Scaling ladders were brought, but, he thought, were being set up half-heartedly. He snatched one himself, planted it against the wall, and ran straight up it, holding his shield over his head, without a look to see if anyone followed. Reaching the battlements he used the shield to shove off the men above him, clawed his way on to the wall, and cleared a space with his sword. Now three of his officers scrambled up to his help: Peucestas, Leonnatus, and Abreas, a tried hero whose exploits had been recognized with double pay. The men below, seeing them stand on the wall a mark for every missile, began crowding up the ladder. Alexander had worked his spell again, but all too potently; the overburdened ladder broke, before any could reach the top. The four remained stranded; Alexander already recognized by the enemy, “not only by the splendour of his arms but by his superhuman courage.” Their section of wall was in missile range from adjacent towers; also from below, there being a mound on the inner side. On to this mound, into the thick of the enemy, he jumped down alone.
Arrian gives his reasons, so typical that he may have told them himself to Ptolemy or Nearchus. “He felt that by staying where he was, he would be at great risk without achieving anything fameworthy; but if he leaped down inside the wall, that in itself might scare the Indians; and if he had to be in danger he might then sell his life dearly, after doing great deeds fit to be heard of by men to come.” He did indeed scare the Indians to a distance, after killing some hand to hand; but from there they pelted him with weapons, while he had only stones to throw back. Meantime his brave companions jumped down beside him. Peucestas carried the Homeric shield from Troy, apparently his usual office though this is the first we hear of it. By the time he lifted it over Alexander, it sheltered a man at the point of death. The Mallians were big men, using powerful longbows; a three-foot arrow had gone through his corselet into his lung.
Even then he had fought on, dragging himself erect by clutching at a tree he had been using to guard his back. The movement caused a massive haemorrhage, with pneumothorax, a collapse of the punctured lung; on which he fell senseless. “Air along with blood blew out of the wound,” says Arrian, a very good observation of the bloody bubbles seen in this injury, often fatal even without subsequent exertion. The gallant Abreas died from another “clothyard shaft” which pierced his skull.
All this time the Macedonians were frantically clambering up on each other’s shoulders or anything they could find. From the top, they stared at the inert body with cries and wails, which changed to frenzied battle yells. Transported with fury, grief and shame, they went through the citadel like some scourge of the Apocalypse, killing everyone they found, even the children.
Alexander, the arrow still in his lung fixed by its barb, was carried out of the battle. The cultured Curtius gives him a polished little speech, encouraging his friends to operate. Their hesitation, at least, must have been real, since the wound must be cut open to release the barb, whose withdrawal was likely to kill him on the spot. He was still pinned to his corselet. Feebly drawing his dagger, he signed with it to saw through the shaft, since the flights would not pass the hole in the cuirass. They managed this; Perdiccas later claimed that it was he who, at Alexander’s special request, opened up his side. Someone else (possibly Ptolemy!) said a doctor did it; the likeliest hero is Peucestas on the spot. The barb was tugged out; the inevitable fresh haemorrhage followed; blood loss, agony and shock induced nature’s anesthetic, and he lost consciousness again.
When the soldiers, returning from their massacre, learned he was still alive, they stood about his tent all day and through the night, till told that he was sleeping. His amazing constitution had won, for now; but like Achilles he had paid for glory with length of days. He had almost certainly a splintered rib; certainly a torn lung, its pleura perforated through both walls; and lacerated intercostal muscles. In healing, all these damaged layers, normally mobile, would knit together with adhesions of tight, ragged scar tissue. Arrian, the only reliable source here, does not say which side it was; but with every arm movement and any hard breathing he must henceforth have felt the wound; and in three years it would kill him.
Meantime, as in his own camp hope revived, the army at the base had had word that he was dead. A reassurance was sent, but disbelieved; the men took for granted that news so appalling would be concealed by the high command. They expected not only a general Indian rising, but, being Macedonians, an immediate internecine struggle for power. We hear nothing, however, of any rivalry being renewed between Craterus and Hephaestion; he must have been too grief-stricken to care. All this could not long be kept from Alexander; who at once decided that if nothing but his physical presence would convince the army, the army would have to see him. With a week-old unhealed wound into his lung, he had himself carried to the river, about ten miles, to make the journey by water. Going upstream, the heave of the oars must have jarred him; but in a few days he was there. Nearchus described the scene.
As soon as the ship bearing the King began to near the camp, he ordered the awning to be furled from the stern, so that all could see him. Even then the men doubted, thinking Alexander’s corpse was being brought there; till at last, when the ship had moored [his sense of theatre had not deserted him] he raised his hand to the crowd; and they cried aloud, some holding up their hands to heaven, some towards Alexander; and uncontrollable tears were shed in their astonished joy. Some of the bodyguard brought him a litter as he was being carried off the ship; but he ordered a horse to be fetched him. And when he mounted it, and everyone saw him, the whole army clapped their hands repeatedly, and the banks and river-glades threw back the sound. Then when Alexander was near his tent he got off his horse, so that the army could see him walking. They all ran to him from every side, some touching his hands, some his knees, some his clothing; others just looked from near by and blessed him as he went; some threw garlands on him, of whatever Indian flowers were then in bloom.
Physically it must have half-killed him; emotionally it must have been meat and drink. However, he had given them the fright of their lives; and, not unreasonably, the officers reproached him. His part was taken by a rustic Boeotian subaltern, who said in the broad speech of his people that deeds are the measure of a man. Alexander expressed his gratitude; but a more solid comfort was the unconditional surrender of all the Mallians, whether from awe of his valour or terror of his men. Their powerful neighbours, the Oxydracae, against whom he had not struck a blow, surrendered also. No doubt he gave impressive audiences, seated, to envoys unaware that he was as weak as a child and coughing blood at every effort. The relative cool of winter helped his long convalescence. He never relaxed control of the campaign. As soon as he could be moved, he continued his progress down river, along the way receiving embassies from his new lands, with princely gifts of every kind from pearls to hand-reared tame tigers.
He had also a visit from his father-in-law, Oxyartes. Some homesick troops of the Bactrian Alexandrias had tried to desert on the rumour of the King’s death; but probably the real motive was to learn if his daughter was pregnant yet. Since leaving Taxila, with one brief interval Alexander had been at war in conditions which could not have admitted of taking her along; and since his wound he would scarcely yet be ready for an active sex life. He extended Oxyartes’ satrapy to the edge of the Hindu Kush, with nominal rule over the still unsubdued lands down river. His garrisons would of course be Macedonian commanded. He could hardly have been installed much further away from court. Alexander may already have had thoughts of a second, more royal marriage.