The Golden Mean (22 page)

My fantasy, perhaps, was of a comfortable ride by the prince’s side, discussing Homer and the virtues. In fact I see little of Alexander, who rides now forward, now back, joking with the men, making a show of himself in his fine armour on his fine horse. He is only faintly ridiculous, and maybe only to me. He is leading as he was taught and doing it well. At night he moves from fire to fire, extemporizing speeches of encouragement to make Carolus proud. Men’s faces light up when they see him coming. Mostly when I ride it’s with Antipater, who’s softened a little toward me now that I’ve joined the campaign. We talk politics: borders, taxation, military strategy. (That
is
politics, to a general.) On the fourth day of our journey, scouts report that the main force of the army is encamped in the Cephissus Valley, held there by the Greek forces. The site of the battle, then, will be a place called Chaeronea, a broad plain, almost flat, with a river to the north and hills to the south. Tomorrow, now that we’ve arrived.

“You’ve never done this before, have you?” another medic says to me.

It’s early evening. I’ve helped pitch the tents where we’ll patch the wounded, and seeing the others clean their kits, do the same. Memories of my father are strong now, in the blue quiet of nervous soldiers sitting around their cook fires, not cooking. Drinking. Stars are prickling into view but there’s light enough still. I unroll and reroll some bandages. The other medic’s kit is grubbier, lighter than mine. I bought all new for this and it shows. He’s younger than me and more experienced. He has told me what I’ll need and what to leave packed, the surgical equipment there won’t be time to use.

“No,” I say. “Never seen battle.”

“You’re fucked, yeah?” He picks through my things. “This is nice.”

A new set of knives; I left my father’s at home. I offer him the set.

“No shit?”

I tell him he’ll get it before we leave. That’s a promise.

“Sure.”

He doesn’t seem to care either way. I wonder if he’s been drinking, too. I wonder where to get some. He points to a tent.

Here’s some boisterousness, finally, some night-before bluster. Soldiers line up with their cups and flasks. The wine is bad, thin and sour; you can smell it from the back of the line. I know it won’t be strong enough. My hand shakes when I hold out my father’s flask, and the dispensing soldier has to hold my hand to steady it, a maternal gesture I understand he’s made a thousand times. He’s missing a leg below the knee, and mumbles something when the pouring’s done. Some blessing: I see his lips move over each soldier.

On my way back to the medics’ tents I give the flask away to a boy who watches the horses.

Antipater’s tent is by Philip and Alexander’s, now, under a stand of oaks ringed at all times by the royal bodyguard. I sleep with the medics, in the tent where we’ll treat the wounded tomorrow. I do sleep. The journey down was hard and I’ve never gone so long without privacy. There’s privacy in sleep. I dream of Pythias, Pythias sweet and eager as I have never known her, and wake with an erection. The medics are already moving around me, setting up their stations, and from outside I hear barked commands, the clank of metal arms, the unison stomping of feet, horses’ clop.

“No, no.” The head medic stops me at the tent flap. “You don’t go out there, not now. Too late for that. What are you looking for anyway, breakfast? You think the prince is having breakfast? You think maybe you’re invited?”

He knows who I am; knows me and doesn’t want the responsibility. Fucking dilettantes, eh? “Just to piss,” I say, quiet as Pythias, eyes down.

“Use the pot.”

I’m not the first, at least; my flow lands in a good couple inches of yellow. So that’s a rule, then: no one leaves the tent. Makes sense; everything in its place. Tidy. I don’t mind that.

I watch the others and try to copy them, turning my bedroll into my own station. I lay out some of my gear and catch the eye of the young medic from the night before. “What am I missing?” Water, pliers. I should have gone down to the river before dawn like the others and drawn my own. I don’t have a bucket, either, and will have to use my own drinking skin. Under the head’s angry eye I fill it from a barrel by the door. Pliers I’ll have to do without.

“Move over next to me,” the young medic says. “You can borrow mine when I’m not using them.”

A trumpet sounds from outside. Everyone in the tent looks up, then down again.

“Hurry,” he says.

