God of War -The Story of Alexander the Great

Well, he was right. We were just starting to move the court back to Pella when the news came trickling in – two big Thracian raids and a string of insults from the Illyrians. The Boeotians expelled their garrison and abrogated the League of Corinth. Demosthenes made a tremendous show in the Athenian Assembly. His daughter had died less than a week before – but he threw off his mourning and went to the Assembly in white, wearing a garland of flowers and saying that Greece was saved.

Bad news travels fast.

There was nothing we could do immediately. Everything depended on timing, luck, the fortune of the gods – and the loyalty of the rump of the army.

Alexander took two steps immediately. We held a council the first night in Pella – Philip was seven days dead by then. Olympias was amusing herself by celebrating his death with more abandon than old Demosthenes. She had a sort of honesty to her, I’ll give her that. She decorated Pausanias’s body as if he were a hero, not a regicide.

Macedon, eh?

At any rate, we held an i

Laodon had a trusted man – a Macedonian, a veteran, a man whom Philip had trusted as a herald and a messenger, but who had a special relationship with Laodon. Hecataeus was his name, and he’d been Alexander’s go-between with both Laodon and with Philip during his exile.

Hecataeus was a complex man – no simple image fits him. He was an excellent soldier, and because of it had made his way from the ranks to effective command of a taxeis under Amyntas. But he was both subtle and utterly honest – a rare and wonderful combination. Men – great men – trusted him. He was, in fact, the ideal herald – respected for his scars and war stories, trusted because he always kept faith, discreet with what he learned. I was not everywhere – I don’t know what the roots of his alliance with Alexander were.

But at the council, Alexander ordered him to go to Parmenio. ‘Bring him over to me, and order him to kill Attalus,’ Alexander said.

Antipater shook his head. ‘You may as well order the poor man to kill the Great King and conquer Asia,’ he said.

Alexander pursed his lips. ‘No, those things are for me to do,’ he answered, as if the comment were to be taken seriously.

Hecataeus smiled about one quarter of a smile. ‘My lord, what exactly can I offer Parmenio? He has the army.’

Again, there was something so . . . well, so reasonable about Hecataeus – it was not as if he was bargaining on behalf of a possible traitor. He was asking fair questions. He was a very able man.

‘Short of the kingdom, you may offer him anything,’ Alexander said.

Hecataeus shook his head. ‘I’m too small a man to make such an offer,’ he said. ‘I would go with concrete terms, if I must do this job.’

Alexander nodded. ‘Well said. Very good, then. Parmenio may have the first satrapy of the spear-won lands of Asia. The highest commands for his sons and himself – my right hand.’ He looked at Hecataeus.

The herald nodded. ‘That’s very helpful, lord. On those lines, I can negotiate.’

Alexander looked around. He was selling the commands of his kingdom to a man who’d either been a rival or held aloof. And we, his loyal i

Black Cleitus made a face. ‘I take it I shouldn’t get used to commanding the Hetaeroi,’ he said.

Alexander slapped his shoulder. ‘Parmenio owns the love of more of my subjects than I do,’ he said. ‘The man has most of the army, and most of the lowland barons. In time, Ptolemy can take over his faction, but for now, I need him. He’s sixty-five – he’ll be dead soon enough. In the meantime – yes. Make room, friends. The sons of Parmenio will be plucking the choicest fruits.’ He shrugged. Parmenio’s sons had not been pages. ‘I expect he’ll want Philotas as the commander of the Hetaeroi.’ He nodded to me and Cleitus. ‘But you two will command the squadrons.’

Then Alexander turned to me. ‘I have a mission for you, as well, son of Lagus, wily Odysseus.’

Well, who dislikes good flattery? ‘At your service, my king,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘I’m sending you to the king of the Agrianians,’ he said. ‘Get me as many of his warriors as you can arrange. Psiloi and Peltastoi – light-armed men to replace all the light-armed men my pater has sent to Asia.’

That was our first intimation that the king intended an immediate campaign.

‘Are we going to war?’ I asked.

Antipater coughed. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘We are trying to negotiate from a position of relative strength, and a thousand light-armed men will make us look the readier to march.’

Alexander smiled. He looked around, caught every eye. ‘What he means is, yes, unless all my enemies miraculously knuckle under, I’ll be fighting all summer.’ His grin became wolfish. ‘I have cavalry, and enough heavy foot. Go and get Langarus to hand over some prime men. And hurry back.’

So I nodded. Even though I was again going to be absent while the big decisions were made.

In fact, I’d already seen the lay of the land. Alexander trusted us – his young i

I had a long ride into Illyria to ponder the ways of kings. I took my troop of grooms, and bandits fled at our approach. It was very gratifying. We swept the high passes clear. We practised climbing abovethe passes and closing both ends at once, so we could catch the bandits – and it worked twice (and not the other ten times!). Once, with Polystratus scouting, we took a whole band of them – scarecrows with armour – and executed all of them, leaving their corpses in trees as a warning to future generations.

So by the time we came down into mountainous Agriania, word of our exploits had run ahead of us.

Alexander’s young wife was pregnant. Her father quite happily called out a band of picked warriors – useless mouths, he called them. Many of them were his own bodyguard – the shield-bearers, he called them in his own tongue – in Greek, we called them hypaspists. He gave me almost six hundred men – well armoured, but light-footed. And he promised to come with his own army if Alexander summoned him.

That was a well-pla

We returned to Macedon by a different set of passes, and the Agrianians loved our game of climbing high above the passes and then closing both ends at once. In fact, they maintained – as a nation of mountaineers – that they’d invented it.

Their principal warrior was ‘Prince’ Alectus. He was no more a prince than I, but an old war hound. He was the hairiest man I’d ever seen – naked, he looked more like a dog, despite his heavy muscles. He had red-grey curly hair, even in his ears. To a Greek, he was impossibly ugly, with his wiry hair and his intricate tattoos.

He shocked me, the first night on the road home, by asking me if I was an educated man, and then debating with me about the gods. He was widely read, and yet he drew his own conclusions from what he read.

‘Ever think that all this killing might be wrong, lad?’ he asked me, that first night. He was drinking my wine in my tent. None of the Agrianians had a tent.

‘Of course I’ve thought it,’ I said. ‘All you have to do is look at a dead man’s widow.’