God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

ELEVEN

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

But Alexander wasn’t done.

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

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

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

Of course, I bore it all with smiles, backslapping, coarse humour – I’m telling the truth here, and the truth is that it never does to show weakness with Macedonians – or any other human animal, eh, lad? But I was hurt, inside – hurt as if I’d taken a wound – by those fifty-five men who’d died so that my king could not have a battle.

So I was tipsy. I drank from the moment the libations were poured, and when the king poured one to Herakles and ordered us all to drink our cups dry, I drank mine and sent it back to be refilled, and smiled at a Thessalian aristocrat-boy so that he shrank away.

Marsyas steadied me.

But Alexander came over and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Yesterday was well done,’ he said.

A great many responses came to me, and I bit them down. It wasn’t the king’s fault so many men had died, and it wasn’t his fault – exactly – that it all seemed to be for nothing and the leaders of the ‘enemy’ army were sharing our funeral feast. So I made a smile come to my face and muttered, ‘Thanks.’

‘Will your men be ready to march tomorrow?’ he asked.

Zeus Soter! I remember that question shooting down my muscles like new pain. My men were exhausted.

But that was not something I chose to say. Good or bad leadership is often a matter of perspective. I was going to make my hypaspists creatures of legend. Creatures of legend do not admit fatigue. Paradox, if you like – I was angry at my losses and eager to keep my men’s reputation well shined.

‘We could march now, if you want us to,’ I said.

Just for a moment, in the flickering torchlight, I saw Alexander’s eyes narrow a fraction. And Marsyas stepped forward, took my arm and smiled. ‘If they can walk, that is. Come, big brother. I’ll steer you to bed.’

I woke in the darkness – fully alert. I got up, kicked Polystratus out of his cloak and crawled into a dry chiton and a heavy chlamys, because the plains of Thessaly had the same fog in early morning as they did at night.

Every muscle in my body protested softly, and a few protested loudly, but the advantage of a life of activity is that even as a very young man you know that none of this is actually pain, and that it will all be gone as soon as you sweat.

I walked out and roused my mess group. Polystratus woke my slaves, and Ochrid, the lead slave, pulled out a quill and blew the coals of the fire into life. ‘Morning, master,’ he said, cheerfully. Ochrid was a big fellow, a Paeonian. He wasn’t too bright, and he wasn’t too big – he had an open, pleasant face and bright blond hair, and no apparent need to be a freeman. But he was steady, trustworthy – as long as you didn’t task him beyond his skills – and careful. He was warm, too.

Let me just say that slaves came and went. A few stayed with me for years, but in general, I tried to keep them moving – to freedom, or to the farms. Being a soldier’s slave is brutal work, and it breaks them. And they can never marry, or have children, or have a little hut or a plot of land. Mind you, they can earn their freedom in an hour of looting or a single lucky kill – or die screaming on someone’s spear-point, for sport. My point is that Ochrid survived years of this life, and he’s got a place in Memphis as my tax farmer there. So he’s an exception. Mostly, I won’t even mention their names. Sad. But one of those facts of life. Slaves come and go.

Where was I?

Ochrid called, ‘Good morning,’ and that seemed to allow other men to approach me, and before I had a cup of hot milk in my hand, a dozen men were all around me – could I look at a wound? Did I know that third file was now three men short? Would we be getting new drafts to make up our numbers?

I was starting to know my phylarchs. And I liked most of what I saw. Nicanor was a Macedonian only by adoption – he was a former mercenary, also from Lesbos, a friend of Aristotle – the great man’s former lover, in fact. Nicanor was the fourth file commander, thin, small, full of fire. A handsome man, with serious culture.

Astibus, on the other hand, was an Agrianian chieftain’s son, tall, blond and outweighing me by half. A giant. Virtually the first man up Ossa, after me. He had an axe – a very old-fashioned weapon indeed – which rested in carefully forged spring-bronze mounts inside his aspis, a vicious surprise when he broke his spear. He put as much thought into fighting as Aristotle did into categorising living things, and the Greek pankration fascinated him utterly – the Agrianians had nothing like it.

