Ptolemy swallowed hard. 'It was a great victory, sir,' he answered.
'Follow me,' the general ordered. Parmenion and his six aides walked slowly across the battlefield, stepping over the bloated corpses of the Persian slain. Dark clouds of crows and ravens rose from the bodies, their raucous cries harsh upon the ears. Parmenion halted beside the mutilated corpse of a young Persian noble, dressed in silk and satin. The fingers of his left hand had been cut away, then discarded once the gold rings had been stripped from them. His face was grey, his eyes torn out by carrion birds. He would have been no older than Ptolemy. In the midday heat the body had swelled with the gases of death and the stench was terrible. 'He dreamed of glory,' said Parmenion harshly, turning on his officers. 'Yesterday he rode a fine horse and sought to destroy the enemies of his King. He probably has a young wife at home, perhaps a son. Handsome, is he not?'
'Why are we here, sir?' asked Ptolemy, averting his eyes from the dead Persian.
Parmenion did not answer. Across the field some Macedonian and Thracian soldiers were still looting the dead, and above the battleground flocks of dark birds were circling, crying out in their hunger.
'How many lie here, do you think?' the Spartan asked.
'Thousands,' answered Perdiccas, a tall, slender young cavalryman who had arrived in Asia with Alexander.
'Somewhere near sixteen thousand,' Parmenion told him. To the far left Macedonian work parties were digging a mass grave for their fallen comrades. 'How many did we lose?' continued the general, looking at Ptolemy. The young man shrugged and spread his hands.
Parmenion's face darkened. 'You should know,' he told him. 'You should know exactly. When you ride into battle your life depends on your comrades. They must be confident that you care for them. Can you understand that? They will fight all the better for a caring commander. We lost eight hundred and seventeen Macedonians, four hundred and eleven Thracians, and two hundred and fifteen allied Greeks.'
The general walked on and, mystified, the officers followed. Here the bodies lay in groups, hundreds one upon another. 'The last stand of the Royal Infantry,' said Parmenion. 'With the army fleeing around them, they stood their guard… to the death. Brave men. Proud men. Do them honour in thought and word.'
'Why should we do the enemy honour?' asked Perdiccas. 'What purpose does it serve?'
'Who will rule this land now?' said Parmenion.
'We shall.'
'And in years to come the sons of these brave men will be your subjects. They will join your armies, march under your banners. But will they be loyal? Will you be able to trust them? It might be wise, Perdiccas, to honour their fathers now in order to win the love of their children later.'
Parmenion knew he had not convinced them, but the walk among the slain had become a ritual, a necessary ordeal — more, he realized, for himself than for the young men he forced to accompany him.
Silently he strode from the battlefield, back along the line of the river to where the horses were tethered, then he mounted and led his small company on to the former Persian camp.
The victory had been swift and terrifying.
The Persian army of around 45,000 men had fortified the far bank of the River Granicus, cavalry on left and right, mercenary infantry and Royal Guards — and the general Memnon — at the centre. By all the rules of engagement it should have produced a stalemate. But Parmenion had secretly sent men ahead to gauge the depths of the river. It had been a dry season and the water was only hip-deep, slow-moving and sluggish.
Alexander had led the Companion cavalry in a charge on the enemy's left flank. Parmenion ordered Philotas and his Thessalian horsemen to attack on the right. The shocked Persians were slow to react, and by the time Parmenion sounded the general advance their lines were already sundered. Only the mercenary infantry and the Royal Guard offered any stout resistance, the other units — and Memnon, the enemy leader — fleeing the field. It was a battle for less than an hour, a massacre for a further two.
Sixteen thousand Persians died before the sun reached its zenith.
The conquest of Persia was under way. Alexander's legend had begun.
That night, Alexander held his victory banquet in the tent of a dead Persian general. He had brought with him to Asia a Greek writer and poet named Callisthenes, a skeletal figure with a wispy black beard and an unnaturally large head which had long since outgrown the attempts of hair to cover it. Parmenion did not like the man but was forced to admit he had great skill as a saga poet, his voice rich and deep, his timing impeccable.
During the feast he performed an improvised work, after the style of Homer, in which he sang of Alexander's exploits. This was greeted by tremendous applause. The young King, it seemed, had personally slain 2,000 of the half-a-million Persians facing him, while Zeus, the Father of the Gods, stretched his mighty hand across the sky, opening the clouds to look down upon this mightiest of mortals.
Callisthenes sang of Athena, Goddess of War, appearing to Alexander and offering him immortality on the eve of the battle, and of the young King refusing the honour since he had not yet earned it.
Parmenion found the song stirring to the point of nausea, but the younger men clapped and cheered at each exaggerated point. Finally Callisthenes told of the moment when Alexander's generals had counselled against him crossing the 'swirling torrent of the Granicus', and gave the young King the answer that he 'would be ashamed if, after crossing the Hellespont, he allowed the petty stream of the Granicus to stand in his way'.
Hephaistion, who was sitting beside Parmenion, leaned in close. 'That is not the way it was,' he whispered.
'None of it is the way it was,' answered the general, 'but it sounds very fine to the young and foolish.'
The feast continued long into the night and, bored, Parmenion made his way back to his own tent. Mothac was still awake, sitting stretched out on a huge padded Persian chair. The Theban had been drinking.
'A wonderful day,' he said as Parmenion entered. 'Another nation ripe for conquest. More cities to be burnt and razed.' His face was flushed, his eyes bleary and red-rimmed.
Parmenion said nothing. Adding fuel to the brazier, he stripped himself of his ceremonial armour and stretched out on a long couch.
'Has the god-King grown tired of hearing stories about himself?' asked Mothac.
'Speak more quietly, my friend,' Parmenion advised.
'Why?' asked Mothac, sitting upright and spilling his wine. 'I have lived for more than seventy years. What can he do to me? Kill me? I wish I'd died ten years ago. You know, after the razing of Thebes I could not even find the grave of my Elea. My sweet Elea!'
'You will find her. She does not rest with the cloak of her body.'
Mothac wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. 'What are we doing here, Parmenion? Why don't we go home to Macedonia? Raise horses and leave this slaughter to the young men. What do we achieve here? More death, more destruction.'
'I am what I am,' replied the Spartan. 'It is all I have left.'
'You should not serve him. He is not like Philip, fighting to save his nation. He is a killer. He will build nothing, Parmenion; he will ride across the world as a destroyer.'
'I do not believe that. He is capable of greatness.'
'Why are your eyes so blind to his evil? What hold does he have on you?'
'Enough of this!' roared Parmenion. 'You are a drunken old man, full of bitterness and despair. I'll hear no more of it!'