Fire From Heaven 21 страница

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 labourers 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 centre, the long front leaned to and fro. The confederate troops, strangers to their neighbours, 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 honour, for a corps or 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 labouring 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 neighbours 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 over-reaching himself; he could be out-maneouvred, slashed with the sabre. But to run at firm up-pointed spears went against a horse's nature. They fingered the hard-cured bullhide 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 colour'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 Chaironeia, 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 Chaironeia, 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...

The roar of battle changed. An exultant shout ran like fire through the packed mass. It began to move, no longer in laboured heaves but like a gathering landslide. The enemy was retreating! The glories of Marathon, of Salamis, of Plataia, flashed before his eyes. Men in front were yelling, 'On to Macedon! ' He started running with the rest, calling in his high sharp voice, 'Catch Philip! Take him alive! ' He should be led in chains through the Agora; after that they would make him talk, name every traitor. There would be a new statue on the Acropolis, next to Harmodios and Aristogeiton: demosthenes the liberator. He shouted to those ahead who could run faster, 'On to Macedon! Take him alive! ' In this haste to be there and see it, he almost stumbled over the bodies of the young men who had fallen in the front line.

Theagenes the Theban, commander-in-chief of the confederate army, urged his horse behind the battle-lines towards the centre. The long front fermented with shouted rumour, too garbled to be of use. Here at last came one of his own scouts. The Macedonians were indeed, he reported, in retreat.

How? asked Theagenes. In disorder? In fair order, but getting away pretty fast. They had already fallen right back from the heights, with the Athenians after them. After them? What! Had they left their station, then, without orders? Well, orders or not, they were already in the plain; it was the King himself they were chasing.

Theagenes, cursing, beat his fist on his thigh. Philip! The fools, the misbegotten, fribbling, vainglorious Athenian fools. What had become of the line up there? There must be a gap as long as a hippodrome. He sent off the scout with orders that it must at all costs be filled, and the left flank covered. No sign anywhere else of the enemy falling back; they were laying on harder than ever.

The leader of the Corinthians received the order. How better guard the flank, than get up on the good rising ground where the Athenians had been? The Achaians, left feeling naked, spread out towards the Corinthians. Theagenes stretched out his own troops in turn. Let these Athenian speechmakers see what real soldiers look like. In their place of honour on the right wing, the Sacred Band changed order; briefly, as they moved, they showed in twos.

Theagenes surveyed the long threshing chain of men, now loose at one end, and weaker overall. Before him, the enemy rear was obscured by a tree-tall thicket of sarissas; ranks not engaged held them high, for the safety of those in front. With them and the dust-cloud, one could see nothing. A thought hit him, like a jolt in the midriff. No word of young Alexander. Where is he? On garrison duty in Phokis? Toiling unnoticed in the line? Yes, when iron floats. Then where is he?

There was a lull in the fight before him; almost a stillness, after the noise before; the heavy pause of earthquake weather. Then the deep bristling phalanx swung sideways, ponderously but smoothly, like an enormous door.

It stood open. The Thebans did not go out of it; they waited for what was coming in. The Sacred Band, turning face to face before they locked the shield-line and settled their spears, showed up in twos, once and for all.

In the stubble-field among the trampled poppies, Alexander lifted his sword-arm, and yelled the note of the paean.

Strong and sustained, the voice trained by Epikrates rang down the great square of horsemen. They took up the paean; it lost in its passage the sound of words, dinning like the fierce outcry from a cloud of swooping hawks. It goaded the horses more than spurs. Before ever they came in sight, the Thebans had felt their thunder through the ground.

Watching his men like a shepherd on a mountain trail, Philip waited for news.

The Macedonians were plodding back, sullenly, carefully, fighting for every few yards of ground. Philip rode about, directing their retreat just where it should go. Who could believe it, he thought. When Iphikrates was alive, or Chabrias... But their orators appoint their generals now. So soon, so soon. A generation…He shielded his eyes to scan the line. The charge had begun, he knew no more.

