Besides, Nike was watching me. She was right there – not a distant rumour of womanhood back in Macedon, but the living embodiment of feminine opinion, and she did a great deal to make us what we were. Young men will compete for a woman’s good opinion, if she is worthy.
Besides, as far as we knew, there was nothing of which she was afraid.
When Polystratus brought my charger, Nike held the bridle, gave me a stirrup cup, said the prayer of Aphrodite over me and poured wine on my sword – and on Nearchus’s and Philip’s, too.
She kissed me – not a long, lust-filled kiss, but a plain kiss on the lips. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said. And grinned. ‘So either way, you’re covered.’
She meant that if I lived, I had a child to raise, and if I died, an heir.
Not sure if that’s what every man wants to hear as he rides to battle, but for me, it was perfect. Something dropped away, and I rode to the prince with a light heart.
To our right, in the first true light of day, the phalanx was forming. In the best tradition of all Greek warfare, our best troops were on the right – the hypaspists and then the foot companions and then the phalanx, but all formed shield to shield in one long line sixteen deep and six stades long, covering the whole of the open ground from the rocks and scrubby ground at the base of the citadel hill, to the banks of the Cephissus river. Across the fields, just a few stades that a fit man could run before breakfast, the Thebans and Athenians formed, too. They had the Sacred Band on their right, so it was facing our rawest levies – not really all that raw.
I need to speak about phalanx warfare. Foreigners think that there’s something to be gained by experience – by spending more time in the storm of bronze and iron. If you are a cavalryman, there’s a great deal of truth to that assertion. Man and horse grow better every encounter – and when wounded, can ride away. It is a different form of war, on a horse’s back.
But down in the dust on a summer’s day in Boeotia, the advantage is often with the most fit, with the highest hearts. Older men who have seen battle may stay alive longer – but they also know the fear of the spear that slips past your guard unseen. Of the chance arrow. The fears of all the details that they survived the other times, when friends died beside them.
Sometimes, the bravest men are those who do not know what lies in store for them.
The Athenians were an army of veterans – most of their hoplites had made campaigns in the Chersonese, or as marines – against us, or policing their empire. The Thebans – they hadn’t seen much action since they carved up the Spartans. No one really wanted to take them on. And opposite me, up that hill, they’d formed twenty-five deep. That did not look good.
But our farm boys looked surprisingly tough, when facing two of the most famous armies in the world. They had a touch of swagger to them that made me nod in respect. Some of our men had been to Asia – most had fought in mountains and plains, in the dark, in storms . . .
They trusted Philip.
I sat my Poseidon by Alexander, and we watched them form.
‘He’s insane,’ Alexander said quietly.
That snapped me back to reality. ‘Who is, lord?’ I asked.
‘My father – Philip. He thinks that his hypaspists can go uphill into those Athenians and break them?’ He shook his head.
I was caught between loyalties. I was absolutely loyal to Alexander – but Philip was Philip. A force of nature. He could not be wrong.
‘If he throws it all away, here, we’ll never get to storm Asia, Ptolemy. We’ll be lucky to hold Macedon. We’ll be some kind of historical side-note, like Alexander I and the battle of the Nine Roads.’ His eyes were darting around – here, there, everywhere.
Hephaestion was mounted by now. He rode over to Alexander and they embraced.
A rider came from the king and ordered Alexander to send two troops around the army to watch the Athenian skirmishers on our right. Laodon got the nod, and I went with him. Troops cheered us as we passed behind them. They looked calm, as if on parade. I felt like I had a belly full of bees.
Laodon didn’t seem too concerned.
‘I don’t want to miss the main action because I’m chasing slaves,’ was all he’d say about being sent to the right.
When we arrived, we saw why we were needed – there was a stade-wide gap between the hypaspists and the edge of the bad ground, the product of a slight widening of the valley and just possibly a mistake on Philip’s part.
We slotted into our place in time to watch some of our Psiloi get driven off the ground by allied skirmishers. It wasn’t a hot fight, but the enemy had cavalry mixed in with their Psiloi, and they were killing our lads in short rushes.
Laodon shook his head, pointing at the ground. ‘I’m not taking my knights into that,’ he said. ‘We’ll kill more horses then men.’
I had to agree – he was older, and I thought he was right.
But the Athenian cavalry was in there, and they were having a field day against our javelin men. Finally the whole pack of our light armed gave it up and fled. They ran right through us, and rallied behind us.
Then we got to endure arrows and javelins. We pulled back, found a better piece of ground and the Athenian cavalry formed to face us and just sat there. We hooted at them, they hooted at us – our numbers were even, and neither of us had anything to gain from a charge.
Our light armed were ready to go forward again, and their leader was talking to Laodon, when a man came galloping towards us from the Athenian ranks. He halted a few horse lengths from our line.
‘I am Kineas, son of Eumenes,’ he called out. He declared his whole lineage – how he was descended from Herakles via the heroes of Plataea. He had beautiful armour, and a pair of white plumes in his helmet.
He was challenging us to fight man to man.
Laodon spat. Looked away. Young enough to be embarrassed – too professional to accept.
Not me. I took my good spear from Polystratus. I gave Kineas of Athens a proper salute, and we went at it. We charged each other from about half a stade – a long ride, when you’ve nothing to do but contemplate mortality.
He got me. I won’t spin it out, you must have heard the story from your uncles – turned my spear, got his spear up and swept me off Poseidon’s back. The Athenian infantry at the top of the hill roared, and I was unconscious.
I knew he was the same man I’d faced twice in two days. So I got my sorry carcass mounted again as soon as I was able to think and see straight – he’d creased the top of my helmet so badly that I couldn’t get it on my head properly and had to discard it, and I had a lump like an egg.
I got back on Poseidon with Cleomenes holding his head, and that was just in time to see Laodon’s troop of companions crash into the nearest troop of Athenians – head to head, no manoeuvre. And their second troop was lining up, and there was no time to worry. My head hurt, but not enough to stop me doing my job.
The boys were quite kind, all things considered. I got some back slaps and some ‘get the bastard next time’ comments, and then I was in my spot at the head of the wedge. The Athenians were formed in a rhomboid, and they had some slope behind them.
And then we were off.
Troop to troop, same weight of horseflesh, same ground, not much to tell in skill – it might have been a bloodbath. It wasn’t. We smashed into them, and I never got sword to sword with Kineas – we struck a few horse lengths from each other, and I was into the Athenian ranks before I had time to think about it, cutting to either side, taking blows on my armour and a heavy cut to my bridle arm – see the scar? But I kept my seat and burst out the other side of their formation and found that old Philip had started his infantry forward.