The New Achilles Read online

  At their feet, the battle had started, or so it seemed to Alexanor. Long lines of men, each perhaps a spear’s length from the next, rolled down their ridge towards the river. To his right, Macedonian cavalry in purple and blue went forward where the ground was not so steep. The king of Macedon stood on the volcanic outcropping just to his left and watched them.

  Alexanor took a sip of his wine, which was delicious.

  ‘Phila!’ the king called. ‘You asked what a skirmish was. Well – have a look. This is skirmishing.’

  The hetaera rose and walked down the rock, jumping lightly from crag to crag, until she stood by the king. In the valley, men were running; at first, there appeared to be no order to their movement.

  Alexanor watched with interest. Almost no one came to close combat; men ran up to an invisible boundary and threw javelins, or stones, and then danced back, like boys playing at fighting, except that there were already bodies lying in the dirt amid the scrubby bushes along the riverbank.

  A corps of archers appeared on the Spartan side of the river. In two volleys of arrows they drove the Macedonian light infantry off the riverbank.

  ‘Fuck,’ Doson muttered. ‘Cleomenes must be made of money. My Agrianians are hard to beat. But he has Cretans …’

  The hetaera glanced at him. ‘I am told that the king of Aegypt was his ally, but has now cut him off,’ she said.

  ‘Who tells you these things?’ the king asked. ‘Lovers?’

  She shrugged. ‘Friends,’ she said, evasively.

  ‘Well, honey, those are Cretan archers, and they are worth their weight in silver, which is about what they charge.’ He held up his hand to shade his eyes. ‘Antipater, tell Demetrios to get this done. Tell him to use the Illyrians. Those Achaean skirmishers down there aren’t worth a fuck.’

  ‘Aye, my lord.’

  The young officer saluted, leapt onto his horse without apparently using his hands, and set off down the steep hillside at what appeared to the watchers to be a suicidal gallop.

  ‘Terrible cavalry country,’ the king said. ‘Probably why Cleomenes has chosen it.’

  He held out his hand and a Persian slave put a large straw hat into it. He put the hat on his head without taking his eyes off the fighting.

  ‘That’s right!’ he called as a clump of his Agrianians advanced in a dense mass, threw their javelins and then dashed forward to the riverbank and began to cross. ‘Someone has some guts.’

  The Cretans loosed arrows and Agrianians died. They responded by using the river’s far banks for cover, squatting down in the swift water. Spartan psiloi went forward to the riverbank to fend them off and died on the spears of the Macedonian peltastoi. Not many of them, though. They were helots and didn’t seem particularly keen to push the contest.

  Young Antipater reached Demetrios of Pharos, the Illyrian commander. He raised his shield, which in the fierce sun seemed to be made of solid gold.

  ‘Illyrians are the worst soldiers in the world,’ Doson said. ‘No discipline, no logistics, no tactics.’

  There was a roar, like a peal of thunder, echoes from all the hills, and a thousand Illyrians ran forward. They had no particular formation: they seemed to hug the ground like desperate wolves moving in a pack against easy prey, eager for the kill and a mouthful of flesh and blood. They ignored the hard-won salient where the Agrianians had crossed and leapt into the river directly opposite the Cretan archers.

  The Cretans loosed, all together.

  Fifty Illyrians went down. The rest were in the river and splashing their way across. The fastest men were already clambering up the far bank.

  The Cretans turned and ran, all together, like a flock of birds turning in flight.

  The Agrianians rose out of the river and pushed forward. Even at this distance, Alexanor could see men stooping to collect rocks or pick up spent javelins.

  All the helots and all of the enemy’s mercenary peltastoi turned and ran from a thousand Illyrian highlanders who were now all out of the river and baying like hounds, charging across the open ground.

  ‘I mean, they’re the greatest assault troops in the world,’ the king said, with a grin at the hetaera. ‘Otherwise, they’re completely useless. Too stupid even to know when they are outclassed. Well, that’s that.’

  ‘So we’ve won?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, Zeus Pater, not at all. Now we simply hold both banks of the river, so Alexander and I can ride over and look at the entrenchments he’s built on the hills. I see how to do this now. It won’t be fun.’ He looked at Alexanor. ‘I have a moment, priest. Can you talk to me about my gut?’

  Antipater was riding back up the escarpment with as little concern for his horse or himself as he’d shown riding down.

