I caught up with him at a tiny village called Shakrak on the edge of a volcanic lake. Cleitus was the officer of the day.
I reported to him. He saluted me, embraced me, held a snap inspection of my reinforcements and immediately split them up among the existing taxeis. He didn’t ask Alexander, and he didn’t ask me, and when he was done and it was too late to do anything about it, I snapped.
‘That was my command,’ I said. I had intended it to sound humorous – it came out the way I really meant it, as bitter.
‘You don’t have a command,’ Cleitus said. ‘Neither do I. Nor do most of the old boys.’ He glanced around. ‘Ask yourself why. Or don’t. But don’t be surprised if you don’t hold any more commands.’
I tried not to shoot the messenger. ‘I’ll find the king,’ I said.
Black Cleitus shrugged. ‘Your funeral,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t.’
I did, anyway.
My timing was poor. I had entered Alexander’s marching camp on the heels of a dust cloud, and that cloud was the harbinger of a troop of Prodromoi with a pair of Persian traitors. The commander of the city of Persepolis – the very capital of the Persian Empire, no less – had offered to hand the city over to Alexander.
I entered the command tent. Alectus saluted me and smiled. Hephaestion looked up to see what the interruption was, and even he managed a smile.
Alexander was facing two handsome Persians. The one wearing a pound of gold foil was apparently named Darius, and he was the son of Tiridates, the commander at Persepolis.
‘My father says come now, and come quickly,’ the boy insisted. ‘Before there is looting.’
Men were turning – Philotas gave me a little wave, and Perdiccas grinned at me. Alexander looked up. His eyes went to me – and slid right off me.
‘Silence, there,’ he said. ‘Will your father recognise me as King of Kings?’
The young man gave Alexander the strangest look. ‘No. You are not the King of Kings, are you?’
Remember, Persians value telling the truth above all things. They don’t prevaricate well.
Alexander flushed. ‘I am the King of Kings. Are you Persians blind as well as deaf and dumb? I am the absolute master of Asia.’
Young Darius stepped back a pace. ‘My father,’ he said again, ‘bids you come as quickly as possible.’
Philotas shook his head. ‘Let me go, lord. It could be a trap. Where better? Their terrain, every peasant is one of theirs, and only this boy’s word on it.’
Alexander glanced at him. ‘Never fear, Philotas. You will go. With me.’
The Persian boy leaned forward and spoke quietly into Alexander’s ear.
Alexander’s eyes grew wide.
‘Stop!’ Philotas said. ‘Tell all of us!’ He was obviously angry, and just as obviously distrusted the Persians.
Alexander turned on him. ‘Desist. Do not give orders under my roof. Go to your tent – I will send for you.’
And Philotas went.
Zeus Soter, the world had changed while I was gone.
Alexander didn’t stop to greet me. He assembled his household cavalry and prepared to ride off to Persepolis.
But technically, I was still a troop commander in the royal Hetaeroi, and I mounted my horse – it was bitter cold, the very edge of a two-day snowstorm in the mountains. My troopers looked at me and laughed, or slapped my back – they were all men I knew. Polystratus took the trumpet from the troop hyperetes, and no one said a word. Philip the Red had been commanding my troop, and he simply clasped my hand and fell back a rank.
It touched my heart.
We rode like the wind. The bridge over the river gorge was gone, destroyed by Darius. We stripped a village of roof trees – in the depths of winter – and prepared to build our own bridge. A troop of enemy cavalry hovered on the far side of the winter torrent, but they only watched us. We put a line of horses across the stream to break the current, and then men – knights of the royal household, aristocrats and veteran soldiers – stripped naked and waded in, bellowing at the cold, carrying the roof trees of the stripped village on our shoulders. We got that bridge across in two hours, and not a single arrow was lofted at us.
We built big fires, warmed ourselves for half an hour and mounted up.
The cold river did something good for my hip and pelvis. I’d been in pain every mile of the ride through the hills, and now, suddenly, the pain was gone. At the time, I thought my balls might be gone, too, but they remained intact.
Up and up, into the hills.
Just before darkness fell, my troop was in the lead – the most aristocratic Prodromoi in history, I suspect. I had Polystratus and Theodore and all his former grooms – all of whom were Hetaeroi now, of course – prowling every track we passed, but it was snowing hard enough that I had reached the point old soldiers reach too often, where I didn’t particularly care if some enemy troopers wanted to ambush me. I was too cold and tired to care, and the snow was piling up on the shoulders of my thickest cloak and starting to melt through, so that trickles of freezing water snuck down my neck and back under my breastplate. You cannot get warm once that starts to happen.
Up and up.
No one ever thinks of Persia as cold.
And then, across the track in front of me, there were three men, like ghosts, or like some horrid set of masks. The light was odd – early sunset in heavy clouds and snow, an amber light with a grey edge to it, cold, hard and evil.
Polystratus reined in, but he’d missed them, or they were supernatural. He was past them.
Here we go, I thought. An ambush.
But the supernatural remained uppermost in my head. There was something wrong with them. I was half a stade away, and with the snow and the light, they looked like corpses. Closer and closer and the wrongness grew worse. The hair rose on the back of my neck. I checked the draw on my kopis.
I retrieved my spear. I had tucked it under my leg so I could keep my hands warm, and now I put it in my right hand and looked around.
Three horse lengths, and they still looked like raven’s food come to life, and my hands were shaking. Philip the Red, at my back, was praying, and he was not a pious man.
Polystratus turned his horse and came cantering back, his horse’s hooves throwing snow.
He was too late.
The middle figure raised an arm.
The arm had no hand, only a stump.
Close up, I saw that he did look like raven’s food. Neither he nor his two companions had either noses or ears.
I reined my horse in so hard that he reared.
‘Pardon, lord!’ the central figure said in Athenian Greek.
I was fighting to control Medea, who was spooked.
‘Greetings!’ said the next figure. Zeus, they were hideous.
They seemed excited. Even happy.
They spoke Greek.
‘Please say you are Greeks!’ the leader said.
I got my knees, frozen through, locked around Medea’s barrel and restored her to order. ‘Greek enough,’ I said. ‘Who might you be?’
‘I am Leonidas of Athens,’ the leader said. He raised a hood from his cloak and hid his face. His right hand was intact.
He moved carefully. The swirling snow made him more hideous than he might otherwise have been.
I realised that one of his legs was made of wood.
‘You—’ I began.
‘Artaxerxes ordered that all of us who had taken arms against him be mutilated,’ he said. ‘I have my lips. Many do not.’ He took Medea’s bridle in his good hand. ‘So it is true. You are here! Alexander is here to avenge us!’
‘Zeus!’ I muttered. ‘Were you taken in arms against the Great King?’