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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 unitwas 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 pursueruthlessly. 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 gri
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.