Nicanor and Astibus were among the more memorable, but I had one hundred and twenty phylarchs, and they came in a huge variety of sizes and flavours, and one was actually black – an African. He was another former mercenary, and his Macedonian name was Bubores, and he had horrible nightmares and could terrify all of us when he screamed in the night. His Greek was pitiful, but his battlefield power was legendary, and he, like Astibus, had been among the first men up the mountain.

Astibus was stubborn and inclined to argue with orders. Nicanor was arrogant and snide – used big words, and patronised his lessers, which meant nearly everyone. Bubares was often drunk on duty, although his men liked him well enough that they covered for him.

These men exist in every army in the world, I suspect. When the Hittites rolled their chariots to windy Ilium, I suspect there were old drunks, arrogant poets and brash youngsters.

And new commanders trying to create legends.

But what they all wanted to know, that morning, was who had won the prize at Ossa – who had been first up the hill. The phylarchs crowded around me, arguing the merits of this man and that.

Old Philip laughed. ‘Lord Ptolemy was first up the hill,’ he said. ‘I saw him.’

Alectus laughed. ‘Cheap bastard,’ he said.

That got a general guffaw.

‘I am not a cheap bastard,’ I said, with mock horror. ‘So I’ll pay half the prize each to the two men who were second up the hill – and without whom I’d be dead!’ I sent Polystratus back to my tent for cash, and I gave half a mina of silver – a pretty fair prize – to Philip Longsword and to young Astibus.

That seemed to make everyone happy. Despite funereal hangovers – the night before, my boys had discovered that Agrianians and Macedonians share a belief that the dead are best mourned drunk – despite muscles of cast lead. Despite all of that, we were first on parade, in pitch darkness.

In armour, with our spears and aspides.

I’ve won battles, and I’ve killed heroes in single combat. I’ve slept with outrageously beautiful women I had no business even looking at, and I’ve climbed mountains and travelled the world. On balance, that moment in Thessaly, standing confidently, arrogantly, despite my pains and my wounded instep and the gouge in my leg – standing bare-legged on parade, with my heroes all lined up behind me, clamouring to start their march – even the slaves all in the ranks, all our baggage packed – we, who had fought a heroic action two days before – and around us, the royal companions and the pezhetaeroi scrambled to be ready – it was one of the most satisfying moments of my life, and I grew taller and handsomer.

The king rode out to me. I didn’t see him coming until the last moment – he was riding quietly on a palfrey.

‘Splendid,’ he said. He grinned – a boyish grin I seldom saw after he was twelve. ‘You know, Ptolemy, just now, I think I’d like to trade places with you. Right now, it is you who are a god, and I am merely your commander.’

Sometimes he was impossibly arrogant, and sometimes he was impossible not to love. I took his hand and locked it in a clasp – the way warriors do. He leaned down. ‘We are going to conquer the world with these men,’ he said. The grin was still there.

The hypaspitoi began to cheer – Alaialaialaialai.

Suddenly Alexander laughed. ‘Fuck them if they’re late to parade!’ he shouted, and pumped his hand to indicate that we should prepare to march.

So we marched away from Thessaly to conquer the world. The hypaspitoi led, and all the rest of the army had to catch up.

Beat that story, lad. Those were great days, great men, doing great things.

We made forced marches across the Thessalian plain, one hundred stades a day and sometimes more. We didn’t drink wine in the stews of Larissa – we missed nothing, I can tell you – and we didn’t bother the shepherd boys on the slopes of Mount Othrys. We crossed Thessaly in five days, and the Thessalian nobles complained we were ruining their horses.

My men laughed. They were marching five parasanges a day, running a third of the distance, keeping up with the cavalry scouts and the king. They were young and strong, and after three weeks in the field, they had bodies as hard as rock. We rested at the height of the pass over the shoulders of Othrys – my men were tucked into rocks and fissures, and there was snow. Men curled up three to a cloak – or rather, three to three cloaks. The man in the middle got a little sleep.

Alexander rode into my ‘camp’, which means that he asked a few sleepy men and a sentry, and Polystratus woke me.

Alexander had only Hephaestion with him.

‘I need another dash from your myrmidons,’ the king said. ‘I need you to be at the Gates of Fire by tonight. I don’t think Thebes has the balls to contest my passage, but once I have the Gates, we’ve got all the time in the world. Tell your boys I promise at least a week’s rest at the Gates. But I need this done now – I went to sleep thinking about it, and I woke up just now with Herakles’ hand on my shoulder.’

