Destroyer of Cities t-5

by Christian Cameron

  Satyrus raised the kopis, and blood from the blade ran down his arm, the warm lick of death on his skin. He inhaled, and he could smell the lion skin of his lord on the wind, and he could see, as if imprinted on his eyes, how he could kill every man facing him.

  But his moment of divinity was stolen when Apollodorus and his marines charged headlong into the pirates at the south end of the beach. Satyrus heard the moment of impact, and it penetrated his battle-fogged head.

  ‘Let me through,’ he barked at the sailors nearest to him, and Jubal swatted a man out of his way.

  Satyrus dashed back through the thin line of sailors — men who had thought themselves safe in the rear rank and had still managed to find the hero in themselves when asked.

  Thank them later.

  He ran up the beach to the soft sand, which ate his remaining energy the way a dog eats fresh meat. He turned, and looked over the beach.

  It was not the battle he’d wanted — it was all being fought on the open beach west of the temples, not in the choked streets of the ruined town, out on the flanks where his well-armoured men could eat these ill-armed pirates in alleys at no cost to themselves.

  So be it. You made plans, and they evaporated. His men were winning — despite that the pirates were still landing fresh men, farther out so that they had to wade ashore hip-deep. And men out there — really, only a quarter-stade away — were hesitating. He could see them waiting at the side of the light rowing boats, unsure whether to clamber over the side or stay aboard.

  But while this attack was serious, all of Golden Boy’s real soldiers were somewhere else.

  Satyrus took the time to watch carefully the scene at his feet.

  Apollodorus was cutting through the loosely formed pirates like an iron chisel through hot bronze — slowly but inexorably, the drive of the marine’s legs like a great hammer pushing his spear point home. A few light pirate ships made to land men behind him on the beach, but Idomeneus and the archers had reacted without orders and the nearly naked pirates were being punished hard for their temerity.

  No crisis there.

  At the north of the beach, the ephebes advanced slowly and cautiously, but on a wide front, only four deep. They had doubled their width, confident in their armour, their training and their youth. They were not mistaken, and the pirates flinched and flinched away.

  The fight on the beach was minutes from becoming pure slaughter.

  To the south, though, there were ships trying to force the defences of the main harbour for the first time. They were taking heavy punishment from Panther’s carefully sighted engines. Satyrus watched for a long time — the time it took forty pirates to die — before he decided that he was watching a feint: Demetrios had sent ships to tie Panther down.

  But why?

  He had no idea what had gone wrong, but he could feel it as surely as if he’d taken a wound.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Abraham asked. He’d emerged from the rear face of the phalanx, breathing like a blacksmith’s bellows. He sank to his knees in the sand. ‘I’m out of shape.’

  Satyrus continued to watch. The pirates were at the point of breaking — too many dead, and water licking at their ankles. Rearrank men were throwing their shields away and swimming.

  Curiously, they weren’t shattered by Apollodorus or by the ephebes or even by the sailors pounding away at their front. What broke them, even as Satyrus watched, was the desertion of their boats — as suddenly as a school of silver fish attacked by a dolphin, the pentekonters and rowing boats that had brought the assault force ashore turned and ran, abandoning their comrades on the beach. Instantly their morale collapsed — a visible movement in the front ranks, and suddenly pirates were throwing down their arms in all directions and trying to swim, and they received no quarter. Satyrus’ oarsmen — many of whom had been slaves — reaped them like a farmer reaps the last crop of barley, hurrying against the winter wind and the rain, gaffing them with long pikes as they swam or punching daggers into men trying to surrender.

  ‘I need Apollodorus,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Abraham offered.

  ‘Good — go fast. I need him, and as many men as he can extricate. I need them now.’ Satyrus gave Abraham a slap on his backplate, and noticed that blood was running out of Abraham’s helmet and over his back.

  ‘You’re wounded!’ he said.

  ‘Bah — it’s nothing.’ Abraham got his helmet off and dropped it on the beach. It had a hole in it, and his hair was a matted mass of blood.

  Satyrus turned his attention back to the fight on the beach.

