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I got an arm up, reversed Attalus’s hold and slammed his head into the ground. If I didn’t dislocate his shoulder – well, I must have hurt it a great deal.
There comes a moment in your life when you must make an enemy. Up until that moment, I was a good boy who served my prince and did what I was told. I never played the factions. I did what my pater had done – stayed clear.
Until fucking Attalus put his arm around my throat and poured wine into me. That was it. I knew what he stood for. Knew who he was for and who he was against, and as soon as I had the leverage, I threw him over my hip and put him head down in the dirt.
‘If I want a Ganymede, I’ll choose my own. A pretty one,’ I said to Diomedes.
He tried to slam the wine bowl into my head.
Alexander got him in a head lock. The prince was completely sober and completely in control of himself. In fact, in his horrid way, he was enjoying the bad behaviour of the others. He locked Diomedes up and began to force his head down against his chest.
‘Let him go,’ Hephaestion said. ‘He’s just a little arse-cunt. Lord – let him go. Don’t do this . . .’ Hephaestion recognised, as I did not, that Alexander meant to break his neck.
All at once, Alexander released his hold and the handsome man collapsed.
Philip had walked on. The entire drama had played out in twenty heartbeats, I had made a bitter enemy and Alexander had acted to support me. Heady stuff.
Philip was already standing near the centre, where our pikemen had shattered the allies.
He was pointing dramatically to the west.
‘We’d already turned,’ he said, ‘and started to drive Athens back, when—’
‘Like fuck you had!’ said a young man with the prisoners. Your uncle Diodorus – one of the richest men there, and hence, on the guest list.
Philip whirled on him. ‘We folded the Athenian hoplites—’
Diodorus laughed. ‘Save it for an audience who weren’t actually there, King of Macedon.’
Alexander, who until then had been so completely in control of himself, laughed.
Every head turned.
A brittle silence fell, and while it stretched on and on, every one of us waited for it to be broken.
Into that moment came a mounted man, wearing a green cloak and bearing a heavy bronze staff. He came out of the dark, and Hephaestion spoke to him – at the edge of my peripheral vision.
He was a good-looking man, and he dismounted in respect, but stood as straight as an ash tree.
‘I am the Herald of Athens,’ he a
‘Fuck off,’ Philip said.
The herald started violently.
I thought that the king had misspoken, but he went on. ‘Fuck off – Athens is done. I’m the victor here, and if I want to send all these worthy men to my silver mines – it’s my whim. Athens is done.’
Demades – another one of the prisoners, and another famous orator – stepped up behind Diodorus, who stood with his arms crossed. ‘Philip, stop being a drunken tyrant!’
Odd that no Macedonian uttered those words. Or not so odd, given what happened. Athens had some great men.
‘Shut up,’ Philip said.
‘Fortune has cast you as Agamemnon, and you seem determined to be a drunken satyr,’ Demades said. ‘Be worthy of your victory, or be forgotten.’
Philip stood up straighter – as if he’d been slapped.
I waited for him to take his spear and gut the orator. I must say, even Demades flinched.
But Philip furrowed his brow and then, with a grand gesture, tossed his wine bowl.
‘You, sir, have the right of it,’ he said to the stu
‘Forgive my impiety, friend. Yes, of course great Athens may bury their dead. A three-day truce from now. And I have prisoners – Demades here will know their names. And more of your wounded with my surgeons. I seek no more war with Athens.’
Well.
I like to think that one of the signs of greatness is the ability to know when you’ve been an arse and apologise. But I’ve never seen it done so publicly, by such a great man. That was the measure of Philip, right there.
He tapped Diodorus on the shoulder as he passed him, walked over to Alexander and embraced him.
‘I might have lost without you today,’ he said. ‘Whatever spirit closed my mind to it – I see it now. Thanks, my son, for a field well fought.’
They were the right words, and I swear by all the gods he meant them.
About two hours too late.
Perhaps if I hadn’t had a nap. Perhaps if I’d stayed by Alexander, or Philip.
Or perhaps it was the will of the gods that two men, both so far above the common man, should demand each other’s esteem in a way that could only lead them to war.
The next day dawned bright and clean, despite the stacks of naked corpses. Philip forbade any further pursuit – suddenly he changed roles, and we were to act the saviours of Greece and not the tyrants.
He was always a merciful man—once he’d won his victory, the sort of man who instantly forgives any man he has beaten, in contest or in battle. And he was as changeable as his son, and usually unable to keep to the harsh lines he often set himself. In truth, a few more dead Thebans might have done everyone a world of good, including Thebes, which might yet stand.
I awoke as randy as a satyr, despite stiffness elsewhere and serious pain in my shoulder, and Nike satisfied me with a sort of impatient ‘I need to get on with my day’ response that moved me to work her pleasure until I made her squeak.
I was, you see, alive.
Alive is better than dead by a long, long way.
I went and saw to my troops and my horses, walked the lines, visited my wounded.
Kineas the Athenian was awake.
I took his hand. He knew me from the fight, and I remember laughing at his confusion, and we shook hands.
‘I imagine you’ll be with us for a while,’ I said. ‘Are you worth a ransom?’
He nodded. ‘A good ransom,’ he said.
I never saw a pe
But Kineas stayed with me while he healed. He and the mouthy Diodorus were fast friends, I discovered, and I included them in my mess, so that every night we ate together – Nike and Kineas and Cleitus and Diodorus and Nearchus and Philip the Red and Kineas’s hyperetes, Niceas, who was the boldest lower-class man I ever met. He and Polystratus got along like brothers, and Niceas’s open mockery of aristocrats everywhere got into Polystratus’s speech as well.
It was a good month. We ate and drank and threw javelins when we were healed – went for rides, sometimes all together, while the envoys went back and forth.
Philip sent Demades with his demands, and Athens sent him back with Phokion to stiffen his spine – Athens’ best general, their noblest soldier and my new friend Kineas’s mentor. The man was eighty. He was a stick figure of sinew and muscle who exercised constantly. Diodorus called him the ‘Living Skull’, but Kineas obviously worshipped him. He was guest friend to Philip, and one of the few men in the world who could lay claim to having beaten him in battle.
I didn’t see him the way Kineas did, but found him dour, rude and incredibly stubborn. Alexander, on the other hand, all but fell in love with him – sat at his feet, listened to his harsh remedies for men’s ills, agreed with his utter condemnation of all bodily pleasure . . .
Aphrodite! He was a dry stick. I left them to it and went riding. We had no duties except to move our camp when the men and horses had fouled the ground too much for it to be pleasant to live on – fifty thousand men do a lot of pissing in the dark. So do horses.
Kineas took us across the plains to Plataea. We already knew that Philip was going to restore Plataea’s independence – one of his little ploys to pose as the preserver of Greek freedom. Plataea welcomed us again, and ten of us spent days there – we stayed in a fine farm with a stone tower at the top of a low hill overlooked by Mount Kithaeron. Kineas’s family owned the farm, and he said that it was the ancestral home. That was a happy time – we ate too much, slept late in the mornings, went to the assembly of the Plataeans and were treated as great men. Nike’s belly started to swell.