Destroyer of Cities t-5

by Christian Cameron

‘Ramming speed! All oars!’ Satyrus shouted, and Neiron gave the same command.

  Satyrus felt the surge of power through the soles of his feet, but the huge enemy vessel was already moving and her stern towered over their side, and the enemy crew was now aware of them — shouting at them, assuming they were friendly — and then realising their error.

  Satyrus stood tall at the starboard oar, testing his weight against them. ‘I intend to sheer off!’ he shouted at his temporary oar master across the length of the deck.

  Laertes nodded and shouted down through the amidships hatch at the rowers. Satyrus shook his head. His hands were clenched on the red-painted steering oars like a pankration fighter in the last grappling of the bout, and his brow was covered in sweat. There was blood down his right side and back, and he was cold.

  Apollodorus stood by him, covering him with his aspis. The enormous enemy ship had archers, and they were firing down at him.

  ‘Thanks,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘Why not turn?’ Apollodorus asked, grasping the rail.

  ‘Too close,’ Satyrus said. ‘If I turn to port, our stern is no farther from them. If I turn to starboard, I’m running right down their side — look at those war engines!’

  The tenner loomed over them like an adult over a child. Her sides rose like cliffs, and she had the same advantage over Atlantae that Arete had had over the light triremes. Neiron, a quarter-stade astern, had one advantage, however: all of his starboard engines could bear, and none of the enemy’s engines could — yet.

  Satyrus caught at the shoulder of Apollodorus’ chiton. ‘Get the forward engine firing,’ he said.

  Apollodorus nodded. ‘I’ll have a go,’ he said.

  So close.

  Satyrus jerked the remaining oar as another marine came up the main ladder dragging an oar. Satyrus managed to nudge the bow off to port and then straighten again — port, and back straight — trying to cheat away from the enemy stern and yet maintain all his speed. And the marine — not anyone Satyrus really knew — had a head on his shoulders. Now he was lashing the new steering oar home against the side with quick, professional knots.

  But the new oar was just too late.

  ‘Oars in! Now!’ Satyrus roared, and Laertes repeated it instantly. They were too close — there was no way to avoid the collision, and Satyrus could already see — as if it were a maths lesson — that if the enemy ship hit his stern, the two ships would come to rest broadside to broadside, each pivoting on the collision at the stern, crushing their oars between them.

  Grapples were flying, now. The deceres wanted them. One thumped home into the stern rail just an arm’s length from Satyrus’ shoulder, and another into the deck just forward, and then the enemy stern tapped into their stern — the angle was too acute for the enemy ship to damage them, but momentum and the grapples spun them to starboard, so that as the mammoth ship coasted, her rowers desperately trying to get their oars in, the smaller Atlantae crashed alongside like a tethered foal against a fence, splintering oars and making a mess of the magnificent enemy ship’s paintwork.

  Atlantae’s oarsmen got their port-side oars in and home before they were rubbing alongside.

  A flight of arrows struck all around Satyrus, but by luck or the will of the gods none of them struck him.

  Satyrus wanted to curse. He felt a tide of despair, the spiritual kin to the feeling in his back and the cold in his spine, but he shook his head. We were that close to escape, he thought. Even as he watched, his newly raised foremast collapsed, splintering, and the sail obscured the whole foredeck. There was a pause.

  Surrender?

  But there was no surrender in a sea fight. If he’d considered it, the gouts of blood painting the sides of the pair of derelict quadremes just to the east told of what lay in store for him.

  Forward, Apollodorus got the one heavy engine on the port side to fire. The whole ship moved when the great bow released, and the bolt went right in through an oar port and appeared to vanish into the hide of a great beast, like a barbed arrow into an elephant.

  Just aft, the Arete fired all three of her engines together, and the bolts slammed into the deceres. But they had no more effect than a child’s sling does against a mad bull.

  Satyrus let go of the oars and slipped his aspis onto his shoulder. He felt perversely annoyed to have to die here, in a lost battle for a monarch who didn’t deserve his sacrifice. Nothing about the situation was remotely heroic — he was only in this position because he’d mistimed his turn as he backed away from the battle, and it was his own hubris in seizing the stricken Atlantae that had brought him to his death.