Fuck him. Let’s face it, I’m not at my best in freezing cold in the middle of the night after a hundred-stade march and very little sleep.

But there comes a moment – when you are building something special – when you just want to keep testing it, because you cannot really believe how good it is. I’ve seen a cutler put an edge on a razor and then test it until his thumb is bleeding – grinning like a fool because the edge is so good. That was me.

I got to my feet, smiled at the king and Polystratus bellowed, ‘Spears and armour! March in one hour!’

And they got up off their rocks and joked that marching would be warmer than lying in the snow.

We marched along the beach and through the Gates of Fire unopposed. In fact, we had time to stop and make sacrifice to the Spartans who fell there for Greece – though I knew we were better men than they ever were. After all, they were merely Greeks, without even the erudition of Athens.

But they were good, brave men, and all brave men should be brothers, even when they fight against each other. War’s bad enough without rules. I hear men say that war should be fought without rules, but I despise such weaklings. Rules in contests are the courtesies of the strong to the strong.

But I digress.

We bought sheep from the shepherds and sacrificed them, and we poured libations to the dead – Persians as well as Greeks. And while we did that, fifty picked men climbed the high pass on our right flank and another fifty prowled ahead twenty stades under Alectus, who neither knew nor cared who Leonidas had been, despite his gleanings of Greek learning.

We were ahead of the Prodromoi, so we laid out the camp – the first time that ever happened – and we got the pick of the sheep. The farmers were thin on the ground, and there wasn’t much food. I sent scouts north into Achaea looking for grain and wine and oil.

Towards evening, Alexander came with the army, looked approvingly at the small ash-altar our sacrifices had left, and dismounted immediately to add his own. His devotions were absolutely genuine – he was a very religious man, and the sacrifices of heroes – all heroes, regardless of cause or race – meant a great deal to him. Some he had to equal or exceed – he was locked in agonistic competition even with the very gods – but that didn’t mean he didn’t worship their achievements. By acknowledging them, he worshipped himself. Or that’s how I see it now.

The next morning, we slept in, and held impromptu games in honour of the Spartans. We had only four Spartans in the whole army, but they were made the judges, and we had a wonderful time, running and throwing javelins, riding horses, wrestling, fencing and reading poetry.

It was a first, but like many aspects of that campaign, it was a sign of the future. Alexander the innovator was also Alexander the conservative. He wanted the old ways restored, even at the risk of seeming a little silly to his men. The first games we held had a slightly forced atmosphere – I remember that when the first wreaths of ludicrously over-woven laurel were awarded to the distance runner, men laughed – but the laughter stopped soon enough.

Marsyas found some local girls and asked them to make us proper wreaths, and when I won the run in armour on the second afternoon – running with a spear wound in my left foot, let me add – I received a beautiful wreath, which I was proud to wear all the next day. And those of us who won wreaths ate together that night.

Astibus won the javelin throw for accuracy.

Little Cleomenes wasn’t so little now, and had long legs like a woman, and won the two-stade sprint – won it handily.

That one I remember, because Alexander watched that race with something very like lust. He wanted to compete.

I was lounging about, literally resting on my laurels. I was lying on a pallet of new straw watching men run and cheering, and I caught the king’s eye. I shrugged. ‘Go run!’ I said quietly.

He gave me a sad smile. ‘Prince Alexander might have run,’ he said. ‘King Alexander will never run again.’

It wasn’t all fun and games. As soon as he made camp, Alexander sent heralds to the members of the Amphictyonic League, demanding – in the most courteous way possible – that they meet him at the Gates of Fire.

In effect, he announced, ‘I’m at the gates of mainland Greece, and none of you have the strength of arms to stop me. Want to talk?’

And they all came.

Even before the League assembled, states around us were falling into line. Or rather, back into our allegiance. The cities of southern Epirus begged for forgiveness and insisted they hadn’t meant to revolt. Listening to their ambassadors was an education in bad rhetoric.

Alexander stunned them by giving a few of them their independence. It was a complex version of independence, wherein he kept absolute control of their foreign relations, but they had city charters and city magnates. I didn’t understand right away, and thought that he was making concessions to the realities – but in a matter of a few weeks his policy became audience. It was his father’s policy in Boeotia to liberate the smaller cities and use them as watchdogs on Thebes. Of course they were loyal Macedonian allies – they owed us everything. Plataea comes to mind.

