Killer of Men - Christian Cameron [198]
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.
Up we went, and the Thracians stood against us. I think they were shocked – appalled, even – that they were being charged. They weren’t men who stood in a line to fight, they were wild tribesmen who killed with the ferocity of their charge. I think they stood only because they knew that their allies were in position to take us in the flank. But my men overlapped their flank, so that my own flank files were bound to push right up into their ambush. I didn’t have to plan it that way – there was no other way it could happen. The hillside wasn’t that wide, and its seaside edge was a cliff that rose above the beach.
Paramanos’s men were pouring ashore from his ship, which was beached beside mine. Turning his ship hadn’t taken long – yet in that time my crew had broken the Phoenicians, killed the Ionians and run up the hill, and now his men were eager to come up and get their share of the loot.
Thracians were famous for having gold.
My men slowed as we came up to the Thracians. I couldn’t blame them – there is no such thing as a ferocious charge uphill, at least not on a hill that steep.
‘Form tight!’ I called, and the men pressed in.
Sorry, honey