Killer of Men (50 page)

The enemy commander had hired Thracians. It probably wasn’t hard, because from all we heard, the locals detested Aristagoras as much as we did. I had never faced them, but I heard that they were titans, big, tough men with no fear of death. I always doubted such tales, but the men I could see in the red light of sunset had tattoos like black slashes on their faces and around their arms, and they held heavy swords and long spears.

‘I’m going for the town as soon as we break their line,’ I said to Paramanos. ‘I know that you don’t have to follow me.’ I looked at him.

He shrugged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’ He pointed at the Thracians – there were more of them every heartbeat. ‘You think we can break that?’

We were three stades out from the beach. I got up on the rail where it rose to protect the helmsman and balanced there, waiting for the rise of the wave. ‘Watch me,’ I boasted, and jumped.

I landed on my own deck. ‘Bow first!’ I said. ‘Marines aft! Empty the first ten benches forward and send all those men aft!’ I waved at my deck master. ‘Sails down! Then masts!’

The other ships were starting to turn, because they intended to beach stern first – a necessary precaution to prevent their ram-bows from digging so deep into the sand and gravel that the ship was damaged – or worse, could never be brought off.

I caught a stay and swung up on the rail. ‘Stephanos!’ I called. He was behind me in line, in the smaller
Raven’s Wing
. I had to wait while he came forward – precious time, while my bow rowers ran back, dragging their cushions, unsure what they were supposed to do – while the deck crew swarmed over the masts, caught in the midst of arming, and the marines clustered by the helmsman’s bench. Hermogenes was in full armour, and Idomeneus looked like a hero in a solid bronze thorax with silver work and a fine helmet with a towering crest shaped like a heron.

‘My lord?’ Stephanos called back.

‘Into the port!’ I said. ‘Land your full crew and take the Thracians from behind! See?’

Indeed, the little port itself was covered by a mole. There were two ships moored to the mole, and no defenders – because the lower town had been lost, so there was no longer any point in holding the harbour. Before the lower walls fell, there had no doubt been a garrison on the mole. I had seen this and Miltiades had not. If
Raven’s Wing
could get into the harbour, her marines would be
behind
the enemy line.

Stephanos turned away, already calling orders, and his ship turned, went to ramming speed and sprinted for the mole.

‘On me!’ I shouted, and ran forward as far as the amidships command station at the foot of the mast. ‘Get that mast down!’ I called to the deck crew – who looked like hoplites. Pirates are always better-armed than other men, with the pick of many dead men’s gear to plunder, and I dare say that my sailors had better armour than the front rank of many a city.

The deck crew let the mast down on to the central gangplank, with all the marines and thirty rowers to speed things along.

We passed the other ships, who were all still turning or backing ashore. The smaller
Ember
was already halfway around.

I had just time to line up the marines and sailors and rowers behind me. They filled the central catwalk all the way aft to the helmsman, and filled the small deck around him, pushing the stern down in the water and raising the bronze-tipped bow. The weight of the mast and the sail helped, too. I pushed the men farther back, and again, pushing against them with my shield to pack them tight in the stern.

‘When we beach,’ I roared, ‘every man follow me! We will form under the bow and cut our way up the beach! Our war cry is “Heracles!”’ I looked aft and raised my spear, and my voice filled my chest like the sound of a god. ‘
Are you ready?
’ I shouted, and the oar master shouted ‘Oars in! Brace!’ and we struck.

Our bow went right up the beach. I was too far aft to see it, but I’m told that our ram actually broke their line, scattering men to the right and left.

‘Follow me!’ I called and raced forward between the oar benches, along the catwalk, over the bow, and I jumped without breaking stride into a clump of Ionian Greeks still shocked by the arrival of the ship.

They had no order, and I got my feet under me and my spear licked out and ripped the back of a man’s knee behind his greave. Blood spurted, red as red in the dying sunlight, and then I looked at a second man, my eyes locking with his under the bronze brows of our helmets, and my spear shot out and caught
another
man – oldest trick in the world – caught him between his thorax and his helmet, ripping up his chest and plunging deep into his neck, stealing his life. He fell off the spear point and I reversed my spear, thrusting underarm with the butt-spike. I thrust deliberately into the aspis of a fourth man. He was trying to retreat – under my feet, the sand thumped as other men came off the
Storm Cutter
’s bow. I knew that in a fight like that, I had to attack – attack and keep attacking until my arm failed me, because as soon as they recovered from the shock, they’d turn back into warriors and kill me.

