He did. In his head he heard Abraham’s plea. Please don’t. He shook his head, suddenly sober, aroused, his body heavy with energy and suppressed lust. He pushed into his own tent.
Helios was still up. He was lying blissfully with his girl, their faces beaming, their hair plastered against their heads with sweat. Satyrus felt guilty about interrupting. But before he could withdraw, Helios saw him and leaped to his feet. ‘Lord!’ he said.
‘I need you,’ Satyrus said. ‘I’m sorry, lad, but I need to make a circuit of the walls.’
Helios nodded. ‘Immediately, lord. I’ll send her away.’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘Tell her you’ll be back in an hour, and leave her to sleep.’ He put his shield on his shoulder.
Together, they walked along the waterfront, challenged by each of the ephebes in the makeshift towers as they passed. ‘Sounded like a great party,’ one young man was bold enough to assert. Satyrus smiled.
‘Your turn will come, young man,’ he said. Pomposity comes easily, with command.
Up the inner harbour, past the new false wall – Satyrus never let the slaves stop building. It was always possible that Demetrios would try another assault on the harbour. A long detour around the new construction where the harbour wall met the north wall, the sea wall that faced the open sea. Always neglected, because there was no real beach – or so it seemed until Memnon had shown him where smugglers landed routinely.
Past the construction, and along the north wall – only a handful of sentries, and Satyrus was surprised to find that most of them were his sister’s Sakje. Where the north wall met the west wall and the robust new fortifications with their modern ditches and towers began, he found Thyrsis, also making his rounds.
‘Who put you on duty?’ Satyrus asked.
‘Melitta,’ he answered.
Satyrus shrugged. ‘You missed quite a party,’ he said.
‘That’s why she sent me away,’ Thyrsis said. He shrugged.
‘Aphrodite, not you too!’ Satyrus said.
Thyrsis was rueful. ‘Oh, yes.’ He spat in the Sakje way, over the wall. ‘If she does not marry soon, we will follow her around in packs.’
‘She is very beautiful,’ Helios put in.
Satyrus got a glimpse of how Abraham no doubt felt. ‘You find her attractive? And her war name is Smells like Death.’
‘What could be more beautiful?’ Thyrsis said.
Helios nodded.
‘Oh, Abraham,’ Satyrus said.
Across the west wall. Satyrus didn’t expect Demetrios would ever try the west wall, but it was so strong that he spent extra time there, peering into the darkness, trying to shake the perception that he’d allowed a night of drunken riot and that Demetrios was going to use that against him. Scaling ladders, perhaps?
And down along the south wall, now a deep, deep bow, from the corner of the west wall where the original fortifications still stood, along the bow – the fourth wall that they had constructed, now really more of a mound of rubble in a long deep curve, with a hasty ditch in front and a shallow trench just behind, and deeper trenches and loop-holed ruined buildings behind that. The wall and ditch were the highest since the loss of the outer wall – after all, Jubal and Neiron had agreed that this one had to be held to the end.
Walking the south wall was hard – and sobering. Twice, Satyrus clambered over the ‘wall’ into what was now the debatable ground: once to listen to see if he could hear sounds of digging, and the second time—
‘Go and wake Jubal and get me twenty men,’ Satyrus said to Helios. ‘No questions, lad. Run!’
Satyrus stood perfectly still, tensed and completely sober, and waited. There it was again.
Chink. Tink.
And then nothing, for a long time.
Just when he wondered if he had torn Jubal from red-hair’s arms for nothing . . .
Clink.
‘Here I am,’ Jubal said.
‘Shhh!’ Satyrus hushed him. He was on the ground in front of the wall – fifty feet in front of the rubble wall, out in no-man’s land.
A line of men were picking their way down the rubble slope. They made a lot of noise.
Over in the enemy lines, there was a shout.
‘Get back!’ Satyrus said, as low as he could. ‘Back!’
Charmides froze. He had heard his lord.
A slim figure barked a sharp command. The file turned and began to climb the slope. Melitta was leading his twenty men – probably all the soberest men – and they’d been spotted.
More shouting in the enemy lines.
‘Listen!’ Satyrus whispered.
