Alexander (Vol. 2) (47 page)

The flagship reached the platform under a rain of projectiles thrown from the heights of the walls. Alexander jumped from the gunwale, followed by his companions, and they all entered the tower, rushing up the stairs between each floor in an inferno of dust and shouting, in the deafening din of the battering-rams crashing into the walls, in the strident, continuous, rhythmic calling of the men as they kept time with the swing of the wood.

Suddenly he appeared at the very top just as the sky, black as pitch now, was torn asunder by a dazzling flash of lightning. For an instant the spectral pallor of the crucified envoys was illuminated, together with Alexander’s golden armour and the vermilion splash of his standard.

A bridge was lowered on to the battlement and the King, followed by his companions, set off on his attack, flanked by Leonnatus, who was armed with an axe, Hephaestion, his sword unsheathed, Perdiccas, bearing a long spear, and Ptolemy and Craterus, resplendent in shining metal. The King was immediately recognizable because of his own dazzling armour, the white crests on his helmet, the red and gold standard, and the archers and all the other defenders of Tyre tried to pick him out. One of the assault team, a Lyncestian by the name of Admetus, threw himself forwards, anxious to display his courage before the King, and was cut down, but Alexander took his place immediately, wielding his sword left and right and crushing enemy soldiers with blows from his shield, while Leonnatus cleared the way on his right flank with the devastating force of his cleaver.

The King was already on the battlements and threw a Tyrian to the sea below while he cut another one open from the chin to the groin and proceeded to throw a third one down on the other side, to the houses below. Perdiccas ran a fourth one through with his spear, lifted him up like a harpooned fish and threw him into a group of his fellow soldiers as they approached. Alexander shouted ever louder now, dragging the torrent of his own soldiers behind him, and his fury reached its climax, almost as though it were fed by the rumble of the thunderclaps that shook both sky and earth from the celestial heights to the infernal abyss. He advanced along the battlement, unstoppable now, running now, heedless of the rain of arrows and iron bolts launched by the catapults. He ran towards Leonidas’s crucifix, not far from him as he charged on. The defenders lined up to push him back, but he knocked them aside as though they were puppets, one after another. Leonnatus, with his immeasurable energy, struck out blindly in the ruck with his axe, causing sparks to fly from the Tyrian shields and helmets, shattering swords and spears into fragments.

Finally the King found himself under the cross where a catapult had been positioned with its crew. He shouted:

‘Take control of this catapult and use it against the others! Get this man off that cross! Get him down!’ And while his companions took control of the small square, he himself spotted a box of tools next to the catapult and grabbed a pair of pincers, leaving his shield to crash to the ground.

An enemy archer took aim at that precise moment from just twenty feet away and pulled his string tight, but then a voice rang out in the King’s ear – it was his mother’s voice, full of anguish, calling out to him:
‘Alexandre!’
And, miraculously, the King spotted the danger. In a flash he pulled his dagger from his belt and threw it at the archer, planting it firmly into the man’s throat, into the hollow between his collarbones.

His companions formed a wall with their shields and he extracted the nails, one by one, from the tortured limbs of his teacher. At that moment he saw before his eyes the naked limbs of another old man one bright afternoon at Corinth – Diogenes, the wise man with peace in his eyes, and his soul melted in his heart. He murmured,
‘Didáskale
. . .’ and somehow Leonidas heard the word and his vital force, all gone now, returned for an instant, just long enough for him to move slightly and open his eyes.

‘My boy, I am afraid I did not manage . . .’ Then he collapsed, truly dead now, in Alexander’s arms.

Suddenly the sky was rent open above the city and the sea, the earth and the small island full of shouting and blood, were all flooded by the torrential rain, by a tempest of wind and hail. But the elements could do nothing to extinguish the fury of the warriors. Outside the harbours, in the raging, foaming waves, the Tyrian fleet was engaged in a desperate battle with Nearchus’s powerful quinqueremes. In the city the defenders retreated from house to house, road to road, fighting on their very thresholds to the bitter end.

Some time towards evening the sun created an opening in the clouds, illuminating the dark waters, the crumbling walls, the carcasses of the ships drifting off to sea, the bodies of the drowned. The last pockets of resistance were soon quashed.

Many of the survivors sought refuge in the sanctuaries, embracing images of their gods, and the King gave orders for these people to be spared. But it was impossible to control the soldiers’ thirst for revenge against the Tyrians they captured on the streets.

Two thousand of them were crucified along the causeway. Leonidas’s body was burned on a pyre and his ashes sent to Macedon where they were buried beneath the plane tree. It was in the shade of that tree that he used to teach his pupils, when the weather was fine.

A
LEXANDER GAVE ORDERS
for the fleet to proceed southwards and to take the disassembled war engines to Gaza, the last stronghold before the desert which separated Palestine from Egypt.

Ten ships were sent to Macedonia to enlist new men as replacements for those who had fallen in taking Tyre. It was in this period that the King received a second letter from King Darius:

Alexander had it read to his war council and at the end asked, ‘What do you think? How should I reply?’

No one dared suggest to the King what he should do and no one spoke, apart from Parmenion, who, because of his age and his prestige, felt he had the right to express his point of view. All he said was, ‘I would accept, if I were Alexander.’

The King lowered his head as though wanting to reflect on that statement and then replied, coldly, ‘So would I, if I were Parmenion.’

