank of the hypaspists, in case the enemy light troops got brave. It was a smart move.

Whether Philip had intended it or not, his extreme right – his hypaspists – had engaged first, so that the entire army was echeloned from right to left, with the best troops leading the way and the worst following well behind. I’ve done this on purpose, but on that morning, I still think it was the result of the king being on the far right when he gave the signal to advance, so that the rightmost files stepped off first and started a sort of marching cascade.

It scarcely matters why – except that the whole army saw the king and the hypaspists recoil. And the Athenians raised a great cheer, sang the paean, and their whole line moved forward.

I couldn’t rein in and watch – bad for discipline. But it didn’t look good.

I kept turning my head and looking back as we rode – and the hypaspists were driven down and down the ridge, even as our rawest troops were marching forward into the Thebans.

When I reached Alexander, he was alone except for Hephaestion, well in front of all the cavalry.

‘What in Tartarus is happening?’ he demanded.

What exactly do you say? ‘The hypaspists seem hard pressed, lord,’ I said.

Alexander nodded sharply, eyes everywhere.

With a pots-and-pans sound audible even from a stade away, the centres met. The allies had the smaller town contingents and some dubious mercenaries in the centre. We had foot companions. Ours were better, and almost instantly they started to push the allies back.

Why?

The smaller a town is, the smaller its phalanx. Some towns have as few as three or four hundred hoplites. That means they’ve never served in a bigger phalanx – they usually don’t form deep enough, and they aren’t used to the terror of a dozen spear-butts with long bronze points licking around their heads. Oh – the rear ranks can be difficult.

But the worst is that the danger spots in a phalanx are always the joins – the places where two contingents line up – say Athens and Thebes. Those two files don’t know each other – don’t trust each other, don’t lap their shields or anything like it. In fact, believe it or not, men from different towns or nations will often leave a gap, even though they know – they know – that the gap is a death warrant. Their distrust for other men is so physical they cannot close that gap. I’ve watched contingents of Medes and Persians do it, watched Aegyptians do it – and at Chaeronea, the centre of the allied army had a dozen little contingents and they had more joins than an old pot that’s been thrice repaired.

In our army, of course, we had contingents of about two thousand – every one the same. All Macedonian, or like enough. We drilled them together. We had no joins. Our pots never needed repair.

Their centre fractured, as an old pot will when it takes a blow.

That transformed the battle, but it didn’t give us a victory. The hypaspists and our right were still reeling back – the Athenians scented victory, and who could blame them? Traditionally, when an army’s strong right was broken, the game was won, and the hypaspists were barely hanging together. They were still plodding backwards. The noblest thing I can say about them is that they didn’t break, and I think anyone else would have.

But the crushing of the centre halted the Theban advance. Or perhaps the Thebans had never intended to fully support Athens. That, too, was part of Greek warfare. Leaving an ally to die was an old tradition – especially with two allies who hated each other.

Alexander was chewing his lip. His eyes went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth – like a caged lynx I had seen once at Pella. A desperate animal.

On our right, the foot companions to the left of Philip’s elite began to bleed men from their rear rank.

‘How can this be happening!’ asked Alexander.

Hephaestion looked at me. I didn’t have an answer.

It looked to me like a race between two men ripping sheets of linen. Would our centre blow through theirs? Or would our right collapse? I feared with every heartbeat that the call would go up that Philip was down, or dead.

Alexander’s eyes stopped darting about and fixed on the centre.

‘Here we go,’ he said.

Remember, he was eighteen, and this was his first battle.

He saw it, he made the call and he led it. And by the gods, he never flinched once he made the call.

‘Wedge on me!’ he shouted. I pulled in at his back – not my normal position, but I was right there and we were doing this thing right then, I could see.

He grabbed Hephaestion’s bridle.

‘Go to Erygius – tell him to take four troops from the left and fix the Sacred band in place.’ He looked at his best friend. ‘Do you understand?’

Hephaestion never really understood. ‘I can take the message,’ he said.

Alexander had an eye to the men forming behind us and another on the battle in front of us.

‘Do you understand, Ptolemy?’ he asked.

I knew exactly what he needed. But I wanted to charge with him. To glory. I saw what he had seen – minutes too late, but I knew, now, that Alexander was about to win the battle.

But being a loyal servant of a great prince is not all wine and gold. ‘Yes, lord,’ I said. In that moment, I hated Hephaestion, as the bitch had a look of triumph – I was sent away, and he was to stay with his lord.

‘Take command of the left of the cavalry and do it,’ Alexander said. Never one to do things by halves.

I saluted, gathered my reins and rode for it.

Erygius was busy packing his men into the prince’s giant wedge when I rode up.

‘Erygius – Alexander says I’m to take all four flank troops and go for the Sacred Band.’

If the old Lesbian was angered to be supplanted, he didn’t make a fuss. His trumpeter called and the men behind him began to move – cursing to have to change and change again, something all soldiers hate – and Erygius turned his horse.

‘We’re going to charge the Sacred Band? Is he insane?’

‘All we have to do is pin them in place,’ I said.

Then Erygius nodded. ‘I see.’ He knelt on his horse’s back and peered under his hand through the thick dust.

‘I’m going to go ahead with . . .’ I looked around, found that Polystratus had followed me. My men, of course, were part of Alexander’s great wedge. ‘Polystratus here. Bring the whole body in a column of troops around the left – see the big fir tree by the river? Make that your left marker. I’ll meet you there – or just keep coming up the stream. See?’

Erygius peered and nodded. ‘Ten minutes,’ he said.

I leaned forward on to Poseidon’s neck, and we were off like a bolt from a stone-thrower.

We went across the back of the army – by coincidence, across the backs of the two taxeis that I had helped to raise and equip. The indecisiveness of the Thebans had probably saved their lives, and they were clamouring to fight. In front of the Thebans, three or four men in brilliant armour were arguing.

The Sacred Band – the finest soldiers in the world – were standing in confident ranks, at the far left of our line. Just three hundred men. Three hundred Olympic athletes, more like. Even a stade away, they looked noble.