What was that fantasy, again? Philosophers’ talk on the ride down, and then—oh, yes—a view from a high hill, Alexander too much to hope for, but Antipater, surely Antipater beside me, explaining the battle, pointing out its features, walking me through the logic of it, and then a vigorous shaking of hands when the day is won. Alexander will find his way to me then, a bit of dirt smeared across one cheek, surely no worse, and laugh and tell me how pleased he is that I came and saw his great day. And Philip behind him, Philip out of breath, a little bloodied maybe, sweatier, grubbier, more grudging, Philip saying, We didn’t fuck him up too badly, then, you and I, did we? In the tents, earlier, I’ll have saved a few lives, exhibited a few unexpected skills (knife skills?), earned respect and joking offers to join the medics’ unit should the king no longer require my services elsewhere. Good joke! Might as well go straight on to Athens, Philip will tell me, as the setting sun dallies in the treetops, gilding our hair, as together we look back over the battle plain, go straight on and begin your work there, just as we agreed.

The trumpet sounds again and the medics stop moving, like children playing a game of statues. From far, far away, a shouted command, a long silence, another shout. A sound like the surf, and the head says, “Stations.” He doesn’t need to shout. I look at the ground, have the leisure to observe the kinky walk of a beetle in the dust.

After a few minutes of listening to what sounds like a distant ocean, the young medic next to me pulls out a set of dice. “Play?”

“Now?”

Around the tent, men are slowly relaxing, speaking in low voices, some even lying down.

“There won’t be any work yet. Wounded who could bring themselves in will keep fighting if they can. There’s a detail to bring in the fallen but they won’t go onto the field until the archers are done. Head likes everyone to stay at their stations just in case, but we’ve probably got some time, unless it’s a rout. Arrow wounds first. That’s what the pliers are for, yeah? Our goal is to get men back out, get them back fighting. We treat the easy ones first. Eyes, chest, or spear arm, leave those for later. Head usually sorts them for us but he can’t catch everything. If something unexpected comes up, don’t waste time. Remember: eyes, chest, or spear arm, send them back to Head. If they live, we deal with them later.”

“Eyes, chest, spear arm.”

“Want to know what’s happening outside?”

“Yes. Yes.”

The young medic digs in his satchel, puts away the dice, and pulls out some tiny wooden figurines, smaller than my fingers. “Here’s Philip, here on the right, the sword arm, facing the Athenians. Alexander on the left, the shield arm, facing the Thebans and Boetians. Infantry between. We’re a little outnumbered, but not badly.” He starts to manoeuvre the figurines like a child playing toys; he actually bumps them up and down on the ground to show movement. Like toys; like theatre. “Two arms, pincers. Theban tactics, yeah? You know Philip was a hostage in Thebes when his brother was king?” I know. “Learned from the best. They’ll regret that now. Philip’s going to try to extend the Athenian line, draw it out, retreat a little even, so they think they’re winning. Overextend the line and then turn on them and break through the gaps with the cavalry. Alexander on the other side, well. Might as well fight flame, yeah? That’s what they say. And then the two sides come together and there you go.”

“How do you know all this?”

He scoops the figurines up in a quick handful. “Up early, before Head sealed the tent. On my way to the river I got a look at the field. I could see the standards, how the enemy laid itself out. And I’ve seen enough of Philip’s battles to know how he usually works. Overextend the enemy line, then work the cavalry in as a wedge. Use Alexander to scare the holy hell out of everybody.”

“He’s never used Alexander before, though.”

“He’s been looking forward to this one.”

I reach for his handful of figurines, raise my eyebrows to say, May I? He lets me take a couple.

“Bragging about it for weeks,” he continues. “ ‘The day my son comes. The day they see what my son can do.’ ”

“Did you carve these?”

“Myself.” Whittled wood, cute. Little soldiers in assorted costume. He points, naming them. “Illyrian, Thessalian. Olynthian, this one, yeah? Triballian, here. I like that one.”

“Stations!” Head calls.

He lifts the tent flap for our first casualty, a Macedonian with an arrow to the thigh. The soldier has already snapped off the shaft. Head points him to a station. When the medic yanks the point out with his pliers, the soldier screams.

“You, and you, and you,” Head is saying.

Suddenly I’ve got a man in front of me, a mercenary. He’s bleeding over his eye but that could be shallow. He looks at me and vomits down his front. I see the arrow then, buried in his left shoulder.

“Send him back,” the young medic says, barely looking at me. He’s busy with his own man now.

I tell the mercenary to lie down. “Use your pliers?”

“Send him back.”

