The result should have been lethal to us. I can only suppose that the internal divisions and miscommunications of the Persians were worse.

At any rate, Parmenio argued for putting the army between the passes, sitting and waiting for Darius to make his move. With our backs to the sea and our supplies intact, we had the rest of the fighting weather to wait – all autumn, if Darius hesitated. We had the wages to pay the troops, and we were holding his terrain. In effect, from a moral standpoint, Darius had to come to us.

Like most of Parmenio’s suggestions, it was sound, unexceptional and virtually guaranteed success.

Parmenio further argued, in a monotonous voice that put many officers to sleep, that on the narrow plains this side of the mountain, our flanks – both of them – would be secure, and the Persians’ numbers wouldn’t matter.

But somehow, in his summing up, Parmenio managed to offend Alexander. I watched it happen. He said that our army could not hope to triumph against the Persians in the open field.

Really, that doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Alexander reacted like a horse given too much bit.

He leaped to his feet. ‘If we cross the mountains, Darius will be forced to fight, and his army will be at the disadvantage of knowing themselves the lesser men. Our boldness will disconcert them and make up for any disparity in numbers. We know from the prisoners that Darius was going by the southerly, Syrian Gates. Let us go to the Gates and force our way through before he seizes them, and the whole plain of the Euphrates is before us.’

Like all of Alexander’s visions, it was bold to the point of madness. The young men were fired by it and the old men shook their heads. His voice rose with emotion, the more so as he was not yet fully recovered and his hands still shook when he got excited.

Parmenio shook his head. ‘Lord, this is folly.’

That was waving a red flag. Sometimes I thought that Parmenio did this on purpose, to drive Alexander to recklessness and defeat, but none of the old man’s other behaviours tended that way. Perhaps he couldn’t help himself. I’ve seen parents make the same error with a wayward child. In fact, I’ve made it myself.

Parmenio was shouted down, and we marched before light in the morning, headed south for the Syrian Gates. We were outnumbered two to one, but this, we all knew, was the battle for Asia.

If anyone worried because the king’s eyes glittered or his hands shook, they kept that to themselves.

The rains started two days south of Issus, and they battered us like a living embodiment of Poseidon pouring himself on the land, and men offered sacrifices – the sea was so angry, over to our right, and we passed very slowly through the Pillar of Jonah. Men were lost to the waves, and baggage animals. We had to march virtually single file, and when the water rose too high, we just had to wait. You don’t know it? Well, there’s a point south of Issus where the coast road has to go down the cliffs and across the beach. Just for a few stades – and the beach is wide and easy – unless Poseidon is angry. When we crossed, it was as narrow as a cart track in the mountains, and the penalty for slipping was drowning.

Then we marched farther along the coast, taking Myriandros. There, at Parmenio’s insistence, we sent Philotas with six hundred cavalry into the passes to make sure we could get across before Darius did. That much caution the king accepted.

I was summoned to the command tent in the morning, at which time I was standing on a wagon bed holding my morning orders group. I had just managed to get all of my phylarchs to laugh at a fairly weak witticism when Black Cleitus appeared behind me, spoke to Polystratus and literally ran off.

That caught my attention. I turned to Polystratus, who was mounted.

Polystratus was laconic. ‘Trouble,’ he said.

Such was my trust in Alexander that I assumed it was trouble between Parmenio and Alexander, or medical trouble. I left Isokles to command the troops and I jumped on Medea (a new Medea, a beautiful Arab palfrey with a small head and a wonderful stride), and cantered across the camp to Alexander’s pavilion. At the palisade gate, there were forty men – disfigured men, most of them blinded, many with other wounds. Prisoners? I passed them, thinking on the fates.

No one was talking when I entered. But every officer in the army was there. Parmenio’s face was white and red – blotches of red. That meant rage.

Alexander was smiling.

No one was saying anything.

Craterus was my brigadier, so I went and stood with him and Perdiccas, and he gave me a nod.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

Perdiccas caught my eye and I followed him out of the tent.

‘Darius tricked us. He’s already behind us – has retaken Issus and all our baggage. He . . . blinded most of our sick and wounded, except a few he left with one eye.’ Perdiccas shrugged.

‘Ares,’ I breathed. Now Darius had us. He was on ourcommunications. He’d outmarched us.

Darius, the slow, conservative Persian.

I followed Perdiccas back inside.

Parmenio was busy apportioning blame. ‘I told you!’ he shouted as I entered. ‘Darius will pick a river – the one with the steepest sides – and he’ll entrench on the other side, and we will haveto fight through him. We’re going to have to attack an entrenched army that is double our size.’

Alexander’s smile never wavered. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory. And now Darius is committed to fight. He won’t be allowed to slip away.’

Parmenio was about to go on with his (perfectly accurate) rant, but Alexander’s comment brought him up short.

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Parmenio asked. ‘This is not a play. This is not a game. If we fail to break Darius, we are done. We will have lost.’ He was so angry that spittle flew from his mouth.

Alexander’s smile was like the grin of a satyr. ‘Then we’d best win, hadn’t we?’ he said, and his confidence was both infectious and offensive, all at the same time.

Two more days of rain, and we came backto the Pillar of Jonah. Darius could have held it against us for ever, but that wasn’t his style. He wanted a field battle as much as Alexander did. So we began to pass it, led by the Agrianians and the Thracians and Paeonians, who went through as fast as men could swim and run, and then spread out on the far side to give us some cover.

That night, we camped on the heights north of the Pillars, and we could see Darius’s fires like a carpet of fireflies. The weather was mild in the evening, but around midnight the rains returned, drowning out Alexander’s attempt to make a burned offering on an ancient altar in the hills.

I doubt my men were dry, but here’s the value of an old sweat like Isokles – he’d spent time training the new men to build shelters. Recruits build shelters that trap water and soak their cloaks – and then fall down at the first touch of wind. Veterans tend to build tiny, snug shelters that will last out a hurricane and have room for five men as long as the men don’t mind lying atop each other. Warm men can sleep, even if they are damp. Our men built some remarkable shelters that night – I remember them – my favourite of which (remember we were camped on a steep hillside) was a shallow cave with stakes driven deep into the sandy soil at the back – and then the file’s shields carefully laid across the stakes to form a roof of solid wood and hide. With some cloaks and some stolen cloth to pad it out, it was as dry as a bone and warm in there. I know, because that’s where I ate breakfast in the morning. With the rain still pouring down.

I had some old friends to breakfast, because we’d made camp late and were all camped together on the ridge – pezhetaeroi and Agrianians and hypaspitoi and Hetaeroi, too. So Bubores and Astibus shared my hot wine and honey, my barley with local yogurt – and those were a general officer’s provisions, gathered by expert foragers like Ochrid. We were in trouble, and everyone knew it.