Tyrant: Storm of Arrows

by Christian Cameron

  Kineas rammed the edge of the platter into a man’s nose. Then he took the man’s arm, whirled him and broke it, so that he screamed like a wounded horse. Kineas swept his feet and pushed him flailing into the line of guards, kicked with his bare feet, set his back against the wall and grabbed for the sword as it bounced off the wall. Philokles? he thought, and his right hand closed on the grip of the sword, a back-curved hanger like a small machaira, with a heavy guard that completely covered his hand. His left hand had the platter by one of its gryphon-head handles, and he hurled it like a discus at the crowd by the throne. The men facing him fell back a step.

  Carlus was bellowing like a bull. There were three men in the blood at his feet and two more clutching wounds and none of the guard would come near him.

  Darius dispatched one of the courtiers with a thrust to the chest - no wasted effort. The two survivors by the throne turned to look at him and Sartobases yelled ‘traitor!’ at him in outraged Persian.

  ‘Philokles!’ he shouted again.

  Women were screaming and the smell of death and offal carried across the warm, moist air. He glimpsed Banugul moving away from the throne, one hand pointing at Darius.

  Darius cut down another man and joined Kineas at the wall. ‘I work for Philokles!’ he said as if a battle cry, and the words penetrated Kineas’s brain. He laughed and attacked the men in front of him. They scattered and he cut one down in his retreat, but then the front of the hall began to fill with the queen’s guard.

  ‘Follow me!’ Darius called. He slipped behind a drapery.

  Kineas would not so lightly abandon his bodyguard. ‘Carlus!’ he yelled. ‘On me!’

  The Kelt swung his sword wide, so that the blade was a blur - back and forth - and then sprang away, the two great swings covering his retreat. He knocked a slave girl flat, smashed his fist into a man’s face, scattering teeth, and ran across the slick floor.

  A guardsman threw a javelin. His aim was true and it struck Carlus in the back, but it lacked power and the cuirass held it. Still, the giant stumbled a step. The guards gained heart and charged.

  Kineas ripped the hanging off the wall - a Persian procession of conquered peoples carrying gifts - and ducked through the concealed door. ‘Follow me!’ he shouted. He could feel Carlus pushing through the door behind him. They were in a dark corridor. Behind them, Therapon’s voice was calling for archers.

  They turned sharply right and the corridor climbed a flight of stairs, lit by pitch brands. ‘Hold them here,’ Kineas said to the big Kelt, who was panting with exertion, fear and pain. ‘Never let their archers get a shot at you. Use the curve of the wall. Understand? I’ll be back for you!’

  Carlus placed his back against the wall. He pushed himself to a full standing position. ‘Aye, lord,’ he said. He grinned. ‘Aye!’ His effort to push himself erect left a smear of wet blood on the plaster. The whole stairwell stank of burning pitch and the sweat of fear.

  Kineas turned and followed Darius again. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

  ‘Postern gate,’ Darius said. ‘Been trying to tell you for three days - she means to attack the camp. Tonight.’

  ‘She’s insane! We’d kill her!’

  Darius sagged against the landing and Kineas could see he was wounded, the flowing blood black in the fitful light. ‘You’d have killed her men - except that you came here. And she owns some of your new recruits. Or thinks she does.’ The man was pale with fatigue.

  ‘Let’s get to this gate!’ Kineas said.

  They went through a door, into a rich apartment and then down a long curve of steps set into the outer wall. The stairwell was pitch-black and cold as the outer wells of Hades, with a thin cold wind coming in through the arrow slits. Outside, Kineas could hear Greek voices - probably his bodyguard demanding news. The sounds of fighting could be heard right through the walls. Carlus was killing men, roaring his challenge.

  They went down, and down again, and through a door.

  There were a dozen men waiting for them.

  ‘Fuck!’ said Darius in Persian, and his sword flashed as he cut at a man. ‘Run, Kineas!’

  It was too late to run. Kineas pushed up beside the Persian and killed a man with an overarm thrust. The blade went right over his shield and into his eye - Kineas was using the bend in his own blade to baffle his opponent in the torch-lit dark. The man went down like a sacrifice and Kineas sank to one knee and swept his blade under the shield of Darius’s opponent. Even with his shorter, lighter blade, the cut severed the man’s ligaments just below the knee. He fell backwards, fouling his mates and buying Kineas a few seconds.