Clink.
Jubal nodded sharply. ‘Got him,’ he said. He tore a strip off his cloak with his knife, walked a few paces, picked up a section of pike shaft and stuck the rag on the end. Then he lay flat. From his prone position, he said, ‘They mus’ be stopped, lord. If’n they get through—’
Satyrus understood immediately. He tore another strip off Jubal’s cloak as the man lay flat, and he used his sword to cut a second length of spear shaft.
A rock whistled out of the darkness and struck the rubble wall, and gravel and shards of rock sprayed. Satyrus was hit in the back, but he wasn’t knocked down.
Then another rock fell.
‘They jus’ get better an’ better,’ Jubal said. ‘Got him.’ He reached out, and Satyrus put the second flag in his hand, and Jubal crawled a few feet and stuck the shaft between two rocks. ‘One more,’ he said.
Satyrus had to go quite a way to find another spear shaft. A rock came out of the dark – two rocks, he could tell from the impact. Too damned close. Now he had a cut on his cheek.
It occurred to him, lying scared and alone in the dark, at the very edge of the enemy zone, that he was the polemarch and that someone else could have done this. And it burst on him like a rapid sunrise that Miriam had kissed him.
He chuckled, and a hand closed on his mouth.
‘Got you,’ the man hissed.
Melitta waited in the dead ground beyond the rubble wall, her hip pressed – not without careful planning – against that of the musician. ‘What are they doing?’ she hissed.
‘No idea,’ Anaxagoras answered her. ‘He’s like this.’ Anaxagoras laughed silently, and Melitta felt it through their hips. ‘And I thought he’d gone off with Miriam.’
A rock hit the other face of the rubble, and chips sprayed like deadly mud from a child’s pebble, when children throw rocks into a pool after rain.
‘Ah – damn,’ Anaxagoras said.
‘Let me see,’ Melitta said. ‘Keep your head down – you – what’s your name?’
‘Hellenos, Despoina.’ The young aristocrat was relatively sober.
‘Tell the other men to be quiet. And get me Scopasis.’ She waved. ‘The barbarian – one of the other barbarians. Dressed like me.’
‘Yes, Despoina.’ If taking orders from a woman was a rare thing for Hellenos, he had the grace to do it well. He went back along the file of men and women – both aristocrats and their Sakje maiden archers, some marines – to Scopasis.
Melitta looked at the gash left by the rock chip on Anaxagoras’ neck, pulled off the scarf she wore to keep her cuirass from rubbing her own neck and wrapped it around his wound to staunch the blood. Another rock hit.
‘I can’t say I’m fond of this,’ Melitta said.
‘I think it’s very brave of you to come out at all,’ Anaxagoras said.
‘I mean the rocks. I adore a night raid – the taste of an enemy’s blood on my blade, the gleam of the moon—’ Laying it on a bit thick, she thought, but his male dominance annoyed her as much as his music and good looks appealed.
An ugly scream in the darkness; almost at their feet.
‘Raid,’ Anaxagoras said, and rolled to his feet.
The moment the hand clamped on his mouth, Satyrus reacted. It was, after all, something for which Theron and Philokles had trained him repeatedly. Before the hand was over his mouth, hi
s mouth was open and he bit savagely, all but severing a finger – his right elbow shot back, he rolled his right shoulder down, fell heavily on the man on his back—
His assailant was screaming. Satyrus caught movement, ducked—
. . . into the blow, so that the man’s hand punched his head instead of the sword cutting into it, and he snapped back, tripped over his first attacker and fell flat on his back – but he still had sword and shield. The aspis he pulled up, over his head and chest. He cowered, fighting for consciousness, trying to get a foot under him, blind.
‘Alarm! Alarm!’ someone was yelling.
His shield gave a great thud as a weapon crashed into it, and a hollow boom as a second one hit the rim. But he had his feet under him, and his sword, and his right hand shot out in a stop-thrust, almost without his volition.
He raised his eyes.
At least three of them – maybe more, but trapped like him in the shallow trench that had been the third defensive line. The trench walls were loose scree on both sides, difficult to climb. One man – with a pick – was above him, trying to get in behind.