My butt-spike stuck in the bronze face of his shield. I ripped it out and thrust again, knocking him back and off balance by attacking his shield. I could
feel
Idomeneus behind me, so I pushed forward, thrust into my opponent’s shield and when the tip stuck I used it as a lever and prised his aspis to the right. Idomeneus killed him with a quick thrust over my shoulder.

All my marines were on the beach, and my deck crew was pouring in behind them, the shield wall forming, hardening the way bronze hardens when you pour the molten stuff on a slate floor to make a sheet, and even as the wall solidified we pressed forward up the beach.

The Ionian Greeks I had been fighting were in flight, and I risked a look – pushed my helmet back on my brow and looked left and right. To the left, the town burned, throwing an evil light on the beach. On the road from the town were two hundred or more Thracians. Their leader was inciting them to deeds of valour, or simply promising them loot – I didn’t understand a word of his language, but I knew what that body language and those gestures meant.

The other ships were landing.
Briseis
was stern to stern with my
Storm Cutter
and Herakleides was sending his marines right down
Storm Cutter
, over the bow and onto the beach, leading his men himself. Oh, I loved him like a brother that hour.

To my right, the big knot of Persians and Phoenician marines was wheeling towards me, intent on pushing me off the beach before the other ships were ashore.

My men were like the runners in the fight at the pass. We were drawing all the enemy to us, while the other ships got their marines ashore. I knew the game. I roared defiance at them. I
was
Ares. I raised my spear over my head and told them they were all dead men, in Persian.

I had no intention of awaiting the onset of the enemy. If I waited, the Persians and the Thracians would hit me together – and each of them outnumbered me. On the other hand, my rowers were coming over the sides now, and every breath put three more men in the rear ranks.

‘The Persians!’ I shouted, and I ran forward a few paces and held my spear parallel to the enemy line. ‘On me!’

We’d been together all summer. My crew knew what I wanted, and they were beside me in three long breaths, more than a hundred men. A ship’s length to my right, I saw Herakleides’ black horsetail and I knew his big aspis was locked into the line.

‘Heracles!’ I roared.

‘
HERACLES!
’ came the response like the thousand-fold voice of the god, and we were off up the beach. The Phoenicians had no bows, and the handful of Persian officers got off one volley – I know that I got an arrow in my shield – and then we were into them.

That was hard fighting, no quarter given, and the sun was set low enough that skill was replaced by luck. Twice I caught heavy blows on my sword arm – one bent my vambrace without cutting through into my arm and a second blow was the flat of an axe and not the blade, thank the gods, or my life would have spurted out of my arm. Even so, I dropped my spear and Idomeneus stepped past me while I fell on my knees. A blow that hard unmans you – I thought I was finished for a long heartbeat, then my eyes told me that my sword hand was intact, my arm ached but was not broken, and again the vambrace had held and saved my life.

But while I was on my knees, a Mede in a gold helmet and bronze aventail cut at my head with his short
akinakes
. His blow landed, and my ears rang. But Hermogenes stood by me, and he made clumsy parries with his spear over my shoulder.

When you are in a real fight, your world is a tunnel formed by the walls of your helmet and the width of the eye slits. I had no idea whether we were winning or losing, but even with my ears ringing and my arm afire, I knew that having their heroic captain on his knees in the sand was not going to help my men win their way up the beach.

I exploded to my feet, pushing with my Boeotian shield just as Hermogenes blocked another cut. I got the bronze spine in the Persian’s face, trapped his sword arm high, dug my feet in the sand and pushed. He landed another blow, but it sheered my horsehair crest without connecting with my head, and I shook it off and pushed again. He tripped and fell. I punched him with the rim of my shield, the rim an extension of my fist. A Boeotian shield lacks the weight and authority of an aspis, but the rim is a weapon in a way that an aspis’s rim can never be. I broke his nose with my first left-handed blow, broke his sword arm with the second and crushed his throat with the third as he tried to cover himself with his arms.

