Parallel Fates Book Two: Alexander's Shadow

Chapter 2: Battle

The smoke of Issus still clings to my nostrils. Not the sweet, cloying fumes of incense burning on the altars of Persian temples, but the acrid, suffocating reek of blazing cedar and human flesh, settling on the tongue of my new body with the metallic tang of blood. This was no mere defeat. It was a critical flaw in the architecture of Darius's empire.

On that day, in the autumn of 333 BC, I did not simply crush the army of Darius. I broke the spine of his empire. But the victory would not have been so complete, so devastating, were it not for him — Craterus. Craterus commanded the taxeis — the heavy infantry phalanx regiment. His men were locked in a death-grip with Darius's Greek mercenaries, taking the brunt of the impact on their sarissas and holding the center while my wedge drove for the royal chariot.

I see him even now, standing on the hill overlooking the field strewn with bodies. He is immense. Not merely tall, but immense, like a monolith hewn from Macedonian granite. His armor is dented, splattered with mud and something dark that is better left unexamined.

That day at Issus, his taxeis held the center against Darius's Greek mercenaries. That steel fist which had once shattered the formation of the Immortals. I remember the moment when everything hung by a thread. It seemed that in another instant, they would crush us. I turned and saw him. He was not praying to the gods, nor was he looking at me, awaiting an order. He was simply redeploying his men. There is something primordial, simple about him. Sometimes I think of that strange comparison to the Apostle Andrew, whispered to me by the memory of PrometheusChat. "The First-Called"... Yes, Craterus had been with me since the days of Philip; he is one of the pillars of the old world. Simplicity... Andrew was a fisherman, a man of the people. Craterus is closer to the soldiers than to us, the royal entourage. He is the flesh and blood of this land and this army, a man accustomed to pulling an insurmountable net against the current.

And this thought of martyrdom... It troubles me. Andrew died on a cross in distant lands.

But Craterus... I feel a chill run down my spine at the simulation of this outcome. He will not die from a barbarian's arrow on the field of a great battle for the unification of the world. A more terrible and senseless fate awaits him — in the fratricidal war of the Diadochi, fighting against those who were his brothers-in-arms just yesterday.

But that will be later. And now there is only the smoke over Issus and the giant figure of Craterus on the hill. He turns to face me.

— My King.

His voice is hoarse with dust and smoke. There is no flattery in this word. Only a statement of fact and a readiness to carry out the next order.

I nod back at him.

Issus was a triumph, but triumph is but a fleeting instant. Silence follows it, a silence in which a new order is born. In this silence, in the tent reeking of sweat and cedar, I see him. Perdicca. He does not enter; he seems to materialize from the shadow cast by the campaign table with its maps.

He is not like Craterus. In Craterus there is the raw strength of the earth; in Perdicca — the cold hardness of granite. A high brow, bisected by a wrinkle that seems to have been there forever. His gaze is direct, not heavy like Craterus's, but piercing. He looks not at you, but through you, assessing your utility for the cause. His lips are always tightly pressed together — the habit of a man who does not waste words on what can be done.

His armor is immaculate. It does not gleam ostentatiously like the Persians', but is polished to a dull, noble sheen. That is Perdicca all over: functionality and order. No luxury. He is a soldier to the marrow of his bones, but a soldier of a particular kind. Not one who hews in the front ranks — though he knows how to — but one who sees the entire board. A strategist.

Thoughts of him always stir a strange feeling in me. He is my mind. If Hephaestion is my heart, and Craterus is my sword and shield, then Perdicca is the army's brain. He cannot abide idle chatter. His speech is short and to the point. He keeps his distance even with the "Friends of the King". In his presence, familiarity is out of place.

I know his primary motivation. It is not merely loyalty to me. It is faith in the empire. He sees himself not as a conqueror, but as a guardian. A man who must clothe the chaos of our victories in the strict forms of law and order. He considers it his duty.

He does not know how to be "one of us". He will always be "the commander". Distant and severe.

— My King? — his voice tears me away from dark visions. There is no question in it. It is a statement of the fact that he awaits orders for the embodiment of the new order.

I look at him — at this living stone of my empire — and understand: it is to him that I can entrust what I would entrust to no one else.

The noise of the camp subsides. Perdicca has left, leaving behind the scent of leather and cold calculation. His place is taken by another. Eumenes. He does not materialize from the shadow; he seems to seep through the tent flap without disturbing it.

There is nothing of Craterus's brute power or Perdicca's severe bearing about him. He is their antithesis. His movements are precise, economical, like those of a man who knows the price of every gesture. His gaze is not piercing, but scrutinizing, penetrating. One reads not the strength of muscles in it, but the sharpness of mind. He is often called the "Greek scribe". In the mouths of Macedonian warriors, it sounds like mockery, an insinuation that he rose not through blood and valour, but through ink and papyrus.