Well, he's alive; if he fell, the news would fly quicker than a bird. Curse this leg, I'd like to take a walk among the men, they're used to it. A spearman all my life. I never thought I'd breed a cavalry general. Ah well, the hammer still needs the anvil. When he can bring off a planned fighting withdrawal like this.... He understood his briefing. Everything pat. But only half there, he had that look of his mother.

Thought changed to tangled images like a knot of snakes. He saw the proud head lying in blood; the mourning, the tomb at Aigai, the choice of a new heir; idiot Arridaios' jerking face, I was drunk when I got him; Ptolemy, too late now to acknowledge him, I was a boy, what could I do?... What's four-and-forty, I've good seed in me yet. A sturdy square dark-haired boy ran up to him, calling, 'Father I'...

Shouts sounded, nearing, directing a rider to the King.

'He's through, sir. He's broken the line. The Thebans are standing, but they're cut off beside the river, the right wing's rolled up. I didn't speak with him, he said ride straight to you when I saw it, you were waiting for the word. But I saw him there in the van, I saw his white crest. '

'The gods be thanked. A bringer of such news deserves something. See me after. ' He summoned the trumpeter. For a moment, like a good farmer at harvest-time, he viewed the field which through his careful husbandry stood for the reaping just as it ought. His cavalry reserve had appeared upon the heights, before the Corinthians could command them. His withdrawing infantry had spread into the shape of a sickle blade. Enclosed in its curve were the jubilant Athenians.

He gave the order to attack.

The knot of young men was still resisting. They had found a stone sheep-pen, nearly breast high, but the sarissas came thrusting over. In the filth on the ground a lad of eighteen was kneeling, clutching at his eye which was falling down his cheek.

'We should get away, ' said the older man in the middle, urgently. 'We shall be cut off. Look, you can see, look round. '

'We're staying here, ' said the young man who had assumed command. 'You go if you want, we'll never notice the difference. '

'Why throw away our lives? Our lives belong to the City. We should go back and dedicate our lives to restoring Athens. '

'Barbarians! Barbarians! ' yelled the young man to the troops outside. They replied with some uncouth battle-cry. When he had time to spare, he said to the older man, 'Restore Athens? Let us rather perish with her. Philip will blot her from the earth. Demosthenes has always said so. '

'Nothing is certain, terms can be made…Look, they have almost closed us round, are you mad, wasting all our lives? '

'Not even slavery, but annihilation. That's what Demosthenes said. I was there, I heard him. '

A sarissa, poking forward out of the thick of the attackers, caught him under the chin and went tearing up through his mouth into his brain-base.

'This is madness, madness, ' said the middle-aged man. I'll have no more part in it. ' Dropping shield and spear, he scrambled over the far wall. Only one man, inactive with a broken arm, was looking when he shed his helmet too.

The rest fought on, till a Macedonian officer came up, calling that if they surrendered the King would spare their lives. At this they laid down their arms. While they were being marched off, between the dying and dead strewed everywhere, to join the herd of captives, one of them said to the rest, 'Who was the little fellow who ran away, the one poor Eubios was quoting Demosthenes to? '

The man with the broken arm, who had been a good while silent, answered, " That was Demosthenes. '

The prisoners were under guard, the wounded were being carted off on shields, beginning with the victors. This would take many hours, many would be there at nightfall. The defeated lay at the mercy, for good or ill, of those who found them; many, un-found, would be with the dead tomorrow. Among the dead too there was precedence. The conquered would lie till their cities sued for them; their bodies, asked and granted, were formal acknowledgement that the victors possessed the field.

Philip with his staff rode down the long wreck-strewn shore of battle from south to north. The moans of the dying sounded in fitful gusts, like wind in the high woods of Macedon. Father and son said little; sometimes a landmark of the fight would prompt a question; Philip was trying to make real to himself the event with all its meaning. Alexander had been with Herakles; it took time to come down from that possession. He did his best to attend to his father, who had embraced him when they met, and said everything that was proper.

