It was truly like watching the gods. I snuck away through the trees. I know now that she was working very hard to get her body back – that this is another tribulation women bear, that they must lose months of conditioning in pregnancy and must train like athletes to return to shape. At the time, I simply missed her.

But two months after Eurydike’s birth, just after the early feast of Herakles, she and I shared a dinner, and after dinner, in the midst of a conversation about Menander’s latest play, she squeezed my hand. ‘I have a hankering,’ she said, ‘to sleep with a man with a big nose.’

Well, well.

Our whole relationship seemed to be restored in one night of love – not just sex, either. She came to me almost every night, for weeks. But it was rare for her to sleep with me – actually share my bed – never so often as to let it become familiar. She began to use different scents and wore different clothes and once shocked me by having a girdle of gold under her chiton, and another time she was painted – beautiful designs in red and black around her wrists and hips and running down into her loins.

No, I didn’t need to tup any slave girls. We’d started something different. We spent time together with our daughter. I remember one day dispensing justice for my tenants, with Eurydike curled on my lap. I was not planning to be my father.

After the Macedonian Feast of Zeus the King, Alexander summoned me to court. I had been gone three months, and I was softer, happier and less exercised than at any time in my life.

Happiness is so much harder to describe than war.

And you won’t find that in the Military Journal, either.

Antipater had either forgiven me, or never been offended. He and Alexander had summoned me back to court to help with the logistical planning for the march to Asia. That part isin the Journal, so I won’t bore you much, but I’ll use this opportunity to tell you what the king and Parmenio had chosen to take to Asia.

First, ten thousand pezhetaeroi in five regiments – Elimeotis, under Coenus; Orestae, under Perdiccas, and under Polyperchon the Tymphaeans – all collectively known as astHetaeroi, the men of Outer Macedon, as separate from the pezhetaeroi,who were in three regiments under Meleager, Craterus and Amyntas son of Andromenes, representing the men of Inner Macedonia. Old Macedonia. To further complicate this, we called all of them – all six regiments – pezhetaeroi. Got it?

Nicanor had fifteen hundred hypaspitoi. Alectus left the hypaspitoi for the Agrianians at this time, and took most of the Agrianians with him – not all, but most – and Nicanor drafted the very best men of the ‘Asian’ pezhetaeroi to replace them. It was a different set of hypaspitoi – but not worse, though it pains me to say so.

The Psiloi – the professionallight armed troops, made up of men who could have fought in more equipment but were paid for specialist scout services (as opposed to the rabble of freed slaves and lesser men that Greeks used as Psiloi) consisted of six hundred Agrianians and four hundred archers – most of whom were recruited out of Attika and mainland Greece, although you’d never know it to look at them, as they dressed like Sakje or Thrake. But they were not mercenaries, but professional archers serving Macedon and looking to gain land grants and Macedonian citizenship. The archers (the Toxophiloi) and the Agrianians together were the Psiloibrigade, which was mine.

Then we had a little more than six thousand Thracians. The conquered chieftains each submitted a band in lieu of tribute – they were serving for plunder. They began to trickle in with the first melting of snow, and they were as excited as children before a feast, and you would never have known we’d beaten them like a drum the year before.

We had about the same number of Greeks – mostly small contingents from the smaller states, three hundred men each from places like Argos and Corcyra. Worth noting here that the Greeks weren’t worthless, but they were outnumbered by the Thracians – this in the Panhellenic crusade to avenge the destruction of Athens!

So that was the infantry, with five thousand mercenaries and Parmenio’s army in Asia (another ten thousand Macedonian foot in six more regiments). Altogether, we had about forty-two thousand infantry.

For cavalry, Alexander and Parmenio spent the winter expanding the Hetaeroi to almost two thousand five hundred, and we took three-quarters of them to Asia – eighteen hundred men with three horses each and full armour.

We had as many again – Thessalians. They served for pay, but under their own officers, as if Thessaly were a new set of Macedonian provinces, like Outer Macedonia. In effect, they were – they elected Alexander Archon for Life. So – eighteen hundred superb Thessalian cavalry.

Then the one really reliable contribution from the Greeks – six hundred splendid cavalry. Athens sent her best – the lead squadron of the Hippeis, all aristocrats, under my friend Kineas. But the other contingents weren’t bad, and they, unlike the hoplites, were friends of Alexander and willing to fight.

Parmenio had another thousand cavalry – mostly mercenaries – and then there were the Prodromoi, now augmented with Paeonians and with Thracians – a little short of a thousand light cavalry. All told, we had at least six thousand cavalry. The army totalled out just short of fifty thousand men, and we calculated rations and forage on fifty thousand, because it was easy, and because a surplus is a hedge against disaster. And besides, if you don’t already know it, that army had at least one slave for every soldier – probably more, and certainly many more after we started to gain Asia.

But I get ahead of myself.

Antipater and I went through all these figures, and then we started to draw things. Camps – laid out for one hundred thousand men. Forage – care to know what it takes to feed a hundred thousand men? It takes six hundred thousand pounds of food a day. Thirty thousand animals? Another three hundred thousand pounds of food. Call it a round million pounds of food a day.

Some of that can be found in grass. But that still leaves a lot to find.

And you can’t put a month’s worth of food in wagons. There just aren’t that many farm wagons in the world.

What you do is build magazines, and store food. Philip had started the process, and Alexander had, thank the gods, never stopped spending on his preparations so that the magazines were full at the two ports in Asia and all across Macedon and down the road to the Bosporus.

It was doubly good, because Antipater showed me the accounts. The magazines were full, and the troops were paid, and we had less than thirty talents in the treasury – cash for thirty days’ operations.

The men wouldn’t mutiny right away, of course – but it would only be a matter of time.

Memnon was reputed to be the best general of his generation, and a brilliant deceiver – and a careful strategist who never fought unless he had to. I began to sweat just thinking of what he could do to us by not fighting. Two months of avoiding us and we’d be broke.

Alexander flatly refused to marry. He’d accepted all of Parmenio’s appointments, and he’d accepted all of Antipater’s financial advice, but he was determined to march in the spring, unencumbered, and he referred to marriage in terms that left no one in any doubt of his views that marriage was profoundly unheroic. Achilles was mentioned a great deal.

Parmenio convinced me to talk to the king. On this topic, I agreed with the king’s mature councillors. An heir would make the kingdom more stable.

On the other hand, I saw through Antipater and I saw through Parmenio. Both had daughters – both seemed to feel that they would make fine fathers-in-law.

Ochrid was still alive, and no one had attempted to poison the king. My arrangements for his daily security were untouched.