ALEXANDERS MOMENTARY CONFUSION gives him a moment’s respite to roll over and vomit. He has never fought from the back of a horse before. These Macks make it look so easy. He is stunned, exhausted. He spits blood. Where is that coming from? Falling from a horse in full armour is a chastening experience.
Ptolemy arrives and leans from his saddle looking similarly bewildered. ‘What is he doing here?’
Gajendra tries to crawl away. Alexander puts his foot on his throat to stop him.
He thinks he intends to choke him to death. But no, he is just giving himself leave to think, to piece together what is happening. Gajendra knows now he must break his promise to Mara; he is going to die now and there is no help for it. He thinks how bitter she will be. For some reason of her own she has loved him, and as she said, everything she loves always dies.
Still, when he is dead he will be glad to get out of this armour. He is too weary to fight on; the fall from the horse has crushed his spirit. Everything hurts.
He looks up at the knoll and wills Hanno to make his entrance now. His advice to him was to wait until Alexander was fully committed. How more committed must a man be than to be off his horse and scratching his head in bewilderment, next to his enemy’s battle standards?
‘What have you done, elephant boy?’
‘I did not just do it for me, I did it for Nearchus.’
‘Nearchus?’
‘He warned me. I should have listened. He should have listened to himself.’
‘By the black breath of hell, what is he talking about?’ Ptolemy shouts. ‘Kill him, Alexander, and let’s get out of here. This is no time to be off your horse berating this lunatic!’
Alexander kicks him again. He sees the sense in what Ptolemy has said. He raises his sword. ‘Well, elephant boy, you want a reckoning with the gods, you shall have one.’
Just then he hears yelling from the ridge above and looks up, sees Hanno and his cavalry swarming down the slope. It gives Gajendra a moment to scramble away out of range. Alexander looks faintly irritated by this turn of events. He points his sword at Gajendra. ‘I will settle with you shortly.’
He picks up a javelin from the ground and hurls it at the first of Hanno’s cavalry. It takes the rider in the breastplate and bounces off, but the aim is so perfect that it knocks the man off his horse and sends him tumbling to the ground.
Gajendra shakes his head in astonishment. The man is not human. Perhaps he is a god after all. Does he never miss his aim?
Without breaking stride Alexander jumps back onto his horse and he and Ptolemy ride to spring the trap.
The two ranks of horses collide. Alexander’s enthusiasm for the fight is undiminished. One of Hanno’s officers wheels his horse around and comes at him from behind; he swings wildly and his sabre almost crushes Alexander’s helmet. He slumps in the saddle but recovers. Now Perdiccas is there and his spear takes Alexander’s attacker out of his saddle.
Alexander shakes his head like a wet dog. His head must be bone right through. It is true, then. You just cannot kill this man.
Gajendra’s body is racked with pain but he concentrates his will on standing up and getting ready to face Alexander a second time. Just one of us can walk off this field today, and I promised Mara that it would be me. He staggers to his feet, searching for his sword, any sword.
The rain sweeps in, blinding him. As the lightning arcs across the sky, he sees Hanno’s men are in retreat and Alexander is still in the saddle. His plan has worked but Alexander, the god, is bigger than his plan. Zeus has spoken. The omens were true after all.
Gajendra sways on his feet. It is hard to breathe, and his vision has blurred. He has found a sword and buckler, though, and has again dropped to one knee to gather himself. As Alexander approaches he raises himself to stand.
That he should do so seems like an irritation to the great king. He hammers his sword into Gajendra’s buckler and sends him back onto his knees.
‘I treated you like my own son. I would have given you the world if you had wanted it. All I asked was your loyalty!’
Gajendra tries to rise but he hammers him again with his sword and forces him down to his knees once more. He half rises and staggers backward towards the temple. He imagines Mara, kissing him in the storm light. He blinks away the image, tries to concentrate. Alexander can kill him whenever he wants to. But first, it seems, he wishes to make his point.
Alexander removes his helmet and throws it on the ground to register his disgust. ‘Why did you do this?’ he says.
‘Do not think to win the battle… think to win the campaign. Think not to win the campaign, think… to win the war.’
‘This was your plan?’
‘When you die, you Greeks will go back to fighting among yourselves and leave us alone.’
‘You Greeks? Who are you fighting for now?’
The sword hammers on the shield again; he will pound him into the dirt like a nail at this rate. Get it over with, Alexander.
He reels backwards against the temple gates.
‘This cannot be over a woman, can it?’
‘You pissed on my head.’
‘It is over a woman!’
He retreats as Alexander batters him with his sword again and again. Finally he has enough of it and summons what strength he has left and hammers his buckler into Alexander’s face and thrusts with his falcata, tearing through the composite of his corselet and finding the flesh between his ribs and the inside of his left arm.
Alexander staggers back, his face registering his outrage that an elephant boy would dare to stab at the royal person. He puts his hand beneath his armour and when he takes it out it is covered in blood. He stares at it in disbelief.
Gajendra runs across the courtyard, slips on the wet stone and goes down again. The fall from the horse has damaged something inside. The pain seems to be everywhere. It is hard to breathe. He rolls on his side and vomits.
Alexander shakes his left arm, as if he can hurl aside the wound in his side like a stray insect. ‘What a soldier you make,’ he says. ‘Not a mark on you, and you are rolling around the floor like you are dying. Come on, elephant boy, get up and let’s make a proper fight out of it, then.’