At length they reached the river. Here by its shore, there was no straggle among the dead of men caught flying. They lay compactly, facing all ways outward, except where the river for a time had guarded their backs. Philip looked at the cable-trimmed shields. He said to Alexander, 'You went in here? '

'Yes. Between them and the Achaians. The Achaians stood well; but these died harder. '

'Pausanias, ' called Philip. 'Have them counted. '

Alexander said, 'You will find there is no need. '

The count took time. Many were buried under Macedonians they had killed, and had to be disentangled. There were three hundred. All the Band was there.

'I called on them to yield, ' Alexander said. " They called back that they didn't know the word; they supposed it was Macedonian. '

Philip nodded, and sank back into his thoughts. One of the bodyguard who had done the counting, a man fond of his own wit, turned one of the bodies over on another and made an obscene joke.

'Let them alone, ' said Philip loudly. The uncertain titters died. 'Perish the man who said they did or bore anything base. '

He wheeled round his horse, followed by Alexander. Unseen by either, Pausanias turned and spat on the nearest body.

'Well, ' Philip said, 'the day's work done. I think we have earned a drink. '

It was a fine night. The flaps of the royal tent were opened; tables and benches overflowed outside. All the chief officers were there, old guest-friends, tribal chiefs, and various allied envoys who had been following the campaign.

The wine was tempered at first, because people were dry; when thirst was slaked, it went round neat. Everyone who felt happy, or thought it useful, started a new round of toasts, and pledged the King.

To the rhythm of old Macedonian drinking-songs, the guests began clapping, slapping their thighs, or banging the tables. Their heads were crowned with wreaths from the broken vineyards. After the third chorus, Philip rose to his feet, and proclaimed a komos.

An unsteady line was formed. Anyone in reach of a torch snatched it up and waved it. Those who were giddy grasped the next man's shoulder. Swaying and limping, Philip lurched along at the head of the line, arm in arm with Parmenion. His face glistened red in the shaking torchlight, the lid of his dead eye drooped, he bawled out the song like battle-orders. The truth of the wine had lit for him the vastness of his deed; the long plans ended, the vista of power ahead, the downfall of his enemy. Freed from careful southern graces as from a hampering cloak, one in soul with his highland forbears and nomad ancestors, he was a chieftain of Macedon, feasting his clansmen after the greatest of all border raids.

The lilt of the song inspired him. 'Hark! ' he roared. 'Listen to this:

Demosthenes decrees!

Demosthenes of Paionia,

Son of Demosthenes.

Euoi Bakchos! Euoi Bakchos!

Demosthenes decrees! '

It spread down the line like fire in tinder. It was easy to learn, and even easier to sing. Stamping and shouting, the komos wavered out through the moonlit night over the olive fields by the river. A little way downstream, where they would not foul the water for the victors, were the prisoners' pens. Roused by the noise from exhausted sleep or lonely brooding, the drawn grimy men got to their feet and stared silently, or looked at one another. The torches shone on still rows of eyes.

Near the tail of the komos, among the young, Hephaistion slipped from his neighbours' convivial arms, and walked along through the olives' shadows, looking out and waiting. He kept along by the komos till he saw Alexander leave it; he too looked about, knowing Hephaistion would be there.

They stood together under an old tree with a gnarled intricate stem, thick as a horse's body. Hephaistion touched it. 'Someone told me they live a thousand years. '

" This one, ' Alexander said, 'will have something to remember. ' He felt at his brow, dragged off the vine-wreath and stamped it under his heel. He was cold sober. Hephaistion had been drunk when the komos started, but that had soon cleared his head.

They walked on together. The lights and noise still meandered before the prisoners' pens. Alexander walked steadily down river. They picked their way over broken spears and sarissas and javelins, round dead horses and dead men. At length Alexander stopped by the river bank, where Hephaistion had known he would.

