POV: Slioch, an ancient Briton in Alexander's army
Summary: Maybe Alexander's cunning plan for victory at Gaugamela wasn't entirely his idea
Author: Nog the nog
Damn, I was bored.
To my right, Parmenion was droning on to the Persian envoys about events that happened half a lifetime ago as if they happened yesterday. I don't understand getting old. How come old people can remember ancient history like it had only just happened but can't remember what they had for breakfast?
Dammed idiot!
And when he wasn't talking to you about people long dead that he expected you to know, he was bragging about his successes with Philip. Listen to him and you'd think that the entire Macedonian army was just the two of them. Vanquished vast armies between them, if you believed him.
I hated these stupid feasts. Feast! Hah! That was a joke.
I stared down at the small pile of larks' tongues on a bed of dull green leaves on an elaborately decorated plate. Girls' food!
No surprise, since that great big girl Hephaistion had arranged the feast. I shot him a baleful glance. He was at the head of the table with Alexander, staring into his eyes like a lovesick girl.
He was useless at organising feasts. Only thing he was good at was sucking up to Alexander. In fairness, though, he was supposed to be quite good at it.
Back home we knew how to have a feast. We might be barbarians living in a cold wet mud hut, but we had proper feasts. Unless you ate half a boar, drank yourself stupid, had a fight and then slept with the nearest serving girl, it wasn't a proper feast.
And that was another thing, as a "barbarian" I didn't get this civilisation stuff.
We thought we Brits were civilised compared to the Picts. We had cattle, they didn't – well only the ones they stole from us. Hell, the Picts didn't even know how to paint themselves blue properly.
We kept our cattle in our hut, and we thought that was really civilised (and it stopped those thieving Picts). The Macedonians kept their cattle outside. That made them civilised and us barbarians in their eyes.
Mind you, difficult to argue with someone that you are not a barbarian when you stink of cowshit.
Hell, I was bored.
I don't know why I didn't admit it. It wasn't Parmenion. It wasn't the larks' tongues. It wasn't that prancing ninny Hephaistion.
It was Anahita.
Roxana might be the most beautiful woman in the known world, but her younger sister Anahita was not far behind her. She'd come to our camp about three moons ago and I had fallen hopelessly in love with her.
Me, who'd never been in love before, prisoner to the most powerful passion I'd ever know.
And she didn't even know I existed. I was just a rude barbarian who was part of her guard.
I started at the plate of leaves and tongues and pushed them round with my fork.
I felt the hairs on the back of neck start to prickle and I became aware of the awful stillness in the room. Something was wrong.
Parmenion's left elbow nudged my right arm and I quickly looked up from the table.
Everyone was staring at me.
I looked up the length of the table at Alexander.
"Slioch", he said, with a slight questioning, pleading tone in his voice.
My stomach tightened. The last time he'd called my name in that tone of voice was about ten summers ago.
And he'd conned me.
It all came flooding back. We were in the back end of nowhere. Alexander claimed he knew where we were because he was following Aristotle's maps. But he didn't. That fraud Aristotle never went further than the brothel or the ale-house.
We were at a feast, planning what to do next, as the campaign had reached a major stumbling block.
"Slioch", Alexander had said with that same tone. "You used to live in the mountains, didn't you?"
"Yes, my lord," I eagerly replied, my youthful enthusiasm fuelled by too much ale. "Went right up to the home of the Gods, they were that high".
"That's what I thought," replied Alexander with all the smoothness of a cobra seducing its next victim. "And you climbed them a lot in all kinds of foul weather?"
"Oh yes, my lord. I can climb anything. In the night, mist, rain – it makes no difference to me. My people reckoned I was half mountain goat".
Stupid bragging. He'd got me right where he wanted.
"Slioch, can you climb that for me?" he said waving vaguely in the direction of the sheer rock face of the Sogdian Rock.
He paused. "At night?"
He paused again. "And lead a small force up there?"
I couldn't back down and lose face in front of all those other warriors, so I had to agree.
It was a gut-churning climb; but we made it and Alexander got his victory.
It taught me a lesson. You had to be careful around Alexander. He could be a cunning schemer at times.
The recollection of that dreadful climb made me shift uncomfortably on my bench. I could sense trouble in this tent full of Persians, and it was looking for me.
