Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3)

by Christian Cameron

  We had never really fought together.

  Perhaps we sought to impress one another. But neither of us would give a step, and neither of us slowed, and so we hurtled straight into their ranks. I got my aspis up and forward onto the spears and I let them slow me, and then I leaped as high as I could and threw my spear – hard – into the front rank, and came down without getting a spear in my foot or knee or head – alive, in other words.

  Gaius must have thrown a pace farther out, because a man fell, and for a moment, their ranks rippled—

  I put my shoulder into the back of my aspis as I landed, head down, and my impetus slammed a man back even as I got my kopis out of the scabbard. The long swords the Gauls used only hampered them, this close. I know, because one rang off my helmet immediately. I was in their ranks, moving among them, slashing right and left. I doubt I killed a man, but I’ll wager I hit six in as many heartbeats.

  And about then, the rest of my spearmen hit their shield wall, and they folded. They began to break from the front, not the back, and suddenly they were dead men – just like that. Let me say, we outnumbered them four to one, and we had every advantage: terrain, flanks, depth and armour. But their shield wall couldn’t hold two of us.

  It is a difference in attitude, eh? As many Persians would have killed us. Hmm . . . Or perhaps not, eh?

  I burst out through the back of their shallow line, and my flankers were climbing the bank and I was almost across the low bridge. To the right, a hundred men or more were coming at the flank of the tin train. It would be close whether they got to it, or it got across the bridge.

  To the left, the river guarded my flank. Or so I thought. But when I looked, there were fifty armoured horsemen swimming the river. The same low water that had allowed me to cross the streambed—

  Well, I can be a fool, sometimes.

  And my spearmen were running the Gauls down and killing them instead of stopping to rally.

  Oh, for a hundred real soldiers! Even real pirates.

  Men in victory are as irrational as men in defeat. Only a veteran knows the truth – that it’s not over until it is over.

  Seckla hadn’t crossed yet. I held up a hand and stopped him.

  ‘If there’s an ambush, the spearmen will find it,’ I said. ‘Stop the horsemen. And take the archers.’

  Seckla nodded and rode off, and I ran – in armour, damn it – back to the donkey train. They were trotting along the road. Demetrios was at their head.

  ‘Move!’ I roared. ‘Move!’

  I looked to the right. The archers lofted another volley, and hit not one but two Aedui warriors, and the rest fell on their faces. My archers turned and followed Seckla, and the Aedui rose to their feet and came forward – slowly at first, and then with more spirit.

  I had been far too confident.

  Panicked men do not make good animal-handlers. Panicked men lead to panicked animals, and panicked animals run. In all directions.

  In a matter of heartbeats, an easy victory had become a disaster. My train didn’t cross the bridge. It ran off, away from the charging Aedui and towards the river. A donkey with an eighty-pound ingot of tin doesn’t run all that well, but it will run as fast as it can.

  The horsemen were almost across. The archers were starting to engage them. The range was close, and the archers had time and felt safe, at least for the moment.

  Horses and men began to die.

  Behind me, the Aedui from the bridge were dying. But my precious spearmen had run too far, all but Alexandros’s marines and maybe a dozen others.

  I could have screamed in my frustration. Even Gaius had run off after the Aedui. Gwan – I could see his Gaulish gear – was beside him, halfway down the valley.

  On the other hand, when the animals broke for the river, the eighty men in reserve ceased to matter as baggage guards. That’s how it goes.

  ‘Demetrios!’ I called. He did not look like a great warrior; he wasn’t very tall and his helmet looked several sizes too big. ‘Face to the right!’ I called. I ran to his men.

  I’d like to say that the enemy didn’t expect us to abandon our tin, but they were not under anyone’s control either, at this point. I put myself at the head of Demetrios’s baggage guards and we charged the Aedui on foot, who had been pricked by the archers and crawled across the marsh.

  A few of them died, but the rest chose to run, evading our short charge and running back into the marsh. There were some desultory spear casts from both sides.

  I needed a decisive result.

  I wasn’t going to get one.

  ‘Hold them here,’ I said to Demetrios, and ran – panting, now, with effort – back to my marines and Giannis and a few comrades.

  ‘Follow me,’ I spat. I ran down the slope towards the river.

  The cavalrymen were trying to kill Seckla, and Seckla was refusing to be drawn into a fight, and the archers were running around, trying to stay alive and occasionally launching a shaft. I only had six archers, and they were the balance of the fight. The cavalrymen didn’t seem to know that, though. Phokis, one of the former slaves and a fine archer, died from a chance javelin throw, but he was one of the few.