And there is a grain of truth in this. He was my secretary. But this position taught him to see what generals do not see. He sees not just the battlefield, but the entire picture: logistics, supply, the mood of the troops, intrigues at court. He is the only one who can govern the empire not only with a sword, but with a pen.

His strength lies in the word. He knows how to be charming. His speech is eloquent and persuasive. But behind this softness lies an iron will. He is an outsider. The Macedonian nobility despises him for his origins, the soldiers do not trust him. This has made him extremely lonely and suspicious. He has no friends among the Diadochi.

Eumenes trusts no one at their word. He checks everything himself, calculating moves in advance, because for him, the price of error is death.

I feel the cold of the future. A martyr's fate awaits him. Not from an enemy's arrow in a glorious battle, but at the hands of his own soldiers. They will hand him over to Antigonus Monophthalmus.

— My King, — his voice is calm and even, devoid of Craterus's familiarity and Perdicca's cold formality. In it lies readiness for work. For the complex, painstaking work of holding onto what we have conquered. I look at him — at this clever outsider — and understand: it is he who will become the one to fight for my memory when I am gone.

And then comes the dawn...

The air smelled of dust, horse sweat, and scorching iron. Here, in the narrow valley between the sea and the mountains, the world narrowed to a single point — to Darius's golden chariot. I saw him. Not as a man, squinting against the sun, but as a system scanning the battlefield. An enormous, unwieldy contraption, surrounded by a living shield of Immortals. An ideal target. The narrow front deprived Darius of his main trump card — numerical superiority. This was not a battle, but a system error that we were ready to exploit. The trumpets roared, and the world turned into chaos. The clatter of shields, merging into one prolonged groan, the neighing of horses, turned into the ultrasound of terror.

To my right, where the phalanx met the most furious onslaught of the Persian infantry, was Craterus. He did not shout. His voice, hoarse with dust and rage, would have been inaudible in this hell. This hell had its own, deafening language.

The air vibrated with a low, guttural hum — the sound of thousands of sandals pounding the dry earth. Woven into this hum was a dry, rattling clatter: the spearheads uselessly beating against the shields. But when steel found its mark, the sound changed. It became wet, squelching, with the crunch of breaking bones. And above all this chaos stood a ringing — a pure, furious clash of metal on metal. This was not the melodious ring of a forge, but a grinding, screeching, clanging that set one's teeth on edge.

And through this cacophony, other sounds pierced: the abrupt, rasping commands in Macedonian and — most dreadful — the screams. The high, piercing wails of wounded Persians and the dull, bestial moans of dying Macedonians.

In this sonic hell, Craterus was an island of absolute silence and concentration. He simply was. His presence was felt physically, like the pressure of a stone monolith. His enormous shield, dented and hacked by spear blows, was not just protection. It was a wall against which the waves of enemies broke. I saw how the sarissa in his hands turned into a blur. He did not make graceful thrusts like a fencer. He worked like a blacksmith.

Clack! — a short, powerful shove of the shield against the enemy's shield — and the Persian line loses its balance for an instant.

Thwack! — a thrust with the sarissa — and the tip, piercing the leather armor, emerges from the Persian's back with a wet, squelching sound.

Here, on the right flank, two different worlds collided.

The Persian attack was chaos. It was a living, screaming mass in motley clothes. They surged like a wave — disorderly, furious, but devoid of a unified rhythm. Their cries were hysterical, their strikes — scattered. It was a chaos of colour and sound.

And facing them stood a wall of polished bronze and wood. Our phalanx was a mechanism. A deadly, perfectly calibrated mechanism. The Macedonians' movements were measured to the inch. The impact of shield against shield — a single, unified sound that made the earth tremble. It was a rhythm. The rhythm of death.

Craterus was the heart of this mechanism. There was no haste in his movements. Only measured, economical fury. The soldiers in the ranks behind him saw his broad back, slick with sweat and blood, and understood: as long as this granite cliff stood, as long as his shield did not falter, they would not retreat a single step. He was a shield in the most literal sense — a living bastion holding the entire right flank. There was no haste in his movements. Only measured, economical fury. He was not just a warrior — he was the physical embodiment of the Macedonian spirit. A short, powerful shove with his shield — and the enemy shield-bearer is thrown back, knocking down those following him.

A standard-bearer fell nearby, pierced by an arrow. The standard began to tilt towards the ground. For an instant, horror flashed in the eyes of the nearest phalangites — a breach!

But Craterus, without even turning, stepped aside. His left hand darted forward and seized the shaft. He simply drove it into the ground beside him, restoring the formation and fighting spirit with a single motion. There was more strength in this gesture than in a thousand speeches.

The enemy infantry pressed on. There were more of them. Far more. But they crashed against the Macedonian formation like frenzied sea waves against a rocky shore. And in the center of this surf stood Craterus — motionless, invincible.