  The ephebes had joined the slaughter with all the impetuosity of youth.

  Satyrus kept backing up the beach, trying to get high enough to see what might be happening at the south end of the harbour — the inner harbour. Panther’s area.

  Helios emerged from the slaughter and came up the beach.

  ‘Good lad,’ Satyrus said. ‘Breathe.’

  Helios’ right hand was all blood, and his arm to the elbow, and his entire right side was spattered by the blood dripping from his spear. ‘I can’t get it out of my hand,’ he said in a strange voice.

  The blood had dried, sticking the spear grip to his hand.

  Satyrus poured his canteen over the younger man’s hand, and gradually the glue-like blood loosened, and then they shared the rest of the canteen.

  Abraham returned, running well, with long strides. ‘Apollodorus is going to break off.’

  Helios pulled his helmet off and dropped it to the sand.

  ‘I need you to run to Panther,’ Satyrus said to Helios, who nodded without speaking.

  ‘Get me a report. Fast as you can. Go, now.’ Satyrus knew he was using the boy up, but his options were limited and the feeling of doom was growing. And the only knucklebone he had was that the pirates had died fast, leaving him with a reserve and some options. Perhaps. Maybe.

  Down in the slaughter, Anaxagoras was cutting a swathe through the pirates. His blue and white plume was unique, and Satyrus had no trouble watching him. His wrath was terrible, like something from the Iliad.

  ‘I do hope we don’t take any casualties wiping them out,’ Satyrus said, and his voice was like Ares’ voice — a thing of bronze, inhuman.

  Abraham watched for a moment. ‘A moral man would say that they are men, like us,’ he said. He turned, and his eyes had no trouble meeting Satyrus’ eyes. ‘But they are not men like us, and their deaths give me nothing but pleasure.’

  ‘Kill them all,’ Satyrus said. By his estimate — he found it remarkable how clearly he was thinking — there were three or four thousand of the curs caught in the pocket, facing a quarter of their own number, and dying. He could never feed so many — he couldn’t even dare to accept their surrender, as they were men of no worth whose word could never be trusted. They would rise against him and slaughter his men if they ever understood the superiority of their numbers. Only Tyche — luck — and good planning had delivered them into his hands. He felt no mercy.

  All this in three rapid beats of his heart.

  ‘Tell the phalanx to kill them all,’ Satyrus repeated to Abraham, and turned away when he heard his name being screamed from the ruined temples.

  ‘Satyrus!’

  He looked right and left. Helmets made such searching difficult.

  ‘Satyrus!’ Closer.

  It was Miriam. She had blood on her face and in her hair.

  Satyrus caught her in his arms — not his intention — as if his body acted without him.

  She went into his embrace, blood and sweat printed on her chiton, so that the outlines of his shoulder armour could be traced on her for the rest of the day.

  But she murmured no endearments.

  ‘The enemy is in the town,’ she said, her voice controlled, her own panic carefully held back. ‘They are behind the agora, and a soldier I met says they are coming in through the west gates.’

  Satyrus turned his head.

  Apollodor
us was coming up the beach, his two hundred intact.

  Thanks, Lord Herakles, for the warning. May I be in time.

  ‘In the streets behind the agora?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s what I believe,’ she said. Her voice trembled. ‘I don’t know.’

  He wanted to say something like, ‘Welcome to war’, but there wasn’t time. ‘Get every woman you can, get onto the rooftops and drop tiles on them,’ he said. ‘Every woman you can find in the agora — listen. I may be sending you to your death, Miriam, but if your women can’t slow them in the alleys, we’re dead.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said.

  ‘I love you,’ Satyrus said.

  She shot him a look from under her eyebrows that suggested that, even in the grip of fear, she had the wits to question his choice of words. ‘I’ll try not to die, then,’ she said lightly. She pulled up her skirts and ran, her long legs flashing in the afternoon light, a rare sight on a battlefield.

  Satyrus turned to Apollodorus. ‘Enemy in the town behind us,’ he said.