  ‘At your service, my lord,’ Alexanor said.

  He walked out onto the rock, which was a little like being a sardine thrown on the grill; the stone was hot, and the sun was brutal.

  ‘I didn’t used to have any troubles,’ Doson began. He glanced at his slave and snapped his fingers, and the Persian man handed him a heavy wineskin from which he took a long pull. He looked embarrassed. ‘Now everything seems to make me … fart. And squirt. All the fucking time. I can’t enjoy anything. Once I pissed blood. Eumenos, my doctor, claims it is an imbalance of the humours.’

  Phila rolled her eyes behind the king, and it was all Alexanor could do not to laugh at his patient.

  ‘I will need to see everything you eat,’ he said.

  The king looked at him. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Will you change your diet if I say so?’

  The king nodded. His eyes were back on the valley.

  ‘I’d be a fool not to, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘You have other physicians,’ Alexanor said. ‘They may not agree with me.’

  ‘But you are right and they are wrong?’

  Alexanor shrugged. ‘Honestly, my lord, I can have no idea until I have examined your diet and your stool.’

  ‘Apollo’s beans, lad. What a fine job you have,’ the king said. ‘Right. Darius there is my body-slave. He handles … everything. Sometimes I think he’s the fucking king of Macedon and I’m the slave.’

  Darius smiled.

  ‘At any rate, get him to provide you with … whatever.’ The king beamed at Antipater as the young officer crested the ridge. ‘Well ridden, by all the gods.’

  The Illyrians were still going, right up to the enemy on the far side. They hadn’t stopped, and by this time the Achaean skirmishers and the Agrianians had caught up to them – maybe three thousand men moving up the opposing ridge and its two outlying hills.

  ‘The left-hand hill is called Olympos and the right-hand is called Euas,’ Antipater said.

  ‘Hmm,’ the king said. ‘Says who?’ He glanced back. ‘Wine,’ he snapped.

  ‘Philopoemen of Megalopolis. He scouted all this two days ago before the Spartans dug in. He’s keen.’ Antipater paused. ‘I like him. He’s like one of ours, not Greek at all.’

  Doson walked back to the very edge of the volcanic outcrop, leaving Alexanor with Phila.

  ‘What a very noble job you have,’ she said. ‘Looking at his chamber pot and his undigested food.’ She smiled, though.

  He knew she was testing him. So he smiled back.

  ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘All things considered, it might be easier to have sex with him.’

  ‘See?’ she said. ‘I knew you’d come around. Anyway, he’s polite, he pays gloriously well and on time and in gold. And mostly he wants Phaex over there, anyway. He might settle for you, though. You are pretty.’ She looked over the valley. ‘Really, I came of my own free will. A king for a lover, even if he’s older than dirt, and a military campaign. Always wanted to see one.’

  Alexanor had never been called pretty before, and wasn’t sure what to make of it.

  ‘That has never been one of my desires,’ he said.

  ‘What, sleeping with a king?’

  ‘Nor that,’ he agreed.

&nb
sp; ‘Now you are going to tell me that you are a Cynic,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I am not a follower of Diogenes, although I confess to a liking for his works.’

  He received a radiant smile from young Thais, who was brown enough that she didn’t bother to wear her hat, and poor enough not to care. She gave him his reins.

  ‘A Stoic?’ she asked.

  ‘Better a Stoic than a Sceptic.’ He tried not to look surprised that a slave girl knew the difference between a Stoic and a Sceptic.

  ‘Really?’ Phila asked. ‘Have you been to the Academy?’

  ‘I have never had the pleasure,’ he said, while thinking I am on the edge of a great battle, debating philosophy with two women.

  ‘Mmm.’ She looked back at the king, who was waving.

  ‘Wine,’ he called, as if it was his war cry.

  ‘I begin to see what might be wrong with my patient’s innards,’ Alexanor said.

  Between the sand and gravel in his blankets, ants, camp noise and the endless sound of horses’ hooves, it was the most uncomfortable night Alexanor could remember. He rose as soon as there was enough light to see and visited his horse and the mule, which both seemed to have been more comfortable, and certainly had more straw than he’d had.

  Then he walked across the camp. The Macedonian camp was neat and orderly; the Achaean camp was not so much disorderly as chaotic. The other, smaller contingents’ camps were like slums of a big city: mostly, hungry, tired men huddled among rocks under their cloaks.

