Alexander did the same. And the outer provinces crawled all over themselves to return to the fold. Even the ones we’d left behind when we marched on Greece.
Athens and Thebes did not send representatives to the Gates of Fire.
It is remarkable, when you are a soldier, how quickly after exhaustion that rest gives way to boredom. The change seems to be immediate – you are exhausted, you have a rest, suddenly you are bored. Bored soldiers are the most dangerous animals in the human bestiary. They fight duels, they get drunk, they rape.
All bad.
By the third day at the Gates of Fire, I’d killed a man who’d fought at Mount Ossa with my own hand – he raped a child, and I gutted him in front of the parade. That gave the rest of them pause. And I learned my lesson – I hope that child’s life saved a few others – and I brought in instructors for sword work, for wrestling, for running. We threw javelins relentlessly, and we climbed the cliffs, and we began to master the close-order drill that Philip had insisted the pezhetaeroi learn. We had a lexicon of manoeuvres, and we spent four days marching through them – Spartan counter-march, Macedonian counter-march, files and form to the left, files and form to the right, wheeling motions, half-file manoeuvres and file-doubling manoeuvres. Anything to keep the bastards busy.
The League representatives met, and on the first day they voted Alexander to be head of the League, as his father had been. Alexander smiled and proposed an agenda for the next four days of meetings.
And then we marched away in the dark. All Alexander ever wanted was the League’s recognition. As soon as he had it, he was finished with them and their trappings of authority. The Prodromoi marched in pitch darkness, very early on a short summer night, and my hypaspitoi followed them. We had guides we’d recruited from the countryside and paid well, and we moved very fast.
We had to cross the mountains of Phokia, and Alexander, always religious, was determined to march past Delphi. The going was steep, but it was high summer and we’d had a week’s rest, and we flew. Three days to Delphi, and a day’s rest.
Alectus went to the temple, presented himself to the priests and was refused – as a barbarian.
So I accompanied him, both of us in armour.
Greeks like to claim that we Macedonians are barbarians when it suits them. As Alexander was the head of the Holy League and his soldiers were the guarantors of the temple treasury, I had a feeling they would accept me as a Hellene – nor was I disappointed.
We waited in the antechamber while a trio of Athenians asked detailed questions about business and about Alexander’s intentions for their city.
When they emerged, I sent Alectus in alone. And I walked out on to the portico with the Athenians. Two of them were unknown to me, but the third was Kineas’s friend Diodorus.
‘They say that meetings in the temple precincts are part of the will of the God,’ I said, putting my arm around his shoulder. Diodorus turned and we embraced.
‘Alexander wants to be recognised as hegemon of the League of Corinth. He’ll fight to get it, too.’ I held both his hands and looked him in the eye so that he’d see I was being utterly honest.
He nodded. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘And a great deal clearer than what the priestess muttered.’
His companions looked uneasy, and kept their distance.
He jerked a thumb at them, rudely. ‘I’m the token aristocrat. They’re my fellow democrats – friends of Demosthenes, or followers. More like acolytes – very dull companions. Give me dinner tonight and I’ll tell you how happy I am that Alexander is coming to rescue us!’ He laughed bitterly.
I sent him on his way and waited for Alectus, who emerged looking troubled.
‘She is a real prophetess,’ he said, and fingered his beard. ‘I could feel her power.’
I shrugged, because only a fool doubts the power of the god at Delphi.
Alectus walked with me back to camp, but I could tell he was not in a mood for talk.
That night, I gave a small dinner for Diodorus, and invited some of the Hetaeroi – Philip the Red, Cleomenes, Nearchus and Marsyas. He was good company, but his tale was a sad one – Athens was in a state of near stasis, civil war, because Demothenes kept the commons united against Alexander – who he caricatured as a fop, a poseur, an effeminate impostor.
Kineas was in the other faction, of course. And Diodorus had finally turned his back on the democrats.
‘If that fool has his way, we’ll fight you again,’ Diodorus said wearily. Then he brightened. ‘Say – you know that Thaïs speaks of you often?’
‘Does she?’ I asked. That gave me a little heart-burst of joy.
‘She gave me a party the night before I left – she prophesied that I would have days of dull company and would need to remember her wit.’ He smiled. ‘Some day, I long to afford a woman like her – to have her all to myself, every day. I’ll take her to dinner parties. Shock the matrons. Perhaps marry her!’
I laughed, although I was jealous.
He smiled at me as if reading my thoughts. ‘Thaïs said that she had been told by a seer she trusts that she is to leave Athens.’ He laughed. ‘Hardly news – the old men hate her so much they threaten to exile her constantly. Bad for public morals. Worse than old Socrates. Or so I hear.’ He laughed into his wine.
Marsyas leaned over. ‘Who is this paragon?’
‘Ah,’ I said, and took the opportunity every man loves, to discuss his paramour. Or perhaps she wasn’t my paramour. I won’t have you imagine that every time I lay with a slave girl or a willing free woman, I dreamed of Thaïs. That would have been, if nothing else, rude. The partner of the moment deserves your full attention. If you can’t remember the woman with whom you are lying – don’t bother!
But I thought of her often, more so as we came closer to Athens, and to discuss her openly with Diodorus was delightful.
At the same time, I sent Nearchus to Alexander when he went on duty with a note explaining the presence of the Athenian envoys and their mission.
Nearchus came back with two grooms and regretfully informed Diodorus that he and his fellow envoys would be guests of the temple for a few days. Diodorus accepted this with good grace. His fellows were obviously terrified.
We marched away in the dark.
We were at Lebedaea before noon, a hundred and ten stades of running and marching, with the Prodromoi just ahead of us and on either side, and the king with them, surrounded by his somatophylakes – the inner companions, the trusted bodyguards. I was one of them, in title.
I knew all morning we weren’t going to stop. Alexander was playing for the whole jar of oil, as the Athenians say, and we were going to make the dash. My men were in peak condition, and ready for anything. The Prodromoi changed horses at the meal break – and every one of them had at least two remounts.
The sun had scarcely begun to decline when we started for Thebes, another hundred and twenty stades across the plains of Boeotia, the dance floor of Ares. If the Thebans were going to fight, it was going to be today, tonight or tomorrow. My men had already come five parasanges on foot, in their armour, with their shields on their shoulders. Go and try it. Tell me how you do.
And we were off. The Prodromoi didn’t range far ahead. A thousand hypaspitoi, two hundred Prodromoi and twenty somatophylakes in full armour – the cream of the Macedonian army. And the king. Twelve hundred men against the might of Thebes and Athens – against a possible sixty thousand hoplites.
Farmers stood at their ploughs and watched us as if we were an army of ghosts.