  Kineas was already stripping the corpse of the man at his feet. He ripped the shield off the man’s arm, tearing at the straps, hacking with his blade at the dead man’s shield arm - the shield’s porpax caught on the dead man’s wrist and hand, a ring, a bracelet - Kineas pulled, shouting curses - the shield came free. Darius backed a step as an armoured man charged him. Kineas, uncovered, whirled, cutting with his sword, still trying to get the shield over his own arm. He cut low, cut high and met his opponent’s shield both times. Desperate, he tried a school dodge - he backed a step, placed a foot on his opponent’s shield and pushed.

  The man fell back. Not a gymnasium-trained man, or he’d have known the trick. Kineas pushed back through the door. Darius was above him on the stairs. The shield dropped on to his forearm, ripping flesh, and the grip came into his left hand.

  ‘When your Kelt goes down, we’re finished,’ Darius said. Carlus was three rooms behind them, his bellows audible even through the stone. Kineas heard the tense humour in the Persian’s voice. ‘I rather enjoy having you on my side, though.’

  Kineas had to laugh at that. ‘Stay on my shield side and get anyone who tries to pass me,’ he said. ‘None of them are your match. We’ll get through this.’ He turned his head and gave the younger man a broad smile.

  Darius straightened up. He met Kineas’s torch-lit glance. ‘I was tempted . . .’ he began.

  Kineas grunted and pushed forward through the door, ignoring whatever confession the younger man was considering. ‘Guard me!’ he called.

  The men on the other side didn’t expect him to attack. He pushed - shield in the face, cut low, push - and they fell back. His second back cut, luckier or more accurate than the others, cut a dactylos above a guardsman’s shield, the point slashing through his eyes and the bridge of his nose so that he fell dead between breaths, never seeing the blow that stole his life.

  ‘Athena!’ Kineas roared with the whole weight of his chest.

  Confused shouts beyond the wall.

  ‘Athena!’ He bellowed again, and cut, pushed, pushed again. Darius was covering his side along the wall, thrusting with reckless energy to force his shielded opponent back.

  Kineas flicked his shield out, caught another man’s shield with his own rim and pulled. Then his sword licked out, thrusting into the man’s chest. He thrust too hard and his borrowed sword fouled, caught on a rib. He kicked, pulled, pushed with his shield as the dying man screamed.

  The sword broke at the hilt, leaving Kineas with a hand’s-breadth of iron.

  Too late to hesitate.

  He threw the hilt into his next opponent’s face. Then, using a pankration move learned from Phocion, he lunged, throwing his shield leg back, and his empty sword hand grasped the rim of the next man’s shield and used it as a lever, ripping the arm in a circle and breaking it. He hammered his shield into the man’s undefended face as he fell, grabbed for the man’s sword and missed. The man’s sword clattered against the cobbles of the floor, vanished in the darkness. A spear punched into his shield, penetrating the bronze surface and embedding in the wood lining. Kineas used his superior leverage to rip the shield free. Again the spear came at him, this time raking his shin because he couldn’t see it coming low. He stepped back and the spearman came forward, the point of a three-man wedge that filled the corridor.

  Darius was still fighting a man
from the last rush. He gave a shout and his opponent screeched as Darius cut off his hand. The man backed away, blood spurting from the stump, and the three spearmen lost several heartbeats as they tried to cover him.

  ‘Sword!’ Kineas said. He put his hand back.

  Darius slapped his own sword into the open hand.

  Just like that.

  Kineas stepped forward, took the lead man’s spearhead on his shield where he could feel it and pushed, fouling the man’s weapon. The man set his feet and pushed back, his mates helping him. Kineas felt the strain and tilted his shield, bent his knees and rolled low, passing his shield under the lip of his opponent’s, kneeling on the damp flagstone. He cut low, felt an impact and stood up, pushing with his legs as Darius came up to guard his back, and the lead man staggered back, shouting that he was cut, and the rest broke, fleeing as best they could from the terror of the darkness and the blood.

  Darius rose next to him, having found the sword of the man whose wrist he’d severed.

  ‘Thanks,’ Kineas said. The daimon of combat left him, and his knees began to shake. He was alive! He almost fell. His chiton was drenched in sweat.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ Darius said in court Persian. He was grey, but he managed a smile. ‘Could I have my sword back, do you think?’