More important, they were about to move to my right – opening a gap.

This is war. What is as plain as the nose on your face becomes complex and fraught with peril. Men make decisions in haste, with limited information, surrounded by death. The Thebans decided to move the Sacred Band to the place that was threatened – an absurd decision. Philip decided to take his best troops uphill into the enemy without support – then was too proud to ask for help . . .

Alexander identified the one weakness in the enemy line, worked through a way to exploit it and acted.

Erygius reached the foot of the hill by the tree, two hundred companions in a tight column behind him.

Alexander’s wedge was formed. He raised his sword. I waved to Erygius. He led the cavalry up the hill in a column. And he was smart enough to start echeloning them forward into line even as he came.

I rode over to the left file of the newest taxeis. ‘I’m about to take my cavalry through here,’ I said. ‘Can I have another half a stade?’

The file leaders started to call out.

The taxeis commander ran towards me.

The Sacred Band commander noticed me. He looked right at me. We were three hundred strides apart, but I swear I saw his eyes widen.

Alexander’s charge struck the gap in the centre. I saw it happen – in some ways, I saw more of it than I would have seen if I’d been at his shoulder.

Erygius had the line formed.

The taxiarch came to my right boot. ‘No orders in an hour! What’s happening?’

‘Alexander has just won the battle,’ I said. ‘All we have to do is keep the Thebans from winning it back. When my horse goes forward, you come with me. You hit them in front.’

‘They’ll kill my boys.’ He looked at me – curiously; he was speaking as one veteran to another.

‘Only for a minute,’ I said.

Erygius was almost up to me. ‘Stay with the horse!’ I roared to the infantrymen. They all knew me – I’d handed most of them their first helmets. ‘Hold the Sacred Band for a minute, and your names will live for ever!’

One of my best speeches. They roared, and to our front, the Sacred Band commander realised that he’d just given up the safe ground on the flank and now his army had no place to make a stand.

I got my horse into my place on the right of the centre troop. ‘Rhomboid left!’ I roared, and my trumpeters called it.

The infantry started forward – just fast enough that the Sacred Band no longer had time to march back on to their ground.

When you are sparring, there comes a moment when you miss a parry – it can be dreadful, because there can be several heartbeats during which you know how much pain is coming. When two boys who hate each other are fighting with wooden swords, there can actually be time to cringe. I’ve done it.

That’s how the Sacred Band must have felt.

Our phalanx was well ordered; morale was good, the troopers down behind their small shields, their long spears licking away at the enemy, and they marched forward briskly, with flutes playing to mark the time.

My cavalry were slow off the mark – the product of too many formation changes and wheels, so that the slower men were behind the manoeuvre and the best men were annoyed by the apparent indecision. Erygius had swung them from a column of troops into line, eight deep – now we needed to pass the gap to the left of the phalanx, and that meant forming column on the leftmost troop, and it looked to me as if the order was given before some of the flank men had got into place from the last manoeuvre.

There’s not enough papyrus growing on the Nile to give me space to write everything I want to say about the drill of cavalry, but all the priests in the world couldn’t describe the depths of my ignorance at seventeen. I didn’t know then that there’s a moment in a real fight where all manoeuvre goes out of the window, and the good men fight and the poor men cower behind them.

So instead of ignoring the debacle, I rode over, halted the column and gave them time to form.

It was the sort of decision young people make, when they are determined to do a thing well – correctly. The way they’ve been trained, and know it should be done.

It was a decision that cost a hundred men their lives. Because when our eager, well-formed, well-drilled farm boys hit the Sacred Band, those killers cut them down as a slave cuts weeds in the garden. I have never, before or since, seen anything like it. Our front ranks rippled and moved – rippled and moved – and it took me a moment to realise that the file leaders were being cut down, replaced by the men behind them, cut down in their turn . . .

I’m sure it didn’t happen this way – but in memory, there’s a fine mist of blood over the whole thing. A man was dying every time my heart beat, and my heart was beating pretty fast.

I can make an argument that my delay with the cavalry gave us the battle – the Sacred Band focused on the Macedonian pikemen in front of them, and ignored the much greater threat of my four troops of companions.

But that’s what Aristotle called a ‘false rationalisation’. After the fact, one can excuse anything – and weak men do. But here, beneath his tomb, in the comfort of the gods, I say that I got a generation of Pellan farm boys killed because I wanted my ranks dressed more neatly, and I knew it. No one ever mentioned it to me. I never even saw an accusation from them, the poor sods. They saw me as a hero.

Well, well. I’m an old man, and look! I’m maudlin. Cheer up. We’re coming to some good parts, and your pater’s in most of ’em.

We went forward at a trot, in a column of half-squadrons. The earlier shift of ground by the Sacred Band left a broad alley on their left, between their end file leader and the marsh that had been covering their flank. We trotted into the open ground, even as the farm boys to our right died like butchered animals. We could hear them die.

But they didn’t give much more ground than the space left when men fell. That’s what I meant before, when I said that sometimes inexperience is everything. They knew the cavalry was coming, they’d been told to hold for a minute, and as far as they knew, this is what happened when hoplites fought.

In fact, they were up against the worst nightmare in all the world of war, and they were standing their ground. Too stupid to run, really. But stupid or brave or what have you, they beat the Sacred Band. What we did was to kill them.

It was like the sort of thing you dream about, when you are thirteen, curling in a tight ball under your blanket trying to keep warm, back smarting from a whipping, and you want to go somewhere else in your head, be someone else, someone brave and noble and incredibly tough, who can never be whipped, never be beaten, never dirty or late for class or threatened with rape. Or at least, I dreamed of such stuff – of riding at the head of my troops, being in the right place at the right time, wheeling my squadrons, charging into the shieldless flank of my enemies and chewing them to red ruin before my invincible spear . . .

Come on, son – don’t you dream of such stuff?

Well, I did. Incessantly.

And here I was.

I raised my spear – someone’s spear . . .

‘Column will form line by wheeling by half-squadrons to the right!’ I roared. Just like that. Made you jump. Hah! I still have the voice.

And they did.

