Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [130]
As soon as we formed close, we raised our voices and sang, and we moved down the hill.
In many ways, this was my first fight in a phalanx. Oh, I know – it was my fourth or fifth, but in all the others I’d been at the back, and the fighting had broken up quickly, or I’d been alone, as in the fight at the pass.
This time, both sides fought like lions.
When you are in the front rank, there’s an instant just before the lines close when a skilful man can hurt his opponent with a spear thrust. Once the lines come together, there’s no fine spear-fighting – you just thrust as fast and hard as you can until the shaft breaks, and then you draw your sword.
I had two spears – most of us had a pair, balanced for throwing, with long leather thongs. When we were five paces apart, I stepped forward with my left foot in time to the Paean and threw my first spear. Most of us did, and two hundred heavy spears crashed into the Carians as their spears came right back at us. If the pounding of the Medes’ arrows had been like the fall of hail on my shield, the jar of a Carian spear was like being hit with a log.
I had my second spear in my hand in the last three paces. I remember being pleased at how well I threw and changed hands, and I stepped forward, planted my foot and thrust overhand, diagonally right.
We crashed into their front and they stopped us dead. And we stopped them.
My spear went in under the Carian’s helmet and he went down.
I let the spear go. I was locked up against a big man and his spear was over my right shoulder, trying to kill Cleon. Ares, that press was close! We were doubled up, and we had the hill behind us. They had armour and size.
No one gave a foot.
I got my sword from under my arm and I thrust under my shield, because the crush was too close for a cut. The point glanced off his thigh armour and I thrust again and again, and finally – gods, it seemed to take for ever – I got the blade around his out-thrust leg and cut his sinews and he went down.
I raised my sword up over my head in the single breath before his file-mate slammed his shield into mine. I cut at his helmet and scored, shearing off part of his crest and slamming the helmet against his cheek. He stumbled and I pushed into his shield – and he fell, tripping over his mate, and quicker than thought my sword went left and right at waist level or a little below. I cut at their buttocks and the backs of their legs – back-cut, fore-cut – and then the third-ranker got past the tangle into me, and I hammered my sword into his helmet. He had no crest and his helmet rang and I hit him again. He dropped his spear to get at his sword and Cleon put his spear right into the tau of his faceplate – a magnificent thrust.
I knew my job – and now I felt the power. I roared and pushed past the dying man, slammed the fourth-ranker with my shield and back-cut at the third-ranker without even looking at him, so that my sword broke on his helmet, but he went down, probably unconscious.
Cleon thrust over my shoulder and I took his spear. He let go and I started fighting with it, and he must have got another from the men behind him, because when that spear broke he gave me another.
They were pushing away from me now, the fourth- and fifth-rankers in the Carian host. None of them wanted to face me and I began to hurt them, sniping against their thighs and necks with accurate spear thrusts. A killer like me is most dangerous when no one will face him. Never give a man time to plan his hits, or he’ll reap a whole rank.
I didn’t kill them. I just made them bleed and they fell. No one is brave with the red flowing from an open vein.
Beside me, Aristides and Heraklides and all the files on either side of mine pushed forward into the hole I was cutting, and they pushed.
And then, as suddenly as the storm of bronze had begun, it was over. The pressure on my chest faded and then it was gone. The dust rose and I punched my borrowed spear at a man as he turned away, knocking him