Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3) (43 page)

‘Ahh,’ I said, or something equally intelligent.

‘He’s assembled a strong force: he has Venetiae cavalry and his own charioteers and several hundred infantry.’

‘And you want to take him on,’ I said.

Collam nodded. ‘He’s a rich man – far richer than any of us. But if the smaller lords band together, we can take him. And you are a famous warrior. And you have twenty warriors
at your tail – a fine company. If you fight beside me, I’ll give Gwan any Venetiae prisoners to trade for his father.’

I shook my head. ‘I didn’t really plan to come here and make war,’ I said. ‘I need to find Doola. I won’t do anything to annoy the Venetiae while Doola is still on
the river or the road.’

It was a good thing to say, but the Lord of the Biturges had other ideas. I suppose he heard that my host was making alliances and causing trouble, because Genattax of the Biturges marched
against us with twelve hundred men, and he came almost without warning.

I might have wondered why Collam was so glad to see me that spring, or why he was so eager to send scouts out to the south. In fact, his son and his other horsemen were
watching every road and path for Genattax all spring, and my search for Doola was merely fortuitous.

But I wasn’t going to ride off and leave Collam in the lurch. And the rumour was that the black man and his convoy were ten days away. Maybe less.

Why did things have to be so complicated?

Collam used me as a recruiting tool, showing his Greek warrior off to his neighbours. He had me demonstrate pankration with Seckla, and sometimes with some unlucky Gaulish lad. I felt as if I
had become some sort of slave prizefighter, but by the time Genattax came at us over the hills, we had a thousand men, almost a third of them cavalry.

Seckla was hesitant, but the rest of the men were game to fight. Fighting for strangers can be a testy business – you don’t really know who can be trusted, and there’s always
the possibility of out-and-out betrayal, but I trusted Collam.

We dismounted and fought with his tribal infantry. I’m not very good at fighting on horseback, and I thought that I could do something to stiffen the javelin-throwing peasantry.

We formed on a hillside, with the enemy in full view, also forming – chaos, really. Men wandered up to the battle, and when they formed their phalanx, each man chose his own place. It was
alien, and yet somehow familiar – after all, even in Plataea, men generally stand beside their brothers and cousins. I wanted us to form quickly and attack across the valley while the enemy
was still forming, but Collam laughed at my notions of tactics and said that such a fight would decide nothing. So instead, both hosts formed, and moved carefully down the ridges towards the
streambed at the bottom. It wasn’t very full. There was marshy ground to our left, and all of our cavalry formed on our right. All the enemy cavalry was there, too. They had more cavalry than
we did, and more chariots, and we had more infantry.

May I say that war looks a good deal less necessary when you are fighting for strangers? As far as I could tell, the differences between Collam and his brother-in-law could have been resolved in
an hour over a cup of wine. Perhaps a Gaul would have felt the same about Datis and Miltiades. At any rate, I didn’t feel fired with enthusiasm for the conflict, and as morning wore into
afternoon, I was increasingly aware that the enemy’s mounted flank outnumbered ours and also overshadowed it, as their line went well beyond ours to the right.

But they wouldn’t cross the stream, and neither would we. I understood why we wouldn’t – we were outnumbered. But they had the numbers, and that trickle of water wouldn’t
have slowed their cavalry.

After some discussion, I found that it was only my ignorance. The
chariots
couldn’t cross the river, and that meant neither side was anxious to engage.

Well, they aren’t professional warriors. They have their own ways, and they are, after all, only barbarians.

We stood across the stream from them for hours. They would chant, and our side would chant. Sometimes a lone man would emerge and bellow a challenge.

I stood with Seckla and watched.

As the sun began to go down, a big man with a red beard emerged from the enemy infantry and whirled his great sword over his head and smacked his shield boss with it. I remember thinking –
why not?

In fact, I dared myself. I had never been so close to conflict and felt so little.

I was afraid – afraid I was losing my taste for war. I was going to become one of those old men who love babies.

