Sword of the Spartan

by Mike Rogers

  What in the name of Zeus had my master done in the year he disappeared? Before I could ask him my master raised his right arm and smiled.

  Then he lowered his right arm again and from within the city the three ballista fired their load of fireballs. Anaxis had set the women to work on sowing large leather bags which were then filled with oil. The engineers used them as ammunition to great effect. The first fireball struck dead on the closest siege tower, which erupted into flames. The second fireball struck the center of the army and killed at least four dozen men. Their cries could be heard up to the walls of Corinth. Those so unfortunate to be torched alive were quickly put out of their misery by their comrades. We saw blades flashing, and the screams stopped.

  But the third fireball…the third was truly a sign from the gods. At first it seemed it would overshoot the army, until it quickly descended and landed directly onto Mummius' bodyguard. Two dozen of the cavalry were struck by the burning oil and perished there and then.

  Anaxis smiled and said, “It would seem the gods have set their marks, Mummius. Leave Greece at once or die.”

  Mummius, unimpressed by the death of some of his bodyguards, merely smiled and said, “Anaxis Isocrates, old friend. You should be fighting for me, not against me! Didn't we have a good time back in Rome? The wine, the women, the money, the fans…”

  Anaxis was not brought out of balance, even though I was. I looked around me and many of our men stared incomprehensively at Anaxis. They were all asking the same questions as I was. But Anaxis merely smiled. He was calmer than ever.

  “All I remember, Mummius, is how you bought your way into the office of Consul with the blood of many innocent men and with bribes! In fact, you spent so much money on your office that you are here to earn some back! You came to Greece not to strike down a rebellion, but to suck us dry! Well now, from the day I left Rome I knew you would come! I knew and I prepared!”

  Mummius laughed out loud. “Yes, I can see that. You are so well-prepared that you have no army! Where are they, by the way? In Macedonia perhaps?”

  And that was that, the conversation was over. Anaxis turned around and walked off to the men waiting at the foot of the walls. There he gave the final instructions to the men: no prisoners, no surrender.

  This would be more than a siege, this was going to be the place where we broke the Romans, where we freed Greece, or so Anaxis made it seem.

  In reality he was telling them there was no way out.

  It was kill or be killed…

  And then the moment we had all been dreading begun: the siege itself. As the Roman horns blasted their fearsome volley, they launched an all-out war on us, there can be no other description of it. The first day of assaults was bloody beyond compare.

  As the Romans ran to our walls, we opened fire. The sun became blocked by the sheer volume of arrows in the sky. Men died by the hundreds. The infamous Roman Testudo, the holding of the shields above their head, was to no avail, for Anaxis had crossbows distributed among the men. The bolts pierced the shields and struck holes in the patchwork of shields. The ordinary archers with the smaller Greek bows finished the job and struck the now unprotected Roman soldiers. Holes were punched throughout the entire Roman lines, but still it was like a pebble on the beach: the waves kept crashing into us. One Roman assault wave after another reached the walls, where they began their preparations for taking over the walls.

  The Roman ballista joined in and fired their deadly loads onto the city. One volley of fireballs after another hit the walls or landed into the city. Anaxis formed small groups of older men, children and women into fire brigades and put them on the task of fire control. On the rare occasion, a fireball struck the top of the wall, spreading its burning oil over us defenders. The burning men screamed in pain and threw themselves off the walls to put an end to their suffering. The air stank of baked flesh and turned our stomachs around. Many cried in desperation and sank to their knees.