"Slioch," Alexander called louder.
Don't know why my clan called me that. It meant spear in my language, and I couldn't throw a spear to save my life. Wasn't bad with a sword though. In fact I was probably Alexander's best swordsman.
My mind was racing in a hundred different directions, trying to guess what Alexander was trying to achieve by making me the focus of the lull in the feasting.
I raised my cup of ale in his direction and called in the best subservient voice I could muster, "My Lord!"
Alexander leaned slightly towards Bessus, the chief Persian envoy and sighed in a low voice. "Britons! If they didn't drink so much and fight one another, they'd rule the world."
All the time he never took his eyes off me. He smiled at me, as you would at a small child that you were indulging.
"The great King Darius has sent his envoy Bessus to us." He nodded in Bessus' direction and was rewarded with a nod and a beaming smile from that oily courtier.
Alexander leant slightly towards me. "The noble Bessus tells us that the great King Darius has a million warriors from every corner of the Persian empire stationed on the plain a few days march from here."
Bessus smiled a smug little smile and nodded wisely.
"The noble Bessus tells us that the great King Darius is prepared to offer us terms to surrender." There was a stirring amongst the assembled Greeks and a low murmuring of discontent around the room. The Persian envoys sat taller in their seats and puffed their chests out.
Alexander help up his hand to still the noise. "We have heard many different opinions from our warriors, but we have not yet heard yours, Slioch. What say you to surrendering?"
My mind was racing. Alexander was asking me because he wanted a particular answer. But what?
I searched his face for a clue but he was his usual inscrutable self.
I scowled and scratched my chin. I probably looked like one of Aristotle's young boys trying to work out some insoluble and pointless algebra problem.
I was desperately trying to work out what to say but I had no idea what answer he was after. I decided to go for the dim Briton.
"Persians?" I queried, trying to sound as thick as a plank. "Are them the ones with pointy heads?"
Pandemonium erupted. Alexander roared his head off with laughter. The Persian envoys jumped to their feet, pulling ceremonial daggers from within their robes. The Greeks near them rose too and blocked their path to me. I was glad I wasn't important enough to be further up the table near them or I'd have been dead by now.
Alexander quickly rose and placed a restraining hand on Bessus' sleeve. The other Persian envoys hesitated, baulked as they were by muscular, war hardened Greeks, veterans of ten years marching and fighting. Bessus turned to face Alexander, hesitating at what was to come next. He clutched his dagger, nervously squeezing his grip on its ornate handle. Alexander smiled. He looked at Bessus and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Bessus seemed to momentarily relax.
"No, Slioch," Alexander replied in the tone of a parent trying to explain something terribly simple to a rather stupid small child. "The ones with pointy heads are Bactrians." Suppressed laughter from the Persians broke out.
Alexander was a cute one. He knew the Persians thought the Bactrians were just a bunch of heathen peasants. Bit like us with the Picts, I suppose. They were our neighbours, but we still hated them.
"Ah," I answered, sounding like a completely baffled idiot who just had the secrets of the universe explained to him and needed to pretend that he understood it when really it meant nothing to him.
The Persians seemed placated by Alexander's humour and were slowly sheathing their daggers. It seemed the danger had passed.
But Alexander wasn't done yet.
I obviously hadn't given him what he wanted so he started on me again.
"So now you know the difference between Bactrians and our noble guests, the Persians." He paused, turned to Bessus and smiled before continuing. "What say you to fighting so many men, Slioch?"
I still hadn't got the faintest idea what he wanted me to say. I tried staring at him, but even after fifteen or so summers of being close to him, I still couldn't work out what went on inside his head.
"They'll need more men."
I don't know why I said it. It was just the first thing that came into my head. I didn't even know what a million was, but it sounded a lot and I wasn't going to let some greasy, perfumed and powdered courtier tell me to surrender. I hadn't walked gods knew how many miles, starved, been frozen, been fried alive and had to fight every step of the way for it all to come to some inglorious end on a dusty plain in the middle of nowhere.
The reaction in the room was even stronger than last time. The Greeks were raising their drinking horns, loudly cheering me and laughing at their Persian guests.
The Persians were on their feet again and were watching Bessus and Alexander to take their cue. By now I worked out that the Persians were chickens and had no intention of fighting – it was all just for show.