  He found the Macedonian military hospital by the cook-fire line. No one stopped him, so he went in and found wounded men, mostly Illyrians and Agrianians from the day before, lying on dirty straw on the floor of the tent. The sun had not yet crested the horizon and the wounded men were already plagued with flies.

  The army had two Athenian doctors and a Macedonian named Antigones. He introduced himself and offered his services.

  ‘Can you do an amputation?’ Antigones asked.

  Honesty was called for.

  ‘I know the theory,’ Alexanor admitted, ‘but I’ve never practised it.’

  ‘Can you kill a man who’s beyond saving?’ Antigones asked.

  Alexanor flinched.

  The Macedonian nodded. ‘Listen, lad. You are here for the king. I’m sure you are a dab hand at gut ailments. But this is nasty business. Mostly, we cut things off that will never work again – arms, legs, lives. Tomorrow and the day after, there’ll be more … time … for the Hippocratic method.’

  ‘Diagnosis? Massive stab wound,’ one of the Athenian doctors mocked. Then he relented. ‘I’m Creon. I don’t mean to be a prick. We could use the help if this is as much a mare’s nest as we’ve heard. Ever deliver a baby?’

  ‘Yes,’ Alexanor said.

  ‘Well, a military hospital after a hard fight is roughly like two thousand women all delivering babies together, and you have two friends to get it all done.’ He leant over and opened an Illyrian’s bandage. The man sat, grey faced, and made no sound. ‘This one will live.’

  ‘Come back when the fighting has started,’ said the Macedonian. ‘I’m serious. If you want to lend a hand, we’ll be fools not to take you.’

  ‘I’ve treated arrow wounds,’ Alexanor offered.

  ‘You have arrow spoons?’ the Macedonian asked, suddenly eager.

  Alexanor nodded. ‘I brought a set made of silver.’

  Antigones nodded as if bowing from the waist. ‘Well, that’s a mercy. Good – we’ll need you, then.’

  Alexanor went and fetched his tools, and moved them to the tent. Then he woke Leon and asked him to find food.

  He met Thais when she was fetching horses for her mistress and the other women.

  ‘My mistress asks, have you and your slave eaten?’ she said.

  ‘Leon is not my slave,’ he said. ‘He was freed a few years back. He probably knows more of medicine than I do.’

  Thais nodded. ‘I love it whenever one of us is freed.’

  ‘As to food, we have none,’ he admitted.

  Thais took him to the women’s tent, which was guarded by no fewer than four royal guardsmen. He left again with bread, wine, cheese, oil, and a pomegranate, which he shared with Leon, who had come back empty-handed.

  Then he joined the hetaera and walked his horse to where the king of Macedon stood, watching his army form.

  The Macedonian phalanx was more formidable than anything Alexanor had ever seen – more formidable than a squadron of Rhodian warships. There were ten thousand men, or so Phila told him: nine thousand of the Macedonian regular infantry and a thousand of the king’s royal guard, who bore shields embossed in silver and gold like so many versions of Achilles. Their equipment was as good as that of the officers in other contingents: bronze breastplates and greaves; helmets with cheek plates that formed almost full face protection; and great horsehair crests that seemed, together with their helmets, to double their height.

  ‘Look at them,’ a deep voice said at Alexanor’s elbow. ‘Magnificent. That is how hoplites should appear.’

  Alexanor turned and saw Philopoemen, armoured from head to foot in bronze cavalry armour, and they embraced. The Achaean looked like a different man. At the Epidauros he had distinguished himself by the plainness of his clothing; here he wore beautiful armour.

  ‘How’s the horse?’ the Achaean asked.

  ‘Superb, as you well know.’ Alexanor nodded. ‘Yesterday the king of Macedon complimented me on it. And that lady there.’

  ‘The concubine?’ Philopoemen said casually. ‘What would she know?’

  ‘She grew up with horses,’ came the woman’s voice from under her enormous straw hat. ‘And asses.’

  Philopoemen bridled.

  Alexanor laughed. ‘You had that coming. Phila, this is Philopoemen of Megalopolis. Where did you grow up with horses?’

  ‘Thessaly, sir. And thank you for asking as if I was a real person.’ She flipped her hat back.

