Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [197]
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