The old general stared at him in pained surprise; it was clear he was profoundly offended. He stood and walked away in silence. Alexander’s companions looked at one another dumbfounded, but the King simply continued, his tone composed and calm.

‘Of course, General Parmenion’s point of view is understandable, but I imagine you all realize that Darius is in fact offering me nothing, apart from his daughter, which I have not already conquered. On the contrary, he asks me implicitly to relinquish all of the provinces and all of the cities east of the Halys which have cost us so much. We will go on ahead. We will take Gaza and then Egypt – the oldest and richest country in the entire world.’

So he replied to the Great King with a curt rejection and set off marching along the coast, while the fleet, led by Nearchus and Hephaestion, proceeded in convoy.

Gaza was a well-appointed fortress, but its walls were of brick and it stood on a clayey hill some fifteen stadia from the sea. The commander of the stronghold was a black eunuch by the name of Batis, very brave and loyal to King Darius – he refused to surrender.

Alexander therefore decided to attack and rode round the walls to see where he might be able to dig pits and where the engines might best attack the bastions. Both of these matters were complicated by the sandy ground which surrounded almost the entire hill.

As he was thinking, a crow passed overhead and let a tuft of grass it was carrying in its claws fall on to his head. The bird continued on towards Gaza, where it perched and soon found itself stuck in the bitumen which had been used to cover the walls and which had melted in the heat of the sun.

Alexander was struck by this scene and asked Aristander, who now followed him everywhere like a shadow, ‘What does all this mean? Is it an omen from the gods?’

The seer lifted his gaze towards the burning disc of the sun and then looked with his pinpoint eyes at the crow struggling with its wings stuck in the glue-like bitumen. The bird gave another tug and finally managed to free itself, ripping out some feathers and leaving them trapped on the walls.

‘You will take Gaza, but if you do it today, you will be wounded.’

Alexander decided to fight anyway, so that his army would not think that he was afraid of an omen of pain, and while his teams of miners set to digging tunnels under the walls to bring them down, he led a frontal attack on the city along the ramp that rose up to the city.

Batis, counting on his favourable position, came out with the army and counterattacked violently, lining up his Persian soldiers together with ten thousand Arab and Ethiopian mercenaries, men with black skin whom Alexander’s soldiers had never seen before.

Even though his old wound from Issus still caused him some pain, the King took his place in the front line with his foot-soldiers and sought a direct clash with Batis, a black giant gleaming with sweat as he valiantly led his Ethiopians.

‘By the gods!’ shouted Perdiccas. ‘That man has certainly got balls, even if he has been castrated!’

Alexander used his sword to mow down the enemy soldiers who challenged him, but then a catapult crew at the top of a tower spotted his red standard, the crests of his helmet and his shining armour and took aim.

Far off, up in another tower, in the palace at Pella, Olympias felt the mortal danger and sought desperately to cry out:
‘Alexandre!’
But her voice would not carry through the ether, blocked as it was by a bad omen, and the bolt was let loose from the catapult. It hissed through the stagnant air and hit its mark, passing through Alexander’s shield and his breastplate and planting itself in his shoulder. The King fell to the ground and a group of enemy soldiers rushed to finish him off and strip him of his weapons, but Perdiccas, Craterus and Leonnatus drove them all back with their shields and ran many of them through with their spears.

The King, twisting in pain, cried out, ‘Call Philip!’

The physician came immediately. ‘Quick! Out of the way! Out of my way!’ and two bearers put the King on a stretcher and swiftly carried him from the battle.

Many saw him mortally pale with the heavy bolt protruding from his shoulder and so the rumour spread that the King was dead and the army began to waver against the enemy attack.

Alexander realized what was happening from the shouts and cries that reached his ears: he took Philip’s hand – his physician was running alongside him – and said, ‘I have to return to the front line – pull out the bolt and cauterize the wound.’

‘But that won’t be enough!’ exclaimed the doctor. ‘Sire! If you go back down there you will die.’

‘No. I have already been wounded. The first part of the omen has come true. The second part remains to be fulfilled – I will enter Gaza before sunset.’

They were at the royal tent now and Alexander repeated, ‘Extract the bolt now. That is an order.’

Philip obeyed, and while the King bit the leather of his belt to stifle his cries, the physician cut his shoulder with a surgical instrument and extracted the point of the bolt. The blood flowed copiously from the wound, but Philip immediately took a red-hot blade from a brazier and plunged it into the cut. The tent filled with a nauseating smell of burning flesh and the King let out a long moan of pain.

‘Sew it up,’ he said through his clenched teeth.

The doctor sewed, stemmed the flow of blood, and applied a tight bandage.

‘And now put my armour back on.’

‘Sire, I beg you . . .’ Philip tried to make him see reason.

‘Put my armour back on!’

The men obeyed and Alexander returned to the battlefield where his army, disheartened now, was losing ground to the enemy thrust. This despite the fact that Parmenion had called out another two battalions of the phalanx in support.

‘The King is alive!’ shouted Leonnatus in his thunderous voice. ‘The King lives!
Alalalài!
’

‘
Alalalài!
’ replied the soldiers and they started fighting again with renewed vigour.

Alexander again took up his position in the front line, despite the fierce pain, and he pulled the rest of the army with him, amazed as they were by his sudden reappearance, as if they were being led not by a human being, but by some invincible and invulnerable god.