Off to our right, in the low hills, there were a great many Persian light troops, and the whole front of their army was covered by more – I don’t want to guess how many ill-armed peasants the Great King had. It’s by counting this skirmisher cloud as soldiers that men come up with the ludicrous numbers the Persians supposedly had against us. I think he had fifteen thousand Psiloi, but there wasn’t a soldier among them, and they weren’t like our Thracians or our Agrianians, who could be counted on even when the fighting got stiff. These were peasants, and they had pointed sticks and light bows, slings, bags of rocks.

Still, there were an awful lot of them, and Alexander, who ate his sausage with me, was increasingly concerned about them and finally sent Cleitus with the Agrianians and a battalion of hypaspitoi to clear the ridge to our east. Alexander continued to eat. I was having a hard time eating.

It was not like Granicus. I had lots of time to look and see just how many Persians there were – a sea of them filling the beach. And to remember just how terrifying Granicus had been. This had never happened to me before, and is an essential part of being a veteran. Raw men fear what they do not know. Trained, experienced men fear what they doknow. I knew it was going to be horrible. The Persians were not foolish, not effeminate. Win or lose, we were going to wade through our own guts to beat them.

After lunch, a lunch I wanted to vomit up but could not, I rode forward with Anander, Perdiccas and Craterus to have a look at the part of the plain where we’d be going. All along the line, Macedonian officers rode forward to scout the enemy lines.

What I saw chilled my heart.

Right in front of my position, the Great King’s bodyguard stood, with their six-foot spears tipped in long steel cutting heads, and instead of sharp iron or bronze saurouters, or butt-spikes, every spear had a solid silver apple at the base of the shaft, making them fearsome weapons. I had never faced one, but Kineas’s father had one on the wall of his andron, as I’ve mentioned, and I knew what a deadly weapon it could be.

And I assumed that the Great King’s bodyguards would be the best.

And worst of all, the banks of the Pindarus, right there where my lads would cross, were five feet high.

Craterus looked it over, turned to me and said, ‘Well, you’re fucked. Better hope I can do better on your flank.’

And Perdiccas wouldn’t meet my eye. No one would. We rode back to our battalions, all of the other officers treating me with the gentle regard friends pay to a dying man, or one condemned for a crime.

Here’s how it was, five stades out. We were on a plain. It was flat – but rose steadily from the sea on our left to the steep hills on our right, so that every unit in the line was slightly uphill of the unit to its left and downhill of the unit on its right. I had Coenus to my right and the hypaspitoi just visible beyond – and past them were the king and Philotas and all the Hetaeroi. That’s where the king’s mighty blow was going to fall.

On my left was Craterus, and beyond him Perdiccas – and beyond him, Parmenio with the rest of the army. The king started with the Thessalians but sent them quite early, round our rear to help Parmenio. I missed all of that. I was busy.

Each of us had a front of roughly one hundred and twenty files. Each of our leftmost men locked shields with the rightmost man of the next taxeis in one continuous phalanx, but we all knew that would go to shit the moment we hit the river, because the river turned twice and the banks were all different heights, and some parts of the riverbank were heavily brushy.

Alexander, now dry and magnificent in his gold and green patina’d antique armour and leopard-skin saddlecloth, his lion-head helmet, his purple Tyrian cloak, rode along the front – back and forth. Every man I know says he gave a different speech.

Opposite my men, he reined in and grinned at me, gave me a little mock salute and made his horse rear, and the men roared.

‘Asia!’ he yelled, pointing at the glitter of gold. ‘Ours for the taking! Now we avenge Greece. Now we make ourselves masters of the greatest empire on the wheel of the earth. Now we make all that they have, ours – by the spear. Our gods are with us. Poseidon crowned me in the dawn, and I feel Athena at my shoulder, and before the sun sets, we will drive this rabble like sacrificial animals into the sea. And avenge every indignity, every burned temple, and the betrayal of Xenophon and his ten thousand!’

That’s what I remember, anyway. And when he mentioned Xenophon, my lads – half of them Athenian street kids – cheered like madmen.

He swept off to the left, towards Parmenio, and we started forward, and the cheering followed him.

Four stades, then three. Then two. Now Alexander was coming back down the line from the left, his cloak flying behind him, the sun gilding his fair hair, and the phalanx roared for him, a wall of sound like our wall of shields. At a stade, we all halted at a gesture from the king – he held his hand out, and the army stopped.

It was magnificent, a word I use too often.

He rode off to the left, to the head of his cavalry, and the trumpets blared, and we went forward.

At that point, I dismounted. Being on a horse gives you a fine view of a battlefield, especially when everyone else is on foot. But Greeks and Macedonians expect their taxiarchs to lead from the front, not from the middle or the back. That’s just the way it is.

I took my aspis from Polystratus, and my favourite spear, about twice the height of a man, heavy as a tree, of old ash, tipped in heavy steel at one end, quite a long blade, and tipped in bronze at the other, quite a short saurouter. Every man to his own taste. My spear was a man’s height shorter than a sarissa. The sarissa is a recruit’s weapon, anyway.

Half a stade on. Twenty horse lengths, and we could see their line as clear as anything, and individual helmets, and the precipitous drop to the river bed. I wanted to panic, but I was too busy yelling for my lads to close up and trying to get my cheek-plates tied together. My hands were shaking too hard, and if I stopped walking, the line would leave me behind – or stop with me.

I remember every one of the last fifty paces before the Pindarus river. We had the worst ground to cover, into the face of the most dangerous men on the enemy side.

And then there was a mighty blare of trumpets from the Persians, and arrows flew from their Psiloi line. I assume that every man shot something, and fifteen thousand arrows were launched and fell in a hail as dense as the morning’s rain. I got six in my aspis.

The trumpets blared again, and another volley flew.

We’d shuddered to a stop under the barrage. I’d seen it before – men can be shot to a halt. We had a lot of men down. Some would rise again and many wouldn’t.

I remember saying ‘Fuck it’ aloud. I didn’t think of Thaïs, or Pella, or my farm, or any of that. What I thought was that I wanted to get it over with.

‘Follow me!’ I roared, and ran forward into the arrow storm.

I could tell you a lot of stories I heard from other men, but I’ll be honest – that’s all I remember of the Battle of Issus, until Perdiccas’s taxeis broke. Obviously we went forward into the river, but I don’t remember a moment of it. We went up the far bank. I know that the enemy guards officers made a stupid mistake and defended the riverbank from the very edge, as if it were a wall, and that meant that our spears went into their legs, at first, and they lost men, and we pushed them back. But when they learned to stand a horse length back from the bank, they started killing our front-rankers as soon as we got up the sandy bank.

As the fighting went on, that bank started to collapse. It was sand and gravel, fairly sharp cut in the early fighting, but after an hour it was a ramp of dead men and collapsed gravel, and I imagine somebody thought we’d fight our way up it in the end.