The Hittite - Ben Bova [87]
The Trojans attacked us with reckless fury, practically leaping on our spear points. They fought to save their city. We fought for our lives. There was no way for us to retreat without being butchered. We either held our foothold on the wall or we died.
Our shield wall buckled under their ferocious attack. We were forced a step back, then another. A heavy bronze spear point crashed over the top of my shield, missing my ear by a finger’s width. I thrust my spear into the belly of that man: his face went from shocked surprise to the final agony of death in the flash of a heartbeat.
More Trojans were scrambling up the ladders to the platform, strapping armor over their nightclothes as they ran. These were the nobility, the cream of their fighting strength. I could tell from the gaudy plumes of the helmets they were putting on and the burnished bronze of their breastplates glinting in the light of the new day.
Farther off, archers were kneeling as they fired flaming arrows at our tower. Others fired at us. An arrow chunked into my shield. Another hit Harkan, two men down from me, in his leg. He staggered backward and let his shield drop. Instantly a Trojan drove his spear through Harkan’s unprotected chest.
Their archers began lofting their shots to get over our wall of shields. Flaming arrows fell among us. Men screamed and fell to the wooden flooring, their clothes and flesh on fire.
The barrage of arrows would quickly break our shield wall and what was left of my men would go down under the weight of Trojan numbers. I felt a burning fury rise inside me, a rage against those archers who knelt a safe distance away and tried to kill us at their leisure. Call it battle fury, call it bloodlust, I felt a flame of hatred and rage that I had never experienced before.
“Hold here,” I shouted to Magro. Before he could do more than grunt I drove forward, surprising the Trojans in front of me. Grasping my spear in two hands, level with the floor, I pushed four of them off their feet and slipped between the others, dodging their clumsy thrusts as they half-turned to slash at me. I killed one of them; Magro and the rest of my men pushed forward and killed several more. The Trojans quickly turned back to face my advancing men.
I dashed toward the archers. Most of them turned and ran, although two of them stood their ground and managed to get off a pair of arrows at me. They thudded into my shield as I ran at the archers. I caught the first one on my spear, a lad too young to have more than the wisp of a beard. His companion dropped his bow and tried to pull out the dagger at his waist but I knocked him spinning with a swipe of my shield. He toppled off the platform screaming to the street below.
The other archers had retreated down the platform that ran along the battlements. The men of my squad were fighting the Trojan guards who had rushed them. For the span of a heartbeat I was alone. But only for that long. The Trojan nobles were charging along the platform toward me, a dozen of them, with more climbing the ladder behind them.
I hefted my long spear in one hand and threw it at the nearest man. Its heavy weight drove it completely through his shield and into his chest. He staggered backward into the arms of his two nearest companions.
I threw my shield at them to slow them down further, then picked up the bow from the archer I had slain. It was a beautiful, gracefully curved thing of horn and smooth-polished wood. But I had no time to admire its workmanship. I fired every arrow in the dead youth’s quiver as rapidly as I could, forcing the nobles to cower behind their body-length shields, holding them at bay for a precious few moments more.
Once the last arrow was gone and I threw down the useless bow, the