God of War: The Epic Story of Alexander the Great by Christian Cameron Page A

well enough. And he really loved them – he didn’t murder his mother, and that alone speaks volumes.
    Don’t look shocked, boy. We’re talking Macedon.
    But he was determined to be like a god – to be a god if ever he could be. To be a better man than his father, and his father was a colossus who bestrode the earth and made the mighty – Persia, Athens – tremble like small boys in a thunderstorm.
    Your father was a great man in a different mould – but you have to measure up to him, don’t you? Aye. And all around you are relatives, tutors, officers – men and women who knew him. You must see the judgement in their eyes.
    Good. Point made.
    Philip had a bad wound, but he was far from dead. In fact, he never gave up the reins of power. He was lying in a litter, dictating the restructuring of the magazines from Pella to the Thracian borderlands so that his counter-strike would land faster and better supplied.
    He looked up and caught my eye first. He was as white as a new-washed linen chiton, and his lips were pale, and his eyes had sunk into his head like those of a corpse – but he grinned.
    ‘Son of Lagus,’ he said. ‘You look ready for war.’
    ‘We heard you were dead, lord!’ I dismounted. The other pages dismounted behind me.
    ‘Not yet. Where is my son?’ Philip looked past me, and I saw him as he caught sight of Alexander, the only young man still mounted. He had his Boeotian helmet off, and the golden hair on either side of his forehead had made itself into ram’s horns, as it always did if he didn’t wash it for a few days. He looked like a god.
    Philip’s face lit up – blood came to his cheeks. His smile – I hoped that my father smiled like that, some day, when he saw me. ‘Ahh,’ Philip said.
    Alexander turned and saw his father’s litter and slid off his horse with his usual elegance. He bowed. ‘Pater,’ he said. Voice clipped, too controlled.
    ‘I’m not dead yet, boy,’ Philip said. Meant as humour. But delivered too deadpan.
    ‘My apologies, then,’ Alexander shot back. ‘I shall return to my studies.’
    ‘No – stay.’ The wounded man shifted. ‘They nearly cut my balls off, lad.’ Another try at humour.
    Alexander managed a half-smile. ‘That would hurt you worse than many another blow, Pater,’ he said.
    Philip laughed, slapped his leg and roared in pain.
    I left them to it, gathered the pages and joined them to the column.
    In fact, we never went back to the schoolroom. But it will take a long digression to explain how we ended up where we did, and you will have to be patient, because when you are young, life is an endless succession of elders forcing you to learn things, eh?
    Throughout my youth, Macedon was at war with Athens. This takes some explaining, because we sent them money and trees for their fleet and they sent us actors and rhetoricians and politicians and goldsmiths. But they had an empire and we wanted it. They were perfidious and evasive and dishonest – and Philip was their match.
    There was no principle involved at all. Just self-interest.
    Athens held most of the Chersonese and all of the best parts of the Bosporus. Athens’ prosperity depended on a free flow of grain from the Euxine – but of course you know all this, you scamp! And that was fine with Philip and Macedon, until Athens started to use all her naval bases in the Chersonese to brew trouble for Macedon. That’s a game that, once started, can’t be stopped. It’s like playing with a girl – you can hold her hand and be in paradise, but once that hand has been on her breast or between her thighs, you can’t go back to holding hands, can you? So it is with nation-states. First they slight each other, and then they foment war through third parties, and then they accidentally sink each other’s ships – brewing more hatred at every action – and they can never go back without a lot of treaties and some reason.
    Athens and Macedon were well matched. Athens was past her prime,