So instead of ignoring the debacle, I rode over, halted the column and gave them time to form.
It was the sort of decision young people make, when they are determined to do a thing well – correctly. The way they’ve been trained, and know it should be done.
It was a decision that cost a hundred men their lives. Because when our eager, well-formed, well-drilled farm boys hit the Sacred Band, those killers cut them down as a slave cuts weeds in the garden. I have never, before or since, seen anything like it. Our front ranks rippled and moved – rippled and moved – and it took me a moment to realise that the file leaders were being cut down, replaced by the men behind them, cut down in their turn . . .
I’m sure it didn’t happen this way – but in memory, there’s a fine mist of blood over the whole thing. A man was dying every time my heart beat, and my heart was beating pretty fast.
I can make an argument that my delay with the cavalry gave us the battle – the Sacred Band focused on the Macedonian pikemen in front of them, and ignored the much greater threat of my four troops of companions.
But that’s what Aristotle called a ‘false rationalisation’. After the fact, one can excuse anything – and weak men do. But here, beneath his tomb, in the comfort of the gods, I say that I got a generation of Pellan farm boys killed because I wanted my ranks dressed more neatly, and I knew it. No one ever mentioned it to me. I never even saw an accusation from them, the poor sods. They saw me as a hero.
Well, well. I’m an old man, and look! I’m maudlin. Cheer up. We’re coming to some good parts, and your pater’s in most of ’em.
We went forward at a trot, in a column of half-squadrons. The earlier shift of ground by the Sacred Band left a broad alley on their left, between their end file leader and the marsh that had been covering their flank. We trotted into the open ground, even as the farm boys to our right died like butchered animals. We could hear them die.
But they didn’t give much more ground than the space left when men fell. That’s what I meant before, when I said that sometimes inexperience is everything. They knew the cavalry was coming, they’d been told to hold for a minute, and as far as they knew, this is what happened when hoplites fought.
In fact, they were up against the worst nightmare in all the world of war, and they were standing their ground. Too stupid to run, really. But stupid or brave or what have you, theybeat the Sacred Band. What we did was to kill them.
It was like the sort of thing you dream about, when you are thirteen, curling in a tight ball under your blanket trying to keep warm, back smarting from a whipping, and you want to go somewhere else in your head, be someone else, someone brave and noble and incredibly tough, who can never be whipped, never be beaten, never dirty or late for class or threatened with rape. Or at least, I dreamed of such stuff – of riding at the head of my troops, being in the right place at the right time, wheeling my squadrons, charging into the shieldless flank of my enemies and chewing them to red ruin before my invincible spear . . .
Come on, son – don’t you dream of such stuff?
Well, I did. Incessantly.
And here I was.
I raised my spear – someone’s spear . . .
‘Column will form line by wheeling by half-squadrons to the right!’ I roared. Just like that. Made you jump. Hah! I still have the voice.
And they did.
The Sacred Band must have known – right then – that they were dead men.
They got their end files faced my way.
You are too young to have been in a fight – let me tell this my way. Depth is everything, even when the men in the back aren’t fighting. They are your insurance against disaster, their weight at your back steadies you, and their spear-points guarantee that if the man next to you falls, there’s someone to step up into his place.
When we appeared on their flanks, the Sacred Band was fighting thirty-six files wide and eight deep. Chewing their way through three times their number in Macedonian recruits.
Then they faced their flank files. That meant that the whole left end of their formation had no support behind them – all those men turned to face me. Not to mention the miracle of discipline it is to face your flank files while fighting to the front. I had to do it later – several times – and only the best men can.
So immediately, some of the pressure slackened against our infantry. And you must remember – this is a big battle, the line six stades long, with each army almost two thousandfiles of eight to sixteen men wide – and I’m telling you about what was happening in the end forty files. Forty of two thousand – what’s that? One fiftieth, that’s how much of the battlefield I owned. And remember while I tell you this – the other forty-nine fiftieths of the line were also fighting. Somewhere, Philip was stumbling back, cursing, and somewhere else to his left, the foot companions were getting their butts handed to them by a bunch of pompous Athenians – in the middle, Alexander had burst through the back of the wreckage of the allied centre, and somewhere else again, the Theban line infantry was starting to give a little ground to the Macedonians and none of usknew that any of these things were happening.
Walk. As soon as my whole line was in motion, Erygius had his trumpeter blow trot.I angled my path across the front of the cavalry and raised my spear. I was damned if the Mytileneian veteran was going to lead this charge. This was my charge.
In the cavalry school, when you are a page, the instructors – all men with a lot of fighting behind them – say that the crucial moment in a cavalry charge is when you are five horse lengths from the enemy spear-points. They knew what they were talking about. There is some complex mechanism – the sort of thing Aristotle would have loved to analyse – whereby man and horse make a nested set of decisions. I suspect it is the distance at which the horse can really seethe spears. The horse has to decide for itself – over, around, through, back. And the rider – at once master and passenger – can convey determination or indecision with the slightest shift of his arse. Horses know.
I knew the moment I got out in front that the Sacred Band had their spear-points down and we were notgoing over them.
So I turned my horse and raced for the rear corner of their formation, as my charge dissolved behind me.
The companions baulked.
In storybooks, cavalrymen ride infantrymen down – crashing in through their spear-points, hewing to the right and left.
Not in real life. In real life, no horse will go through a formed, unshaken body of men – even if they are armed only with pitchforks or their fists. Daimon is everythingin a fight between infantry and cavalry. The daimon that motivates men to fight, to stand, to flinch, to run – that daimon.
The Sacred Band were only eight ranks deep, so they had only eight files facing me.
The end two troops were actually well past the end of their line. I raced for them, caught the attention of their phylarchs and started them in a wheel – a broad sweeping wheel into the flank and rear of the Sacred Band.
Some of the men in the rear ranks turned, and some didn’t.
I’m a quick learner. Having halted once to dress my ranks and missed an opportunity, this time I didn’t wait for perfection. As soon as I saw that at least one troop leader had the idea, I led like a Macedonian should.
I set Poseidon’s head at a gap in the enemy ranks where the fourth and fifth men in the rear rank were arguing. The corner of the enemy body was a mess.
This is where horseflesh means a great deal, because Poseidon was smart, strong and well trained. So I let him go. I didn’t aim him – he aimed me.
And then – then, it was just me and the Sacred Band. About eight of them, at the right rear corner of their original formation – meaning that I was facing file closers and right file men, the very best of the best, except for the front rank.