Who knows what I feared. I am now an old man, and I love babies. Hah! The things young men fear.

At any rate, I kicked off my sandals and walked to the edge of the stream. He came down – I don’t think he was delighted to have his challenge taken up, after an afternoon when no
challenges had been answered.

Since he hesitated, I jumped the stream. Immediately, a great shout went up from our lines, and men clattered their spears on their shields and roared.

He was obviously surprised. Nor did he have a spear, and I did. He backed and backed, and we began to circle.

I tried some old tricks to draw and attack, but I began to fear that I was dealing with a very experienced warrior. He would not be drawn. He wanted me to commit to my attack so that he could
counter it, come inside and hit me with his sword.

I wasn’t sure his strategy was sound – I wasn’t sure that his long sword could even hurt me through my armour. He wore no armour – just a silver torque and trousers.

We circled again, and men shouted insults. They wanted us to get on with it. Easy to say, when you aren’t the one facing three feet of Keltoi steel.

And then, he crossed his feet – a foolish thing to do at any time – and dropped his shield just a bit. We were ten feet apart, and he thought I couldn’t hit him.

I stepped forward and threw my spear; he raised his shield and I was already drawing my sword, and my spear went in
under
his shield and into his thigh, and he grunted. I use heavy
spears, and the blow went well in, and he couldn’t get it out.

He screamed and fell to his knees, and of course that hurt him more.

I carefully pinned his sword hand with my shield – dying men are dangerous – and cut his head off with my kopis.

It was a good stroke, and he was positioned for it, and Ares himself held my hand. I have cut men’s hands off before, but I don’t think, until that moment, that I had ever beheaded
anything but rams in sacrifice. Blood fountained out of his neck, and his body twitched and fell forward, and his eyes
blinked
from the severed head – I swear it. It shook me.

Our whole phalanx set up a wild bellow of approval, like so many oxen.

I went and retrieved my spear. And then, well. Apparently my interest in war had not waned. I started walking towards the enemy.

‘Send me another hero,’ I shouted.

The enemy phalanx was not very tightly formed. As I have said, every man stands where he will, and their spacings are not ideal, and men who dislike each other leave gaps, as do strangers. All
in all, they form at something more like our
fusin
or normal order, not the
sunaspismos
or close order that a phalanx more typically fights in. I walked forward slowly, and the
men opposite me shuffled back.

Well.

A young man without a torque came out. He was probably someone’s bondsman, and although he was well muscled, he didn’t know much about using a spear.

I killed him.

A tall man with heavy moustaches came out. He had a magnificent torque and a shirt of scales, and a helmet with a pig on top. His shield was long and narrow, like two boards together, with a
long central boss. He had a good spear, and he crouched like a boxer as he approached me.

He tried to shield-bash my aspis. He hadn’t fought a Greek before. The round face of my shield ate most of his energy, and the willow splits resisted the rest, and he backed away. I
stabbed for his feet and got one. My spear came away bloody, and he roared in pain and leaped.

I wasn’t prepared. No one had ever leaped into the air in front of me before, and instead of gutting him in the air, I ended up slamming my spearhead into his helmet – better than
nothing, but he came down on my shield and we went down in a tangle. I went over backwards, my legs trapped under me, and something snapped – very painfully – in my right foot as I went
down. I was under him, but he was just barely moving, and I had time to get the knife out from under my arm and put it under his chin.

By Heracles, my foot hurt. When I looked down, my toes were swollen. I’d broken it.

What an inglorious wound.

The next man was already dismounting from his chariot. By Greek standards, the Keltoi have very little sense of honour. I’d put three of theirs down, and they just kept sending champions.
This new one was somebody – his men cheered, and he had a long shirt of polished scales and a beautiful helmet with eagle’s wings – real ones – on either side of his
head.

I got my aspis back on my arm and I sheathed my dagger, and my kopis, and got my spear back.

He stood by his chariot and shouted his lineage – descended, apparently, from the War God.

I was breathing like a horse after a race, and he was fresh.