  Philopoemen blushed. ‘Ah, despoina …’ he began, and then failed to find words.

  ‘Philopoemen!’ shouted a magnificently armoured Macedonian on a tall white horse. Alexanor turned his head. The Macedonian officer was waving at the Achaean.

  Alexanor watched his friend turn his horse as if thunderstruck and shook his head.

  ‘Sir?’ he called.

  ‘Get your people down on to the plain. Tuck right in behind the phalanx where you’ll be safe.’

  Philopoemen saluted with his fly-whisk riding whip and turned back to Alexanor.

  ‘Care to come and kill some Spartans? Probably the greatest battle in our generation.’

  Alexanor nodded. ‘I would like to come. I will not kill anyone unless I have no choice.’

  ‘Can you fight?’ Philopoemen said.

  Alexanor shook his head. ‘Not from horseback. Nor from conviction, if it comes to that.’

  The Achaean nodded. ‘Fair enough. Come along and see anyway.’

  He waved his whip at the hetaera, who waved back. Alexanor walked his horse over to her as the Achaean called orders.

  ‘That’s your friend who loaned you the horse?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t die. You provide good conversation.’ But her eyes were on Philopoemen. ‘He’s like Achilles.’

  Alexanor felt a pang.

  Alexanor had to struggle to control his mount as a dozen horses went by at a gallop. Then he got in behind Philopoemen, and together they started along the road.

  ‘Was that Alexander? The cavalry commander?’ Alexanor asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Philopoemen said. His eyes were already watching the far ridge.

  ‘He has a high opinion of you, I heard yesterday.’

  ‘First I’ve heard of it,’ the Achaean said. ‘I’ve been on this horse for ten days, or so it seems to me. Serving under Alexander is not like serving under Aratos.’ He shrugged. ‘Aratos has been the Strategos of the Achaean League since I
was born, or thereabouts.’ He sounded wistful.

  ‘Who is the boy in the golden armour?’ Alexanor asked.

  Philopoemen turned his head, away from the ridge. ‘Prince Philip. He’ll be king, someday, as opposed to Prince Alexander, who’s a member of the royals but not in line. It’s all a little barbaric.’

  ‘Have you met Philip?’ Alexanor asked.

  ‘Yes. But they protect him as if he was made of Aegyptian glass. I’m out skirmishing all the time. But I’ve got to know Alexander pretty well. Not what I had expected.’

  ‘How are they different?’ Alexanor asked. ‘Prince Alexander and your Aratos?’

  Philopoemen’s head had turned back to the events on the distant ridge line.

  ‘Stay around and you’ll see,’ he answered. ‘Alexander swears like a trooper, that’s the biggest difference. Tells the truth from time to time.’

  ‘Damn, it’s the priest,’ said red-haired Dinaeos. He cantered up as if he and the horse were one creature and slapped Alexanor on the back hard enough to make him cough. ‘How’s Epidauros?’

  ‘Not as exciting as it was when you were there,’ Alexanor said.

  He was not an effusive man, but he could see the Thracian, Kleostratos, smiling, and other men he knew in the ranks of the Achaean cavalry, and it made him very happy to be so easily accepted.

  The Achaean Exiles looked very much like the Macedonian cavalry. They had armour: most of them had helmets, good ones, although almost all without plumes, and breastplates; long boots, and heavy spears and javelins. They all had matching cloaks of heavy wool in a dust-brown.

  ‘Aratos is a brilliant politician and philosopher, but I’ve learnt more about making camp and guarding it in a week with Alexander,’ Philopoemen said. ‘And patrolling.’

  ‘And swearing. Don’t forget swearing.’ Dinaeos laughed. ‘I’m sick of patrolling. That’s all Alexander thinks we’re good for. In fact,’ he confided in a mock whisper to Alexanor, ‘everyone is sick of it except our hipparchos. He’s in love. With his horse.’

  Men laughed. Alexanor had enough knowledge of men to know that the mockery directed at Philopoemen was a form of respect.

  Then they were slip-sliding down the steepest part of the road. Alexanor might have been terrified except that he was surrounded by men who chatted as they slid, as if going down a steep slope on horseback was part of life. He leant so far back he felt as if he might be standing straight up, and at one point his legs seemed more around his horse’s neck than its belly, but he made it to the bottom of the steepest stretch still mounted.