Satyrus backed like a crab, praying to Herakles that he wouldn’t catch his foot on a stone.
Two men had spears, and they attacked, confident now that he was retreating.
Five men. Satyrus knew that no one man can take five, so he backed away, watching the man on the edge of the trench—
The man went down, and in falling he fell into the trench, fouling his mates – Satyrus lunged immediately, missed his footing, swung wildly, hit a shield and was toe to toe with an opponent. Both of them swung, their hilts locked a moment, and then the man’s eyes glazed over, something warm sprayed across Satyrus’ shins and the man slumped to the ground, all the fingers of his sword hand severed in a poor parry.
Satyrus stepped back, because the trench behind the wounded man was suddenly full of men in Thracian helmets – ten, fifteen—
‘Herakles!’ Satyrus roared, and charged.
‘That’s fighting,’ Anaxagoras said uselessly.
‘Follow me,’ Melitta said, and ran down the wall of rubble. She didn’t pick her way with risky sobriety – she ran, and left the men behind her with little choice but to follow. She could see men moving beyond the next rise, men like black ants on sand. She made the bottom of the rubble-rampart without falling, pulled her bow from her gorytos, got an arrow on the bow and narrowly stopped herself from shooting the black man with the sword – she knew him from the party, but they came face to face and she could tell he’d come as close as she.
‘My brother!’ she said.
Herakles! She heard – close. She ran.
The men in the Thracian helmets were surprised, their night raid caught in their own trench area, and they had the natural reaction of raiders – retreat. It took them long seconds to realise that they were under attack from one man.
Satyrus’ head rang like his shield under the assault of their spears, but he downed the first man with a thrust over his shield into the man’s eyes – thrusts are more deadly in the dark, as there is less lateral movement to betray the blow – and then he pushed forward over the dying man and got his shield against the next man’s shield and struck him in the moment of impact. Philokles’ trick, as most men brace, even unconsciously, against the pain of the moment where the shields meet. Satyrus’ sword wrapped around unerringly and found the neck between the helmet’s tail and the top of the cuirass, and the man went down without a groan.
But that was the end of luck and mastery, and three blows on, Satyrus was again on his back, head ringing again where a blow had shot his shield rim into his forehead, and he pulled under his shield – again. Got his back to a downed timber, pushed against it, got a knee under him—
He knew it was Anaxagoras as soon as he got to his feet. The man had his shield cocked to one side to let Satyrus rise, and then the two of them filled the trench. Anaxagoras had a spear, and he used it brutally, slamming it into the enemy shields as hard as his massive physique allowed, rocking the smaller men back and punching the needle point of his spear through their shield faces, stabbing arms and shoulders.
And behind the men fighting Anaxagoras and Satyrus, there were screams, and the familiar sound of Sakje arrows buzzing like wasps and hitting home in flesh like an axe hitting a gourd.
Above them, the round, full moon beamed down upon the earth.
Satyrus got his feet set, his head at least clear enough to support his friend. When Anaxagoras killed a man, they stepped forward together.
Satyrus knew Helios was behind him when the spear licked over his shoulder, riding on the smooth bronze scales of his shoulder armour, exactly as Helios did when he was tired, in practice. And the point, thrust expertly, one-handed, went into the enemy helmet and came out red.
They heard more buzzing wasps – the crash of armour hitting rock – screams.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ Helios said, tugging his cloak; the remnants of his cloak.
But Jubal had other ideas. ‘No!’ he said. ‘Lord! Into they trench – fin’ the fucking mine!’
Anaxagoras whirled. ‘What are you talking about? This is insanity!’
Satyrus got it. ‘A mine – they’re mining under our new wall before they even storm the old one – right?’
‘They do!’ Jubal said. ‘Now – follow me!’
Satyrus whirled on his friend. ‘This could be the entire siege – right now. Win or lose. Follow him!’
Sieges make for a strange order of things: a king, a dozen aristocrats, some Sakje – following a sailor. But the sailor seemed to know where he was going, or so Satyrus assumed.