No one had stripped the bodies yet. The bright shields, the victor's trophies, glimmered softly under the moon. The smell of blood was stronger here; bleeding men had fought on longer. The river chuckled gently among the stones.

One body lay by itself, face down, feet towards the river; a young man, with dark crisply-curling hair. His dead hand still grasped his helmet, which stood by him upside down, with water in it. It was unspilled, because he had been crawling when death overtook him. A blood-spoor, along which he had been returning, led from him to the heap of dead. Alexander picked up the helmet, carrying the water carefully, and followed the trail to its end. This man too was young; he had bled a wide pool, the great vein of his thigh being severed. His open mouth showed the dry tongue. Alexander bent, with the water ready, and touched him, then laid the helmet aside.

'The other had stiffened, but this one is hardly cold. He had a long wait. '

'He would know why, ' Hephaistion said.

A little way on, two bodies lay across each other, both facing upward to where the enemy had been. The elder was a strong-looking man with a fair clipped beard; the younger, on whom he had fallen back in death, was bare-headed. On one side he was bare-skulled; a downward slash of a cavalry sabre had flayed off the face to show a bony grin. From the other side, one could see that beauty had been there.

Alexander knelt, and as one might straighten a garment, replaced the flap of flesh. It adhered, sticky with blood. He looked round at Hephaistion and said, 'I did this. I remember it. He was trying to spear Oxhead through the neck. I did it. '

'He shouldn't have lost his helmet. I suppose the chin-strap was weak. '

'I don't remember the other. '

He had been speared through the body, and the spear wrenched back in the urgency of battle, leaving a great torn hole. His face was set in a grimace of agony; he had died wide awake.

'I remember him, ’ said Hephaistion. 'He came at you after you struck the first one down. You had your hands full already. So I took him on. '

There was a silence. Small frogs chirrupped in the river shallows. A night bird sang liquidly. Behind them sounded the blurred chant of the komos.

'It's war, ' said Hephaistion. 'They know they'd have done the same to us. '

'Oh yes. Yes, it is with the gods. '

He knelt down by the two bodies, and tried to compose the limbs; but they were set hard as wood, the eyes, when he had closed the lids, opened again to stare. Finally he dragged the man's corpse over, till it lay by the youth's with one stiff arm across it. Taking off his shoulder-cloak he spread it so that both faces were covered.

'Alexander. I think you should go back to the komos. The King will be missing you. "

'Kleitos can sing much louder. ' He looked round at the still shapes, the dried blood blackened by moonlight, the palely shining bronze. 'It is better here among friends. '

'It's only right you should be seen. It's a victory komos. You were first through the line. He waited for that. '

'Everyone knows what I did. There's only one honour I want tonight; to have it said I wasn't there. ' He pointed at the wobbling torchlight.

'Come, then, ' said Hephaistion. They went down to the water and washed the blood from their hands. Hephaistion loosened his shoulder-cloak and wrapped it around both of them. They walked on by the river into the hanging shadow of the willows fed by the stream.

Philip finished the evening sober. As he danced before the captives, a certain Demades, an Athenian eupatrid, had said to him with quiet dignity, 'When fortune has cast you for Agamemnon, King, aren't you ashamed to play Thersites? '

Philip was not too drunk to feel, through this harshness, a rebuke from Greek to Greek. He stopped the komos, had Demades bathed and freshly clothed, gave him supper in his tent, and, the next day, sent him back to Athens as an envoy. Even in drink, Philip's eye had been good; the man was one of Phokion's party, who had worked for peace but obeyed the call to war. By him, the King's terms were conveyed to Athens. They were proclaimed to an Assembly stunned silent with incredulous relief.