  ‘Zeus Sator! Apollo, Kineas, be with us,’ Apollodorus said.

  ‘Follow me.’ Satyrus led them up the beach, and his fears almost robbed him of the ability to run — had the town already fallen? Usually, once the enemy penetrated the walls, the defence collapsed although Rhodes was so big and so deep that both Satyrus and Panther had been using its depths as a defence.

  He ran back across the rubble, ignoring the growing pain in his right ankle, through one of the tunnels and the fallen Temple of Poseidon and into the agora.

  It was not a mass of enemy soldiers. It was a mass of panicked civilians, with Miriam trying desperately to motivate some of them to join her.

  Even as Satyrus ran up, Panther’s wife Lydia, and Aspasia, and other town leaders — the priestesses and the healers — stepped out of the mob and began to harangue them, and the mob fell silent.

  Through the silence, Satyrus could hear the screams from the west.

  ‘Form three columns — one on each main street. There must be some defenders — put heart into them.’ Satyrus barked his commands and Apollodorus picked his three commanders, and even as men emerged from the rubble tunnels they were numbered off into three groups.

  ‘I’ll take the right,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘I should stay with you,’ Apollodorus said.

  Satyrus shook his head. ‘You’re no worse off if I die here — if the town holds,’ he said. ‘Besides, I have Draco and Amyntas,’ he said, catching their eyes. ‘They won’t let me die.’

  Both men managed a grunt that might have been mistaken for a chuckle.

  ‘Ares’ golden balls, this sucks like a flute girl at an ephebe’s symposium,’ Amyntas said. ‘I hate sieges.’ He turned to his men. ‘Have I ever told you lads how I saved Alexander?’

  ‘Not above a thousand times,’ Draco grumbled. ‘Come on, or the young king will try and do all the fighting himself.’

  Amyntas spat. ‘He’s just doing it to impress that girl,’ he said.

  ‘I can think of worse reasons,’ Draco retorted.

  Even in fear of imminent death and loss of the city, Satyrus found that his cheeks could burn.

  Into the streets west of the agora, new terrain for Satyrus and all the marines, they went slowly, well closed up, checking side streets as they came to them.

  They went half a stade before they found men looting. A dozen men, all enemy soldiers, who had decided that the town was fallen and they could start the promised sack.

  Their paralysis, their total surprise at his force gave Satyrus some hope.

  ‘Forget the side streets,’ Satyrus said. ‘Form close. At the double! Forward!’

  Their feet pounding the stones, the marines moved fast, flowing along the gently curving street at the speed of a running boy or girl who hears the call of a distant parent — and they saw the enemy, a clump gathered around a small olive tree in a town square no more than two horse lengths on any side. The square was packed with Antigonids sacking a rich house, raping two women they had caught, drinking fine wine — all the delicious, evil spoils of war in one place — and Draco’s marines slammed into them without slowing, and the slaughter was fast and their was blood in the spilled wine and the fountain at the centre of the square was choked with dead men.

  But behind the initial assault of plain pikemen had been a corps of veterans, a reserve, and now they reacted like professionals, coming up from the west and punching straight into Satyrus’ marines, and the pikes and spears were crossed, locked and the killing began in the square.

  They were pushed out of the square, step by step. Amyntas died there, who had saved Alexander’s life in far-off India, who had killed men from Thebes to the Hindu Kush and beyond. Draco saw him fall, and he planted his feet over his fallen lover and his spear rose and fell as if he were Ares incarnate, and the Antigonids feared to face him — indeed, as the enemy was reinforced, some of them shouted his name because they were facing the old veterans now, the best of Demetrios’ force, and the men in the front ranks of the Argyraspides knew Draco by sight and they drew back in respect.

  Another marine dragged Draco back, and Satyrus grabbed his ankles and pulled and they made it alive around a corner.

  ‘Rally!’ Satyrus said.

  Draco was weeping, all rationality gone, like a beast that has lost its child. ‘Give him to me!’ he shouted at Satyrus, and would have struck him if Satyrus hadn’t been watching. He let the body fall, backed away as a man would back away from a dangerous predator, and only when he saw Draco crouch over Amyntas did he turn his back on the man.

