Satyrus pulled at his sword again, and it came free of the scabbard fitfully, the blade red with rust.
Lucius looked at him. ‘Where I’m from, that’s a crime,’ he said.
Satyrus nodded. ‘If my tutor saw me with a rusty sword,’ he said. Then he looked into the valley. ‘Apobatai!’ he called.
Heads turned.
‘Philos!’ Satyrus called. ‘Run up the track and tell Nikephorus to start forming the rearguard – One-Eye’s making a grab for us. Look on the heights above us!’
Philos dropped his shield and ran, sprinting up the steep trail with the hoarded energy of the professional soldier.
Lucius was looking at the cliffs above them. ‘We’re fucked,’ he said.
Satyrus was shaking his head. ‘I have scouts in every valley!’ he said.
‘They went over the ridges,’ Lucius said. ‘Once you climb to the top, moving along isn’t that hard.’
Rocks began to roll down on them from the heights.
The first attack was really just a probe – fifty tribesmen of one sort or another, charging out of the rocks.
Satyrus stood his ground between Herakles and Lucius. Herakles was afraid – terrified – and he talked and talked, his young voice carrying over everything. He talked about his mother, and about a contest he’d won – a pitiful story – and about how he wasn’t afraid.
‘Here they come,’ said Lucius. His first words in an hour.
By luck, good or ill, the only determined attackers – a pair of men too young to understand the word feint, or so it seemed to Satyrus – made unerringly for their part of the line while javelins fell like rain. Herakles took a javelin in his shield and stepped back half a step, reached around it to pull it free – and they were on him.
Lucius got one – a simple, brutally well-timed thrust into the man as he ran at them, full tilt. A running man is vulnerable. Most men slow when they hit the shield wall, but not these Mysians. He went down.
Satyrus tried to do the same but Herakles, in his panic, was shuffling and then – full of fear – thrust forward at the tribesman, effectively cutting Satyrus out of the fight.
The enemy spear hit him just over the heart, glanced off his bronze thorax, skipped up his neck, across his face, and past. Herakles caught the shaft – hurt and desperate – and they were face to face, and Herakles’ hand went up under his arm as he was trained, caught at his sword hilt – backwards – ripped it clear of his scabbard overhand and thrust it into his attacker’s face, by luck or Tyche through an eye, and the enemy – a boy Herakles’ own age – went down, and his shade left his body.
The fall of javelins had stopped.
‘I killed him!’ Herakles said, elated. ‘By the gods! I stood my ground!’
Lucius nodded. ‘Yep,’ he said. He flipped the two dead men over and checked them. They had nothing.
‘I-I killed him! Man to man! You saw me, Satyrus!’ the young man said, and he almost danced – skipped a little, and his eyes were bright.
‘That was the easy part,’ Lucius said. ‘Now they come at our flanks. Where is Nikephorus?’
Satyrus was on the same message. ‘Back!’ he told the Apobatai.
‘He … smells like … a deer.’ Herakles was looking at the boy at his feet. The dead boy’s lank hair was in his own blood, and flies were already landing on the mass of potential food. Slowly, and with awful certainty, the corpse voided its bowels.
‘Oh … gods!’ Herakles said, and threw up on the corpse at his feet.
Lucius had his hair. He stood there until the boy was done, and Satyrus gave him some wine from his pottery canteen.
‘I … killed him,’ Herakles said.
Satyrus’s eyes met Herakles’ eyes. ‘We know,’ he said, his voice as soothing as a mother’s. ‘Have some wine.’
‘Welcome to the brotherhood of Ares,’ Lucius said.
Satyrus slapped the younger man on the shoulder of his armour-yoke. ‘Move faster, or you’ll lie with him.’
They began to trot up the pass.
More rocks began to fall.
Just short of the top of the pass, they found Philos, dead, his throat cut.
‘Uh-oh,’ Lucius said.
‘Herakles, stand with us,’ Satyrus said. ‘Right.’ He had most of the Apobatai – almost two hundred men. The obvious choice was to form them in the open space at the top of the pass and hold off all comers until Stratokles or Charmides or Nikephorus sensed what was wrong.