Athens was to acknowledge the hegemony of Macedon; so far the condition was Sparta's of sixty years before. But the Spartans had cut the throats of all their captives at Goat's River, three thousand men; they had pulled down the long Walls to the sound of flutes, and set up a tyranny. Philip would release his prisoners without ransom; he would not march into Attica; he left their form of government to their own choice.

They accepted; and were granted in due form the bones of their dead. They had been burned on a common pyre, since they could not last out the days of peace-making. The pyre was broad; one party of troops stoked it all day with timber, another fed it with corpses; it smoked up from sunrise to sunset, and both details finished worn out. There were more than a thousand men to burn. The ashes and calcined bones were boxed in oaken chests, awaiting a state cortege.

Thebes, stripped and helpless, had surrendered without condition. Athens had been an open enemy; but Thebes, a faithless ally. Philip garrisoned her citadel, killed or dispossessed her leading anti-Macedonians, and freed the Boeotians from her rule. There being no parleys, her dead were quickly gathered. The Band were given the heroes' right of a common tomb, and remained together; above them the Lion of Chaironeia sat down to its long watch.

When his envoys returned from Athens, Philip let the Athenian prisoners know they were free to go, and went off to his midday meal. He was eating in his tent when a senior officer asked leave to enter. He was in charge of dispatching the convoy. 'Yes? ' said Philip. 'What's wrong? '

'Sir, they're asking for their baggage. '

Philip put down his soup-soaked bannock. 'Asking for what? '

'Their stuff from their camp, bedding-rolls and so on. '

Macedonian mouths and eyes fell open. Philip gave a bark of laughter. He grasped his chair-arms, and jutted his black beard. 'Do they think, ' he roared, 'that we beat them at a game of knucklebones? Tell them to get out. '

As the grumbling exodus was heard, Alexander said, 'Why not have marched on? We need not have damaged the city; they'd have left it when you came in sight. '

Philip shook his head. 'One can't be sure. And the Acropolis has never fallen, so long as it was manned. '

'Never? ' said Alexander. A dreaming aspiration shone in his eyes.

'And when it did fall, it was to Xerxes. No, no. '

'No. That's true. ' Neither had spoken of the komos, or of Alexander's leaving it; each had welcomed the other's forbearance. 'But I wonder you didn't at least make them hand over Demosthenes. '

Philip swept his bread around his soup-bowl. 'Instead of the man, there would be his hero-statue. The man will be truer to life…Well, you can see Athens for yourself very shortly. I am sending you as my envoy, to return their dead. '

Alexander looked round slowly; he had supposed for a moment he was the object of some obscure joke. He had never thought it possible that, having spared Athens both invasion and occupation, his father would not himself ride in as a magnanimous victor, to receive her thanks. Was it shame for the komos? Policy? Could it be even hope?

'To send you, ' said Philip, 'is a civility. For me to go would be thought hubristic. They have the status of allies now. A more fitting time may come. '

Yes, it was still the dream. He wanted the gates opened from within. When he had won the war in Asia and freed the cities, it was in Athens, not as conqueror but honoured guest, that he would hold the feast of victory. And he had never even seen it.

'Very well, Father, I'll go. ' A moment later, he remembered to express thanks.

He rode between the towers of the Dipylon Gate, and into the Kerameikos. On either side were the tombs of the great and noble; old painted grave-steles faded with weather, new ones whose withered grave-wreaths were tasselled with the mourners' hair. Marble knights rode heroically nude, ladies at tiring-tables remembered beauty; a soldier gazed out at the sea that kept his bones. They were quiet people. Among them, the noisy crowds of the living milled to stare.

A pavilion had been built, to house the ossuaries till the tomb was ready; they were lifted in from the train of biers. As he rode on between obsequious faces, a shrill keening swelled up behind him; the women had surged upon the catafalque, to wail the fallen. Oxhead started under him; from behind a grave, someone had hurled a clod. Horse and rider had known worse, and neither deigned to look round. If you were at the fight, my friend, this does not become you; still less if you were not. But if you are a woman, I understand it.

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