God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great

TWENTY-NINE

We turned south.

We started to intercept spies – they weren’t very clever – with offers of vast riches for the murder of Alexander.

Darius was willing to do anything to avoid the trial of battle.

To cap his other efforts, he sent a deputation of nobles to try and make a treaty. This time, he was clever enough to make it very public indeed. This time, Alexander was not going to change the wording.

They offered him everything west of the Euphrates and a royal wife.

Again, Parmenio suggested we accept.

Alexander didn’t deign to reply. But later, we heard that he allowed the head eunuch of Darius’s wife’s household to escape with the embassy.

Because the news that his wife had been unfaithful with Alexander drove Darius into a rage of madness – a paroxysm of jealousy, or so I understood later, when most of the Persian officers were my own officers – the sort of frustrated rage that all men experience when nothing seems to go their way.

Just as Alexander intended.

And then there was no more talk of peace.

The War God was riding to Babylon.

Darius concentrated his army at Arabela, and offered battle on a plain of his own choosing, which he had his engineers improve with labour gangs of slaves until it was as flat as a well-wrought table.

We heard about this battlefield when we were still hundreds of stades to the north, and as we marched closer and the rumours of the enemy’s army size became ever more inflated, we were more and more derisive. The mere fact that Darius had attempted to negotiate showed how weak he was. Our best estimates from all sources suggested that even with some help form his eastern barons, he’d have a hard time gathering twenty thousand cavalry and as many infantry. Ariston nearly lost his job for reporting twice that many on a daily basis.

And then Darius moved north from Arabela, suddenly closing the distance with us.

It’s easy to fall into hubris. Easy to forget how smart an opponent is. Darius outgeneralled Alexander before Issus. He’d planned a fairly subtle campaign this time, too, and Alexander had outmarched him – something that all of our opponents always underestimated, as we could march roughly three times as fast as anyone we ever faced. But even faced with our speed, he changed his campaign plan and moved his army – and did unexpected things.

In an afternoon, we went from deriding Darius to the knowledge that he was a day’s march to the south. Reliable men reported that his army was ‘uncountable’.

Kineas of Athens came in person to tell the king that Darius’s army covered a hundred stades of camp.

The tone of command meetings changed.

Late that evening, the army moved up a low ridge. Scouts told us that the ridge we were occupying was less than two dozen stades from Darius’s new battlefield.

Alexander summoned the old crowd to ride out with him. There was Craterus, and there was Perdiccas, and there was Black Cleitus and there was Philip the Red. And Parmenio, and Philotas, and Nicanor.

And me. He came to my tent, as in the old days, and called me by name.

A dozen of us rode out of the camp, up the ridge.

The ridge rose well above the plains, and had a good view. Perhaps too good a view.

It looked as if the Valley of the Tigris was on fire.

I will never forget the sight of Darius’s army. Their camp filled the earth – as far as the eye could see to the south and east, there were fires.

‘Zeus my father,’ Alexander muttered.

Parmenio looked for a long time.

Then he shook his head. ‘We’re fucked,’ he said.

No one disagreed, and then, after a silence, he went on, ‘Throw Hephaestion out with the cavalry as a screen, and let’s get out of here. We can vanish into the mountains. We’ll lose some men, but not what we’ll lose if we go down on to that plain.’

What I remember best is the feeling that Darius had led us the way a pretty girl can lead a drunken soldier. The ugly feeling that we’d been had.

Alexander was white. And silent.

Twice I saw him touch his forehead, where I had smeared her blood.

He was terrified. I hadn’t seen it often, but often enough to know. Terrified not of dying, but of failing.

I’d love to say that I offered a brilliant plan, but I was terrified too. We’d outmanoeuvred Darius, but in the end it was like a little man dodging a giant. The giant doesn’t care about all that dancing around, because eventually, when it comes to the clinch . . .

When we rode back to camp, there was still a streak of summer light in the sky, red-pink and angry, and Alexander ordered the duty taxeis to dig in. Amyntas’s men – and they didn’t love it. Nor did mine, on duty next. We worked half the night, and we kept men awake.

Because I had the night duty, I knew that the king was awake. There was light in his tent.

But I didn’t go to him.

I’ve heard a hundred legends about that night, but I was there. He didn’t summon a council. He didn’t consult the auguries. He didn’t feast, and he didn’t drink wine.

Nor did he summon Barsines or her sister.

What he did was to lie awake, silent, on his camp bed, staring at the ceiling of the tent and the flies.

At some point, according to Hephaestion, he fell asleep, and son of god or not, he snored. We all heard it.

There is something immensely reassuring about the sound of your warrior king snoring in the face of the enemy.

I was about to rotate the duty with Alectus of the hypaspitoi when Ochrid came and told me that the king wanted the duty officer.

I entered his tent. He was awake.

‘Ptolemy,’ he said. ‘I’m glad it is someone intelligent. I have written down my dispositions for the morning. Please see that the army is formed. I will no doubt sleep late.’

The arrogance – the bored assurance – of his voice would have angered me at any time – but just then, his arrogance was rope in the hands of a drowning army.

‘Formed’ could only mean one thing. I nodded and took the parchment, and he smiled at me and lay down on the bed and was almost instantly asleep.

I cast my eye over the dispositions. But they only confirmed the word ‘formed’. We were going to fight.

We were going to fight.

My hands shook as I left his tent.

And yet – I took his orders to Parmenio, left them with a slave, disarmed myself and lay down with Thaïs, and I was asleep in a few heartbeats.

Odd.