Bessus looked angrily at Alexander. He sensed Alexander was making a fool of him, but he wasn't sure. I might just have been a dim, drunken Briton. He'd never met one before, but he'd heard that the stories about our drinking and fighting and that we weren't too civilised.
Alexander shrugged his shoulders and raised the palm of his hand to the ceiling in a gesture of despair.
"You see, noble Bessus, what I have to deal with. There is no slaking their blood lust. Battle it will be."
There was a chill in the air next morning. You could smell the coming winter in the cool air. The snows would not be long in coming and we were far from our warm home fires.
Gaugamela.
That was what the locals called the poor excuse for a village nearby. There'd been nothing worth stealing there last night after the feast and my mood hadn't improved any. I missed Anahita. I missed her girlish giggle, her playful eyes and the way she tossed her long dark hair when she laughed.
"Slioch!" Hector hailed me.
I turned around to the direction of his voice.
Hector. I had fought with him for five summers. Tall, lean and handsome – he could have passed for an Olympian God and was damned good in a fight.
And we were going to have a fight today.
The horizon was black as far as you could see with Persians, Medes, Bactrians and soldiers from parts of the Persian empire I'd never heard of. They were blocking our way to Persepolis and we needed to get there before the winter snows came or we would all starve to death. Or freeze to death. Or both.
I still didn't know what a million was, but if I was looking at it, then I had been right. It was a lot.
"Rider!" Hector was pointing towards an approaching horseman.
I liked fighting alongside Hector. He was good company between battles. The women in the villages and towns we passed through flung themselves at him. What they didn't know was he liked boys.
Worked fine for me, though. I was always around to pick up his hand me downs. Sometimes after convincing some young girl that I'd put a good word in for her with Hector, I wondered if I'd been around Alexander too long. I was getting to be devious and manipulative like him.
Still, best not to think about these things too much. Better to just enjoy ourselves, have a drink and march down the road the next morning, following Alexander to the next horizon.
The rider skilfully reined in his mount just in front of Hector and me. He was a fresh faced youth, his new armour glinting brightly in the sun.
A Companion. Straight out of the training academy, I would reckon.
"My Lord Alexander commands you to move your men to the right to that small rise," he said, trying to put some authority into his young voice. He pointed over the top of the heads of Hector and me.
I turned slowly to follow the direction of his arm and I did so I cast my eyes over the soldiers I'd been told by Alexander to lead.
Peletons! He'd given me stone throwers! And he'd put me on the far right of his line. Parmenion was holding the left of the line in a strongly defended position. Me? I was at the exposed end of a weakened line.
First place those Persian chariots were going to aim for.
And all we could do was throw stones at them whilst they mowed us down.
I must have really made him mad at the feast.
Peletons!
The only men who ended up in the Peletons were the ones who were useless with a spear or a sword. At home, only the women and the cripples chucked stones.
Companions! Why couldn't I be swaggering about in shiny armour?
If I was ever going to get anywhere in this army I was going to have to start liking boys. Well, that and learn to ride.
I squinted into early morning light. I could see two small rises in the land about a hundred paces away.
"Which one?" I asked without turning around to face the preening Companion. He annoyed me.
He shifted in his saddle and followed my gaze.
I turned and looked up at him. He seemed uncertain.
"Well?" I asked.
He bit his lip. From where he'd been with Alexander, they could only see one. He hesitated. He didn't want to seem uncertain before this battle hardened warrior. He ought to go back to Alexander to ask him.
He glanced over his shoulder, back towards where Alexander was with the Companions. They were too far away to quickly ride over and seek clarification.
He waved vaguely at both pieces of rising round. "That one!" he shouted as he spun the horse around and galloped away, dust flying from its hooves.
I looked at Hector. He looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.
"Right! Up you get!" I shouted at the peletons resting on the ground near me. "We're moving!"
The Companion messenger was galloping to another part of the battlefield with a message for another commander. From a distance, Alexander saw us moving.
"Where is that stupid Briton going?" he exclaimed angrily. Battle was not far away and he wanted all his troops in the right positions.
"Quick!" he shouted as he dug his heels into the flanks of his beloved steed. "Follow me!"
Alexander and his Companions rode across the face of the Greek line. They eventually reached me and Hector and the peletons.
