Wunderry Plus subscribers can listen to Tides of History early and ad free right now.

Join Wunderry Plus in the Wundery app or on Apple Podcasts. The ashwood handle felt light to him.

Even held with two hands, the Sarissa would have been heavy for most, tipped with a razor-sharp iron point, and measuring three times the height of a man.

But this was nothing new to him, not the weight of the spear, not the hot Greek summer sun, his head inside his bronze helmet, not the sweat

soaking the dirty tunic under his linen armor, not the combination of excitement and raw fear,

twisting his guts and making his heart hammer in his chest. of home in the hills of Macedonia and took up service for King Philip.

Since then he had marched into Illyria, Thessaly, Thrice, Pionia, Epirus, and a dozen other

places standing shoulder to shoulder with his companions in the phalanx and putting a

hands length of sharp iron into the king's enemies. Now he was in Boisha near the city of

thieves marching into the teeth of an army of Greeks. He rarely thought of the calling on his hat as he'd left his impoverished family behind, the hunger in his belly, the excitement

and fear of that long ago day.

He wondered whether his family were still alive or would recognize him if they saw him now.

His arms and legs and face criss-crossed with scars

and weathered by sun and wind.

His feet tramped on the churned earth as his stomach roiled.

He stood in the front rank, a veteran where the danger was greatest.

On the plus side though, the dust wasn't as thick here as it was further back in the

formation. There it choked your nose and eyes, got down into your lungs until you hocked up gobbets of dirty flint,

and obscured your vision so badly that you could hardly point your sarissa.

Not here.

Here, he could see the line ahead of him the big round shields of the Greeks

Athenians he thought waiting for them their line looked ragged to his practice dye they were

...