Alexander did the same. And the outer provinces crawled all over themselves to return to the fold. Even the ones we’d left behind when we marched on Greece.

Athens and Thebes did not send representatives to the Gates of Fire.

It is remarkable, when you are a soldier, how quickly after exhaustion that rest gives way to boredom. The change seems to be immediate – you are exhausted, you have a rest, suddenly you are bored. Bored soldiers are the most dangerous animals in the human bestiary. They fight duels, they get drunk, they rape.

All bad.

By the third day at the Gates of Fire, I’d killed a man who’d fought at Mount Ossa with my own hand – he raped a child, and I gutted him in front of the parade. That gave the rest of them pause. And I learned my lesson – I hope that child’s life saved a few others – and I brought in instructors for sword work, for wrestling, for running. We threw javelins relentlessly, and we climbed the cliffs, and we began to master the close-order drill that Philip had insisted the pezhetaeroi learn. We had a lexicon of manoeuvres, and we spent four days marching through them – Spartan counter-march, Macedonian counter-march, files and form to the left, files and form to the right, wheeling motions, half-file manoeuvres and file-doubling manoeuvres. Anything to keep the bastards busy.

The League representatives met, and on the first day they voted Alexander to be head of the League, as his father had been. Alexander smiled and proposed an agenda for the next four days of meetings.

And then we marched away in the dark. All Alexander ever wanted was the League’s recognition. As soon as he had it, he was finished with them and their trappings of authority. The Prodromoi marched in pitch darkness, very early on a short summer night, and my hypaspitoi followed them. We had guides we’d recruited from the countryside and paid well, and we moved very fast.

We had to cross the mountains of Phokia, and Alexander, always religious, was determined to march past Delphi. The going was steep, but it was high summer and we’d had a week’s rest, and we flew. Three days to Delphi, and a day’s rest.

Alectus went to the temple, presented himself to the priests and was refused – as a barbarian.

So I accompanied him, both of us in armour.

Greeks like to claim that we Macedonians are barbarians when it suits them. As Alexander was the head of the Holy League and his soldiers were the guarantors of the temple treasury, I had a feeling they would accept me as a Hellene – nor was I disappointed.

We waited in the antechamber while a trio of Athenians asked detailed questions about business and about Alexander’s intentions for their city.

When they emerged, I sent Alectus in alone. And I walked out on to the portico with the Athenians. Two of them were unknown to me, but the third was Kineas’s friend Diodorus.

‘They say that meetings in the temple precincts are part of the will of the God,’ I said, putting my arm around his shoulder. Diodorus turned and we embraced.

‘Alexander wants to be recognised as hegemon of the League of Corinth. He’ll fight to get it, too.’ I held both his hands and looked him in the eye so that he’d see I was being utterly honest.

He nodded. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘And a great deal clearer than what the priestess muttered.’

His companions looked uneasy, and kept their distance.

He jerked a thumb at them, rudely. ‘I’m the token aristocrat. They’re my fellow democrats – friends of Demosthenes, or followers. More like acolytes – very dull companions. Give me dinner tonight and I’ll tell you how happy I am that Alexander is coming to rescue us!’ He laughed bitterly.

I sent him on his way and waited for Alectus, who emerged looking troubled.

‘She is a real prophetess,’ he said, and fingered his beard. ‘I could feel her power.’

I shrugged, because only a fool doubts the power of the god at Delphi.

Alectus walked with me back to camp, but I could tell he was not in a mood for talk.

That night, I gave a small dinner for Diodorus, and invited some of the Hetaeroi – Philip the Red, Cleomenes, Nearchus and Marsyas. He was good company, but his tale was a sad one – Athens was in a state of near stasis, civil war, because Demothenes kept the commons united against Alexander – who he caricatured as a fop, a poseur, an effeminate impostor.

Kineas was in the other faction, of course. And Diodorus had finally turned his back on the democrats.

‘If that fool has his way, we’ll fight you again,’ Diodorus said wearily. Then he brightened. ‘Say – you know that Thaïs speaks of you often?’

‘Does she?’ I asked. That gave me a little heart-burst of joy.