The Sacred Band must have known – right then – that they were dead men.

They got their end files faced my way.

You are too young to have been in a fight – let me tell this my way. Depth is everything, even when the men in the back aren’t fighting. They are your insurance against disaster, their weight at your back steadies you, and their spear-points guarantee that if the man next to you falls, there’s someone to step up into his place.

When we appeared on their flanks, the Sacred Band was fighting thirty-six files wide and eight deep. Chewing their way through three times their number in Macedonian recruits.

Then they faced their flank files. That meant that the whole left end of their formation had no support behind them – all those men turned to face me. Not to mention the miracle of discipline it is to face your flank files while fighting to the front. I had to do it later – several times – and only the best men can.

So immediately, some of the pressure slackened against our infantry. And you must remember – this is a big battle, the line six stades long, with each army almost two thousand files of eight to sixteen men wide – and I’m telling you about what was happening in the end forty files. Forty of two thousand – what’s that? One fiftieth, that’s how much of the battlefield I owned. And remember while I tell you this – the other forty-nine fiftieths of the line were also fighting. Somewhere, Philip was stumbling back, cursing, and somewhere else to his left, the foot companions were getting their butts handed to them by a bunch of pompous Athenians – in the middle, Alexander had burst through the back of the wreckage of the allied centre, and somewhere else again, the Theban line infantry was starting to give a little ground to the Macedonians and none of us knew that any of these things were happening.

Walk. As soon as my whole line was in motion, Erygius had his trumpeter blow trot. I angled my path across the front of the cavalry and raised my spear. I was damned if the Mytileneian veteran was going to lead this charge. This was my charge.

In the cavalry school, when you are a page, the instructors – all men with a lot of fighting behind them – say that the crucial moment in a cavalry charge is when you are five horse lengths from the enemy spear-points. They knew what they were talking about. There is some complex mechanism – the sort of thing Aristotle would have loved to analyse – whereby man and horse make a nested set of decisions. I suspect it is the distance at which the horse can really see the spears. The horse has to decide for itself – over, around, through, back. And the rider – at once master and passenger – can convey determination or indecision with the slightest shift of his arse. Horses know.

I knew the moment I got out in front that the Sacred Band had their spear-points down and we were not going over them.

So I turned my horse and raced for the rear corner of their formation, as my charge dissolved behind me.

The companions baulked.

In storybooks, cavalrymen ride infantrymen down – crashing in through their spear-points, hewing to the right and left.

Not in real life. In real life, no horse will go through a formed, unshaken body of men – even if they are armed only with pitchforks or their fists. Daimon is everything in a fight between infantry and cavalry. The daimon that motivates men to fight, to stand, to flinch, to run – that daimon.

The Sacred Band were only eight ranks deep, so they had only eight files facing me.

The end two troops were actually well past the end of their line. I raced for them, caught the attention of their phylarchs and started them in a wheel – a broad sweeping wheel into the flank and rear of the Sacred Band.

Some of the men in the rear ranks turned, and some didn’t.

I’m a quick learner. Having halted once to dress my ranks and missed an opportunity, this time I didn’t wait for perfection. As soon as I saw that at least one troop leader had the idea, I led like a Macedonian should.

I set Poseidon’s head at a gap in the enemy ranks where the fourth and fifth men in the rear rank were arguing. The corner of the enemy body was a mess.

This is where horseflesh means a great deal, because Poseidon was smart, strong and well trained. So I let him go. I didn’t aim him – he aimed me.

And then – then, it was just me and the Sacred Band. About eight of them, at the right rear corner of their original formation – meaning that I was facing file closers and right file men, the very best of the best, except for the front rank.

I didn’t think of all that. I don’t think I thought of anything, except that it was good to be me.

Spears came up, but Poseidon had made his call and I made mine. I didn’t have a lance – they were never as popular then as they are now. I had a heavy hunting spear, a longche, which Polystratus had put in my hand, and I threw it. It went somewhere – who can tell in a fight?

I got my sword out after I hit their line. Poseidon got a spear in his hindquarters, and I got one right in the gut – a perfect shot, except that my cuirass turned the point and my knees were strong – I rocked, but I didn’t come off, and the point slid over my shoulder and the shaft rang my bell – remember, I had no helmet.

And then my sword was in my hand – a long, heavy kopis. I cut down and back – a school shot, the one you practise endlessly for mounted combat, and for a reason – and caught something. I remember thinking that this wasn’t so bad – that I was doing my duty.

And after that, it was all fighting. Poseidon slowed to a stop, and he reared every time I jerked the reins, but after the first ten heartbeats I couldn’t even back him. I’d made a hole in the corner of their phalanx and now other troopers were pushing into it.

I do remember the first man I know I put down, because he was right under my right foot, trying to throw me from the saddle. There’s a lot of wrestling in phalanx fighting, and his approach was correct – get me on the ground and kill me there. He got his shield shoulder under my right foot and started to lift, and I cut down – once, twice, a desperate third as my balance was going – cut chunks out of his aspis, and the sheer terror of being dismounted enabled me to get him, as the third cut went through shield rim, the visor of his Thracian helmet and in between his eyes, and he died right there. You don’t often see it, but I saw it – saw his shade pass his lips.

Old Heraklitus said it was the best way to go, your soul all fire, in the heat of battle. Compared to rape or torture or cursed sickness or coughing your lungs out – sure. But it was better to be alive. Achilles says it – better the slave of a bad master here than king of the dead.

No shit.

He’s the only one I remember. I yelled myself hoarse, probably shouting ‘Herakles!’ over and over, like half the men on that field. The next thing I remember is that the pressure on my knees eased – suddenly there were horsemen all around me, and just a few Thebans between us – and then, before my heart could beat three more times, there were none.

Just like that – a cloud of dust, the stink of death, and they were gone.

In fact, a whole pack of Sacred Banders were still alive and fighting – over by the Macedonian phalanx, where they were safe from the cavalry and we couldn’t tell one man on foot from another. But the unit was gone, and the whole flank of the Theban phalanx was open.

