When an army loses discipline it loses the battle. The Thebans, good as they were, had lost the cohesion a phalanx needs to make it effective. They were not an army now, they had no phalanxes, only knots of shaken and confused men who were being cut to pieces by our cavalry.
On the other side of the battlefield, I learned later, the Macedonians stopped their planned retreat the instant the trumpet blast gave us the order to charge. Suddenly the Athenians were facing those sixteen-man-deep phalanxes. The two sides clashed briefly, then the Athenians broke and started to run away. Philip’s men pursued them, slaughtering them as they ran, until he saw that the Thebans were still fighting for their lives against us. He ordered an end to the pursuit of the Athenians and brought his phalanxes over to our side of the field to finish off the Thebans.
For even though we had won our battle, the fighting was far from over. The Thebans refused to surrender. Hopeless, they fought on, especially their Sacred Band. Those men lived up to their reputation; even when we had cut them down to scattered pairs of men they fought on, back to back, on their knees when they were too badly wounded to stand. They refused to give up.
“You may kill us, but you will never see our backs,” shouted one of them as he stood over the drooping body of his companion, dying from several spear thrusts.
It was grisly work, and costly. Thunderbolt took a spear thrust through his ribs and went down with a hideous shriek, almost pinning me beneath him. I leaped clear and skewered the Theban who had killed him. I saw Alexandros still on Ox-Head, his helmet gone, golden hair flowing in the breeze, hacking at the enemy with a fierce grin pulling his lips back from his teeth. His Companions were scattered through the melee, killing with equal ruthlessness, their swords and sword-arms dripping with hot blood.
A pair of Thebans must have recognized Alexandros’ blond mane, for they pushed their way past the peltasts in front of them and headed for the prince. Coming up behind him they raised their spears simultaneously at his unprotected back.
Unprotected except for me. I had tried to stay as close to Alexandros as I could, but in this awful slaughter the excitement of battle, the passions of fear and blood-lust, and the sheer exhilaration of killing had almost made me lose my head. Almost. I knew somehow that this craving for violence had been built into me by the Creators; I was their instrument of destruction, their Hunter.
But despite the battle-fury that drove me on I saw the two Thebans ready to strike Alexandros from the rear. I was fighting a pair of them myself, both of them protecting themselves from my sword with their big shields, one of them still holding a spear, which he used to keep me at a distance from them.
The spear point seemed to waver in slow-motion before my eyes, almost hypnotically, while the other Theban tried to work himself over to my left side, where he could thrust at me with his bloodied sword.
I had no time to waste on them. I ducked beneath the spear point, rolled to the ground and kicked the spear-wielder in the groin. As he collapsed onto his own shield I jumped to my feet and slammed my shoulder into the shield of the other Theban. He jounced backward a step and I dashed off toward the men who were about to kill Alexandros.
I could not close the distance in time. So I threw my sword as hard as I could as I yelled, “Alexandros! Behind you!”
My sword point went completely through the nearer Theban’s shoulder. He screamed and the spear dropped from his paralyzed fingers as his companion jabbed his own weapon at Alexandros. But the young prince had turned slightly at my shouted warning and the spear point slid across the belly of his bronze cuirass harmlessly as Alexandros raised his sword and brought it down on the Theban’s neck hard enough to take his head almost completely off his shoulders. Blood geysered as the man gasped his death agony.
I had reached the other Theban by then. He had fallen almost beneath Ox-Head’s shuffling hooves. Wrenching my sword from his shoulder, I plunged it into his throat. He died with a look of surprise on his face.
Philip’s phalanxes reached us then, marching up in good order to dispatch the last of the Sacred Band.
The king rode up just behind his phalanxes and went straight to Alexandros. Looking him over with his one good eye, Philip broke into a tired smile.
“Not a scratch on you!” He seemed pleased. “Not even on Ox-Head. The gods must work overtime protecting you.”
Alexandros smiled back as if he had received nothing more than his due. If he realized that I had saved his life he made no mention of it.
I stood, panting and suddenly very weary, on grassy ground made slippery with blood and entrails. All around me the field was littered with corpses and the writhing, moaning bodies of the wounded. The battle was over. Now some of the troops were moving among the wounded, giving them the final merciful dagger in the throat. Others were stripping the dead of their arms and armor.
Ignoring the men, I staggered across the battlefield looking for Thunderbolt. Philip’s strategy had worked almost perfectly. The enemy commanders had known that cavalry could not attack a well-formed line of spears. So Philip had induced the Athenian citizen-soldiers to break ranks and ruin the solidarity of their line. Then our cavalry could destroy their foot soldiers, and we did. But it had cost me a valiant steed.
Thunderbolt was already dead when I found him, the spear still sticking in his flank. I hoped that he had not suffered too much, then found it ludicrous that I cared more for this horse than for all the men who had fallen.
I began to laugh, at myself, at the folly of men who slaughter one another, at the so-called gods to whom men pray. If they knew that the gods were nothing more than selfish humans like themselves, what would they do? How would they re-order their lives if they rejected the gods they worshiped?
I had to get off by myself. Slowly, painfully I climbed the steep hill of Chaeroneia’s acropolis. The sun was going down behind the distant mountains, and from the steps of the temple atop the hill I could see the entire battlefield in the long shadows of the setting sun. Thousands of bodies lay strewn like broken toys the breadth of the field.
“Are you pleased?” I muttered. “Is this the kind of human sacrifice that you enjoy watching?”
Turning to the temple, I climbed its steps and entered its shadowed interior. Statues of gods loomed around me: Zeus, Ares, Apollo, Poseidon.
“You made me part of this,” I said to them. “You created me to kill my fellow men. I hate you! I hate all of you! For making me in the first place, for using me as a puppet, a tool, a toy. All I want is to get out, to get off this wheel of life, to find the final peace of oblivion.”
And I knew that I had to learn from Ketu how to seek that ultimate death.
The statues remained silent and cold. The sun dipped behind the mountains and the temple became utterly dark. Yet my eyes adjusted to the darkness; I could still make out the statues, their aloof faces, their blankly staring eyes. Yes, there was Hera, proud and cruel. And Aphrodite, sensuousness personified.