  He got his helmet strap in his right hand and pulled it tight. ‘No one’s fault but my own,’ he said. ‘Herakles, stand with me.’

  The smell of wet fur was sharp, heady, pungent. The smell heartened him — meant he was still in touch with the other world, the world of the heroes. But it touched him in another way; he’d never smelled the cat so clearly, and he suspected that the veils between his world and the world of the heroes were stretched thin.

  I’m going to die, he thought. It was not a new thought, but it had never been so immediate, and he had a frisson of hesitation as he thought of fifty inconsequential things he would like to have done. He thought, among a hundred other foolish thoughts, of Miriam’s hips under her chiton. It made him smile.

  ‘Not dead yet,’ he said aloud — so loud that the marine at his elbow grinned back.

  ‘No, we ain’t, lord.’ The man stood taller for a moment, and then settled his apsis on his shoulder and raised his spear.

  ‘Here they come,’ he said.

  Satyrus wished he could remember the man’s name. He’d got a new oar from below, lashed it in place and then got his aspis between Satyrus and the enemy arrows. None of it was the stuff of the Iliad, but it was all done fast, and well — the sort of things that could tip a battle one way or another, as completely as a commander’s decisions.

  There were fifty enemy marines in the first rush — fifty professional soldiers. Apollodorus had his twenty all formed up, and Satyrus and his companion — he’s called Necho. Satyrus suddenly found the man’s name against a welter of recollections. Together they raced forward, abandoning the helmsman’s station and apparently fleeing. Enemy marines, clambering over the stern, mocked them.

  As they came up to Apollodorus amidships, the marine captain was stating his orders — calmly and quietly so as not to be heard by the enemy.

  ‘Look scared. Hang back. Look unwilling — and when I give the word, charge. Any man who shirks is a dead man.’ He paused. ‘Look like the crap you aren’t!’ he said. He pointed aft, past the enemy. ‘Arete is on the way. Show some yourselves.’

  This speech seemed to put heart into the marines, who were, of course, used to Apollodorus and his acerbic commentary. No man who followed him would expect a salutation to the gods or a flowery speech.

  The enemy marines came over the stern, and Apollodorus let them get aboard — most of them. He played that he was terrified — that his men were hanging back.

  He flicked a look at Satyrus, who nodded. Apollodorus was a marine for a living, and Satyrus was merely a king. The nod permitted Apollodorus to keep the command.

  ‘Cowards!’ Apollodorus shouted. An arrow from the enemy stern hit his helmet and danced away. ‘Stand your ground, stay with me — NOW!’ he bellowed, all play-acting gone, and he raced down the deck for the mass of enemy marines.

  Satyrus would have said that it was impossible to surprise men in open warfare, on an open deck in the midst of a battle — but the enemy marines were plainly shocked when the whole of his marine contingent rushed them as one man. Perhaps they had been counting on negotiation, surrender, massacre-

  Satyrus slammed his aspis into his first man, an officer in an ornate blue and gilt Attic helmet with a pair of feather crests, and the man went down hard, flying back into his file partner and he, too, went down, and Satyrus put his butt-spike into the second
man’s eye slot, ripped it free and plunged the fighting point, the sharp steel, into the neck of a third man. Then blows rained on his shield like storm-driven waves on a ship’s bow — three, four, five and he was rocked back as one blow almost cost him his balance. He thrust his spear out, stabbing blind, his eyes under his shield rim in a storm of pain, and he felt his needle-sharp point cut — slide — plunge like a knife into roast meat, and then the shaft was snapped by a blow from the right, and he had nothing but a bronze butt-spike and a few feet of ash. He blocked an overarm blow from an axe with his shattered shaft — the axe cut away part of his own crest in a shower of blue and white horsehair — and he threw the butt-spike at an unarmoured giant to his front and made the man flinch back, and then Apollodorus was into the man, under his guard, stabbing as quickly as thought, once, twice, and the big enemy marine folded and vanished from Satyrus’ limited line of sight. What felt like an armoured fist struck Satyrus’ helmeted head and he rocked, tottered but did not fall because he was hemmed in so close by other fighters — he stumbled, recovered his balance, blessing long days on the sand of the palaestra. Without conscious thought he got his right hand under his armpit and pulled out his sword, stepped forward and cut overarm at the first man to come under his hand, and hit the man on top of his helmet crest so that he fell, unconscious.