Against that solution, the top of the pass was overhung by two big ridges within a stone’s throw. The men holding the top of the pass would be bombarded with small rocks and scree – not the end of the world, but annoying. And there was a light fog – almost a haze – as far as Satyrus could see. If his messenger was dead, it could be an hour before Nikephorus inquired.
‘Any great ideas?’ Lucius asked.
Satyrus found he had the daimon on him, and the smell of wet cat that he hadn’t smelled in years.
Perhaps I die here
, he thought. It would be like Herakles to grant his worshippers the time to get their thoughts in order so that they could die like heroes.
‘Yes,’ he said. He looked around for phylarchs. ‘All officers,’ he said. ‘On me. Form your ranks, gentlemen.’
The phylarchs of the Apobatai gathered around him, and Delios tipped his helmet back, looking around through the haze. ‘We can hold here, lord,’ he said.
Satyrus shook his head. ‘That’s just what they want us to do,’ he said. ‘As soon as all the boys are together, we’re going up the ridge – there. Don’t point. All together. Men at the flanks will have to scramble and fight. But if we get up there we’ll hold. Who has water left?’
No one did.
‘There’s a stream right there. Every file waters up. Then we go. Phylarchs, take the time to look for your way up.’
‘Ares – this will suck,’ Delios said. He shook his head. ‘But … you’re right. Better to die like lions.’
Satyrus grinned. ‘I don’t intend to die,’ he said. ‘I intend to get to the top of that ridge and kill everything I find there.’
Delios wasn’t sure if his king was joking. ‘Lord?’
Satyrus nodded to all of them. ‘Herakles is with us,’ he said.
Behind him, he heard young Herakles say to Lucius, ‘What does that mean? Is he talking about me?’
‘Shush,’ said the Latin.
It took for ever for the men to fill their canteens. Arrows fell on them, and javelins, and rocks with increasing frequency as the enemy filled in on the ridge above them – more men on the ridge behind them. Satyrus took a heavy rock on his shield and had to skip to avoid it crushing his ankles.
Somewhere, they had friends, too. Probably the archers out with their morning scouts – there were enemy tribesmen dying up there on the ridge, and arrows going
both
ways.
‘I don’t get it,’ Lucius said. ‘Who’re those bastards?’
‘No idea. Don’t look a gift archer in the mouth,’ Satyrus said. Louder, he said, ‘Dump everything but your canteen and your fighting gear. If you have a long spear, ditch it. If you can get a javelin or two – take them.’
The ranks shuffled as men stripped their food bags. Veterans took a bite of bread, or dropped a ripe fruit down the front of their chitons. Some men dumped everything – some kept everything.
Men were edging forward, eager to start, to get it over with. To get out from under the rain of death. Two men were already down – one with his skull crushed, another with a broken ankle and
then
a crushed skull.
‘Wait for it,’ Satyrus yelled. Above them, the Mysians were screaming war cries.
Young Herakles shuffled and spat, trying to get the taste of death out of his mouth. Lucius looked bored. Satyrus watched the hills above them, wishing that he could suddenly hear the trumpets of the main column.
It seemed an odd and somewhat pointless place to die. But the smell of wet cat was powerful in his nostrils, and his hands shook with the power of his eudaimonia. He felt the strength of ten men flowing through his hands.
‘If this is your last hour,’ Satyrus called in his storm-at-sea voice, ‘use it to show the gods that you are a hero, not a man.’
The Apobatai, poised on the edge of desperation and defeat, heard him, and their roar of defiance was the sound of a wounded lion, crouched in the thicket, still dangerous.
‘At them!’ Satyrus roared, and they were away – a mad scramble, rock to rock, and the javelins flew thick and fast, and rocks – almost impossible to climb with an aspis straight-armed over your head. Satyrus got a leg up on a big rock, and something hit him in the exposed hip, and then he was up – no idea how – and instead of slipping down and climbing the next rock, he simply jumped – landed on the peak of the next giant rock, his foot already slipping, and he did it again, running from rock-peak to rock-peak while javelins hit his shield.
He wasn’t the only man to run along the top of the rocks instead of picking his way.
He was just the fastest.
