God of War -The Story of Alexander the Great

Highlanders are brave, but they are no match for a man who has trained every waking moment from age seven. I don’t even remember taking a cut. Polystratus came and helped, and then Philoi, another former slave, and then they were all dead, and we were storming the kitchen – the kitchen doors gave directly on to the courtyard, and there was no reason to wait. The cook died in his doorway, and my people went through that house like a tide of death, killing the slaves, clearing each room. We found the two brothers – Alexander the Highlander’s brothers – in the cellar.

I tied their hands behind their backs, put them on horses and then went through the house, looking for documents. I found four scroll tubes and a single scroll chest – highlanders don’t read much – and loaded them on a horse.

Then I torched the house and we rode for the palace.

No question it was an evil act. We killed a dozen slaves and twenty freemen and took two princes prisoner. I won’t even argue that I was only following orders. I will merely say – and I pray to Zeus you have time to discover this your own way – that if you will be a king, you will kill men. Are they ‘i

You decide, boy. But make sure you make your own decision, because, by Zeus, it will come back on your head and in your dreams.

Midnight, and we rode into the palace precinct. Black Cleitus had the Hetaeroi. I saluted and he waved me on. My prisoners were taken to the cellars.

A great deal had happened in my absence. Apparently Antipater counselled caution and Hephaestion cautioned rashness – not for the last time, that particular pairing – and Alexander went to meet the army in person – all the foot companions and the two full taxeis of Macedonian phalangites who had accompanied the king from Pella. He met them at sunset, while I was storming the traitor’s estate, and he promised that Philip would be avenged – and that they would conquer Asia. And they cheered him, and declared him king by acclamation.

Wish I’d seen it. There used to be a painting of it in the royal palace in Pella, but I hear Cassander had it painted over. Coward.

I was exhausted, but Alexander embraced me, fed me wine, heard my somewhat laconic report. I didn’t feel it was an achievement about which I should brag.

‘You killed them all and burned the building?’ Alexander asked.

Antipater put his face in his hands. Took a deep breath through his hands. ‘We are lost,’ he said.

Alexander shook his head. ‘Well done, my friend. That’s the hydra beheaded.’

But I was wily Odysseus, and I wasn’t half done. I stood where I could see Alexander and his mother, who was behind his couch, and Antipater, who looked shaken.

‘I have all their correspondence,’ I said.

It was far worse than I thought. Olympias flushed and her eyes locked with mine – Alexander froze, and Antipater’s eyes flicked between Alexander and me.

‘Give it to me,’ Olympias said. ‘Have you read it?’

I looked her right in the eye – no mean feat, friend – and said, ‘No.’ But I smiled when I said it, to rob the denial of all meaning. I was playing very hard.

Alexander flicked a look at me – and then at his mother. ‘Mother?’ he asked quietly.

‘I know they are as guilty as if they held the knife themselves,’ I said. I carefully avoided mentioning that I now suspected that they weren’t alone in being guilty.

You may ask why I was working the situation so hard – eh? No? You understand, don’t you, boy? Palace revolution isn’t that alien to you, is it? All the rules were changing that night. I was determined to be a main player, and not a small one. Great things grow from small – that is how the interplay of power works. I had missed some important events – I already feared that I had been supplanted as Hetaeroi commander, and I was correct. Six hours’ absence – doing the king’s secret mission – and I was no longer commanding the Hetaeroi. You get it?

Good. I’ll move on.

Olympias came up to me. She was so small that, standing, her head came just above my shoulders. ‘Give me the scrolls,’ she said.

I sent Polystratus to the stables for them.

‘What do youthink I should do with them, son of Lagus?’ she asked.

I smiled at her, an actor on a stage. ‘Why, Lady Queen, you should do whatever is best for Macedon,’ I said.

She actually smiled. ‘I like you, Ptolemy,’ she said.

Oh, I feared her. It was all I could do to look into her beautiful eyes and smile back, instead of shitting myself in fear. Because she was considering having me killed, right then and there.

It was almost too late when I realised that I was playing the wrong game. I was still playing the game of pages, whereby I could learn secrets to be the more trusted by the i

The game had changed. Alexander was king, and now he was playing for the preservation of power, and he observed no rules.

But I had not failed utterly, and Alexander embraced me again. ‘Ptolemy is one of my few friends, Mother,’ he said. ‘You want to hate him because he is as intelligent as we are. Do not. That is my express wish.’

I felt the arrow slicing down my cheek as it passed – death was that close.

Olympias met her son’s eyes, and then looked up at me. ‘If you read those letters, you are a fool. If you did not, you are a different type of fool. The correct action would have been to burn them with the house. Do you understand, young Ptolemy?’

I shrugged. I was young, foolish, vain and brave. ‘Perhaps the correct action was to make copies,’ I said.

Alexander turned and handed me a cup of wine. ‘Only if you plan to kill me and become king,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think you are in that game.’

‘Never,’ I said.

Alexander nodded. ‘Stop playing with fire, my friend. Mother, he never read the letters. He’s baiting you.’

Damn him, he was right.

Olympias sneered. ‘Such a dangerous game,’ she said quietly. ‘I dolike you, young Ptolemy.’

I went to bed, still alive, and awoke, still alive. I learned a great deal in that exchange, and I never tried to match wits with Olympias head to head again. On the other hand, I was invited to council that morning, as soon as I was dressed.

Alexander presented himself to the ambassadors, and was acclaimed hegemon as his father had been.

And then Alexander ordered Pausanias’s corpse to be spiked to a tree. In public.

Philip’s corpse was stinking – which many saw as an omen. The ambassadors and the army were already present, so we rushed the burial – his tomb was ready, had been ready since he took the wound fighting the Thracians and began to think of mortality (and immortality).

So the next morning, just two days after the murder, we marched to his tomb, the parade in the same order as the parade into the theatre had been, except that my squadron of Hetaeroi – not Cleitus’s squadron – marched first.

We got to the tomb, and the priest of Apollo poured libations and prayed and we sacrificed a bull, four black rams and the two younger sons of Aeropus. My prisoners. They were drugged, and died as quietly as the bull.

This public revenge settled the matter of murder, at least among the commons.

But among the noble factions, men saw it as a clean-up operation, and many men looked at Antipater.

And Olympias.

After that, the factions were quiet. In fact, they were silent.

We had two immediate problems after settling the local population and killing the two possible immediate rivals. They were that the Greek states would almost certainly revolt, whatever their ambassadors said – and worst of all, Attalus, bloody Attalus, and Parmenio, whichever side he chose to be on, were in Asia with the cream of the army.

And Antipater predicted that every province would revolt except the home provinces.