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Every time I got another wounded man on to the litter made by my horse and Philip’s, I swore it would be the last.
But I kept going back. The younger companions were proving something, or saying something, or too young to know when to quit. I didn’t know which. But most of us were out there.
Philip’s victory di
I was done. Your pater was the last man I moved off the field. A young healer found me, ordered me to sit, and I went down like a sack of grain. He wrapped the wounds on my arms and my thigh, looked at my scalp and pronounced me fit enough.
‘Don’t drink wine tonight, lord,’ he said. He pointed at my scalp. ‘A blow to the head does not go with wine.’
So I stumbled back to my tent. To where Nike had stood waiting, as I heard it, for seven hours.
She embraced me, blood and guilt and all. I never loved her better – except when she washed me clean of the blood, wrapped me in a blanket and laid me on some straw she’d foraged like the miracle worker she was. I was out in a second. Show me a man interested in a tumble in the hay after a fight, and I’ll show you a madman. Men talk about it. Show me one who got laid after Chaeronea.
I slept.
For about an hour.
Nike woke me. ‘The king has asked for you. At his di
I wasn’t stiff yet, and I was young enough that I was able to function, but I felt as if I’d been wrapped in felt and kicked a hundred times by giants. Everything seemed to come to me from afar – words, thoughts, gestures.
Nike was worried. Polystratus had a look – I didn’t like his look.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked him.
Just beyond the lamplight of my tent, someone was standing. The messenger from the banquet, I assumed.
‘Clean chiton,’ Nike said, laying a soft wool cloth over my arm. ‘Best gold pins. Myndas, get the sandals on him.’
Polystratus pitched his voice very low. ‘The king and prince are not doing well together,’ he said.
Nike fussed over my shoulder and the cuts on my arms. ‘It’s not fair. They can live without you.’
It was Cleitus. As soon as he moved at the edge of the lamplight, I knew it was Black Cleitus.
‘Alexander listens to you. He needs to go to bed and stop bragging.’ Cleitus shrugged. ‘It’s bad.’
I sighed. ‘He did win the battle.’
Cleitus looked as if I’d slapped him. His loyalties were deeply divided – he loved the king, and he owed everything to Alexander.
‘He’s not insane, Cleitus. Just vain and tired. He won the battle, and Philip can’t face it. I shouldn’t have passed out. Who let him go to di
Cleitus appeared ready to cry – an odd face on a man who always looked like the worst thug in a darkened street. ‘Philip ordered him. Hephaestion tried to stop him.’
I nodded, and Nike put my best cloak over my head, the pin already closed – tugged it, and planted a kiss on my lips. ‘He’s a grown man,’ she said.
‘He’s not,’ I answered, smiling, as I always ended up doing, even when we had a spat.
And then I headed off down the hill to find Hephaestion. Cleitus followed, begging me to come straight to the king.
‘Relax,’ I said. This is where being born a great noble with my own estates had its advantages. I could be late for the king – I could, if I had to, live comfortably despite his displeasure.So sod him.
I found Hephaestion standing in the door of the command tent under the old oak.
‘Come,’ I said.
‘I wasn’t summoned,’ he said. Shrugged.
‘I order you,’ I said. ‘On my head be it. Alexander needs us.’
Hephaestion nodded, pulled on his best cloak. ‘Thanks.’
What we found at Philip’s great tent was an orgy – an orgy of middle-aged self-congratulation and bragging, the sort of thing that writers of comedies think is only done by boys.
I’m past the age now that Philip was that night. I understand now how much worse the experience of battle is when you are older, when other men are faster, when the joy of the thing is utterly gone, when there’s nothing to war but a vague feeling of shame because your kingdomis killing all these nice young men. Oh, yes. That, and the endless pain of the body – even the hardest body. The failure of reflexes, the slowing, the dimming of vision . . .
. . . and so, when you win that victory, when you put your man down, when you bed a beautiful girl, it is a greater victory, and you brag as you did when you first did these things – from relief that you still can.
Trust me on this, boy. The only thing worse than experiencing the ageing of the body would be to notexperience it – to have your body rotting somewhere in the mud.
They were loud, and they were behaving badly. When I arrived in the royal precinct, Philip had just stumbled out of the tent. He had Demosthenes dressed in a purple robe, being prodded along with a spear – a dozen other Athenian leaders were there, too, and Philip was leading them on a tour of the battlefield. He was drunk – drunk even by Macedonian standards. He had most of his cronies by him, too – Attalus was there, and Diomedes, and Philotas, Parmenio’s son, and Alcimachus, one of his somatophylakes. And over against the tent wall was Alexander. The prince was alone. I’d never seen anything like it – there were no courtiers with him. His face was the face of a statue – pale in the moonlight, and set like good mortar.
‘I’ll show you poncey Greeks how a battle is fought,’ Philip declaimed. He took a spear from the guards to help him walk, and with it, as they went out on to the field, he prodded Demosthenes.
‘Demosthenes, Demosthenes’ son, Paeonian, proposes!’ he roared, and all his cronies laughed. In fact, it was fu
Philip prodded him with the spear. ‘Philip son of Amyntas, Macedonian, imposes!’ he shouted, and the Macedonian officers roared their approval. I saw Alexander, then – caught his eye.
Just for a moment, I could see what he was thinking before the mask snapped back. He was looking at the king, and his mouth and eyes roared their contempt.
I had never seen him like this.
I got Hephaestion to his side with the same ruthlessness I’d massacred routing Athenians – I stepped on feet, used my elbows – I was richer and better born than they, and they were drunk. I elbowed a swathe through the staff and got to Alexander before he exploded, and Hephaestion actually grabbed his arms.
We started on a battlefield tour.
Battlefields are incredibly grim at night – but you know that. Dead things and things that eat dead things. And a bunch of drunken Macedonians and their prisoners.
I walked with Alexander, Hephaestion, Cleitus and Polystratus for a stade, and then, when I thought it safe, started to slip away. But Philip was wily-old, wily, and somewhere down inside, desperately angry.
‘Going to bed so soon, son of Lagus?’ He came back through his staff, locked an arm around my neck and his breath stank. ‘Drink!’
‘The surgeons told me . . .’ I began, and then Attalus pi
I was sober.
Attalus had arm-locked my left arm. He did it casually, and to cause me pain.