And the battle cry came back – from the valley, from the heights above us, from every throat that could still draw breath, so that the very air around us thickened with the sound.
Alaialaialaialaialai!
The Peltastoi broke. I thinkthey thought from the sound that we’d got behind them. But it doesn’t matter. They turned and ran.
They all lived, because none of us followed them. We sank down on our ridge-top and bled.
I drank water, and Polystratus appeared with twenty mounted grooms and bandaged my calves and my instep, and put me in riding boots.
Cassander rode up the shallow end of the ridge, three stades away.
At our feet, two thousand slaves were cutting steps in the hillside. They were fast. They’d been promised cash payment and freedom for the best, and they worked with a will – so fast that we could watch the progress they were making.
Cassander saluted. We were not friends – I’ve said that. But he grinned. ‘That was worthy of the heroes of the Iliad!’ he said. ‘Alexander all but pissed himself with pleasure. Now he wants you to clear the ridge heading south.’
I nodded.
Polystratus handed me a roll of sesame seeds in honey, and I sucked a mouthful out of the sausage skin. The sugar went into my blood like ambrosia. I drank a mouthful of wine, finished the seeds and stood up, a new man.
Youth! How I miss it.
‘Hypaspists!’ I called. Very little came out.
I looked at Philip, who was busy with two slaves, wrapping the mess he’d made of his sword arm. He shook his head and croaked something.
‘My voice is strong,’ Alectus rumbled. He had a bandage around his head. ‘I missed a good fight.’
‘I thought you had your doubts about fighting,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘You should listen more carefully,’ he said.
I had to whisper loudly to get words out. ‘We need to sweep the ridge.’
Alectus nodded. He walked out along the ridge and raised his big spear. ‘Hypaspitoi!’ he called in his barbaric accent. ‘Not finished yet, philoi! Take a deep breath, think of happy things and get your helmets back on.’
Not exactly like my speeches, but it did the job.
Alectus led, and we followed. Whatever fire had run through my veins was gone, and I was washed clean – and empty. I couldn’t think, and I couldn’t form words. Which was fine. Alectus spread us out in a skirmish line across the ridge, as if we were Peltastoi ourselves – perhaps the terrain, or perhaps it was just the Agrianian’s way. And we walked slowly, and the remaining Peltastoi and Psiloi simply popped up like hares in a hunt and fled, and we let them go. They wasted some stones on us, and we didn’t trouble them with our javelins.
Now, in truth, we lost three men for every one the Athenian mercenaries – that’s what they were – lost to us. And in truth, we outnumbered them by at least two to one when all our men reached the hilltop.
But if you ever ride through the Vale of Tempe, look up at Mount Ossa, and tell me it wasn’t one of our finest hours. We pushed them off the ridge.
And after that, they weren’t going to make a stand anywhere. Maybe they thought we were insane. And perhaps we were.
We camped that night at the southern end of the ridge, overlooking the Thessalian camp. Behind us, the whole Macedonian army was coming up the steps cut by the slaves.
That night, Marsyas came to me. I had no tent – the baggage was still down on the plain. I was eating more sesame and honey, and my heart burned with the sting of it, but Polystratus had found milk, and warm milk and honey is a fine meal on a cold night in the mountains.
Marsyas came to our fire and flopped down next to me.
‘Hail, Achilles, Lord of the Myrmidons!’ he said. ‘Alexander is beside himself with jealousy. Just so you know.’
I laughed, but I knew my king, and I knew I was in trouble.
Marsyas shrugged. ‘I have your song. And I think your corps have earned a song, don’t you?’
‘Slaves and Peltasts?’ I said, because that was the Macedonian way. ‘On a little hill?’
‘If that’s a little hill, then Aphrodite has little tits,’ Marsyas said. That seemed really funny to me, too.
He had Polystratus fetch my lyre – a little-used instrument, I promise you. He made ‘tsk tsk’ noises while he tuned it, and then he played.
Well, you know what he played, I’m sure.
By the third time through, Philip and Alectus and even Cassander were singing along.
By the next morning, enough men knew it to make a decent sound as we marched past the king, down the high pass and into the plains of Thessaly, leaving the Thessalian army standing like fools.
Marsyas asked me for a job that morning. As I said, we’d never been close, because of our year groups, but I liked him, and I needed some good officers – and any boy who survives being a royal page is a good officer. So I gave him the first ten files. He dismounted and marched, and later in the day, his slave brought him an aspis.
At any rate, we came down the pass with the Thessalians behind us. Of course, they were between us and home, but we, on the other hand, were between them and theirhomes.
We halted at midday, ate a small and hasty meal and formed for battle. Remember, they outnumbered us two to one.
Alexander rode out, then. He rode across the front of the army, helmet off, Tyrian purple cloak streaming behind him, and he looked like a god. I think – I may be wrong – I think it’s the first time I saw him like that.
He galloped across the front and the roar was like a physical thing, right to left across the whole army, a shocking sound.
And then he pulled his horse up in a little display, half a stade in advance of his whole army. And he used his spear to salute the Thessalians, who were pouring out of the pass behind us.
The sound of our cheer rose to the heavens, climbing the pass to Olympus and to Ossa and then bouncing back in a mighty ripple of echo.
The Thessalian army shuddered to a halt.
They started to sort themselves out, and Alexander ordered us forward.
We marched forward about a stade. Our line wasn’t perfect, but it was adequate. Later, Macedonian armies did this kind of display all the time, and our drill was magnificent. That summer day, it was enough that we kept our places in line and no gaps opened.
The Thessalians, it was obvious, weren’t going to get formed in time. They were just a mob.
A delegation was spat forth from the mounted part of the mob.
Alexander raised his arm, and we halted.
He rode forward by himself.
I know that the Prodromoi started forward, and my squadron of the Hetaeroi. He waved them back, but the Prodromoi shadowed him, moving anxiously . . .
They needn’t have worried.
The Thessalians surrendered.
In retrospect, you just nod, boy, because what army of barbarians could even look at a Macedonian army without fear, eh? But that was not yet come to pass. We weren’t ‘Alexander’s Macedonians’ yet – an army that, by wonderful irony, was always at least a third Thessalian.
I count that day as Alexander’s first battle. At Chaeronea, he did what he could with a dull plan. Philip was a brilliant strategist and a fine fighter, but a dull tactician. Alexander . . . was Alexander.
Had we rolled forward into the Thessalians, we would have killed a great many of them – and been at war for years. Alexander took a terrible risk. But the circumstances – when every province in the empire was in revolt, and we had no friends – required risk. Or that’s how the king saw it, and he was the king.
And Thessaly was ours. The best cavalry in Greece, the finest horses and a nation that immediately offered two years’ tribute as recompense for hesitation.
In one day, Alexander had changed the game.
Heh. Alexander, with the help of the hypaspists. And not for the last time, either.