  ‘On me!’ Satyrus bellowed. His voice was failing, and he felt fatigue sapping his will to fight, and the fact that they could not hold the square suggested that the town had fallen indeed.

  ‘Satyrus!’ Miriam shouted. She was above him — it hurt him to look that far up, with the neck plate on his back armour biting into his neck under his helmet as he craned to see her. But there she was, a roof tile in her hand.

  ‘On me!’ he roared, his spirit soaring. And the change in his tone was more convincing than the words, and suddenly the marines hardened around him even as the Argyraspides charged around the corner-

  The corner took them by surprise, and the marines held the rush and thirty-year veterans died there, men who had climbed the banks of the Ipsus and the Jaxartes and stood their ground at Arabela. And Satyrus had no time to think: all he knew was the rush of blades, the hollow sound of his shield taking impact after impact, the endless roar of the battle cries and the screams and curses as men were hit and went down. He stood his ground, a front-ranker now, and the men on either side stood their ground, and that was all that could be said. He thrust with his spear as often as he dared, and had no idea if he was hitting or not — over his shoulder, men thrust, and there were screams — it seemed almost impossible to Satyrus that he could still be unwounded, and the fighting in the street seemed to have gone on for hours.

  Then, almost as if an order had been given, the marines backed away three steps — all across the street — and the Argyraspides did not follow. And now that the front-line fighting stopped, the silver shields had time to realise how many of their men were down — how hideously they had been thinned by falling roof tiles and mud bricks from the houses on either side, which were reaping them with more efficiency than the tired marines.

  Just as a young child, her knee skinned in a fall, may take long heartbeats to scream for her mother, so the Antigonid veterans stood for long seconds before realising how many dead they had.

  But they were the best soldiers in the world. And they had not lived so many years in the hands of brutal Ares without learning all the hard lessons of the battle haze. When they found how badly hurt they were, how deep they were in the noose of the women on the roofs and in the alleys — they did not fail. Calling to each other, because so many of their file leaders were dead, calling out from man to man, they lapped their shields and charged.
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br />   Satyrus took the rush on his shield in a state of despair, because any other troops would have broken. All he could do was stand his ground, and die.

  The man on his left died almost immediately, and Satyrus and his rank-mate to the right — he saw that it was Jubal the sailor, a man who had no business being here — were pinned to the street wall by the rush of Macedonian veterans. But Jubal grunted, struck out with his spear and put a man down — a man with a shield rich in ivory and silver, and instead of flinching, the Nubian pushed forward and Satyrus got his shield up, lapped it on the Nubian’s and pushed his legs against the house foundation at his back. Someone filled in from behind, pushing into Satyrus’ left and lapping his shield, and suddenly they were filling the street. They held like a smaller wrestler holds a larger when his slipping feet find a small rock, buried in sand, wide enough to catch the flat of the foot and give the fighter that heartbeat to gather his wits-

  And then Apollodorus stormed into the side of the Argyraspides from the flanks of the square. The enemy commander had never understood that Satyrus’ counter-attack was in three columns. He’d committed everything in the centre. And in a street fight, ignorance is death.

  Apollodorus’ column burst into the square, fifty paces behind the Argyraspides’ front rank, but their shock was translated instantly and that was too much for the veterans. And they still didn’t break. They knew that to break was death. Instead, they retreated through the streets, leaving dead men at every step, dead at the hands of Satyrus, Apollodorus, Charmides — but more dead from the endless rain of mud brick and roof tile.

  They never broke.

  They moved fast, and they killed even as they retreated, and when their Macedonian comrades broke and deserted them, they covered the younger men’s retreat at the gates and died there as well, and Satyrus thought that they were the most magnificent soldiers he’d ever seen.

  And then they were outside the gates. And just beyond the gates, coming hard, was a fresh phalanx — a whole taxeis — two thousand men. Two thousand fresh men.

  The gates were still there — a mystery to Satyrus. How in Tartarus did they get in? he thought.