  The enemy was roaring, shouting, and marines were pouring onto the deck, but Satyrus and Apollodorus has cleared the deck around them, and the first batch of enemy marines were penned into the stern, terrified and yet shouting for aid — for something — Save the king! they called to each other and came in again.

  Satyrus looked down between his legs and realised that he was straddling the enemy commander, who he had felled with his shield rush in the first seconds of the melee. He only had to look at the man for a second to know him.

  ‘Demetrios!’ he said.

  ‘Satyrus the Euxine,’ said the man lying under him. Demetrios the Golden grabbed his ankle and threw him in one practised move, and then Satyrus was on the deck, his left arm encumbered by his shield — a wonderful implement in a sea fight, but an impediment in grappling — and Demetrios reached out for his windpipe but Satyrus drove his sword hilt into the golden man’s faceplate and the silvered bronze buckled under the blow and Demetrios grunted. Blood fountained. Still, Demetrios landed a heavy blow to Satyrus’ throat just as Satyrus got his feet under him and he was rocked back, blackness encroaching on his vision and his breathing ruined, just as the second group of enemy marines charged.

  Apollodorus’ men met them like gods with a charge of their own — heavily outnumbered, but desperate and charged with Apollodorus’ quiet courage — and the sight of Arete’s foremast looming up close. Demetrios was back-pedalling like a crab on his hands and knees, trying to get to his feet. Satyrus managed to cling to consciousness — Demetrios was leaking blood from under his helmet, but Satyrus had to assume that was just a broken nose. That’s why they’re dumping every marine they have into my ship, he thought. Save the king, indeed. He got to his feet, as did Demetrios, just a spear length or two apart.

  ‘You are the man I wanted to fight,’ Demetrios said. He drew his sword with a deadly flourish. Under his helmet, the bastard was grinning. ‘The Hektor to my Achilles. A worthy hero for me to conquer — not poor old Ptolemy.’

  Satyrus could see that Demetrios was fresher, and unwounded, and thought, as if from a distance, that if the man had simply struck without the Hektor speech, he might have finished the fight there and then. Satyrus was unarmed — in bashing Demetrios’ helmet, he had shattered the pommel of his sword and the bone hilt was in shards. Satyrus dropped it, stepped back once and his now empty hand found a spear stuck in the railing by his shoulder. He pulled the weapon free, skipped his return speech, set his feet, took a choking breath and threw.

  The spear was not light. It was a full-weight longche, the weapon most marines carried, and Satyrus took a big step forward as he released, the whole weight of his hips behind the missile, and it struck the Antigonid king right in the centre of his torso, knocking him flat to the deck. But kings wear good armour, and Satyrus’ best throw didn’t lodge — no mortal blow — but skittered away down the deck.

  Satyrus stumbled two paces. The enemy marines from the first rush were rallied — and then stopped in their tracks to see their gallant king laid low, again. Instead of a making charge that would have finished Satyrus, they were gathering around the fallen Demetrios. They were poised to rush into the rear of Apollodorus’ men-

  Oarsmen erupted out of the rowing decks, led by Stesagoras swinging a great twin-bladed bronze axe. The axe head glowed like fire — like fire. .

  Like fire.

  Satyrus gulped another breath while he considered his ludicrous plan, which appeared fully formed in his head like Athena from Zeus, and another while Stesagoras cut a swathe through the enemy front rank with the axe, before the inevitable — a spear in his guts and death, for him.

  It was one of the hardest decisions of Satyrus’ life, because the natural decision — the Heraklean decision — was to throw himself swinging into that fight and die with his newly freed oarsmen, with Stesagoras, a gallant man who had just died like a hero.

  But in the flash of Stesagoras’ axe, Satyrus saw a way to save them all — a poor chance, but some chance.