We never reformed, and we didn’t really charge again – we went into their flank files in dribs and drabs, a few at a time – in fact, I suspect most men don’t even remember a pause between fighting the Band and fighting the line infantry – but I was isolated at one end of the fight for a long time. Say, fifty heartbeats.

I got twenty men behind me in a small wedge and we rode to the right – our right – and we found another combat in ten horse lengths.

By then, the Theban line must have been coming apart. They were panicked to find us in their rear, and our Macedonian infantry was doing well enough at this end of the line.

I didn’t know anything about it. Where I was, there was the reach of my sword and the impacts of their spears on my chest, my back, my greaves – I must have taken fifty blows, and only two wounds. Even with my head bare. I was lucky – and of course, after the Sacred Band, I was mostly facing men who’d already lost the will to fight.

Polystratus stuck at my bridle hand and like most Thracians, he never relinquished his spear, but stabbed two-handed, holding on to his mount with his knees. He used a heavy spear with an odd chisel point – he could punch it right through a helmet or a breastplate. But mostly, he blocked blows coming up from my bridle side – in fact, he was a constant pressure on my left knee, his horse always there like a companion’s aspis in a phalanx fight.

After some time had passed, we could hear the cheers, and the men under our hooves weren’t making the least pretence of fighting back. But the duty of royal companions doesn’t end with victory – far from it.

The thing for which we train, the reason we’re brutalised as pages and ride all day, every day and hunt animals on horseback . . .

. . . is the pursuit.

Beaten men don’t defend themselves. They are easy to kill. But tomorrow, if you let them rally, they return to being grim-faced hoplites who will gut you if they can. There are a great many myths these days about the superiority of the Macedonian war machine. Perhaps. We had some advantages, some tactics, some technical knowledge and lots of good leadership.

But one thing Philip taught Macedon was to pursue ruthlessly. When Philip lost, his beaten troops usually slipped away covered by his cavalry, and when he won – well, men who faced him lost and usually died. They didn’t come back to fight again.

Pursuit is an art within the art of war – a cruel, inhumane, brutal art. It requires high conditioning and discipline, because all a warrior wants when he’s won a victory is to stop. And that’s true of every man on the field. The daimon can handle only so much danger, so many brushes with death, so many parries and so many killings. The fatigue of combat is such that most men are exhausted after just a hundred heartbeats of close fighting. Or standing under a shower of sling stone, unable to reply – men are exhausted. Fear, fatigue and pain are all somehow the same thing after the first seconds of a fight. The better-conditioned man lasts longer and is braver. And so on.

Philip trained us to be ready to go on after the fight was over. It was our main duty, in many ways. Alexander had been positioned behind the centre – with all the companions – not to win the battle with a lightning strike into the enemy centre, but to exploit the victory that Philip thought he’d win on foot. That was his plan.

Now that the Thebans were breaking, it was my duty to harry them to death.

I could scarcely lift my arms, and keeping my back straight to ride was beyond me – but I found one of the troop trumpeters and started sounding the rally, and before I could drain my canteen I had twenty files of cavalry at my back.

Erygius was there. He gave me a big smile, smacked my back. ‘You’re not bad!’ he said.

That made me blush.

‘We need to get into the rout and crush them,’ I said.

The veteran nodded. He shaded his eyes – did his trick of climbing a little higher on his horse and kneeling on his back. ‘Hard to tell – the Kerata Pass must be west.’ He waved towards what had been the centre of their army. ‘Where Alexander charged. No point in carving these fools up – they’re already trapped against the hills.’

Mostly, we had Boeotian dust and sunlight, and if it hadn’t been for dead trees at the edge of the marsh, I’d have been lost.

‘Let’s head west,’ I said.

He nodded.

Our horses were tired, but we keep our animals in top shape – by riding far and fast every day – and we swept across the back of the allied position, killing or scattering any opposition. Twice we turned to the south, on to rising ground – our objective was to block the Kerata Pass, not to fight every Theban soldier.

But far short of the foot of the pass, we found the rout, and then we became killers. The Thebans were utterly broken, and the Athenian hoplites weren’t much better, although some of their best men were staying together. We slaughtered the Thebans – there’s no better word for it – and I did so in a haze of fatigue. I was so tired that I didn’t fully recognise that I’d passed from killing helpless Thebans to killing helpless Athenians until Polystratus took my bridle and pulled me up so hard I almost toppled off my mount.

We’d come pretty far – almost three stades – I’ve visited the spot since. The rout filled the pass, and men were forced up the sides like flotsam in a spring rain. My cavalrymen and Alexander’s were all through the rout, hopelessly mixed in with the enemy, killing, or in many cases merely riding along, taking prisoners, or sitting on the high ground, watching. There is, as I have said, a limit to what even the trained killer can make himself do. Until Chaeronea I had killed six men – after, I never counted again.

But Polystratus hadn’t reined me as a merciful gesture. He was pointing.

Virtually under my spear was a crouching man. His shield was gone, he had a light wound and somehow his chiton had got bunched into his zone so that his butt cheeks were showing – a pitiful sight. And he was weeping, begging me to spare him.

I fully intended to kill him in sheer disgust. But again Polystratus stopped me, pushing my spear away with his own.

‘You have ears, or what?’ he asked.

I swear that until he said that, the gods had quite literally closed my ears. I hadn’t heard anything for hours.

I must have shrugged, or something like. He grinned. ‘It’s their great man,’ Polystratus said. ‘He claims . . . well, listen to him!’

The crouching, bare-arsed man at my feet was Demosthenes the orator.

After that, I started taking prisoners. I was done killing – my whole body hurt, my right side was sticky and wet and cold with blood, and that reek – the reek of sweat and copper and excrement – was in my nose for a day – in the hair of my horse, in my own hair.

And I couldn’t kill any more men.

I just couldn’t.

I threatened, and some of them just pushed past me, as if they didn’t care either, or as if they knew I was past my limit. It’s almost like a failure of courage – your arm rises and falls, you kill and wound and maim, and then – and then, you can’t do it any more.

I gathered a dozen prisoners, and as far as I could tell, I was the southernmost Macedonian in the whole host – the rest of the pursuit had halted below me. I didn’t see Alexander anywhere.