  Kineas met his eye. They exchanged swords, and something more.

  Between them, with shaking hands, they got the postern open. Instead of fleeing, they admitted Kineas’s guardsmen, who, drawn by his shouts, were already tearing at the door from the outside. And then, leaving four men under Sitalkes to hold the gate and sending a mounted man to the camp, Kineas led the rest of them back into the citadel for the Kelt.

  They found him alive, cleared the corridor in front of him and retreated from a volley of arrows. Carlus was wounded in more places than Kineas could count in the dark, and he was no longer smiling.

  ‘You come!’ he said, six or seven times, before he passed out. He fell a few feet from the postern and no one could carry him, so they pulled him to one side and prepared to hold the corridor, piling tables and trunks against the walls as cover from arrows.

  ‘You should go, sir,’ Sitalkes said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Darius. He was still bleeding, despite a linen wrap, and his pallor had reached a dangerous level. He spoke as if sleepwalking.

  Kineas longed to go, but his own sense of himself as a man wouldn’t permit it. ‘No,’ he said.

  They waited for a rush of guardsmen. Twice, men peeked around the far corner of the corridor, bronze glinting in the fitful light of the cressets. The nearest one was burning down, past the pitch to the solid wood that burned faster but gave less light. Pine wood smoke and ordure scents mixed, and smoke began to fill the corridor.

  An arrow whispered out of the dark. It glanced off Sitalkes’ cavalry breastplate and ripped across another man’s bridle hand before embedding itself in an upturned table.

  They all crouched low, as much to get their heads out of the smoke as to avoid the arrows.

  ‘Get ready,’ Kineas said.

  ‘Listen!’ Darius said, and collapsed, his limbs loosening all at once so that he slumped forward and his head rang as it hit a table.

  ‘Shit,’ said Sitalkes. He and one of the Keltoi grabbed the Persian under the arms and pulled him out of the line and back to the relative safety of the door.

  ‘I hear it too,’ said another man. ‘Fighting!’

  Now Kineas could hear it. There was fighting somewhere else - Ares! What in Hades was going on? He rose to his feet and leaned out of the postern gate. There was movement on the slope below him, a line of shapes climbing the hill. He watched them for a long moment - one of the longest of his life - and then he identified something about the set of the cloak and the particular movements of the lead man.

  ‘Diodorus!’ he called.

  In moments, the postern was crowded with armoured men - dismounted cavalry. Andronicus took command of all the Keltoi. Diodorus embraced Kineas.

  ‘We heard you were dead!’ he said.

  ‘Not dead yet.’ A roar shook the rafters. ‘What in Hades?’

  ‘Before we got your message, Philokles and Niceas said that something was wrong. They’re rushing the main gate.’

  ‘Ares and Aphrodite! They’ll be slaughtered!’ Kineas looked around wildly, even as Nicanor pushed forward, almost devoid of breath from the exertion of climbing the steepest face of the hill, Kineas’s helmet and breastplate clasped against his paunch.

  ‘Right,’ said Diodorus. He looked up and down the smoky corridor. ‘Andronicus, take your troop and push down that corridor. Eumenes, take your troop with me. Kill everyone.’

  Kineas got his head into his breastplate. ‘Diodorus—’

  Diodorus pushed past him. ‘You’re done, Strategos. Let us do our jobs. Right, follow me!’

  Kineas refused to be set aside. Still wearing his captured shield, he pushed in behind Diodorus. They shoved the makeshift barriers out of the way in one long push.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Kineas,’ Diodorus said.

  ‘I know how to get to the gate!’ Kineas said.

  An arrow came out of the dark.

  ‘Shit,’ Diodorus said. ‘Charge!’ he yelled, and he was off down the corridor.

  Kineas struggled to keep up and a flood of men led by Eumenes pushed behind him. At the corner, Eumenes pushed his strategos out of the way and got ahead. Side by side with Diodorus, he cleared the corridor, killing an archer and wounding another before the mass of them broke, screaming in panic.