‘She gave me a party the night before I left – she prophesied that I would have days of dull company and would need to remember her wit.’ He smiled. ‘Some day, I long to afford a woman like her – to have her all to myself, every day. I’ll take her to dinner parties. Shock the matrons. Perhaps marry her!’

I laughed, although I was jealous.

He smiled at me as if reading my thoughts. ‘Thaïs said that she had been told by a seer she trusts that she is to leave Athens.’ He laughed. ‘Hardly news – the old men hate her so much they threaten to exile her constantly. Bad for public morals. Worse than old Socrates. Or so I hear.’ He laughed into his wine.

Marsyas leaned over. ‘Who is this paragon?’

‘Ah,’ I said, and took the opportunity every man loves, to discuss his paramour. Or perhaps she wasn’t my paramour. I won’t have you imagine that every time I lay with a slave girl or a willing free woman, I dreamed of Thaïs. That would have been, if nothing else, rude. The partner of the moment deserves your full attention. If you can’t remember the woman with whom you are lying – don’t bother!

But I thought of her often, more so as we came closer to Athens, and to discuss her openly with Diodorus was delightful.

At the same time, I sent Nearchus to Alexander when he went on duty with a note explaining the presence of the Athenian envoys and their mission.

Nearchus came back with two grooms and regretfully informed Diodorus that he and his fellow envoys would be guests of the temple for a few days. Diodorus accepted this with good grace. His fellows were obviously terrified.

We marched away in the dark.

We were at Lebedaea before noon, a hundred and ten stades of running and marching, with the Prodromoi just ahead of us and on either side, and the king with them, surrounded by his somatophylakes – the inner companions, the trusted bodyguards. I was one of them, in title.

I knew all morning we weren’t going to stop. Alexander was playing for the whole jar of oil, as the Athenians say, and we were going to make the dash. My men were in peak condition, and ready for anything. The Prodromoi changed horses at the meal break – and every one of them had at least two remounts.

The sun had scarcely begun to decline when we started for Thebes, another hundred and twenty stades across the plains of Boeotia, the dance floor of Ares. If the Thebans were going to fight, it was going to be today, tonight or tomorrow. My men had already come five parasanges on foot, in their armour, with their shields on their shoulders. Go and try it. Tell me how you do.

And we were off. The Prodromoi didn’t range far ahead. A thousand hypaspitoi, two hundred Prodromoi and twenty somatophylakes in full armour – the cream of the Macedonian army. And the king. Twelve hundred men against the might of Thebes and Athens – against a possible sixty thousand hoplites.

Farmers stood at their ploughs and watched us as if we were an army of ghosts.

Women stood at the edges of fields and watched us pass. Let me tell you what that means. Women are usually locked away when armies come. It’s a good idea. If country people get a rumour of an army, their grain is buried, their animals are driven up the hills and their women vanish.

We marched through a Boeotia full of late-summer grain, donkeys and beautiful women watching us march. They had no idea we were coming, and the Prodromoi moved so fast and so professionally that any man among them who thought to saddle his mare and ride for the city was quietly, ruthlessly removed and brought before the king. No one was killed, but by the time the sun was well down in the sky, we had thirty of these honest citizens trailing the king.

And we could see the Cadmea in the distance. Fabled Thebes.

Bastards. Really, an example of bad behaviour to ring through the ages. Only worthy thing Thebes ever did was to beat Sparta, and even there, really the Spartans beat themselves. Otherwise, Thebes was like a weathercock to tell worthy men what not to do, eh?

It is very fashionable these days in Greece to decry the fate of Thebes. Fuck them. They got what they deserved. How’s that for insensitive?

Anyway, we kept marching. We were on a superb road by then, rounded at the crest, paved with stones, and we sped up.

We marched right up to the gates. We posted a double line of sentries, paid the farmers of the near Cadmea to provide chicken, lamb and barley, and made a rich dinner. The hordes of Thebes didn’t frighten me any, and I slept well.

We were up in the dark, but however early the hypaspitoi rose that day, the men of Thebes were up earlier. By the time I found Alexander, Thebes had already surrendered and agreed to accept a new garrison, and accepted Alexander as the hegemon of the League.

I went back to bed.