He went up the side of the ridge, and three bounds brought him to his first opponent – his balance was already slipping, and the man was below him, and Satyrus put a spear point unerringly into the top of the man’s head as he turned to run, right through the top of his skull, and Satyrus leaped again. Now he was on a patch of grass the size of a helmsman’s station, and two men stood there, one with a bow and one with an axe. The bowman shot the axe man in the back and died to Satyrus’s spear, his eyes still full of the remorse of his panic-driven error. And then the Mysian tribesmen were breaking, running, and the Apobatai hunted them through the rocks to the top of the ridge, until their flight was stiffened by Agrianian javelin men from northern Macedon – professional light infantry, some of them veterans from Alexander’s earliest campaigns. There were fifty of them there, and some slingers.
They were professionals, but they didn’t have armour, shields, or desperation. Satyrus’s men suffered from the slingers – ten men went down in as many casts – but then, out of nowhere, a dozen of his scout-archers appeared higher on the hill and let fly into the back of the Agrianians, and the ridge was taken. The Mysian tribesmen were butchered, thirty of them were taken prisoner, and the Agrianians fought a dogged rearguard action of their own, their javelins outranged by the Sakje bows of the scouts. But they knew cover and they knew how to move, and they slipped away with fewer than a dozen casualties.
Satyrus made the top of the ridge and slumped against a stone. His sword was red with blood and light rust, and when he raised the blade to point out the enemy slingers and call an order, the blood ran untrammelled down the blade and over his hand. He had one more fight – not his choice – when a wounded Mysian chose to die rather than surrender and attempted to take Satyrus with him. Satyrus had to kill him twice, a blow to the head that should have put him down and another that all but severed his head before the man fell at his feet.
And then he slumped against a rock again, the pain in his hip so intense he could barely stand, the sword stuck to his hand with dried blood.
Herakles found him first, gave him water, and then poured water over his sword hand until the dried blood ran away and he could open his hand.
‘It’s dry here,’ Satyrus mumbled. At his feet, he could see Nikephorus coming hard with three hundred pikemen.
‘Can you walk, lord?’ Herakles asked him.
Satyrus laughed. ‘You, too, are a king, lad. You and I don’t call each other “lord”.
Herakles looked around. ‘Is this … all there is? Satyrus? Is this all there is to … to war?’ He looked at his feet – crusted with the mud of Ares – blood, excrement and dirt. ‘I was
so scared
.’
Lucius came up and put his arm around the young man, and Satyrus drank wine from his canteen and rubbed his hip. The thorax had held, but now that he had time to look, he could see that the rock – he thought it had been a rock – had crushed the flange at the hip right into his skin.
‘Help me get this off,’ he gasped. The blood was soaking his buttocks and his groin, running down his legs.
He dropped his shield and they unlatched the thorax and folded it off him. He wished for his scale shirt, but it was thousands of stades to the north.
The wound itself was nothing; the rock had crushed the armour, and the corner of the broken bronze had cut his hip deeply and repeatedly with every stride he took – a series of fifty semicircular cuts, every one of which had drawn blood.
‘That’s going to make a spectacular scar,’ Lucius said. ‘Can you walk?’
Satyrus shook his head. ‘I’ll be fine. Dump the thorax – we can’t fix it here.’
Young Herakles shook his head. ‘And let them put your breastplate in a trophy?’ he said. ‘Never!’ He took a rock and bashed at the place where the hip was bent in and the metal was torn asunder. In three blows he’d knocked it back into shape, the jagged edges now thrust out and away from Satyrus’s hip.
‘Well done, young man!’ Lucius said. They got it over Satyrus’s head, and latched it, and Satyrus felt only the pain of the wound and some additional pressure where the weight sat on his hips. He pushed his blood-soaked chlamys up onto his hips, and managed to wink at Herakles. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Although I don’t really care if they build a trophy,’ he added.
‘That was incredible,’ Herakles said, as they started to descend the mountain. ‘I feel like a god.’
Satyrus nodded. The wine had gone to his head, and all he wanted was sleep. The rain had stopped. The sun was starting to burn through the haze. Nikephorus was running to meet them, relief in his eyes.
‘I had no idea!’ he shouted, fifty paces away.
When Satyrus reached him, he slapped the mercenary on the back. ‘Neither did I. Antigonus is one wily bastard.’
They collected the rearguard, picked up their dead and retreated over the top of the pass.
Yes,
Satyrus thought.
That’s all there is.