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I rode into camp. Half the men were standing to in wet clumps with their sarissas in their hands. The rest were huddled around fires – enormous fires. The tents had mostly blown down.
War is so glorious.
My tent was one of those down. Polystratus took Poseidon, made sounds indicating that I was a fool and he was a mother hen, and he took me to histent, which had a front and back wall of woven branches and a stool. He got my cuirass off, towelled me dry and told me that there were Thracians down the valley.
Nichomachus handed me a cup of wine. I drank it.
‘I know!’ I said, trying not to sound whiney. Gordias pushed into the tent.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Get lost?’
I drank more wine. ‘I got caught on the hillside with the Thracians,’ I said. ‘Did Cleomenes get to you?’
Gordias shook his head. ‘Which one is he? One of the pages? No – I had no word. And not all the troopers here are mine – I had some trouble giving orders.’
That’s the moment I remember best of the whole evening. I’d sort of collapsed on arriving in camp – acted like a cold, wet kid rescued by his servant. Polystratus was towelling my hair when I discovered that my message hadn’t got to camp.
‘Gordias, there’s Thracians within a stade of camp. An ambush on the road north, more coming across the ridge. Where are the pages?’
Gordias shook his head. ‘There’s twenty of the youngest here in camp. I thought the rest were with you?’
‘Ares’ prick,’ I swore. It was my father’s favourite oath. ‘Put my cuirass back on. Polystratus, get us both horses.’
Polystratus didn’t squawk. I put my sodden wool chiton back on – noticing that the dye had run and stained my hips. Gordias got my cuirass closed on me again – say what you will, the bronze is a good windbreak. Mounted on Medea, with Polystratus by me, I went back out into the remnants of the storm. Dawn wasn’t far away, and there was a bit of light, and if you’ve done this sort of thing, you know that the difference between a bit of light and no light is all the difference in the world. I got us up the ridge, found my game trail and there were a dozen of my pages, shivering like young beeches in a high wind – but all clutching a spear close to them, behind trees.
‘Good lads,’ I said – an old man of seventeen to young men of fourteen. ‘Back to camp now.’
‘They are right there,’ Philip Long-nose said. ‘Right across the ravine!’ He pointed, and an arrow flew.
‘Been there all night,’ said another boy.
Polystratus whistled.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Get back now – hot wine in camp.’
The pages started to slip backwards. This was the sort of thing we practised in hunting – observe the quarry and then slip away.
But one of the youngsters made a mistake, or maybe the Thracians were coming anyway. And suddenly they were scrambling across the ravine – fifty or a hundred, how could we know?
I had no idea how many pages I had under my hand.
‘Run!’ I ordered. ‘Camp!’
They ran.
Like a fool, I waited, shepherding them down the trail, and Medea got a spear in the side as a result. She tossed me and ran a few steps and died.
I’d been thrown twice in a night and I wasn’t too happy. But I rolled to my feet in time to have Polystratus grab my arms, and we were off down the trail with a tumble of arrows and javelins behind us.
They chased us right up to camp. We had no walls or ditches, and there was a dark tide of Thracians flowing across the barley fields. Their lead elements were a spear-cast behind Polystratus’s horse’s rump.
And as soon as the Thracians in the valley saw the Thracians on the ridge moving, they came, too.
First light – a general rush.
The pages routed, ru
It should have been a bloody shambles, but for men like Gordias. The infantry let the pages through and then started to form the hollow square. It was patchy, but the Thracians were in dribs and drabs, not a solid rush – I know that now. At the time it looked like a wall of them, but in fact, there were never more than fifteen men coming at us at a time.
Polystratus got through the phalanx and dropped me in the army’s central square. Myndas, of all people – my least favourite slave – appeared with my third-string charger and a cup of wine and a towel. I dried my face, drank the wine and used his back to get mounted – I had hurt my hips falling.
The pages had no trumpeter and no hyperetes – both were with Alexander. Since the infantry seemed well in hand, I rode around gathering pages – three or four at a time – and leading them into the centre of the square. They were exhausted and most were terrified. But they were royal pages, and that meant they knew their duty. I got about a hundred of them together, formed them in a deep rhomboid and led them to the unthreatened corner of the square. Halted while the file leaders opened the corner for us.
‘We’re about to ride down the barbarians who kept us up all night!’ I called. ‘Stay together and stay on me, or I’ll beat you bloody!’
My first battlefield speech.
Met by silence.
We walked our horses out of the square and wheeled north. Gordias was on to me in a heartbeat – he began to wheel the ‘back’ faces of the square – the faces with no opponents – out on to the plain, unfolding the square like a ‘W’.
The Thracians hadn’t come for a field fight, and as soon as they saw us approaching them it was over, and they started to fade into the trees – first a few, and then the whole of their front.
Over on the west side of the valley was a squadron of horse – or, rather, some tribal lords on ponies. I aimed at them. They’d have a hard time riding into the trees, and I was going to get a fight. I was mad.
The Thracians didn’t want that kind of fight, and they turned their horses and rode for it, a few of them shooting over their horses’ rumps with bows, and one of my boys took an arrow and died right there – young Eumedes, a pretty good kid.
We were half a stade away. Too damned far. They turned like a flock of birds and ran.
I put my heels into my charger’s side. I had a fresh horse, a bigger, faster horse, and I was mad. I hadn’t even named my new chargers – that’s how much of my time oats and cartwheels took.
The Thracians were mostly gone into the trees. Nearer to hand, the chief and his retinue were begi
I got up on my charger’s neck and let him run. I ignored the followers and stayed on the chief. He turned, made a rude gesture at me and turned his horse into the sopping woods.
I didn’t give a shit, and followed him, closing the distance between us at every stride. I’d picked a good remount – this horse could moveand had some brains, as well, and we were hurtling though the trees, never more than a heartbeat from being thrown or scraped off on a tree – just try galloping through open woods.
But my mount was eating the distance. The chief looked back at me – he was a bigger man, much older. He looked back, measured the distance, looked back again, and we both knew it was too late for him to turn his horse and fight. So he drew his sword and prepared to fight as I came up on him – jigging like a hare, trying to get me off his bridle-hand side.
I wasn’t having it. And my mount was smart – as I said. He turned on his front feet, right across the pony’s rump, and in a flash we were up with them and I got an arm round his neck and ripped him off the horse – just as the instructor taught. I never even let go of my spear.
He went down hard, rolled. Before he was on his feet, my spear was at his throat. His leg was broken, anyway.
He wasn’t the warlord. But he was the warlord’s sister’s son. And I got him back to camp, having collected my pages from their pursuit. We had a dozen prisoners, and Eumedes was our only loss.