And then the Athenian Hippeis showed what they were made of. Someone – not your pater, he was already down – kept a bunch of them together, and they came after me. I had to fall back along the rout, and as I went I picked up men – whole files, at times.

It was a curious form of war – I don’t think a single blow was struck. We were exhausted, and so were they, but they were willing to fight to protect their infantry, and we were not willing to fight them just to kill a few more of the fools.

And no sooner had the Athenians got formed than the best of the infantry started to form on them.

Not enough to prevent the aftermath, but enough to save their precious sense of honour, their arete. Myself, I wasn’t so impressed. Only later did I realise – when I was more of a veteran myself – what it took those tired, beaten men to stop running, find a little more courage, turn and stand their ground. I salute them. I didn’t know it then, but they were probably the bravest men on the field.

I found Alexander with his father, well back down the field. By then, there were thousands of dead Thebans and as many Athenians – heaps for the carrion birds. Greece died there – old Greece, the Greece of Aeschylus and Simonides and Marathon and Plataea. They spent three hundred years building a golden world. We killed it in a long afternoon.

I’ve never been happy about it. When I played Marathon as a boy, I never imagined that I would be there when the dream of Athens died in the dust of Chaeronea – nor that my hand would hold the sword.

More wine, here.

Mid-afternoon. Alexander was so elated that he was a danger to himself – when I rode up to him, he threw his arms around me and said, ‘Did you see me? Antipater says I won the battle. I did, too – Pater was getting beaten, and I saved us, and we won!’ He still had his sword in his hand, and his blue eyes had very faint white rims around them – he looked like a dog in the agora run mad in the heat. Hephaestion looked worried – deeply worried.

His sword beat against my breastplate when he embraced me, and he almost pulled me off Poseidon’s back.

‘Get him out of here,’ Antipater said to me.

I could see Philip, just a few horse lengths away. He had his back to us. His shoulders were slumped, and he looked old. He’d had a bad couple of hours.

‘He’s not making Philip happy.’ Antipater played the court game better than anyone, and I had just enough intelligence left to understand.

‘Come,’ I said into Alexander’s too-long embrace. ‘Bucephalus is trembling with fatigue, lord. We need to get these mounts rubbed down and fed – see to our men, too.’

He let go of my neck and his sword pommel slammed into my temple.

‘Oh!’ he said – almost a giggle.

‘Put that thing away!’ I snapped. ‘Better yet – give it to me!’

I took the blade closest to the hilt, tugged – and he kept hold of it.

‘It is stuck to my hand,’ he said, his voice a little wild.

It was, too. With blood.

‘Zeus Lord of Kings, and Ares of the Bronze Spear,’ I cursed. ‘Polystratus – water here.’

‘I just kept killing them,’ Alexander said. He was going to cry. I’d seen it with younger troopers. I’m a callous bastard myself – killing itself didn’t unman me like this.

Hephaestion got to us with a helmet full of water.

I poured it over his sword hand, and the sword came free, a little at a time. While Polystratus and Hephaestion got the sword out of his hand, I talked to him the way I would talk to a young trooper – to Nike when she cringed at thunder, the only thing that scared her – to Poseidon when he saw a snake.

‘There’s a good lad. Nothing to it – see the blood wash away? All gone. Let go, my prince. Well done – we won the day. You won the day.’ Voice pitched just so.

‘We did. I did.’ Alexander sighed. ‘They are so full of blood,’ he said.

‘May I invite you to dinner this evening, lord’?’ I asked.

He managed a wobbly smile – his mouth folded so that he seemed to smile and frown at once. But he was mastering himself – he had a will stronger than any man I’ve ever met.

‘I would be delighted, if it would not be too much trouble,’ he said, his face smoothing even as he spoke.

Hephaestion gave me a small nod. We seldom liked each other much – but when it came to Alexander, we could pull together. But when the sword came free from the prince’s fist, Hephaestion whispered in my ear –

‘Philip will have a victory dinner.’

I nodded. Alexander was sitting straight, eyes darting – the white rims gone.

‘One battle at a time,’ I muttered, and Hephaestion gave me a quick smile.

‘Let’s get cleaned up and see to our horses,’ he said to the prince.

I saluted, kneed Poseidon and cleared their path. Then I rode over to Philip. He was surrounded by sycophants – and officers. Older men, mostly.

They were telling him how brilliant his plan of luring the Athenians off the hill had been.

‘It was our counterstroke that broke them,’ Philip said to Laodon. ‘When we turned on them, they couldn’t stand.’

I remember thinking, Oho, so that’s how it’s to be, eh?

‘Your boy thinks he won the battle himself,’ Nearchus the elder said.

‘Let him,’ said Philip with a hollow laugh. ‘Boys always think they are important. And the troops love him.’ He shook his head. ‘Cavalry against hoplites – what was he thinking?’

Saving your sorry arse, I thought.

Attalus’s cousin Diomedes laughed a little too long. ‘He’s as mad as a dog in the heat, lord. We all know it.’

Philip turned and glowered at Diomedes. But he said no word, struck no blow. Something in this little scene told me that the words had been said before – that the catamite was playing a long game.

But Philip’s somewhat careless glare silenced Diomedes, although I noticed that he had a ‘cat’s got the cream’ smile on his over-thick lips. Then Philip noticed me.

‘Well fought, son of Lagus,’ he said, offering me his hand – a major favour, at court. He grinned – a genuine Philip grin. ‘Although you got off to a bit of a rocky start.’

I rubbed the goose egg on my head and smiled back.

‘Next time you represent Macedon in single combat, see that you win,’ he went on, and most of the older men laughed.

‘He was pretty good,’ commented Antipater. ‘Kineas son of Eumedes. I know him. His father’s my guest friend.’

Philip nodded. ‘One of Phokion’s boys – what do you expect?’ He clapped me on the back. ‘You look like a man with something to say.’

I couldn’t help but grin, despite my fatigue. ‘I have a gift for you, lord.’

Philip raised his eyebrows.