  The siege towers were next and rolled to the walls, where they were greeted by our men. The walls were crammed with soldiers, all carrying diverse weapons. Some had bows, others swords. Most of the mercenaries had Falxes, which needed a lot of room to handle. As the first tower arrived and dropped its gate, several dozen Roman soldiers jumped out of it, wearing the lightest armor that I had ever seen. They wore a helmet, sword, small skirt and an even smaller shield. And yet a single one of these men took down four or five of our hardened veterans before they could be killed. I know this out of firsthand experience, for I had been one of the defenders on the very wall they attacked. Suddenly I found myself alone, for the men around me had fallen and I stood against the last five of these odd soldiers. I was sure to die, until from behind a spear pinned one of the Romans down. A red flash passed in front of my eye and another two of the attackers were gone. A few moments later I noticed it had been Anaxis. He had spotted the danger and came running in, handling his Falcata like the sword of Ares himself. The last attackers quickly fell and Anaxis had their bodies thrown over the side and the tower set ablaze.

  I gasped for air as he pulled me onto my feet and dragged me down the stairs. I trembled like a reed, and Anaxis slapped me a few times in the face, shouting my name.

  “Trimidites! Snap out of it! You're safe! They're gone!”

  I clung onto him and said, “What…were those? So…fast…”

  Anaxis dragged me to the nearest ton of water and pushed my head into it. The cold water snapped me out of my shock, and I sank to my knees, ashamed that I had lost my nerve.

  “Gladiators. Rome sometimes uses them if they are short on soldiers. For things like storming the walls of an enemy city they are well suited.”

  I looked at Anaxis, who drank of the fresh water and asked, “How do you know all this?”

  Anaxis deliberately avoided my gaze and said, “That is none of your business. Focus on the task at hand: defending the city.”

  “But what of Mummius?” I asked.

  “What about him?” Anaxis said and shrugged.

  “He…clearly knows you from the past. I—”

  I was unable to finish my sentence, for Anaxis placed his iron fist on my throat and squeezed it shut. He gave me a look I had seen him give other men many times. It was the look he assumed before he made his kill…

  “If you value your life you will never talk about that Roman pig and me in the same sentence ever again, is that clear?”

  Unable to say anything or to shake my head I blinked my eyes. Anaxis let go and smiled.

  “Good. Now go to the hospital and see how things are there. We can miss you here for a few hours. Give my warmest greetings to your wife and child.”

  Anaxis turned around and left. I felt my legs collapse under me and crashed onto my knees.

  I blamed the assault on me as the result of stress. Anaxis hadn't slept in three days, that I knew for certain and the preparations of the assault were devastation on any man's constitution, let alone his mind. But still there were too many questions and too little answers. What had happened in Rome? Why had my master gone there?

  Chapter 13

  The second day of the assault brought more of the same. The Romans had built more siege towers and ladders through the night and were using them to their full capacity this time. Three times we lost large segments of the wall, but each time Anaxis had the Romans shot down by our archers from within the city and then the remainder cleared off by the sword. Our men poured boiling water and oil over the ladders, killing and wounding thousands of Romans. The siege towers were set on fire by crews with bags of oil and torches. Sometimes our ballista got lucky and struck one of the towers, sending it crashing down onto the Roman army, killing dozens more.

  But the Romans, too, got their streaks of luck. Their ballistae, growing more numerous by the day, were spreading death and fire throughout the city. Entire streets burned to the ground and sometimes even the walls stood ablaze for hours in a row, killing more men and slowly damaging the integrity of t
he thick stone defenses. During one particularly critical phase of the assault the Romans had directed their ballista fire on one point of the wall. Our lines buckled and the men fled to safer ground. The Romans immediately ceased fire, sent men with ladders and nearly succeeded in taking over an entire section without losing a single man.

  Until Anaxis noticed the danger…

  As the first Roman soldier reached the top of the wall he found himself in for a nasty surprise. A single Spartan stood there, holding a spear and aiming the tip at him.

  With a flash the legionnaire found himself pierced and he plummeted into the depth, dragging two of his comrades along. The other soldiers quickly rushed onto the wall, but Anaxis was more than a match for them. When the dust settled and the blood stopped flowing there lay twenty dead Romans and the wall was saved.

  Anaxis climbed onto the edge and stared into the depth, overlooked the Roman army and shouted, “Is this the best you got, Mummius? Is this the might of Rome? I spit on Rome!”

