God of War -The Story of Alexander the Great

The crowd was terrified.

Phokion was angry. It showed in his posture – the old warrior was stiff, hips set, ready to fight.

I did my duty, kept them in place and watched as Antipater cleared the theatre a bench at a time. Olympias and her ladies were already gone. They had never entered the theatre, and neither had Cleopatra.

Every foreign contingent was sent to their lodgings with a pair of guards – mostly royal companions – with orders to make sure that not so much as a slave got away until Antipater ordered them released.

I wrapped myself in my role and saw to it that the companions did their work. Slaves came and took the king’s corpse. No one pretended he was still alive.

That meant that Alexander was king.

We cleared the last of the seats, and for a moment, it was just me and Cleitus, way up at the top, watching the Theban embassy moved forcefully down the ramps.

‘Alexander is king!’ Cleitus said.

I nodded.

‘Pausanias killed the king,’ he said.

I nodded.

Cleitus caught my eye. ‘We know better, don’t we?’ he said bitterly.

I remember that moment well. Because I shrugged. ‘Philip was going to ruin us,’ I said. It was in every man’s heart – Philip had turned to hubris and self-indulgence. And in Macedon, when the king slips, you find a new king.

Cleitus thought for a long time. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Poor Alexander,’ he added.

And that’s all we ever said on the subject, except one night in Asia. And that was years and parasanges later, and I’ll tell that tale when I come to it.

TEN

You might have thought that having lost his father – whether he actively schemed at Philip’s murder or just sat back and let it happen – Alexander might have either suffered remorse, or at least enjoyed the fruits of success.

In fact, the next months are a blur to me, and I can’t pretend I remember them well. This is the problem with my secret history, lad – we neverspoke of these things at the time, and I can’t really remember the exact order in which things happened.

On the afternoon of Philip’s murder, Antipater ordered the palace locked down, and all the former pages were in armour, as I said – we cleared the theatre, and then we came to a sort of shocked halt.

Antipater was there. And he started issuing orders. For us, the most important order was that we were now the firstsquadron of the royal companions. He ordered me to set the watch bill, and he took Philip the Red and more than half of us to clear the palace, and all of the dead king’s royal companions were put under what amounted to house arrest in their barracks and stables.

They went without a murmur, which saved everyone a bloodbath.

Perdiccas rode back covered with blood and told me – and then Alexander – that he had killed Pausanias with his spear – that the man had had a pair of horses waiting, so he had accomplices.

In the morning, I had been certain that Alexander had contrived the murder himself, or Olympias had done it, but by afternoon, my cynical observations were shaken, mostly because both Olympias and Alexander were behaving so . . . naturally. They were acting as if they were afraid that the plotters were after them. And the precautions they took were real.

I put a whole troop of the former pages – from now on I’ll just call them the Hetaeroi – on guard at the palace. I led them myself. Black Cleitus stood at Alexander’s side, and Hephaestion stood behind him, both in full armour.

Aeropus’s son, Alexander of Lyncestis, came in just after the sun touched the roof of the Royal Tomb. That part I remember. I was in armour, and he rode right into the palace courtyard, leaving a strong force of men at arms at the gate. I met him. He was the de facto ruler of the highland party, and he had some claim to the throne – distant, but in Macedon perfectly acceptable.

I had a pair of archers watching him with arrows on their bowstrings.

‘My lord,’ I said formally.

He slid from his horse. ‘Ptolemy,’ he said, with a nod. We weren’t friends, but we had enough in common that, in a crisis, we had some basis for trust. ‘I wish to surrender to the king. Will he spare me?’

I remember thinking, What the fuck’s going on?I shook my head. ‘I can’t say,’ I said. ‘I give you my word I won’t have you killed out of hand, but . . . if you conspired at Philip’s murder, I can’t save you.’ I couldn’t understand why he had come in or surrendered himself, and my suspicious nature made me wonder if there wasn’t a surprise attack coming at me. I stepped back.

‘Eyes on the walls!’ I said. ‘Watch those men in the alley – watch everything.’ There’s good leadership. Laugh if you like, boy.

Alexander the Highlander was as pale as a woman’s new-washed chiton. ‘I think my brothers had something to do with it,’ he said.

And then Antipater appeared. He was everywhere that day.

‘Ah, Ptolemy,’ he said, as if we’d made an appointment to talk. ‘Is that my useless son-in-law you have there?’

In fact, Alexander the Highlander was married to Antipater’s daughter.

It occurred to me that Antipater had just spent two full weeks at Alexander the Highlander’s estates.

Alexander met his namesake in the throne room. They talked for a quarter of an hour or so, and then Alexander appeared in the courtyard – my Alexander. He looked around for a long time, his eyes locking on one former page or another, and finally his eyes came to rest on me. He looked at me for far too long. He had a scroll tube in his hand and an old cloak over his white robes from the morning.

He beckoned. As I came up to him, Antipater came out on to the exedra.

‘Alexander!’ he called. His tone was peremptory.

Alexander ignored him. ‘Take twenty men. Your own retainers, or someone else’s. Go and take the sons of Aeropus, and see to it they are brought here. Do not use the Hetaeroi – do you understand?’

I understood immediately that I was being asked to do something outside the law – and something for which I was trusted.

‘Consider it done,’ I said, with a proper salute.

Alexander flashed me that awesome smile. ‘Herakles ride with you,’ he said. And then he said, ‘If I’m still king when the sun rises tomorrow, I reckon I’ll be king for a bit.’

He was scared. I’d never seen it before.

Antipater was shouting from the exedra. Alexander ignored him.

‘Ptolemy!’ Antipater shouted.

I looked up.

But before he could speak, Alexander pointed at his best and most loyal councillor. ‘Antipater,’ he said. Heads turned. ‘Which one of us is king?’

Antipater hesitated.

And the Fates wove on.

I took Polystratus and his friends – my own retainers, trusted men, every one – small men who owed everything to me, and had been in exile with me. We rode out into the countryside. The Aeropus clan’s local estates were up the valley, two hours’ ride. We were there as the sun was setting. I had briefed my troopers carefully.

We were challenged at the outer gate. But they let us in. The outer yard was full of armed men – at least as many as I had with me.

My men rode in under the arch, and Polystratus killed the gatekeeper with a single javelin throw, and we went at them. They had weapons, and they were highlanders – trained men. Violent men.

Mostly what I remember is the sudde

My men had good armour and horses. That was the margin. That, and surprise. I don’t know why they let us into the courtyard, but they did. And when we went at them, at least a hand’s worth were down before the rest turned into killers. I got one of them with his hand on the release to the dog cages. Then I held the ground when three of them rushed me.