I motioned to Polystratus, and he led the wretched Demosthenes forward.

Philip smiled as a wolf smiles at a lamb.

I slipped away, duty done, and suddenly all I wanted was to sleep.

But the path to camp crossed the brow of the hill, and there I found Philip the Red and most of my own troop, still mounted.

They were picking up their wounded and dead, like good soldiers, and I joined them, like a good officer.

That took us an hour – killing the worst wounded and picking up the least wounded of both sides. Something turns over in you – you kill, you can’t kill any more, you help save one, and all you want to do is save them all. Men are complex beasts.

And I didn’t want to stop. If I stopped collecting the wounded, if I paused in getting water – well, I’d have to start thinking about it all. Besides, as long as Cleomenes and Philip were working, I was working.

Our grooms came out to help.

We got all of our own – there were only eight – and then we started collecting our own infantrymen, and enemy infantrymen. They lay in neat rows, or all muddled together – some men awoke as if from sleep when touched, to stumble to their feet, barely injured – others had screamed themselves to wheezing silence and lay as a deer lies when he has your arrow in his guts and he’s run as far as he can and the dogs have ripped his flesh and for some reason he’s not dead yet.

Every time I got another wounded man on to the litter made by my horse and Philip’s, I swore it would be the last.

But I kept going back. The younger companions were proving something, or saying something, or too young to know when to quit. I didn’t know which. But most of us were out there.

Philip’s victory dinner was starting – I could see the torches and the slaves – when I found your pater. He was lying almost alone in some high grass – I found out later that his friends had taken him out of the melee and laid him there, and then been caught up in the battle. He had three wounds – rather as I did, myself. Polystratus and I got him on the litter and took him back to the surgeons. He was deeply unconscious. And he’d lost his gorgeous lion’s-head helmet, which I rather fancied, I must confess.

I was done. Your pater was the last man I moved off the field. A young healer found me, ordered me to sit, and I went down like a sack of grain. He wrapped the wounds on my arms and my thigh, looked at my scalp and pronounced me fit enough.

‘Don’t drink wine tonight, lord,’ he said. He pointed at my scalp. ‘A blow to the head does not go with wine.’

So I stumbled back to my tent. To where Nike had stood waiting, as I heard it, for seven hours.

She embraced me, blood and guilt and all. I never loved her better – except when she washed me clean of the blood, wrapped me in a blanket and laid me on some straw she’d foraged like the miracle worker she was. I was out in a second. Show me a man interested in a tumble in the hay after a fight, and I’ll show you a madman. Men talk about it. Show me one who got laid after Chaeronea.

I slept.

For about an hour.

Nike woke me. ‘The king has asked for you. At his dinner. He means to honour you. So they say.’

I wasn’t stiff yet, and I was young enough that I was able to function, but I felt as if I’d been wrapped in felt and kicked a hundred times by giants. Everything seemed to come to me from afar – words, thoughts, gestures.

Nike was worried. Polystratus had a look – I didn’t like his look.

‘What’s happening?’ I asked him.

Just beyond the lamplight of my tent, someone was standing. The messenger from the banquet, I assumed.

‘Clean chiton,’ Nike said, laying a soft wool cloth over my arm. ‘Best gold pins. Myndas, get the sandals on him.’

Polystratus pitched his voice very low. ‘The king and prince are not doing well together,’ he said.

Nike fussed over my shoulder and the cuts on my arms. ‘It’s not fair. They can live without you.’

It was Cleitus. As soon as he moved at the edge of the lamplight, I knew it was Black Cleitus.

‘Alexander listens to you. He needs to go to bed and stop bragging.’ Cleitus shrugged. ‘It’s bad.’

I sighed. ‘He did win the battle.’

Cleitus looked as if I’d slapped him. His loyalties were deeply divided – he loved the king, and he owed everything to Alexander.

‘He’s not insane, Cleitus. Just vain and tired. He won the battle, and Philip can’t face it. I shouldn’t have passed out. Who let him go to dinner?’

Cleitus appeared ready to cry – an odd face on a man who always looked like the worst thug in a darkened street. ‘Philip ordered him. Hephaestion tried to stop him.’

I nodded, and Nike put my best cloak over my head, the pin already closed – tugged it, and planted a kiss on my lips. ‘He’s a grown man,’ she said.

‘He’s not,’ I answered, smiling, as I always ended up doing, even when we had a spat.

And then I headed off down the hill to find Hephaestion. Cleitus followed, begging me to come straight to the king.

‘Relax,’ I said. This is where being born a great noble with my own estates had its advantages. I could be late for the king – I could, if I had to, live comfortably despite his displeasure. So sod him.

I found Hephaestion standing in the door of the command tent under the old oak.

‘Come,’ I said.

‘I wasn’t summoned,’ he said. Shrugged.

‘I order you,’ I said. ‘On my head be it. Alexander needs us.’

Hephaestion nodded, pulled on his best cloak. ‘Thanks.’

What we found at Philip’s great tent was an orgy – an orgy of middle-aged self-congratulation and bragging, the sort of thing that writers of comedies think is only done by boys.

I’m past the age now that Philip was that night. I understand now how much worse the experience of battle is when you are older, when other men are faster, when the joy of the thing is utterly gone, when there’s nothing to war but a vague feeling of shame because your kingdom is killing all these nice young men. Oh, yes. That, and the endless pain of the body – even the hardest body. The failure of reflexes, the slowing, the dimming of vision . . .

. . . and so, when you win that victory, when you put your man down, when you bed a beautiful girl, it is a greater victory, and you brag as you did when you first did these things – from relief that you still can.

Trust me on this, boy. The only thing worse than experiencing the ageing of the body would be to not experience it – to have your body rotting somewhere in the mud.

They were loud, and they were behaving badly. When I arrived in the royal precinct, Philip had just stumbled out of the tent. He had Demosthenes dressed in a purple robe, being prodded along with a spear – a dozen other Athenian leaders were there, too, and Philip was leading them on a tour of the battlefield. He was drunk – drunk even by Macedonian standards. He had most of his cronies by him, too – Attalus was there, and Diomedes, and Philotas, Parmenio’s son, and Alcimachus, one of his somatophylakes. And over against the tent wall was Alexander. The prince was alone. I’d never seen anything like it – there were no courtiers with him. His face was the face of a statue – pale in the moonlight, and set like good mortar.