  The men regained their courage by this display of audacity and took their places once more, settling for a new assault.

  The second day ended without further danger for a breach but had cost us dearly. Plenty of men were wounded, and those maintaining the walls or extinguishing the fires were exhausted. It was clear to me that the morale was fragile and the men's

  condition even more. It would not take much for the city to fall. All that kept them going was the presence of Anaxis and the promise of a relief force in the coming days.

  As the Romans retreated to their camps to lick their wounds, I, too, left and went to one of the field kitchens near the walls and helped me to some bread and soup. As I placed myself on one of the large wooden benches that stood under the roof of a half-burnt house, a man sat himself aside me. At first I did not pay much attention to him, until he touched my shoulder and said, “I am sorry to bother you, young man, but could you please give me some of that bread? My old legs wouldn't carry me further than this bench, you see.”

  I looked at the man and could barely keep my nerve. He was more corpse than man, but still there he sat aside me, in armor and all. The left side of his face had been burnt severely in one of the past ballista attacks, his left arm had been amputated and the wound looked infected, and as for the right part of his body…well, let us just say not even the best surgeons in Greece could have done much about that anymore. The man was a wreck, and yet on his side hung a bloodstained sword. He wore his armor with a pride I had rarely seen in a man and the entire sight caused me to break out in tears and cry like a child.

  And then the third day of the siege arrived. The fighting started out as it had the days before. First the Romans assembled and rolled their siege towers to the walls, brought ladders and their ballista opened fire. Our men died by the hundreds as the day went on and the Romans by the thousands. Again we lost and reconquered sections of the wall, again parts of the city burned to the ground and again wounded men were brought in droves to the hospital.

  But by the end of the day, some of the men started calling out frantically for Anaxis. We rushed to the place of origin and much to our fear the men warned us about the ultimate Roman weapon: sappers.

  Some of the Roman engineers had figured out the weak spots in the wall and were now digging a way underneath, ready to collapse the entire tunnel and with it the wall when they were done. Anaxis cursed out loud and noticed it was already too late to do anything about it anymore. He had everyone evacuated off the wall and positioned them at the foot of it, in perfect phalanx formation. The Roman might bring down the wall, but our men would be standing ready behind it as a wall of steel. When the night arrived, the city was thrown in a panic by a gigantic rumbling sound. With the loudest noise I had ever heard, an entire section of the wall simply came down and a vast cloud of dust covered everything. Men took off their helmets to rub the dust out of their eyes, but Anaxis kicked them under their asses and told them to stand ready. Immediately a few thousand hastily trained Hoplites positioned themselves in front of the gap, ready to take on whatever the Romans could throw at us. Anaxis, being the Spartan he was, knew the tale of Leonidas at the battle of Thermopylae. It was on that spot that Leonidas held the entire Persian army with merely three hundred warriors. Leonidas had used the natural narrowness of the pass to catch the Persians. It was a spot most suited for a phalanx and so was the gap in the walls of Corinth.

  I found it strange that no Romans had tried to storm the gap yet, and the men grew more nervous as the minutes past. The dust started to settle and still the Romans didn't come.

  What was going on? Anaxis wondered the same and marched towards the edge of the gap, intending to peek around the wall. But just as he went to stick his head forward a black projectile flew a mere arm's length passed him and struck the phalanx. The assembled body of Hoplites was ripped apart by a gigantic stone ball and the cries of wounded men filled the sky. Anaxis looked at me and I noticed surprise and shock in his eyes. He came running towards me and shouted, “Get everyone out of here! They're clearing the gap with ballista!”

  But it was already too late. One after another stone balls came crashing through the gap, killing dozens of our men with a single shot. Men were crushed against walls by the projectiles, lost limbs or heads or were simply knocked away like rag dolls. A single volley was all it took for the entire phalanx to break rank and to send the men scattering for safety.