Up the slope of the last wall – half a dozen enemy fled before them. Now they were deep in the enemy area, a part of the walls that hadn’t been in Rhodian hands in a month. But Jubal moved fast, and Melitta was at his heels, and Satyrus swallowed bile and followed as fast as he could.
The enemy was sounding the alarm in all directions.
Satyrus hoped Jubal knew what he was doing. Demoted by Tyche from polemarch to hoplite, he ran heavily across the open ground in front of the old wall, across a tenth of a stade of rubble and up the inner face of the second wall – currently the leading edge of the Antigonid trenches.
At the top, well lit by moonlight, Melitta stopped and shot – once, twice. Scopasis joined her and the two maidens, and their arrows poured off their bows – Satyrus was breathing so hard he could scarcely run, but he made it up beside his sister. Jubal was down in the rubble gully of the enemy trench, and enemy blood was black in the moonlight.
Melitta leaped down beside the African, and her akinakes was in her hand. She finished a sentry with an arrow in his gut, looked at Anaxagoras and licked the point, smiling.
Anaxagoras stumbled on the rim of the trench, his head whipping around in a double take.
Satyrus wanted to laugh and cry. His sister was flirting, showing off like a young girl.
‘Here!’ Jubal called.
A trumpet sounded, near at hand, and was answered from far off – the enemy camp.
One of the men had a pick, and there were torches burning along the trench. Jubal took the pick and a torch and dived into the opening in the ground. Satyrus let him do it – Helios went with him.
‘I’ll go and cover him,’ Melitta said, sheathing her akinake. She took her archers forward.
He saw them rise to shoot.
Time passed . . . heavy, terrifying time, and a rock fell out of the dark, far over their heads, and then a wave of them, pounding the ground where they weren’t, over by their own lines.
‘Better hurry,’ Melitta said.
Satyrus was listening to the enemy engines. They were close – close enough to rush.
He moved forward, listening to the grunts as the torsion drums were wound tight, the thud as the heavy arm impacted against the upright, the snap-crack as the sling on the end of the arm released its load and snapped against the frame.
Less tha
n a stade away.
No.
Satyrus saw that men were looking expectantly at him. But this was not the time for further heroics, and taking a handful of men, even his best men, deep into enemy lines in search of their engines would be beyond reckless.
Smoke was pouring out of the entrance to the enemy mine, and within a dozen heartbeats Helios was scrambling out of the hole. Jubal was right behind him.
‘Run for it!’ Satyrus hissed.
Melitta loosed a shaft. ‘We’ll cover you,’ she said.
Other men hesitated – leaving a half-dozen Sakje, most of them women, to cover the men’s retreat sat ill with the Greeks.
Satyrus grinned and grabbed Anaxagoras by the chlamys. ‘Come on, young hero. She’s got a bow. We have swords. Let’s go.’
Jubal shot him a fierce grin and headed off at top speed across the ruined, moonswept landscape, his leather-clad feet scarcely making a noise. The rest of them weren’t so quiet, and when they began to climb their own rubble wall, someone on the far side saw them and suddenly the night was full of projectiles, arrows and rocks from the smaller engines. The rapid hail may have assuaged the enemy’s need to strike back – but it had no other effect.
The men crouched in the cover of the reverse slope of their own rubble wall, listening to the enemy engines drop rocks.
‘Them needs new rope,’ Jubal said. ‘Torsion slipping – rocks landing short.’
‘They need new rope,’ Satyrus said.
‘What I say,’ Jubal shot back.
‘Where’s Melitta?’ Anaxagoras asked.
‘Out in the dark, killing Antigonids,’ Satyrus replied.
Before the enemy engines could reload, there was the soft sound of gravel sliding, a padding of moccasin-clad feet across stone and Melitta jumped down into the trench. She looked around until she found her brother.
‘They’re not much for night actions,’ she said, pointing with her chin at the enemy lines. In the darkness and the moonlight, the scars on her face made her appear another creature entirely, and her attempt at a flirtatious glance at Anaxagoras appeared, at least to her brother, more demonic than enticing.
‘They’re afraid of us,’ Satyrus said.
There was a soft crump, and then another, and then a roar that filled the night and the bitter smell of burning oak and something darker—
Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities Page 47
