God of War -The Story of Alexander the Great

Alectus nodded. ‘Or his children, eh?’

‘Some men are evil,’ I said, drunkenly cutting across a whole lot of arguments. Aristotle would not have approved.

Alectus sneered. ‘And you only kill the evil ones, eh?’

That shut me up.

He was an old barbarian and he’d done a lot of killing, and he was begi

‘Oh?’ I asked. ‘And who made it?’

Alectus shrugged. ‘If a god made it, what does he want? I mean, if I make a shield, it’s because one of the lads needs a shield. Eh?’

‘Where are we going with this?’ I asked.

‘Talk goes with wine,’ Alectus said. ‘I like both. I used to like a good fight. But now, I’m begi

‘Are all you hill men philosophers?’ I asked.

Alectus spat. ‘As far as I can tell, your philosophers ain’t interested in what’s good for men. They’re interested in sounding good and pompous, eh? None of them seems to be willing to tell me what the gods think of killing.’

‘Go to Delphi!’ I said. I had meant to say it with a sneer, but I’m afraid – then and now – that I have a great respect for oracles.

Alectus drank off his wine. ‘You may actually have the makings of a wise man, Macedonian. Will Alexander take me to Delphi?’

I shrugged. ‘No idea. But . . . if we march on Greece, we’ll have to go right past the shrine.’

Alectus lifted the whole bowl and poured a libation. ‘To Delphic Apollo and his oracle,’ he said, and drank some. ‘That was god-given advice, young man. I’ll pay more heed to you in the morning.’

And then he picked up his sword and walked off into the night.

I liked Alectus.

We were two weeks getting back to Pella and my farms fed the Agrianians. I met up with Heron for the first time in two years and he embraced me – and I freely gave him almost a quarter of my farms. Loyalty is rare, young man. It needs rich reward.

And when we reached Pella, I swore out a warrant at the treasury for the value of the food my farms had provided to the barbarian auxiliaries. That got me a two-year remission of taxes.

Which meant that I made a profit – if a small one – on bringing the Agrianians to Pella.

I won’t belabour this point. But I mention it so that you know that managing a great estate is a matter of constant work and constant alertness to opportunity. It is much easier to fritter a great estate away than to protect and expand it.

Pella was an armed camp. There were three taxeis of pikes outside the town – all the men of upper Macedon, townsmen of Amphilopolis and hardy mountain men, all billeted on Attalus’s estates. Alexander had ordered every nobleman to call up his grooms, so that we had almost four thousand cavalry. He left his father’s royal companions at home, and almost a thousand of the foot companions he retired to new estates – a popular move, and one that left him with a reserve of veterans, if we had a disaster.

Alexander picked the largest and best men from the foot companions (as had his father before him) and added them to the Agrianians, and created his own hypaspitoi. As I say, Philip had had his own – picked men of the phalanx, but they were the very veterans that Alexander had just settled on good estates. Did he distrust them? Or was the new broom sweeping clean?

I wasn’t consulted. Later, we had three regiments of hypaspists – the ‘Aegema’ and two regiments of elite infantry to go with them. They were our only infantry that wore harness all year and never went back to their farms – well, in the early days. Heh. Soon enough, no one was going home at all. But I get ahead of myself.

My grooms went with the cavalry, and my squadron of companions was commanded by Philip the Red, and no man was appointed to overall command of the Hetaeroi. But I found that I was the commander of the hypaspitoi – a job I held many times, and always enjoyed.

Alexander loved to blend. It was an essential part of his success that he thought that men could be alloyed just as metals were – and the early hypaspitoi were his first experiment. It was his theory that big, tough, well-trained Macedonians would serve to reduce the Agrianians to discipline, and that the hardy, athletic and wilderness-trained Agrianians would teach his elite Macedonians a thing or two about moving over woods and rocks.

Well, that’s what made him Alexander. I admit I thought he was mad. They’d only been joined an hour before we had our first murder.

Alexander heard of it, sent for me and asked what I pla

‘Catch the culprit and hang him,’ I said.

Alexander nodded. ‘Good. Get it done by sunset.’ He looked at me. ‘We’re marching.’

I was stu

Alexander frowned. ‘Antipater sometimes has trouble remembering who is king,’ he said.

So I rode Poseidon into my lines. It was easy to find the killer. He was one of my men, a pezhetaeroi file leader. He was standing in the courtyard of his billet, bragging to his friends.

Some of my best men. Six foot or taller, every man. Loyal as anything.

I had Polystratus and my grooms. ‘Take him,’ I said.

He didn’t even struggle until it was too late. All the way to the gallows tree he shrieked that he was a Macedonian, not a barbarian. His cries brought many men out of billets, and many Agrianians out of their fields. They watched him dragged to the tree, impassively.

Alectus came and stood in front of them. He nodded to me.

I did not nod back.

I ordered Philip son of Cleon – that was my phylarch’s name – to have a noose put around his neck.

I had almost a thousand men around me by then, and the Macedonians, as is our way, were vocal in their disapproval.

A rock hit Poseidon.

I had had other plans, but my hand was forced. The noose was tied to the tree, so I reached out and swatted the horse under my phylarch with my naked sword blade, and the horse reared and bolted, scattering the crowd, and before his fellow Macedonians could get organised, Philip son of Cleon’s neck snapped and he was dead.

And thatgot me silence.

‘Gentlemen,’ I said. It was silent.‘One law. For every man in the army. No crime against your fellow soldiers will be tolerated. You are one corps – one regiment. It is the will of the king. In a few hours, we will march to war. If you are angered, save it for the enemy.’

Then I sent for the phylarchs and Prince Alectus.

‘When we march tomorrow,’ I said, ‘we will not march as separate companies. There will be four Macedonians and four Agrianians in every file, and they will alternate – Macedonian, Agrianian, Macedonian. And across the ranks – the same. See to it.’

My senior phylarch, yet another man named Philip – Philip son of Agelaus, known to most of us as Philip Longsword – spat. ‘Can’t be done. Take me all night just to write it down.’

‘Best get to work, then,’ I said.

There are some real advantages to being a rich aristocrat. He couldn’t stare me down. Social class rescued me, and eventually he knuckled under with a muttered ‘Yes, m’lord’.

Alectus merely nodded.

‘Don’t be fools!’ I said. ‘You two don’t know the king and I do. He’ll kill every one of you – me too – rather than give up on this experiment. So find a way to work together, or we’ll all hang one by one.’

If I expected that to have an immediate effect, I was disappointed. They both glared at each other and at me, and they left my tent without exchanging a word.

All night, I wanted to go and see what they were doing. At one point, Polystratus had to grab me by the collar and order me into my camp-bed.

The Hetaeroi marched first, in the morning, and we were just forming, and the whole army was waiting on us. And every man in the army knew what had happened.