“Shield arm.” I take the pliers and yank. The man screams. The arrowhead comes out, it actually comes out. I’ve done one. I fumble to strip his leather tunic to get a bandage on. The man opens his eyes and looks at me and dies.

“No, wait,” I say.

The young medic points to his groin, to the blossom of blood there. “Eyes, chest, spear arm, groin. Head!” He points to my station.

Head sends a couple of attendants to carry the body away. Immediately there’s another, and another. Soon my clothes are soaked with blood. Most of them die. As the young medic predicted, arrow wounds give way to spearings, stabbings, splintered bones. I start sending them back faster.

“Wait,” this one says, as I’m raising my hand for Head’s attention. “Just bandage it.”

A thigh wound, pouring blood. Thighs I’m supposed to treat, but surely he’ll just bleed to death. I look at the face, look again.

“Quality!” Lysimachus laughs and then grimaces. “I am the lucky man.”

I tie a tourniquet, tight as I can, and press a bandage to the wound with both hands, leaning all my weight onto it.

“Curse your mother,” he says.

Head looks over my shoulder, walks on.

“What’s happening?” I ask.

“Retreat.”

I try loosening my grip and the blood wells up again. I bear down.

“Just to the river,” he says. “I need to get back. We need every man.”

“The prince?”

He grins, grimaces. I ease up and the bleeding’s less. I help him stand.

“I’ll give him a kiss for you,” he says.

The work continues. My mind categorizes automatically, ahead of my desire to categorize; I think faster than the willingness to think. Matter and form: the soul gives form to the matter of the flesh; I don’t think that’s merely a metaphor. It’s like wax, and the impression in it. Then, some bodies are natural, some are not; some natural bodies have life, some have not. There is, too, the matter of purpose; can one say the soul is the purpose of the body? I feel a woolliness there, a gap in the teeth of my logic. Pythias has such a comb, of tortoiseshell, which she tries to use despite a gap the width of two fingers where the teeth have broken off. She brought it with her from Hermias’s court, and won’t allow me to replace it for her. Set aside purpose for now. The attributes of life: mind, sensation, movement in space, and the movement implied by nutrition and decay. Sensation comes first; animals, for instance, can sense before they can move. I wipe my hands on a rag, which is already wet and black with wiping. Not all creatures have all these faculties; plants, for instance, have the nutritive faculty but no sensation; animals lack what in humans is called mind, and are incapable of rational thought.

“Hey.” The medic is shaking my arm. “You need to sit, yeah?”

“No.”

“Yeah, go on. It’s over. Don’t you hear?” Roaring from outside, the ocean pulling up close. “Head!”

I wonder who’s dead. Then hands are on me; I’m being sat. Head pinches my nose with two fingers, jerks my head back, pours wine down me. Something strong, not last night’s. I gag.

“You’re all right, old man.”

He lets go of my nose and I jerk away, spluttering. “What happened?”

The young medic puts his face up to mine, his own eyes wide as he looks at my pupils. He taps his temple. “You went away.”

“We won,” Head says.

I retch purple. Head tousles my head, grinning, and walks on, pouring a shot for every man in his tent.

“Home now, eh?” The medic taps his temple again.

I nod.

“Lie down, if you like.”

“Can we go out?”

“Soon. We’ve got a long day ahead still. Head will take us out to look for survivors. Each medics’ tent gets assigned a different section of the field; we have to wait and see which is ours.”

“All survivors, or just ours?”

The medic nods. “You’re learning. Bread?”

I take the chunk he offers. It’s smeared with blood off his hands, blood with substance in it, like Pythias’s menstrual gore. The taste is salt; I manage a bite or two. I watch Head bend his head to listen to an officer at the tent flap, then turn back toward us.

“Macedonians and Athenians. Everyone got that? Macedonians and Athenians. If you’re not sure, ask.”

“What about the others?” I ask the medic.

“They have a detail for that. Bring your kit in case you get one that can’t be moved.”

“East field,” Head repeats to every man as we file through the tent flap. “Horses down. Watch for the horses. East field.”

Outside, at first I can’t see. The sun hurts everything it touches. We walk into a world of men and horses, milling it seems like, the men stunned by the rent in the fabric they’ve just come through, the walk back from the killing field to the false world of tents and bedrolls and meals and living. They need to drink so they can celebrate. I look for faces I recognize and realize: most of them. Is that possible?