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I took them out for drills every day. That gave the day structure. I had learned some very fancy riding tricks in Athens – team tricks, the way the Athenian Hippeis did them for the religious festivals – and I taught them to the royal companions. And I put all my fighters on to the grooms and trained them hard, too.
But you can only do so much drill. And I lacked the experience to know that I should have kept them all busy all the time. I had enough trouble keeping myself entertained.
I rode, wrestled – in a town so barbaric that they didn’t have a gymnasium or a palaestra, which is fu
At any rate, I started to write. The first thing I wrote was about the Keltoi – what they wore, what they carried, and their marvellous stories. They had beautiful women with them – back-talking, witty, marvellous women with bright hair, slanted eyes and a boldness seldom seen in Macedon. They weren’t available – I tried – but they flirted as if they were.
Men who didn’t understand found themselves matching swords with the Keltoi men. I understood, because in this way the Keltoi were like Athenians. Subtler, but not weaker.
And I wrote about the mountains, which, despite the lack of culture, were breathtakingly beautiful and full of game.
One of my favourite memories came from that winter.
After a snow, the royal huntsman – who was himself of royal birth and carried the portentous name of the hero himself, Lord Achilles – took us on a bear hunt. I had never been out for bear. I’d seen the fur, seen the animal once or twice, but until then I’d never seen one stand on its back feet and rip dogs to pieces.
It was in a thicket at the edge of a clearing in a high oak forest, well up the mountainside, and that bear had a better eye for terrain than most Greek generals. His flanks were covered by ravines and he had an escape route out the back of the thicket and into the deep trees, and our dogs, loyal and well trained, made hopeless leaps at the monster and died, so that that roar of the baying pack became quieter and quieter. The dogs could reach the bear only two at a time.
Old Achilles leaned on his spear. ‘Well, boys?’ he said. I was there with Alexander and half of his court in exile, and for a moment it occurred to me that this was some deep Macedonian intrigue to kill the prince.
Alexander raised an eyebrow. And winked at me.
‘You and Hephaestion up the ravines,’ he said. ‘Horn-call when you are within a spear-cast of the bear. Philip and Nearchus and I will go right up the hill into him. All we need is a few seconds – thrown spears will do it if you hit him.’
That was our plan.
I spent half an hour climbing the ravine. You try climbing wet rocks in a scale thorax and smooth-soled boots. With a pair of spears and a sword.
I’d still be there if not for Polystratus, who followed me, or led me, barefoot – handing me up my spears, and pushing my arse when I couldn’t find a handhold.
An hour, and the sun was going down and most of the dogs were dead, or beaten. I got up the last big rock, and I could smell the bear, and I could see why the old monster was still there.
One of the first dogs had got through the bear’s guard and mangled a paw – a back paw. The bear was bleeding out, and couldn’t run.
He was a giant, and he was noble, like some barbaric war chief clad in fur, with a ring of his dead enemies around his feet.
I put my horn to my lips and blew.
The bear turned and looked at me. Out shot a paw – if I hadn’t been in armour I’d have died, and even as it was, scales flew as if the bear was a cook in Athens and I was a new-caught fish. I still have the scars – three claws went right through the scales and cut me.
I was taken completely by surprise. I thought that the old bear was at bay – exhausted and done for.
There’s a laugh. And a lesson.
Polystratus put his shoulder into my back and held me against the bear. That may sound like a poor decision, but it was a two-hundred-foot fall to the rocks below.
I got my sword into the bear – two-handed. Polystratus was shouting – I mostly remember the bear’s teeth snapping at my helmet and the hot, stinking breath. The bear reared back, and then stepped away.
I managed to keep my feet, although there was a lot of blood coming out of me. But the bear grew a spear – Hephaestion, somewhere beyond my tu
I didn’t have the strength to throw mine – not hard enough to penetrate its hide – so I knelt and angled my spear at the bear. The bear swiped at the spearhead – I dipped the head and stabbed – and Alexander was there, and Black Cleitus, and Philip, their spears went into the beast, and then Alexander went right in between the claws with his sword – fore cut, back cut to the throat and the beast was dead.
Achilles himself was in at the kill, spear in the beast.
He nodded at us.
‘That was well done,’ he said. He measured the bear and pronounced us to be mighty.
Alexander watched the bear die. ‘He was noble,’ the prince said. ‘We were many – he stood against us all, like one of the heroes of old.’
Then he turned to me. ‘But you went toe to toe with him alone,’ he said. Polystratus was stripping my thorax to get at my wounds.
I was on my back. ‘And he bested me. Polystratus did all the work.’
Alexander shook his head. ‘Isn’t this your ivory-hilted sword stuck in him to the hilt?’ he said.
My vision was tu
It was full spring when I regained consciousness, and it was warm in the sun. I had had dreams – dreams of Nike where she called on me to avenge her, and dreams of Thaïs that were rather different, and dreams of Alexander and monsters.
A great deal had happened since the bear hunt.
A bear’s claws are filthy, and my wounds – really no worse than what a man might take sparring in armour – became infected. The deadly archer shot me fullof arrows, and I was sick for a month, raving, out of my head.
I was still weak, but awake and alive in the sun, when we crossed the muddy passes – the highest were still full of snow – to Agriania in Illyria, a place so barbaric that Epirus seemed civilised. But the king here – Longarus – was a guest friend of Alexander’s, and despite the defeat we’d inflicted on him, or perhaps because of it, he hosted us.
I get ahead of myself, though.
On the road there – a road I remember as colder than anything I’d ever experienced, I guess because of my illness and wounds – Alexander filled me in on a winter of news.
Cleopatra was pregnant. Very pregnant. Had obviously been pregnant when married. And Philip had won the agreement of the League of Corinth – the new league of Greek allies – to the sacred war with Persia. He’d made them swear to support Philip and his heirs.
In Asia, the King of Kings was dead – murdered by his vizier, Bagoaz. Arses, the new King of Kings, was Bagoaz’s puppet, and Persia looked like a ripe fruit ready to fall into Philip’s mouth.
Philip had spent the winter training the army, and moving the heavy baggage and much of the artillery train to the Chersonese.
The troops were on the verge of mutiny because they were unpaid. This was hardly news, but took on a different meaning when we were exiles.
My money was almost gone. I’d fed my people for the winter and put armour on all the grooms, and that was the limit of my purse. And there was nothing from Heron. Easy to see evil in that, but the passes were mostly closed with weather and Attalus was absolute master in Macedon when Philip was in Corinth.