Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [161]
I balanced on the rail and waved down on to the Phoenician’s deck. ‘After you, my lord!’ I said.
He grinned and we all leaped.
That was a great day, and a great hour. The enemy already knew they were doomed and doomed men seldom fight well. We cleared that first ship faster than it takes to tell it, killing their sailors – all their marines were elsewhere, boarding the Lesbian ships. I cut the captain down by his helmsman and Nearchos gutted the helmsman, and then we went over the side and down into the next ship – another trireme, and now we were coming up behind the Phoenician marines as they fought shield to shield against Lesbians and Chians and Ephesian exiles.
Behind me, the Cretans were clearing the Phoenician decks, tripping from bench to bench. A Cretan ship is a fearsome thing because every bench has another warrior. We were worth five ships’ worth of marines.
My spears were gone and my good sword was in my hand. I was standing on the rail of a Lesbian ship – there were twenty ships all locked together in a single mass of death – and I balanced there for three heartbeats while I looked for Archilogos.
Then I saw him, a flash of blue and gold, still on his feet, his right arm covered in blood and his aspis a flapping mass of splintered wood and collapsed bronze. Some men fight better when they are doomed.
And I blessed the gods that they had given me the moment to redeem my oath.
Hah! I killed like the scythe of Hades. I won’t bore you with the tale – oh, you want me to bore you?
It was one of my finest days.
All the doubt left me. I cared nothing for their wives and their children and their petty lives. As fast as my arm moved, they died. If they turned, I cut them down, and if they didn’t turn, I put my sword into their throats and thighs. I could have cleared a ship by myself, but I had Nearchos by my side, and his blade was as fast as mine, and Lekthe’s spear flashed over my head from time to time when I was pressed, and they died. The four of us were the cutting edge of a living axe of Cretans, and we flowed over their decks as fast as men can clamber from bench to bench. My right arm was red to the shoulder with the blood of lesser men, dripping down my chest inside my armour, and there was the smell of copper in my nose like an offering to the god of smiths, and still I killed them.
After we cleared our second ship, I got my voice back and called ‘Archilogos!’, and he turned. Because if he died without me, I would never forgive myself. He had to know I was coming.
Another ship, the last before Archi’s, and I was suddenly blade to blade with a giant. To make it worse, he was standing on the command platform and I was in the benches. He was an officer of some sort, because he’d gathered a dozen marines and turned them to face our rush.
I paused. He was huge, and I felt the blood and the fire in my muscles.
‘Spear,’ I said, reaching back, and Lekthes put his in my hand.
That’s right, honey. And he eventually died a lord, and his daughters play with you. I thought you’d recognize the name – I’ve mentioned it a dozen times.
The giant raised his shield, ready for me to throw the spear.
Instead, I charged him. Raising the shield cost him a second, and I got a foot on the platform and my shield went against his, and before I got the other foot up, I slammed my spear point into the side of his helmet, a broad bowl with cheek pieces, riveted in the middle. Phoenicians are masters of many things, but bronze-work is not one of them.
He stumbled back. I’d rung his bell. Then he cut low at my legs, but I dipped the Boeotian and put the bronze-bound base into his sword. Then I slammed my spear into his helmet – again.
In the same place.
He stumbled back, and I roared. I remember that moment best of all, because this giant of a man was afraid and that fear was like the scent of blood to a shark.
He cut at my legs again, but I blocked it, stepped in and put my spear point into his helmet a third time,