  The Hellenes poured in behind them. More men were coming through the postern, and they followed their appointed leaders blindly into the smoke and the darkness. Leon pushed past Kineas without knowing him and raced down the corridor to Diodorus and Eumenes, who were ten strides ahead, and they went up an undefended flight of stairs. Kineas could barely make his legs push him up behind them. Two more men passed him. The sounds of fighting were closer.

  ‘We’re above the gate,’ Diodorus said, apparently to Eumenes.

  In the distance, ‘Apollo! Apollo!’, and the screams of wounded men. That was Philokles’ roar. Kineas felt new strength from the gods flood into his legs, and he flew up the rest of the stairs and saw Eumenes’ silver-chased breastplate glitter coldly at the end of another passageway and Leon’s black legs shining in the torchlight. Kineas ran, his bare feet slapping on stone.

  The stupid barbarian archers were running for their friends and leading Diodorus to the gate. Kineas understood that even as he leaped over another dead archer in the semi-darkness. There was more smoke than before - something was on fire.

  ‘Athena!’ Diodorus roared - difficult to believe that such a thin man could release such a war cry. ‘Apollo! ’ Closer.

  Kineas was right behind Eumenes and another trooper - Amyntas, one of Heron’s gentlemen - and Leon. Eumenes and Leon were shoulder to shoulder, looking like gods in the flickering light. Diodorus hammered his shoulder into a closed door and it gave. As Leon and Eumenes added their weight, the door blew open and all three stumbled. An archer shot. Panicked or not, his arrow flew over Leon’s bowed head and punched Amyntas off his feet. Kineas leaped over the falling man and cut the archer down. His own sword felt good in his hand. He raised his shield and took an arrow, and then another, and pushed forward.

  A spearhead came past him: Eumenes, covering him. He roared his war cry - it came out thin and high, ‘Athena!’ - and then he felt resistance against his shield and Eumenes was shoving against his back and he cut low. The resistance gave way and he felt a rush of cold air.

  There were stars overhead. He was standing at the entrance to a tower, up on the wall and close to the main gate.

  Somehow, Philokles had opened the gate. He stood in the courtyard, killing, with bodies all around him and the whole mass of the garrison trying to evict him and the men with him. ‘Apollo!’ he roared, and Kineas answered ‘Athena!’ and the garrison soldiers looked up and saw their
doom behind them on the wall.

  With the unanimity of despair, they broke, and the Hellenes hunted them through the corridors and killed them where they found them. The citadel was stormed, and too many of the Olbians had fallen in the taking to allow for any human behaviour by the stormers. They were animals, and like animals they roared through the rooms and corridors, destroying, raping, killing.

  Kineas made no attempt to stop it. He could not have stopped it had he wished - the law of war was strict and the citadel had been stormed. And he lacked any will to resist. He came down from the wall with an avenging rush and they cleared the courtyard in moments, but the Olbian dead were everywhere, some burned with hot sand and some stabbed with many spears, and between Philokles’ wide spread legs was the body of Niceas.

  Kineas threw himself on the body of his boyhood friend. Niceas was burned with sand and had a great gash on his unhelmeted head and a spear in his side, but he still had breath in him.

  ‘He lives!’ Kineas proclaimed.

  Niceas shook his head gently. ‘Saves you the price of a brothel,’ he said, and coughed blood.

  ‘No,’ Kineas said. ‘No - Niceas!’

  ‘Graccus is waiting for me,’ Niceas said. He smiled, like a man who sees home at the end of a long journey, and died.

  And Kineas held him for a while, until the skin under his forearms started to cool.

  ‘Let’s kill every fucker in the castle,’ Philokles said. He didn’t sound like himself. But Kineas thought it sounded like a fine plan.

  Dawn. Smoke from burning sheds and the remnants of fires. Olbians, their faces black with soot, huddled against the wind, their bodies slack from exhaustion and guilt. Beyond sated. No man can survive a storming action and ever forget what he did when he was a beast.

  A carpet of bodies from the courtyard to the throne room.

  The floors were cold.

  Leon had saved many of the citadel’s slaves. He and Nicanor and Eumenes had pushed them into the queen’s bedchamber and held the door. So in the light of dawn, Eumenes brought Banugul to Kineas where he sat on her throne. The blade of his Egyptian sword was clean, because he had wiped it fastidiously on the cloak of Sartobases. Just beyond Sartobases was the corpse of Therapon, who had died in the guards’ last stand, cut down by Philokles.