  At any rate . . . I charged fifty cavalrymen with twenty infantry.

  I didn’t have a spear to throw.

  It was foolishness. They were brilliant horsemen – as good as Persians – and one of them saw me, and all by himself he turned out of the chase for Seckla and rode at me. I should have stopped running, but I didn’t. I ran right at him.

  He was grinning. He had a scale shirt down to his thighs, a fine helmet and two javelins. He threw one just before he reached me. It bounced off the face of my aspis and then I sidestepped and his horse sidestepped – he struck with his javelin, hitting me in the head. My sword licked out and caught his leg, and then he was past me, and I was alive.

  I shook my head, and the eagle fell off.

  A dozen more of their cavalrymen turned, now, eager to emulate their fellow. And he was circling wide behind me, coming back for another try.

  ‘Form on me,’ I croaked, and set my feet. I remember praying to Heracles, and feeling like a fool. I had come all this way, and I was losing my train of tin. And perhaps my life or my freedom.

  I gritted my teeth.

  A dozen cavalrymen may not sound like much. After all, I was a hero of Marathon! I had faced down a hundred Persian noblemen – the finest horsemen in the circle of the world.

  But the Gauls were, man for man, marvellous horsemen, perhaps the equals of the Persians, and they were fresh, delighted to be fighting, dangerous men on well-trained horses. I was tired, and defeat has its own fatigue. And we were losing.

  Behind me, the Aedui infantry were gaining courage, and working their way forward.

  Far to the south, I could see Gaius’s Etruscan feathers waving on the brows of his helmet. He was rallying my phalanx. He would only be ten minutes late. In time, perhaps, to rescue my corpse.

  My marines and some shepherds pressed in around me.

  ‘Spears up!’ I remember roaring.

  There’s a belief that horses won’t face a spear point, or a well-ordered host of men. I don’t know – perhaps it becomes true at some point, if the host is wide enough. Certainly, I’ve seen five hundred Athenians turn the charge of the very best of the Persian noble cavalry, the horses turning away before a single man had died.

  But the Gauls trained their horses differently. The Gauls came at us in no particular order, but one man, on a beautiful white horse, was in front, and he came at me at a dead gallop, and when he was a few horse-lengths away, I realized that he was not slowing down and that I was literally trapped between my comrades.

  So naturally, I leaped out and charged him.

  What would you do?

  I got my aspis up – no low blows from a horseman. I was on the cavalryman’s bridle-hand side, so he had to cut cross-body at me, and I took his blow on my sword – held high over my head, across my aspis face – a
nd I let the blow roll off my blade like rain falling off a temple roof, turned my hand and struck. It was a short blow, but I had plenty of fear to power it, and he had no armour on his thighs, and then the next horseman hit me in the back and I went down.

  My cuirass took the blow, but I went face down over my aspis and I stunned myself on the rim of my own shield. A horse kicked me as I fell, right on the point of the hip.

  I thought I’d got a spear through my armour. I assumed I was dead. I was down, and the pain was intense, and when I tried my legs, they didn’t work.

  My legs didn’t work.

  I don’t know how long I lay there. I was conscious, but I had taken two bad blows and a light ring to my head, and I had every reason to think I was raven’s food.

  Then a riderless horse came pounding across the ground at me, and without conscious thought, I rolled myself over to avoid it.

  With my legs.

  Thought is action. I got my feet under me and powered to an upright position. My sword was lying there. My helmet had twisted on my head. I remember standing there on a stricken field, unable to decide which I should do first – retrieve the sword? Fix the helmet?

  Aye, laugh if you like. Pain and fatigue and desperation make you stupid.

  My marines had scattered. Giannis helped me get myself together.

  Six of the Gauls’ cavalrymen were down. And Seckla was leading the others in a merry dance.

  Suddenly, we were in a stalemate. A stasis. I muttered to Giannis, and he began shouting for the men to come to me.

  Other men pointed at me.

  Demetrios had all of the reserve together, and they came to me in a block. The Aedui infantry were still hesitant.

  My archers were in a patch of brush, down by the water, and they were carefully loosing at the bolder Gaulish horsemen. They didn’t hit many men. But they hit a great many horses. And the Gauls are tender on their horses.

  When I went down, we were losing. When I got up, we weren’t.

  War’s like that. I made a good plan, and it failed. The enemy plan was foolish, and it nearly succeeded.