I awoke late, to a new world. A world where Alexander, my boyhood friend, was actually going to be the hegemon of the League of Corinth – the master of the Amphictyonic League, the keeper of Delphi. The King of Macedon, Lord of Thessaly and undisputed master of his father’s empire.

It was thirty-nine days since we’d marched out of Pella, with Antipater claiming we should sit and negotiate and lay out some bribes.

The first sign of the new world was Amyntas son of Philotas, one of Parmenio’s household officers. I knew him well – he’d brought me my first toy sword.

He was waiting with Polystratus when I awoke. We embraced, and he shook his head.

‘When I was a young man, I never slept this late,’ he said with mock severity.

‘When you were a young man, Agamemnon was still king and the siege of Troy was in its second year,’ I said. ‘And I doubt you ever marched two hundred stades in a day.’

He grinned. ‘With Philip? I’ve made some marches, boy. Watch what you claim.’ Then he gave Polystratus a long look. ‘Can I trust your man?’

‘With anything,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Parmenio was always a good friend to your father,’ he said quietly.

‘Absolutely. Parmenio has my complete respect and admiration. Where’s this going?’ I asked.

Amyntas shrugged. ‘Alexander made my lord an offer.’ He looked around again.

I nodded. ‘I know all about it.’

He looked startled. ‘You do?’

‘Command in Asia, under the king. First satrapy, all the high offices for his sons and his favourites. Like you, Uncle Amyntas.’ I shrugged. ‘You should ask for the hypaspists. Best outfit in the army.’

He twirled his moustache. ‘So you know. So – is it genuine?’

‘Polystratus, get my Uncle Amyntas a cup of wine.’ I gestured, but Polystratus was already gone. A damned good man, Polystratus. Then I turned to Amyntas. He wasn’t actually an uncle at all – he was Parmenio’s political manager, and he’d been close to my pater.

‘You know, Uncle Amyntas – the truth is, it doesn’t matter whether the deal is genuine or not.’ I grinned. I liked him, but I needed, right then, for him to understand what we’d all just spent thirty-nine days learning. I went on, ‘I assume it is genuine – I’m one of the king’s friends, and he’s never spoken of Parmenio with anything but respect.’ I shrugged. ‘But truth to tell, Uncle, if Parmenio doesn’t ditch Attalus and switch sides, we’ll come to Asia and beat the shit out of him. The king is the king. And look around, Uncle. We hold Greece in the palms of our hands. Thebes fell today. This is Philip’s son, and the gods love him.’ I smiled. ‘Don’t be mad at me. Just take it on board. He’s the king. Parmenio needs to bend the knee. Or . . . else.’

‘Alexander needs my lord,’ Amyntas said. He was in shock. ‘You can’t honestly believe that the gold-haired boy can defeat Parmenio?’

‘In fact, Uncle, you believe it too, or you wouldn’t be here. You’d be in Asia, readying your army to come and fight us for Macedon with Attalus. Eh?’ I grinned. ‘Have some wine. We’re not as young as we used to be.’

He rubbed his chin. Ochrid brought a stool and he sat on it, took wine from Polystratus and shook his head. ‘I’m to negotiate for Attalus.’

I nodded. ‘Spare yourself. Attalus is a dead man.’

Amyntas rubbed his chin as if looking for a louse. Maybe he was. ‘Like that, is it?’

‘Listen – you weren’t there. Neither was Parmenio. But Attalus did things – none of us will ever forgive him. If Alexander let him live?’ I shrugged. ‘One of us would do him anyway. And Alexander would let it be.’ I met his eyes. ‘You know how it is, right? When a man has gone outside the laws other men accept? Attalus did that. And he put himself against the king. He’s a dead man.’

Amyntas seemed to deflate. ‘Is this the stupid business about the boy Pausanias?’

I nodded. ‘That’s part of it.’

He nodded. ‘When Attalus came to Asia, he told us that story. He told it with pleasure. And Lord Parmenio left the dinner in disgust.’ He shrugged. ‘Attalus carries the seeds of his own death.’

I nodded. ‘Let him go, then. Attalus is done.’

Amyntas nodded. ‘I hadn’t expected to find Alexander in possession of the League,’ he said. ‘I think I should sail back to Asia and ask my lord to think again.’

‘Finish your wine first,’ I suggested.