‘I’ll show you poncey Greeks how a battle is fought,’ Philip declaimed. He took a spear from the guards to help him walk, and with it, as they went out on to the field, he prodded Demosthenes.

‘Demosthenes, Demosthenes’ son, Paeonian, proposes!’ he roared, and all his cronies laughed. In fact, it was funny. Philip had one gift his son never had – a strong sense of peasant humour. He was parodying the great Athenian orator’s delivery – the way he’d rise to his feet and start in against Macedon.

Philip prodded him with the spear. ‘Philip son of Amyntas, Macedonian, imposes!’ he shouted, and the Macedonian officers roared their approval. I saw Alexander, then – caught his eye.

Just for a moment, I could see what he was thinking before the mask snapped back. He was looking at the king, and his mouth and eyes roared their contempt.

I had never seen him like this.

I got Hephaestion to his side with the same ruthlessness I’d massacred routing Athenians – I stepped on feet, used my elbows – I was richer and better born than they, and they were drunk. I elbowed a swathe through the staff and got to Alexander before he exploded, and Hephaestion actually grabbed his arms.

We started on a battlefield tour.

Battlefields are incredibly grim at night – but you know that. Dead things and things that eat dead things. And a bunch of drunken Macedonians and their prisoners.

I walked with Alexander, Hephaestion, Cleitus and Polystratus for a stade, and then, when I thought it safe, started to slip away. But Philip was wily-old, wily, and somewhere down inside, desperately angry.

‘Going to bed so soon, son of Lagus?’ He came back through his staff, locked an arm around my neck and his breath stank. ‘Drink!’

‘The surgeons told me . . .’ I began, and then Attalus pinned my arms and Diomedes poured wine down my throat. I bathed in more of it than I drank.

I was sober.

Attalus had arm-locked my left arm. He did it casually, and to cause me pain.

I got an arm up, reversed Attalus’s hold and slammed his head into the ground. If I didn’t dislocate his shoulder – well, I must have hurt it a great deal.

There comes a moment in your life when you must make an enemy. Up until that moment, I was a good boy who served my prince and did what I was told. I never played the factions. I did what my pater had done – stayed clear.

Until fucking Attalus put his arm around my throat and poured wine into me. That was it. I knew what he stood for. Knew who he was for and who he was against, and as soon as I had the leverage, I threw him over my hip and put him head down in the dirt.

‘If I want a Ganymede, I’ll choose my own. A pretty one,’ I said to Diomedes.

He tried to slam the wine bowl into my head.

Alexander got him in a head lock. The prince was completely sober and completely in control of himself. In fact, in his horrid way, he was enjoying the bad behaviour of the others. He locked Diomedes up and began to force his head down against his chest.

‘Let him go,’ Hephaestion said. ‘He’s just a little arse-cunt. Lord – let him go. Don’t do this . . .’ Hephaestion recognised, as I did not, that Alexander meant to break his neck.

All at once, Alexander released his hold and the handsome man collapsed.

Philip had walked on. The entire drama had played out in twenty heartbeats, I had made a bitter enemy and Alexander had acted to support me. Heady stuff.

Philip was already standing near the centre, where our pikemen had shattered the allies.

He was pointing dramatically to the west.

‘We’d already turned,’ he said, ‘and started to drive Athens back, when—’

‘Like fuck you had!’ said a young man with the prisoners. Your uncle Diodorus – one of the richest men there, and hence, on the guest list.

Philip whirled on him. ‘We folded the Athenian hoplites—’

Diodorus laughed. ‘Save it for an audience who weren’t actually there, King of Macedon.’

Alexander, who until then had been so completely in control of himself, laughed.

Every head turned.

A brittle silence fell, and while it stretched on and on, every one of us waited for it to be broken.

Into that moment came a mounted man, wearing a green cloak and bearing a heavy bronze staff. He came out of the dark, and Hephaestion spoke to him – at the edge of my peripheral vision.

He was a good-looking man, and he dismounted in respect, but stood as straight as an ash tree.

‘I am the Herald of Athens,’ he announced. ‘I request words with the King of Macedon.’

‘Fuck off,’ Philip said.

The herald started violently.

I thought that the king had misspoken, but he went on. ‘Fuck off – Athens is done. I’m the victor here, and if I want to send all these worthy men to my silver mines – it’s my whim. Athens is done.’

Demades – another one of the prisoners, and another famous orator – stepped up behind Diodorus, who stood with his arms crossed. ‘Philip, stop being a drunken tyrant!’

Odd that no Macedonian uttered those words. Or not so odd, given what happened. Athens had some great men.

‘Shut up,’ Philip said.

‘Fortune has cast you as Agamemnon, and you seem determined to be a drunken satyr,’ Demades said. ‘Be worthy of your victory, or be forgotten.’

Philip stood up straighter – as if he’d been slapped.

I waited for him to take his spear and gut the orator. I must say, even Demades flinched.

But Philip furrowed his brow and then, with a grand gesture, tossed his wine bowl.

‘You, sir, have the right of it,’ he said to the stunned Athenian. ‘I’m drunk, and playing the fool.’ He nodded, five or six times. Turned to the herald.

‘Forgive my impiety, friend. Yes, of course great Athens may bury their dead. A three-day truce from now. And I have prisoners – Demades here will know their names. And more of your wounded with my surgeons. I seek no more war with Athens.’

Well.

I like to think that one of the signs of greatness is the ability to know when you’ve been an arse and apologise. But I’ve never seen it done so publicly, by such a great man. That was the measure of Philip, right there.

He tapped Diodorus on the shoulder as he passed him, walked over to Alexander and embraced him.

‘I might have lost without you today,’ he said. ‘Whatever spirit closed my mind to it – I see it now. Thanks, my son, for a field well fought.’

They were the right words, and I swear by all the gods he meant them.