  He leaped down the central ladder of the ship in a single jump of faith, and fell flat when some outside blow moved the ship. He got to his feet, tried to ignore his own blood all around him on the deck and staggered forward along the central gangway. There were oarsmen here — only the bravest, most desperate, least sane had joined Stesagoras — and he pushed past them, headed forward, past the midships stations, past the forward rowers, past the elite lead oarsmen who sat in the bow, to the tabernacle, the small space under the forward tower and over the ram where the sailors kept the fire pot that allowed them to heat iron or to start fires on the beach. A heavy, carefully protected clay pot the size of a man’s head that was full of coals set in leaf mould and bark to smoulder slowly. Satyrus picked it up by the heavy linen wrap which surrounded it — sailors fear fire the way Ares fears Athena — and pushed himself erect, got to the forward ladder and climbed, now two horse lengths behind the fighting. He climbed up the ladder on willpower and staggered to the side of the ship, and looked up at the immense height of the enemy’s sides — and his heart seemed to stop, to die within his breast. At his most fit, unwounded, he would never have been able to throw the heavy pot over the enemy rail.

  He took a shuddering breath and stood straight. An arrow struck his helmet and ricocheted away, and a second hit his chest so hard that he staggered, but the point didn’t puncture his armour and he got his feet under him and lifted the pot off the deck by the linen bag, and in a moment of inspiration he whirled it above his head — the pain in his back flared as if the coals had burst into flame there — and he ignored the pain for the movement, the purity of the great circle over his head, and he twirled, his feet moving nimbly, and then, when it seemed right, when the god spoke to him, he let the fire pot go.

  It was never going over the enemy rail. For an instant, in the perfect physical moment as he spun, he had thought that perhaps, by the glory of Herakles. . but his throw was too flat.

  Too flat, and too hard. No arc at all, and it shot like one of the bolts of the war engines, straight as an arrow across the deck and over the water — into the staved-in oar port where Apollodorus’ first missile had hit, so that where the iron bolt struck, all the oarsmen were dead; the pot went through the hole and shattered, spilling coals onto the summer-dried wood of the rowing benches, and there was no one by to pour a canteen of water or wine on them.

  And then Satyrus had to turn away, because it had been an act of desperation, and the gods had, at least, seen his throw go aboard the enemy, but there was no result — no smoke, no tongue of flame.

  His sword was broken, lost somewhere. His aspis was leaning against the podium wh
ere the fire pot usually rested in the tabernacle, close under his feet but as far as Hyperborea.

  But there were plenty of them on the deck, and Satyrus scooped up a short, heavy weapon almost like an iron mace, and an aspis, stripped from one of his own dead marines.

  Now for death.

  He was behind the enemy marines, and he would kill a few of them before they, in desperation, turned on him. He took a great shuddering breath, and his back hurt, and he wondered why it would matter how many enemy marines he killed — he was going to die, and were they not men, as he was? Perhaps better men. Perhaps men with loves, with lives ashore. He was saddened, as he cleared the breastplate from his neck and freed his right arm for one more fight, to discover how little he had to live for. My sister, he thought. And her son. They will miss me, and I them. Pater, I have failed, and I am sorry.

  Then, by an act of will, he banished doubt, banished self-pity, shook his head to get the sweat out of his eyes and charged into the rear of the Antigonid marines.

  He pulled up short — no need to commit suicide — and slammed his heavy sword into the back of a helmeted head, and the man fell. Satyrus took his time; his shoulder hurt. He put a second man down, and a third, and now they were aware of him.

  But instead of closing on him in a pack, Satyrus saw, as if down a tunnel, as one of those things men talk about over wine — the real veterans, the men who’ve stood in the closest fights and who find humour in the horror, or at least room to live with it — the Antigonid marines slide to the right and Apollodorus’ men, exhausted, just let them go, as if, by agreement, the vicious fight was over. Each side watched the other like dogs in a dogfight, but no weapon moved, and Satyrus joined the unspoken truce, although he was in a position to reap another man or two. It was, in fact, the oddest moment he had known in combat.

  Satyrus stepped up to Apollodorus, who stood, unwounded and magnificent, in the midst of a dozen of his men, the survivors of the fight.

  The truce was broken when enemy marines began falling as if cut down with a scythe — arrows, appearing out of the air, took two of them even as Satyrus slumped over, the pain in his back conquering his training so that he could no longer stand erect. Arete, game to the end, had ranged alongside, and her archers were reaping the enemy. Even as he watched, Idomeneus leaned far over his own rail and shot an officer who was trying to force another charge.