After breakfast I reported the whole conversation to Alexander. If I was to be the new faction leader of the lowland nobles – a job I thought that I wanted – I had to play both ends. I’d given Amyntas sound advice, but the king had to know I gave it from loyalty, not self-interest. All very complicated, as being a courtier – even a martial, active courtier – always is.

Alexander nodded. He made a face – rare for him, because he prized his immobile good looks – and spat. ‘I wonder what his terms were,’ he said bitterly. ‘From the great Parmenio to a poor misguided boy.’

‘Better not to know,’ I said. ‘I told him that Attalus was not negotiable.’

Alexander shrugged. ‘Oh, him. He’s in his late sixties – hardly a major power—’

I stopped the king with a raised hand – which shocked him – but I was instantly outraged. ‘I told him that Attalus was not negotiable,’ I said again, quite harshly. ‘Now I’ll tell you. Or rather, lord, I’ll remind you. Your loyal men died or were injured, humiliated, raped – by Attalus. None of the pages will ever accept him. If you forgive him, I’ll kill him myself.’

Alexander looked at me, and again, his eyes narrowed.

I was challenging him.

‘You are above yourself, Ptolemy,’ Alexander said. ‘It is not your place to tell the king what he may and may not do.’

Something – something that had been hanging over me since I stormed Mount Ossa – broke.

‘You’re wrong, Alexander,’ I said, and my use of his name was deliberate. ‘It is my place. I am your friend and your trusted man, one of your great nobles, the leader of your best troops. If you leave Attalus alive, you tell us, your pages, that our sacrifices meant nothing to you. And that makes you an ungrateful bastard, not a king. Everything is not a trade of this for that, a compromise towards better rulership. Sometimes, you just have to accept that you are a leader not by the will of the gods but by the consent of the men of worth. If you leave Attalus alive, you betray us.’

He turned away. His posture hardened. With a good athlete, you can read anger in every muscle, not just in a few in the arms, shoulders and neck. He had rage in his hips and in his lower back.

‘Remove yourself,’ he said.

‘Fuck you,’ I said. Not what Aristotle would have wanted me to say. ‘Call your companions and have me dragged out.’

Hephaestion came in in a hurry. I have no doubt he’d been listening. ‘You cannot address your king that way,’ he said. ‘Apologise!’

‘Alexander is going to pardon Attalus!’ I said.

Hephaestion hadn’t been listening as closely as I had thought. He stopped dead. ‘What?’

Alexander whirled. ‘Not you too! Listen. Attalus is a tool. I need him in Asia. I need all my father’s generals.’

Hephaestion made a moue of distaste and glanced at me, clearly caught between annoyance at the king and dislike of me. ‘Attalus,’ he spat.

I leaned forward. ‘My king, you do not need Attalus to conquer Asia. You do not need Parmenio and you do not need Amyntas. You just conquered Greece in forty days – with your own men and your own army. And your own head.’ I shrugged. ‘And I stand on my statement. If you pardon Attalus, I will take my grooms and retire to my estates.’

Alexander paused and just looked at me.

‘My father did it,’ I reminded him. ‘I can live without all this.’

Alexander was as white as a new-woven chiton. ‘Leave me.’ He waved his hand quickly, like a man dying of suffocation. ‘Don’t argue. Go.’

I left the tent.

That was a bad day. I ordered my kit packed. I called Philip Longsword and told him the whole story – much as I’m telling you now, because my story went back to the hunt with Laodon and the rape of Pausanias. He heard me out, and shook his head.

‘Bad,’ he said. ‘But you shouldn’t have defied the king.’

I knew he was right. I knew that in a moment’s hot-headedness, I’d lost years of ground with Alexander, and maybe lost him altogether.

So I handed command to Philip, and said some goodbyes, and then sat down on a camp stool – our kit caught up with us that morning when the rest of the army marched in – and waited for the summons.

It didn’t come all day.

Men watched me – men who had been my own a few hours before. But they kept their distance. Philip Longsword had told them – on parade – not to come within a spear’s length of me, by my own order.

A long day.

As the sun was setting and the evening sacrifices were being made, Nearchus came with a full file of Hetaeroi. Before he could ask, I gave him my sword.

We walked back through a silent camp.