He picked up his shield, hopped once and hurled his spear like Zeus’s thunderbolt.

The hop gave him away, however, and I deflected it with my aspis.

He reached up and his charioteer handed him another spear, and he threw it.

I began to get angry. And his second throw wasn’t any more decisive than the first.

And he reached for a third spear. The bucket in the chariot had six.

You can run on a broken foot. Really, you can.

I didn’t run at him. I ran at his horses. They wanted to shy, but the charioteer held them.

I killed one.

Heh.

Then I killed the other one.

Then I killed the charioteer. He was yelling at me as if I’d committed some sort of foul.

Kelts don’t kill charioteers, apparently.

Then I turned and started hunting the lordling.

His daimon had already left him. He tried to keep away from me. And he was yelling – demanding that I stop, that I had broken the laws of a duel.

At least, that’s what I think he said.

Eventually, when he was pressed almost back to his own foot soldiers, he stopped. We went shield to shield. I used mine with a push of the shoulder to roll his down, and I pricked him with my
spear – I got him, but his scales saved him from the worst of it.

He stabbed at me, but I had turned him with my stronger shield and he stumbled away.

My spear licked out and struck his helmet.

He stumbled.

I struck his right foot with my spear.

He gasped, but his shield was still steady as I leaped forward, and our shields went
crack
as we struck at each other. My spear went into his throat, and his spear rang off my
helmet.

I stumbled back. If I had not killed him, he would have had me then.

Now their line was backing away from me.

Seckla came across the stream at my back. He rightly assessed that I was hurt.

But he didn’t come alone. The rest of my men crossed with him – and Collam’s infantry. Although they owed me no loyalty, they apparently thought that this was a signal and then
began to cross, and suddenly, our whole line was crossing the stream.

But the enemy were falling back.

Our cavalry didn’t move. They sat on their side of the stream and watched our infantry push the Biturges up their ridge.

They began to run.

The Senones leaped forward like hungry wolves, gave a bellow and it was over.

Well, except for the actual battle.

The infantry didn’t decide Keltoi battles. Cavalry decided Keltoi battles. The Biturges cavalry watched their infantry run, and they turned on us.

I couldn’t keep up with the runners. My foot hurt too much. So I was standing, breathing, leaning on my spear when the Biturges cavalry charged into the Senones infantry. It was an
insanely stupid thing to do – they abandoned the streamside and charged our victorious infantry out of loyalty to their own infantry, I assume.

The way Collam tells it, he couldn’t believe his eyes for several long breaths of a man. It seemed to good to be true.

But as the last of the horsemen cantered uphill away from the stream, he decided it must be true. And he led his cavalry across the stream, and that, my friends, was the end of the battle.
Collam captured half a hundred noble cavalrymen and twenty chariots.

Of course, the Biturges cavalry had had ten minutes to chew on us, and I missed the end because I was lying face down in the grass.

I missed everything. Doola came upriver with ten more pigs of tin, his wife and twenty barrels of wine, as well as three hundred Gaulish refugees looking for a new life on the
Inner Sea.

Collam made a treaty with the Venetiae on his own terms, and traded them six of their merchant aristocrats for Gwan’s father and his debt.

I was two weeks returning to consciousness, and I had headaches and black depression – the result, a Greek doctor told me later, of a bad blow to the head. I never saw the man who put me
down – I was alone, and a great many of them came for me because, of course, I’d downed their champions.

My recovery was slow. I caught something – one of Apollo’s arrows – that made me drip at both ends, and my foot swelled and got purple so that I thought it would have to come
off. And then I lost more time – off my head, I think, with a fever.

Doola nursed me. Bless him, and his wife. I was a hero to the Gauls, but with so many prisoners, so much loot and the trade negotiations, I was largely forgotten.

It was a month before we left. Even then, I’d lost weight, and I could just barely ride, and it was Doola, not me, who led us back across the passes to Lugdunum. We had many parting
embraces and declarations of friendship, and I had enough golden torques given me to start a collection.