About two hours too late.

Perhaps if I hadn’t had a nap. Perhaps if I’d stayed by Alexander, or Philip.

Or perhaps it was the will of the gods that two men, both so far above the common man, should demand each other’s esteem in a way that could only lead them to war.

The next day dawned bright and clean, despite the stacks of naked corpses. Philip forbade any further pursuit – suddenly he changed roles, and we were to act the saviours of Greece and not the tyrants.

He was always a merciful man—once he’d won his victory, the sort of man who instantly forgives any man he has beaten, in contest or in battle. And he was as changeable as his son, and usually unable to keep to the harsh lines he often set himself. In truth, a few more dead Thebans might have done everyone a world of good, including Thebes, which might yet stand.

I awoke as randy as a satyr, despite stiffness elsewhere and serious pain in my shoulder, and Nike satisfied me with a sort of impatient ‘I need to get on with my day’ response that moved me to work her pleasure until I made her squeak.

I was, you see, alive.

Alive is better than dead by a long, long way.

I went and saw to my troops and my horses, walked the lines, visited my wounded.

Kineas the Athenian was awake.

I took his hand. He knew me from the fight, and I remember laughing at his confusion, and we shook hands.

‘I imagine you’ll be with us for a while,’ I said. ‘Are you worth a ransom?’

He nodded. ‘A good ransom,’ he said.

I never saw a penny, of course, because Philip declared the Athenians free – even Demosthenes. The Thebans he kept – even sold a few as slaves – but the Athenians walked away.

But Kineas stayed with me while he healed. He and the mouthy Diodorus were fast friends, I discovered, and I included them in my mess, so that every night we ate together – Nike and Kineas and Cleitus and Diodorus and Nearchus and Philip the Red and Kineas’s hyperetes, Niceas, who was the boldest lower-class man I ever met. He and Polystratus got along like brothers, and Niceas’s open mockery of aristocrats everywhere got into Polystratus’s speech as well.

It was a good month. We ate and drank and threw javelins when we were healed – went for rides, sometimes all together, while the envoys went back and forth.

Philip sent Demades with his demands, and Athens sent him back with Phokion to stiffen his spine – Athens’ best general, their noblest soldier and my new friend Kineas’s mentor. The man was eighty. He was a stick figure of sinew and muscle who exercised constantly. Diodorus called him the ‘Living Skull’, but Kineas obviously worshipped him. He was guest friend to Philip, and one of the few men in the world who could lay claim to having beaten him in battle.

I didn’t see him the way Kineas did, but found him dour, rude and incredibly stubborn. Alexander, on the other hand, all but fell in love with him – sat at his feet, listened to his harsh remedies for men’s ills, agreed with his utter condemnation of all bodily pleasure . . .

Aphrodite! He was a dry stick. I left them to it and went riding. We had no duties except to move our camp when the men and horses had fouled the ground too much for it to be pleasant to live on – fifty thousand men do a lot of pissing in the dark. So do horses.

Kineas took us across the plains to Plataea. We already knew that Philip was going to restore Plataea’s independence – one of his little ploys to pose as the preserver of Greek freedom. Plataea welcomed us again, and ten of us spent days there – we stayed in a fine farm with a stone tower at the top of a low hill overlooked by Mount Kithaeron. Kineas’s family owned the farm, and he said that it was the ancestral home. That was a happy time – we ate too much, slept late in the mornings, went to the assembly of the Plataeans and were treated as great men. Nike’s belly started to swell.

Kineas ceased to be my prisoner early in the arrangement. We were well matched – he was as wealthy as I, well educated and well read, and he could ride. We raced horses, and talked and talked.

When you are a nobleman, there aren’t that many peers to talk to – most want something and the rest are potential rivals. I was never going into Athenian politics, and Kineas was never going to be in the royal court of Macedon. We could agree or disagree – we could enjoy the pleasure of saying ‘me too!’ in the security of knowing that, as equals, if we said ‘me too’ we meant it.

Kineas’s friend Diodorus had a wicked turn of phrase that I couldn’t get used to – like Niceas, he said things that were better left unsaid. And after the peace talks were under way, Kineas’s other friends appeared from Athens – Grachus, Lykeles and a few more. We went hunting behind Parnassus, and we spent a week holding an amateur set of military games, all of which was started by Diodorus’s claim that Athenians were better cavalrymen than Macedonians. We won. But not by much – and Kineas won most of the contests that he entered. To see him throw a javelin from horseback was to see how it was meant to be done.

And then – one night Nike had a sore stomach, the next she was apologetic about being in bed, and the third – she was dead, and our baby with her.

That’s when Kineas and I became friends, young man. I sat with her corpse for a long time – holding one of her hands. I didn’t really believe she wouldn’t come back to me. I was numb and angry at the same time. And the mound of her pregnancy seemed the harshest mockery – pregnant women are supposed to be immune to disease. And I considered self-murder. She was that much to me that I didn’t really see what I had to live for.

I sat there for two days, in her folding chair by her corpse. Alexander came and clutched my shoulder and kissed her. That meant a great deal to me. But he left, and then Kineas came, and left. Cleitus and Philip and Nearchus and Cleomenes came, sat with me, and left.

After a couple of days, Kineas came again. This time he was dressed for riding.

‘Come,’ he ordered me, and I simply rose and followed him. Don’t know why.

We rode through a long afternoon, and camped under the eaves of Kithaeron. He killed a deer and we ate it. I swear that in the whole evening he said only ‘Salt?’ and ‘Have another helping’.

In the cold mist of dawn, we rode on, up the mountain. Up and up. Until we were on the flat of the crest, with the sea a golden blue in one direction and all Boeotia spread beneath us in the other.

‘Bury her here,’ he said. ‘With my people.’

Then I wept, and then I nodded, and then I discovered that her corpse was in a wagon at the base of the mountain.

We burned her in the high place, and her ashes went into a pot with a maiden and a child painted on it, and then we put her at the top of the mountain with all those Plataean heroes.

And the next few days are lost to me. There’s nothing there.

But your father and I were ever friends from that day forward.