Perdicca, also commanding his own taxeis of the Macedonian phalanx, was delivering the decisive blow to the Persian center at the head of his Paeonian cavalry. Where our line sagged under the battering ram of Persian chariots, I saw not just a battle. I saw Perdicca's work. It was not the chaos of a melee, but a cruel, precise geometry. If Craterus was a shield, then Perdicca was a surgeon's scalpel, excising the affected tissue.

Here, the sounds were different. There was no continuous clatter of the phalanx. The air was sliced by a whistle — arrows and javelins flew, with which the Persians tried to soften our defense before the assault. But the most dreadful sound was a dull, growing rumble. It was not a thunderstorm. It was an avalanche.

From the dusty haze, Darius's chariots bore down upon us. Heavy wheels, shod with iron, clods of dry earth flying from them, and their axles creaked as if Death itself were complaining about its work. The horses, maddened by the noise and the smell of blood, tore at their harnesses. The charioteers, standing at their full height, were no longer shouting — they were howling like wolves.

It was a chaos of pure kinetic energy. A deadly, uncontrollable battering ram that was meant to pierce our formation like a knife through butter. They were not charging in formation, but as a scattered, roaring mass, counting on a single, solitary strike.

And at that moment, I saw the difference. I saw Perdicca. He was not standing in the front line. He was behind it. His face was absolutely calm. While everything around him was crumbling and screaming, he was the center of cold silence. His eyes did not dart about in panic. They were counting. Counting the distance. Counting the speed.

He did not shout "Hold the line!" That would have been useless. Fear is a poor architect. He gave orders in short, chopped phrases, which were immediately passed down the chain of sarissophoroi.

— Lock shields!

— Pikes — at an angle!

— Let them through!

And the formation obeyed. It was a miracle of discipline. Faced with death bearing down upon them, the Macedonians did not flinch. The first rank dropped to one knee, bracing their sarissasagainst the ground and pointing the tips up at an angle. The second and third ranks did the same, creating a solid palisade of spears.

The chariots struck this palisade.

The effect was horrifying and... useless for the Persians. Horses at full gallop crashed into the spears. A sickening crunch of breaking bones and neighing, turning into a death rattle, resounded. Chariots collided with one another or with the sarissas, turning into a heap of splintered wood and dead flesh.

It was not a battle. It was annihilation.

Perdicca did not merely stop them by force. He broke their momentum with his mind. He made the formation part where a single wagon needed to be let through into the void behind our ranks, and then close up again behind it, cutting the charioteer off from the main forces.

He was the architect of this victory on his sector. While Craterus held the shield with brute force, Perdicca built victory from calculation and cold fury.

And somewhere in the thick of this hell was Eumenes. You would not see him in a melee, nor find him in the center of a heroic clash. He was not a hammer, nor a shield. He was the nervous system of that enormous, roaring beast that was our army. He was what made Craterus's muscles and Perdicca's mind work in unison.

His tent, standing just behind the main line, was an island of frightening calm. There was no smell of blood here. It smelled of sealing wax, of the sweat of slave-scribes, and of the dry clay of tablets. The only sound piercing through the battle's roar was the scratch of reed pens on papyrus and a sharp, dry thud — Eumenes, without looking, stamping his seal on an order.

Messengers darted around him like shadows. Dirty, out of breath, their faces covered in a layer of dust mixed with sweat. They were the blood vessels through which orders flowed from the brain to the limbs.

— To Craterus! — Eumenes's voice was quiet, but it cut the ear no worse than the grinding of metal. — Tell him: hold the line at any cost. Let him not attempt a counterattack. His task is to stand.

The messenger, a mere boy, merely nodded and vanished as if he had never been there.

— To Perdicca! — a new order flew after the first. — Let him let the second line of chariots through to our right flank. I am sending a detachment of light infantry with javelins there. Let them engage them in combat and finish off the charioteers.

Eumenes did not see the entire battlefield with his own eyes. He saw it on the map spread across the table. He heard it in the dispatches. For him, the battle was not a chaos of screams and the clanging of steel, but a complex puzzle that needed to be solved in real time.

He took a tablet, quickly scribbled a few marks on it, and passed it to the next messenger.

— To King Alexander! — his gaze sharpened for an instant. — Darius is beginning to redeploy his cavalry on the left flank. It seems he is preparing a counter-strike against the center.

This was information. Pure, unbiased information. Not panic, not flattery, but simply a fact. This was his strength. In a world where everyone was blinded by rage or fear, Eumenes remained cold and calculating.

He was an outsider to the Macedonian proud ones. They considered him a "Greek scribe". But it was this "scribe" who was now conducting the symphony of war. Without his quiet voice, without his quick fingers breaking the seal, Craterus's army would have been merely a wall without support, and Perdicca's tactics — a useless plan on parchment.

He was the glue that kept us from falling apart into thousands of soldiers fighting for themselves.