I had time to flex my numb hand once, and then I drew my sword from under my arm, fumbled it and dropped it. I remember looking at it lying in the sand and thinking – now I’m a dead man.

But the Phoenician marines gave ground, backed away from us ten paces and rallied. They were magnificent fighters, those men – they didn’t lose heart, just backed off to give the Thracians time to take us in the flank. But their retreat showed them that all their officers were down, and that rattled them. I could see it in the movement of their shields in the fiery light.

Idomeneus was ahead of me, lithe limbs flashing. He harried their retreat and the best of my marines followed him, so that our taxis lost cohesion. The better men were willing to keep fighting; the others hung back, pleased to have beaten the Phoenicians and the Medes, and wanting a rest from terror. That’s how it always is.

‘Thracians!’ one of my rowers shouted, just before he leaped from the ship’s rail into the surf and ran to join us.

The Thracians were still hesitating, and their hesitation had already cost them the battle. But they might still wreck my men with their charge.

I could hear Miltiades calling his battle cry – ‘AJAX!’ – to my right, and I knew that the rest of our men would be coming ashore now, and in the time it took to beach a ship, the fight would be over. But there was plenty of time for things to go wrong.

I had to go forward.

‘Stephanos is behind the Thracians!’ I shouted. ‘Follow me!’ I stooped and picked up my sword – just about. I remember well how little grip I had. But a Greek cannot lead from the second rank. No one would follow such a warrior. So I pushed forward and bellowed ‘Heracles!’ like an angry bull, trying to get the daimon of combat to fill me and carry me up the beach.

Idomeneus was on his knees when I came up, using his big shield to cover his body against two Phoenician marines with axes. I ran full tilt over one man and his axe bit through my shield. The bronze plate over my left arm turned the blade and I hacked at him with my nerveless sword hand like any green ephebe who doesn’t know how to hold a sword.

Sometimes, as Heraclitus says, when skill fails, passion must suffice.

Hermogenes took the second man. The man with the axe swung and for a long heartbeat I thought he was gone, but the shaft, not the blade, bit into his shield. Hermogenes had an aspis, and the tough face turned the shaft with a hollow boom and Hermogenes was on the man, stabbing wildly with his spear. What he lacked in accuracy he made up in ferocity.

Now that we had cleared the ground around Idomeneus struggled to his feet. We shamed the rest of our line forward. The Phoenicians might have rallied then – but they didn’t. They hesitated for a moment – they were brave men, and they knew what the loss of their ships would mean. But they decided that retreat was the wiser option, and they went up the beach, still cohesive enough to drag their wounded and one of their leaders with them.

The sun had set and the only light was the red autumn sky and the fires of the town. The Thracians still outnumbered us, but they were retreating, flowing up the hillside like a herd of deer, and Stephanos was harrying them from the left, his best runners trying to outrun the Thracians to the crest of the long hill above the town.

I flexed my hand. Some feeling was returning.

At that point, Aristagoras elected to bring his men out of the citadel in a sortie. It was typical of the bastard – too late to help win the victory, too soon to come out in safety. His sortie caught the Thracians in the flank, though, and suddenly they had to turn or be eaten by the new threat and by Stephanos’s crew nipping at their heels like a hunting pack.

I could see it all happening in the red light on the hillside above me. It was unreal – I have never seen such light again, red as blood – and I knew that Ares himself was watching us, that we were on his dance floor, and he would judge us.

I could see the swan on Aristagoras’s helmet and I knew who he was. And thanks to the folds in the hill, I could see what neither he nor Stephanos could see – there was another contingent of Thracians behind a parallel crest.

And I was already tired.

Too bad. I wanted Aristagoras dead, and I would never have a better chance than now.

I’ve made all this seem to last a long time, but in truth, Miltiades’ marines were still coming off his stern and some of our ships were just coming ashore – it had all happened that fast. But if you want to know what fatigue is, fight for your life for three or four hundred heartbeats, then run up a rocky hillside at dusk with a hundred men baying at your heels. My scale shirt felt as if it weighed as much as my body, and my helmet sat on my head like the weight of the world on Atlas’s shoulders. Who am I to complain? Many of my rear-rankers had rowed all day.