The river gleamed in the light of the paling sky, between tapering poplars and shady planes. Beside it, in orderly patterns, the Theban watch-fires budded into flame. Alexander gazed in deep concentration; for a moment he pictured in this distant firelight the human faces; then they dwindled into the spread of the great design. And all the gates were opened, and the warriors came pouring out, Foot and horse, and the din of onset resounded.
“Wake up, lad,” said Philip. “We’ve seen all we need; I want my supper.”
Parmenion always ate with them; so tonight did Attalos, newly come in from Phokis. Alexander saw with discomfort that Pausanias was on guard. Those two together in one room always put his teeth on edge. He greeted Pausanias with special warmth.
It was Attalos, friend and kin of the dead rival, who had planned the obscene revenge. It was a mystery to Alexander why Pausanias, a man with no lack of courage, should have come to the King demanding vengeance, rather than take it with his own hand. Could it be that he had wanted a sign of Philip’s loyalty? Long ago, before the change, he had had a kind of archaic beauty, which could have housed such an arrogant Homeric love. But Attalos was chief of a powerful clan, a good friend of the King, and useful; the dead boy’s loss had been bitter, too. Pausanias had been talked out of it, and his honor patched up with rank. Six years had gone by, he had been laughing oftener, talking more, becoming an easier presence, till Attalos was made a general. Now once more he never met one’s eyes, and ten words were a long speech for him. Father shouldn’t have done it. It looks like a reward. People say already…
His father was talking of the coming battle. He brushed clear his mind; but an aftertaste lingered, as of tainted food.
Alexander had his bath in the gravelly pool, and lay on his bed, going over in his mind the battle-plan, point by point. There was nothing he had forgotten. He got up, dressed, and walked along quietly between the watch-fires, till he reached the tent Hephaistion shared with two or three other men. Before he had touched the flap, Hephaistion had risen soundlessly, thrown on his cloak and come out. They stood for a while talking, then went back to their beds. Alexander slept well till the morning watch.
The din of onset resounded.
Over the barley stubble and round the olive trees, crashing through vineyards half-picked when the laborers fled, knocking down the props and treading the grapes into bloody wine, the press of men swayed and mixed and seethed, their mass swelling and bursting like bubbles, rising and settling like yeast. The noise was deafening. Men yelled to one another, or to the enemy, or to themselves; or screamed in some piercing agony beyond what they had known that flesh could feel. Shields clashed, horses squealed, each corps of the confederate army shouted its own battle-paean at full stretch of its lungs. Officers roared orders, trumpets blew. Over everything hung a great cloud of rusty, choking dust.
On the left, where the Athenians held the foothills which formed the confederates’ anchor, the Macedonians shoved their long sarissas doggedly from below, the points of three graded ranks forming one row of weapons, bristling like a porcupine. The Athenians took them on their shields when they could; the bravest pressed between them, stabbing with the short spear or hacking with the sword, sometimes overwhelmed, sometimes denting the line. Along the far flank Philip sat his strong cobby war-horse, his couriers by him, waiting; for what, his men all knew. They heaved and strained in the line, as if their failure to break it was killing them with shame. Though huge noise was everywhere, among them it was somewhat less; they had been told to listen for the word.
In the center, the long front leaned to and fro. The confederate troops, strangers to their neighbors, sometimes rivals, shared the common knowledge that where the line broke disgrace and death would enter. Wounded men fought on till with luck the shields closed before them; or fell, and were trampled on by men who could not drop their guard or pause. The hot press churned in the hot dust, sweating, grunting, cursing, hacking, thrusting, panting, moaning. Where rock broke the ground, the melee heaved round it like sea-foam, and splashed it with crimson spray.
At its north end, where the river guarded its flank, there stretched as evenly as a string of beads the unflawed shield-line of the Sacred Band of Thebes. Now in action the couples were forged into a single bar, each man’s shield overlapping the left-hand man. The elder of each pair, the erastes, kept the right, the spear side; the younger, the eromenos, the side of the shield. The right was the side of honor, for a corps or for a man; though the youth might grow up the stronger, he would never ask his friend to cede it. All this was governed by ancient laws. Newly sworn lovers were here, intent upon their proving; and couples who had been in the corps ten years, solid bearded fathers of families, love rendered down to comradeship; the Band was too famous to be renounced at a dream’s passing. Its lifelong vows were battle-vows. Even through the dust, it glittered. Its bronze hatlike Boeotian helmets and its round shields edged with cable-work had been burnished to shine like gold. Its weapons were six-foot spears with iron blades, and short stabbing swords, still sheathed, the spear-hedge being unbroken.
Parmenion, whose phalanx faced them, had all he could do to hold them. Now and then they gave a great heave forward, and could have gone further yet, but for fear of breaking contact with the Achaians next to them in the line. They were polished and smooth like some old well-made weapon a man knows the feel of in the dark. Hurry up, Philip; these fellows have been to school. I hope you know what you’ve given your boy to bite on. I hope he has the teeth for it.
Behind the laboring phalanx, just out of bowshot, the cavalry waited.
They were massed in a thick column like a catapult bolt, with a tapering head, whose point was a single horseman.
The horses fidgeted at the noise, at the drifts of blood-smell on the wind, and the tension in their riders’ bodies; they blew from the tickle of the dust. The men talked to neighbors or called to friends, rebuked or fondled the horses, straining to see through the ten-foot dust-cloud how the battle went. They were to charge a line of hoplites, the horseman’s nightmare. Cavalry against cavalry, the other man could fall off as easily as you, pushed with the spear, or overreaching himself; he could be outmaneuvered, slashed with the saber. But to run at firm up-pointed spears went against a horse’s nature. They fingered the hard-cured bull-hide pectorals on their chargers’ breasts. The Companions found their own equipment; but they were glad they had listened to the Boy.
The foremost rider flicked off a fly from his horse’s eyelid, feeling with his thighs its strength, its knowledge of the coming fury, its implicit trust, its complicit horse-sense. Yes, yes; we’ll be going when I say go. Remember who we are.
Hephaistion in the next short rank felt at his sword belt; should it be one hole tighter? No, nothing makes him so angry as a man fixing his turnout in the line. I must catch him up before he gets there. His color’s high. It often is before an action. If it was fever he’d never say. Two days with it before the fort fell, and not a word; I could have carried extra water. A fine night I had of it.
A courier rode through the dusty trampled stubble, and hailed Alexander in the King’s name. The message was word of mouth: “They are taking the bait. Be ready.”
Up on the hill, above the pink-washed village of Cheironeia, in the tenth row back of the Athenian force, Demosthenes stood with his tribal regiment. The young men held the front; next behind were the strongest of the middle-aged. The whole depth of the line shifted and strained, as a man’s whole body does when his right arm alone makes some great effort. The day grew hot. It seemed they had been standing and swaying and staring down for hours; suspense ached in him like a tooth. Ahead men were falling, getting spears in their guts and chests; the shock of the blows seemed to travel all through the thick ranks, back to where he stood. How many fallen already; how many ranks still left between that and him? I should not be here, I am wronging the city by risking myself in war. The milling press made a long shove forward. It was the second in a short time; without doubt now, the enemy was giving ground. There were still nine ranks between him and the long sarissas; and their line was wavering. It is not unknown to you, men of Athens, that I carried shield and spear on the field of Cheironeia, counting as nought my life and my own concerns, though some might have called them weighty, and indeed you might have reproached me with hazarding your welfare in risking mine…A choking cry of pain came from the front rank, which had been the second. Men of Athens…