He cannot feel his arms and he cannot hear Alexander’s voice any more. His sword feels as if it weighs as much as his horse. Alexander is standing over him. His lips are moving so he must be saying something. His teeth are black with blood and dirt.
Alexander stabs down, but it is not a killing stroke, he hasn’t finished talking yet. Alexander likes to talk and he has plenty to say when he feels like it. The battle is over. What is to be established here is the more important question of why he is not properly loved.
Gajendra writhes as the point of Alexander’s sword goes in. As his general stands back he slithers away. Of all the telling moments of his life is this how it will end, down here on the floor again, like a worm, like a snake?
He rolls his head to the side and sees Zeus lying down there with him. It can happen to me, Zeus seems to be saying, it can happen to you.
He is lying in a pool of blood but it does not appear to be only his. There have been other combats fought in here today. One of Hanno’s officers lies outstretched, his spear at his feet. It is a short, stabbing spear with a four-square iron point.
He concentrates his will on crawling towards it. Inch by inch, now, never mind about what he is saying about you. When your enemy thinks you are beaten is when you are at your most dangerous. Isn’t that another of his lessons? Alexander is still ranting, now he rolls him over with his foot, the better for him to hear the rest of his speech about loyalty.
Gajendra’s fingers close around the broken shaft of the spear.
Now as Alexander raises his sword to deliver the killing stroke he steels himself for one final effort. He grasps the spear and thrusts upwards, seeking the vital flesh below the lip of Alexander’s breastplate. But he hasn’t the strength to do it and Alexander seizes it with his left hand and forces it out of his grip, his fist so far up the shaft that their fists touch.
It is then the world turns black.
When he opens his eyes there is chaos. The stone gate crashes in and he hears an elephant trumpeting. Colossus stands in the courtyard, ears flared, clearly very angry. Somehow he has lost his mahavat and the archers in the howdah are shrieking and clinging on for their lives.
Alexander is thus delayed in killing his elephant boy. ‘What have we here?’ he says, turning around. ‘Have you come to rout my enemies or protect your little elephant boy?’
Only Alexander would stand bare-headed before an enraged elephant with nothing but a sword and buckler. His soldiers would come and help him but they are too far away and his bodyguard are engaged by Hanno’s men, who have regrouped for a second attack.
For the moment the King of Macedon is on his own.
Colossus raises his trunk and charges.
Alexander reaches for the javelin he has just wrested from Gajendra’s hand and hefts it in his right hand. He aims for Colossus’s eye.
Gajendra rolls onto his side, finds the dagger at his belt and plunges it into Alexander’s calf. Alexander screams and the javelin falls easily wide of its mark. He turns and stabs down with his sword a second time. Gajendra cries out in pain.
Colossus picks him up with his trunk and hurls him across the courtyard. He slams against the temple wall. A lesser man would have died; but Alexander, the god, the immortal, lies still for long moments, then shakes himself and gets to his feet, dazed, and looks about for his sword.
Colossus charges a second time. He swipes him again, sending him sprawling across the marble where Alexander lands against his fallen idol, Zeus.
No ordinary man could survive such punishment; but Alexander is no ordinary man. He lies on his back, his right hand feeling for his sword. Giving up the search, he rolls onto his side and starts the slow climb to his knees. He leaves a smear of blood on the marble.
Colossus takes him a third time, charging with his tusks, which have been sheathed with iron tips. The force of the charge is enough that the tip of one tusk penetrates Alexander’s golden armour and pierces him through, pinning him to the wall of the tabernacle. Colossus shakes his head like a dog with a rat and Alexander lands on the altar, leaving gouts of blood on the stark marble.
Ptolemy is first on the scene and shouts his dismay; their king is dead. Even Hanno’s men leave off their fighting and stare in disbelief. It is a scene so improbable that no one can quite believe it.
Ptolemy rides his horse into the temple to try and retrieve his body but Colossus will have none of it. He charges and Ptolemy retreats. But even that is not enough, for he barges now into the Companion Cavalry and scatters them. In moments he has cleared the field. He turns and trudges slowly back to where Gajendra lies stricken. He nudges him with his trunk, rolling his body, looking for life.
Lightning cracks around the mountain.
Hanno climbs down from his horse. He knows the battle is lost, but they have done what Gajendra has promised, they have killed the man who called himself King of the World. Their reprieve is temporary. Alexander’s cavalry will regroup; his own army is in rout. Only the thunderstorm and the confusion that will inevitably follow Alexander’s death will save them now and allow some of them to escape with their lives.
His men are trying to retrieve Gajendra’s body but the monster elephant will not let them close. They hesitate and look back at him for orders. Well, he is not leaving the boy here. Gajendra didn’t leave Catharo and he will not leave Gajendra.
Does he try and kill the elephant now?
Mara appears from nowhere; she is supposed to be at his camp on the other side of the mountain, with the supply train. It does not surprise him that she has defied his orders and come here. She rides to the temple gates, or what is left of them after Colossus finished his rampage. She jumps down off her horse and pushes his men out of the way.
She walks straight towards the crazed elephant.
‘Kill him! Kill the monster now!’ he shouts.
His men reach for their javelins, the two bravest run in with their swords.