The king was with Hephaestion in his tent. No one else. I took that as a good sign. If he meant to execute me, he’d have to order it done before my peers, and they’d have to agree.

He kept his back to me.

Hephaestion did the talking.

‘The king requests that you resign the command of his household guards. And requests – as one man to 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 Thaïs.

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 Thaïs 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 Thaïs 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 Thaïs, 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 Thaïs.’

I sipped some sweet wine. ‘Dear Thaïs, 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.’

Thaïs 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,’ Thaïs 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?

Let me put it this way. Before that afternoon, I’d never really had sex. She was playful, humorous, lust-filled, languorous, fast, slow, intelligent, as beautiful as Aphrodite, with more cleverness in one hand than all the slave girls I’d ever bedded had in their cunnies. And in between bouts – for sex with Thaïs bore some very real relationship to competitions – she’d talk of things – real things, like love and friendship and war.

I’d like to say we made love six times, but that would be bragging.

‘I’m going to be sore tomorrow,’ she said.

‘I’m sore right now,’ I said. I was looking at my penis, which was as red as a Spartan’s cloak. She laughed. I laughed.

Put a value on that.

‘Come away with me,’ I said. ‘Live with me. Be my hetaera.’

‘On the basis of one afternoon on a couch? You don’t have my bill yet.’ She smiled and kissed my nose.

Now, I hated my nose. People called me ‘Farm Boy’ because of that beak. No one had ever kissed it before.

‘On the basis of the fact that I think of you constantly.’ I licked her lips.

‘You’ve bedded me now – the feeling will pass.’ She smiled. ‘Men really only fancy what they haven’t had.’

I bit her.

She bit me.

We were pretty far down the path when she grabbed my hand – she was strong – as strong as a warrior. ‘That hurts. I’m done, sweet.’

I laughed and kissed her. ‘I suppose I owe you for the week you’ll be out of commission,’ I said.

She shook her head. ‘I’m not a porne,’ she said. ‘You’d be surprised how long it is since I had a man between my hips.’

I licked her lips again. ‘I’m lucky.’

She laughed. ‘Perhaps.’

‘I mean it,’ I added. ‘Come with me.’

‘You don’t know me,’ she said. ‘And people will say the most unkind things.’

I shrugged. ‘I’ll kill them.’ That made her laugh.

She wouldn’t give me an answer. We drank some wonderful red wine together, and I left to go to a dinner in Alexander’s honour.

I didn’t see her for two days. She refused my invitations and was not at home to anyone.

On the third day, Demosthenes himself agreed to lead the embassy to Alexander. Athens was racing to throw itself at the conqueror’s feet. Demosthenes could never meet my eye. Old Phokion was kind enough to shake my hand and tell me that the exploit of Mount Ossa was as worthy as any feat of arms he’d ever done.

Kineas and I boxed, and he gave me a black eye. Your pater had the fastest hands I’ve ever failed to see, and that’s no lie.

I was done. So I sent Thaïs a note, declaring that I was still sore and that I still wanted her to come with me. I thought a touch of humour might have an effect.

She sent me a bill for ten talents of gold. A year’s income from all of my estates.

I sent her all ten talents, and a bill for ridding her of a troublesome guest – one Athenian drachma, payable in kisses.

The next day, I packed my gear. I had no intention of riding with Demosthenes. I detested him. He made my skin crawl.

Mid-morning, while I said my goodbyes to Kineas, his father’s steward summoned the old man, who went out for a hundred heartbeats and came back.

‘Ptolemy, there is a person at my gate. She says she will wait for you. Do you wish me to admit her?’

Kineas looked puzzled. I was puzzled.

‘Not . . . Thaïs?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ Eumeles said. ‘A person of some . . . distinction.’ He spoke with evident distaste.

‘Ah!’ I ran down the stairs and out into the courtyard, across the yard and out through the gate.

There were twenty mules in the alley, and a dozen slaves, and Thaïs, robed like a matron and wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat.

‘Last chance to change your mind,’ she said.

I shrugged. ‘At ten talents an . . . encounter, I must confess that ours may be a chaste relationship.’

She nodded. ‘Platonic, perhaps?’

I laughed. Kineas laughed when I told it to him. He snorted wine over his chiton. She was that funny.

When I left Athens, I had the one thing Athens had that I wanted.