  It was a complete fiasco…

  Men fled the scene and threw away their weapons, left wounded comrades behind or even trampled one another.

  Anaxis desperately called out to the men to stay near the gap, to reform the lines, to pick up their weapons, but to no avail.

  And then our eyes met and my heart stopped.

  In my master's eyes I saw what I had dreaded the most: the city was lost.

  Anaxis knew it and that was enough to me. The city would fall before the day broke and we'd all be killed or sold as slaves. The Romans would kill the warriors, rape the women and then sell them as slaves.

  Rape the women…

  My mind went back to the hospital. Minerva!

  I turned around, forsaking whatever duty I still had and started running up the hill.

  Minerva!

  Chapter 14

  The sight of the carnage at Corinth is something that carved a path through my soul and even today, nearly twenty years later, there are still times I see it flashing before my eyes. I awake in the dead of night, screaming in agony for what I witnessed there. It broke me, Alexander. I was never to be the same man again.

  None of us were.

  Madness. That would be the most fitting word to describe it. As the city burned, as the men died, as the women were raped and hauled away as slaves, as all was lost one man refused to back down. No, not a man. A monster.

  Anaxis…

  As the lines buckled and the men collapsed under the impacting stone balls fired into the breach by the ballista, Anaxis was the only one to keep a cool head. He waited for the ballista to stop firing and then he moved into the breach. He dropped his shield and picked up one of the fallen Falx in his left hand. To what end was obscure to me nor did I care. All I could think about was getting to the last defense line on the temple mountain, where Minerva and you were, Alexander. For a few minutes I abandoned all duty to my master and to the people of Corinth and pursued an interest most selfish: my wife and child.

  But as I reached the top of the mountain and banged on the wooden gate to be let in, I noticed how the people stared at the walls and pointed at something. I turned around and immediately found what they were looking at: Anaxis. A scarlet cloaked and bloodied Titan stood in the eye of the storm, patiently awaiting the incoming Romans…

  …and cutting them down like trees in a storm. Even from afar I could see Anaxis using the Falx, which was nothing more than an inwardly curved blade, to pull down the Roman soldiers' shields and then killing them off with his Falcata. The tactic proved most efficie
nt as the number of bodies around him grew larger by the minute. But still, he was nothing more than a pebble in the river. Half a million Romans stormed into the city and gazed upon Anaxis as nothing more than a simple object that they could move at their leisure.

  But how wrong they proved. Inspired by the bloodied Spartan, more and more of the mercenaries and men of Corinth now turned around and stormed into the fray. Those to reach the incoming Romans were cut down with great ease, until their body swelled to such a number that the gap became clogged with fighting men. Anaxis had reached his goal: to block the incoming army. But every man knew this night the city would fall. They could only hope to avoid the inevitable, and die under a flash of steel rather than the whip of a slave trader.

  Over the horrifying sounds of metal on metal and the screams of dying men I could hear the monster roar, “Mummius! Where are you bastard?! Show yourself! Fight me like a man and stop cowering behind your men! Fight me damned! Coward!”

  Even in death this was one Spartan the Romans would remember. This was Leonidas reincarnated! This was his Thermopylae where he would stop the barbarians! This would be his resting ground, making the soil become holy to all of Greece! Or so he thought…

  The truth was that Anaxis had gone mad, blood drunk and fearless of death. I knew that by the time they'd actually get Anaxis down they'd have lost a frightening high number of men, but again I forgot about him and the city. My wife and child were more important. I stormed into the temple and found the two of you in the high priest's office. Your mother had prepared a flask of poison for the two of you. As I came storming into the room, still wearing my Spartan armor—the one Anaxis had given me—and bloodied sword, she cried out in panic and grabbed the bottle. I realized she did not recognize me with the helmet on and crossed the distance between us with a speed even I never knew I possessed. I slapped the bottle out of her hand and shouted her name.

  “Minerva, it's me! Mino me! I have come to save you!”