Alexander brought his horse to an abrupt stop next to me.
"Where are you going?" he exclaimed angrily.
I thought about giving him some clever reply, but I was distracted by some movement in the Persian lines opposite us. Here come those damned chariots I thought.
Alexander could see in my face that something wasn't quite right. He spun in his saddle and saw what I was staring at.
The Persian cavalry had followed Alexander's Companions parallel along the battle lines, fearing some cunning ploy by the man they called the Horned One. Because we'd gone to the wrong rise in the ground, we'd bent the line. The Persians had followed and had swung away from their line.
Now there was a gap in their line, almost like a door hinging as the cavalry swung to face us.
Alexander saw the opportunity.
He wheeled his horse around to face the Persians and aimed straight at the gap.
"Companions!" he roared. "Follow me!"
He charged off, dust and stones kicked up by the flashing hooves of the mighty Bucephalus.
He looked over his shoulder. "Slioch!" he shouted at the top of his voice. "Follow us! Give us support!"
I turned to my men.
"You heard him. Follow me! Charge!"
I don't remember much of the day after that. Off we charged into the dust kicked up by the stampeding Companions' horses. After a breathless race across the open ground, ever watchful for those fearsome chariots, out of the dust loomed the Persian hordes.
They were already in disarray from the ferocity of the impact from the Companions' charge. We rained rocks down on them from the dust cloud. They wavered, and then broke.
Alexander made a bee-line for the great King Darius. We followed and fell on the fleeing Persians.
There might have been a million of them, but in the massacre that followed, I only met three that could actually fight.
I like a fight as much as the next man, but even I got sickened by the slaughter. My sword arm ached from the butchery by the end of the day.
When the fighting was done and we were pursuing the Persian rearguard, we stumbled on the baggage train. I found a magnificent helmet which I appropriated. It could go towards my retirement fund. I was going to retire to Babylon when we found the edge of the world. Babylon! A man could die happy there!
End of the world? That reminded me, when I got back to Greece, I was going to find Aristotle and bash his head in. From what I'd seen of the world, most of what Aristotle taught was lies.
The closest we'd got to the edge of the world was some filthy little village in Anatolia. Alexander had dragged me there to see some rickety old farm cart that was held together by a bit of rope. It was cold, wet and there was no food. Alexander tried to undo the rope, but couldn't, so hacked it to bits with his sword in a fit of rage. He said that meant he was going to be king of the world. Couldn't see the point, personally.
Next morning I was walking across our camp, making towards the tents of captured Persian royals. I was hoping to find Anahita. She might need rescuing or consoling or something.
I was thinking about her sweet little body when I came up behind Alexander. He was talking to that oily historian Callisthenes.
He and I didn't get on.
A long time ago, at the start of our campaigns, I'd caught him with his hands all over a little slave girl. Hardly more than a child she was, and she was sobbing uncontrollably.
So I smacked him in the face and bust his nose.
Alexander made me give the girl back to Callisthenes. He then, ever so sweetly, told Callisthenes that he thought he deserved a reward for saving his life from the mad barbarian Briton. "How about giving me the girl?" he asked ever so sweetly.
Callisthenes gawped at him, but couldn't say 'no' to the king.
Alexander had turned to Hephaistion and borrowed a big handful of gold coins from him. He then poured them into the girl's hands and told her she was free to go wherever she wanted.
For an awful minute, she looked at me like she was going to come to me. Then she turned tail and fled with her double-handful of coins.
That was a long time ago. Callisthenes had never forgiven me.
"Slioch, you barbarian," he'd said to me, "you will never be mentioned in the history of Alexander. No matter what you do, men shall not read of your exploits. I shall expunge you totally."
Like I gave a damn. Nobody back home even knew what a history was, never mind read one. That's the trouble with historians – full of their own self-importance.
Alexander and Callisthenes were unaware of my presence.
"So you see, Callisthenes," Alexander explained enthusiastically to the historian as I came up. "I knew that the Persians couldn't be beaten in a head on fight by our small force, so I came up with a strategy to open up their line. I knew that they'd follow my every move, and so I created an opening. Let me explain it again…"
Callisthenes nodded in agreement and scribbled frantically on a piece of parchment.
You'd got to hand it to Alexander. He was very clever.