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I didn’t try and move. Our infantry had seen the Thracians off, and they were a lot better for it. I got a cheer as I rode in with the Thracian, covered in gold – he had a lot of gold on. I ordered all the prisoners stripped of their jewellery and all of it – and everything off the men killed by the infantry – put in a pile in the middle of camp. I had my herald a
And the sun rose. The low clouds burned off, and it was early summer at the edge of the hills instead of late autumn, and the men were warm. No one grumbled when I sent forage parties into the hills for more fuel.
Gordias slapped my back. ‘Well done,’ he said.
‘You mean I fucked almost everything away, but it came out well enough?’ I asked. I wasfeeling pretty cocky. But I knew I’d done almost everything wrong.
Gordias nodded. ‘That’s justwhat I mean, son.’ He shaded his eyes, watching the distant Thracians. ‘We have a word for it. We call it war.’
That night, I decided to press my luck. Gordian and Perdias, my other mercenary officer, were completely against it.
Even Polystratus was hesitant.
I decided to attack the Thracians in the dark. There was some moon. And we’d had forage parties out all day – there’d been steady low-level fighting, our woodcutters against theirs, all day. We’d had the best of it – mostly because our farm boys had chased their farm boys off in the early morning, and that sort of thing makes all the difference. And while they had a few tattooed killers, it seemed to me an awful lot of my opponents were as raw as my own troops.
No, I’m lying. That’s what Perdias said, and later in the day Gordias agreed. I didn’t have a clue – but once they’d said it, I took it as true.
At last light I put a minimum of men on watch and sent the rest to bed. Myndas had my tent back up and all my kit dry – there’s a hard campaign all in itself – and he’d built a big fire, built a drying frame – quite a job of work for a Greek mathematician. But he was still trying to overcome my anger, and he had a long way to go.
We stood at the fire – the two infantry officers and the commander of the Thessalians, a wild bastard named Drako, who wore his hair long like a Thracian, with twisted gold wire in it, and the Thracian auxiliary commander, Alcus. He and Drako were like opposites – Drako was slim, long and pretended to a false effeminacy, as some very tough men do; Alcus was short, squat, covered in thick ropes of muscle and heavy blue tattoos.
‘We’re going at them, across the ridge-top trail at moonrise,’ I said.
Gordias shook his head. ‘Son, you did well enough today—’
‘I’m not your son. We have them on the ropes—’
Alcus spat. ‘Thracians attack at night, not Greeks.’
I wasn’t sure which side he was supporting, but I chose to interpret it my way. ‘Exactly. They won’t even have sentries.’
Gordias sighed. ‘Listen – my lord. We’ve done well. But we don’t know where the prince is. This is hisexpedition. If we fail, we’ll be crushed. And – listen to me, my lord– if we succeed, Alexander may not be too thrilled. You know what I’m speaking of.’
I considered that for a few heartbeats. ‘Point made. We attack at moonrise.’
I heard an enormous amount of bitching when we woke the troops – the camp was too small for me to be isolated from their discontent. The only trooper more unwilling than a beaten man is a victorious man – he’s proved his mettle and got some loot, and he’d like to go home and get laid.
They went on and on – they were still bitching about my sexual habits, my incompetence and my errors of judgement when I roared for silence and marched the lead of the column off into the trees.
My plan was fairly simple. I sent the Thracians and the Thessalians down the valley – they were to start an hour after us, and make noise and trouble only after we struck. All the infantry were with me. The pages were staying in camp as a rallying point, and because they were so tired that most of them didn’t even wake up for the rallying call. Thirteen-year-olds – when they collapse, they’re like puppies, and it takes a day or two to get their strength back.
We crossed the ridge more slowly than I could believe – we seemed to be held up by every downed tree, and we lost the trail over and over, despite the moonlight. Finally I pushed up to the front of the column and led it myself – and immediately lost the trail. People say ‘as slow as honey in winter’, but really they should say ‘as slow as an army moving at night’.
After a couple of hours, the moon began to go down, the light changed and I discovered that I had perhaps two hundred men with me and the rest were gone – far behind, on another trail, or hopelessly lost.
But we were there.I could see the Thracian fires.
And I didn’t really understand how few of my men were with me because, of course, it was night.Really, until you’ve tried to fight at night, it seems quite reasonable.
I had Polystratus right at my heels – Gordias at my right shoulder.
I remembered my Iliad, so I whispered that every man was to pin back the right shoulder of his chiton. I waited for what seemed like half the night for this order to be passed and obeyed, and then we were moving forward again, bare arms gleaming faintly in the last moonlight.
We found that the Thracians weren’t fools – they had camped in a web of dykes, where in better times hundreds of cattle and sheep could be pe
Really, I had a dozen opportunities to realise that I was being an idiot and call the whole thing off.
I led them along the face of the first dyke wall – over the berm, and down into the evil surprise of smelly waste water on the far side. Disgusting. And up, now smelling like a latrine – over the next dyke, and again I saw their fires. I was off by a stade, already turned around in the berms.
But now the system of dykes worked in my favour – we were inside the outer walls, and we moved west along the north side of a long earth wall, and there was no way a sentry could see us, unless he was right atop us.
I was right at the front, moving as fast as I could.
So, of course, I began to outpace all my troops, until Polystratus and Gordias and I were alone.
We stopped at the end of a long wall – almost a stade long. We didn’t need scouts to know that we were there – we could hear drunken Thracians calling one to another.
I poked my head over the berm.
There was the sentry, an arm’s length away. He roared, I stabbed at him, missed, his counter-thrust tangled in my cloak and I got my left arm around his spear, shoved it into his armpit, lifted it and slammed my fist into his face six or seven times, and he was down. Gordias killed him.
But every Thracian awake in that corner saw me, and there was a growl from the camp.
Gordias roared for the men to cross the dyke and charge.
I watched my beautiful plan fall to rubble. But since there wasn’t any alternative, I drew my sword and ran headlong into the Thracians at the foot of the dyke.
It was dark. I think I wounded or killed two or even three men before they began to realise what was happening.
There were Macedonians coming over the dykes. Just not all that many.
I still don’t know how many were still with me at that point. A hundred? Two hundred?
They made quite a bit of noise, though.
Gordias crashed into the knot of men where I was fighting, and Polystratus – who had had the sense to bring a shield – stood at my shoulder, and most of the men we were facing were awake enough, but they had eating knives and dirks – all their gear was somewhere else. (Try to find your gear in the dark when you are drunk.)
And of course they were drunk. They were Thracians.