  But now we had some advantages. So I ignored that dull, metallic ache in my hip, and I picked up a fine Gaulish spear and pointed it down the field at the riverbank, where our donkeys and horses were pinned by a handful of mounted Gauls.

  ‘There’s our tin, friends,’ I said.

  ‘Arimnestos!’ shouted Giannis. I thought he was trying to get my attention, but Demetrios shouted it too. In a moment, a hundred men were bellowing my name as if it were a war cry.

  I’m not ashamed to say I almost burst into tears. And when we charged, I had the feeling – that old feeling – that I was invincible.

  That’s the daimon of combat, thugater. One moment you think you are dead, and the next, you are full of of piss and vinegar, ready for anything.

  I’ve seen a few defeats, but far more victories, and men die in defeat faster than they do in victory.

  We slammed into them. No, that’s a lie, friends. We ran at them, and most of them ran from us – into the river. The men chasing Sekla were cut off, well up the ridge to our right. And in a few moments, we were all around our pack animals. The stubborn panic of the average donkey is a two-edged sword. They ran from us, but they weren’t going to tamely submit to our enemies, either.

  If men hadn’t died, it would have been like comedy, Thugater. We’d run around in all directions, our bandit enemies had largely run around us, and now they were running away. I’m not sure if that counts as a battle or not. We lost nine men, dead and badly wounded, and the worst part was killing off our own wounded – Garun, a Marsalian fisherman who’s been with me since I poured bronze for the ram-spur, and others just as good, or just as deserving of life. But when a man has a spear right through his guts so that the head comes out the back—

  Best he have brave friends.

  The Aedui infantry on our side of the stream faded the moment it became clear that their noble cavalry wasn’t going to fight. We took eight of them, too – tired men who didn’t have the muscles to run away.

  The enemy had about thirty dead and wounded and twenty captured. A dozen of the captured were cavalrymen. They couldn’t cross the gully to freedom, and Gaius closed the bridge, and Demetrios and I worked with Sekla to herd them into a circle. They were mostly very young men, and all the fight had gone out of them, and I think they’d have surrendered sooner except that they got the idea we were going to execute them.

  Did they think we were fools?

  We used them as hostages, of course. We sent the youngest, a boy of seventeen, up the ridge to tell his lord that we had them, and then we made camp. We spend two hours on our ditch and our abatis, and then we collapsed in exhaustion. A fight – even an easy fight – takes it out of you, and the affray at the bridge on the Rhodanus was a sharp fight with a bad bit.

  The next morning, we rose and packed our animals carefully, and marched with a strong advance guard – twenty men. After all, we’d captured a dozen horses. And we now had a dozen men in fine scale shirts.

  By evening, we were camping within bowshot of the walls of Ludunca. The town had hundreds of timber houses and some dozens of stone houses, as well as four temples and a stone outer wall. We paid a fine for camping in someone’s field.

  Gwan and his Senones unpacked the donkeys and the horses and the carts, and turned them around for home. Their part was done. At Ludunca, all of our tin was loaded onto barges. These weren’t made of a single tree trunk like those on the Sequaana. These were made of planks – as few as three very wide planks, or as many as nine. The sides were formed of single, heavy planks that fitted perfectly to the strakes of the bottom. Again, the boats were designed to take the standard barrels, but could also hold our pigs of tin.

  Vasilios was fascinated. He told us all, several times, that the way they built boats depended on the available timber. He was especially impressed with the way the Galles used iron nails to clench the timbers to cross supports – very alien to the Greek construction method, but very strong.

  He showed me one in particular that impressed me. The floor of a particularly large and heavy barge had cross beams to support the side of the boards and to keep them together. These boards had holes drilled in them and then in the supports, and pegs of oak were driven into those holes, and then iron nails were driven into the pegs, forcefully expanding them against the wood around them. The result was watertight and as strong as – well, as iron. And oak.

  We loaded for Marsala even while we negotiated with the local Aedui for the release of our hostages. They were all important young men – not the infantry, no one even wanted them back, but the horsemen. In the end, I released them all for a pound of gold and some casks of ale.

  I don’t think I’ve mentioned that we figured out that Callum had traded us twelve casks of bee’s wax for a pig of tin. I had no idea if that was a fair trade, but people had begun to make offers on the bee’s wax already. Without Doola, I was helpless to guess the value. Demetrios said it would trade well in many places, because it was so clear and white.

  I have to smile. I had a picture in my head of Arimnestos, the Killer of Men, standing in front of a group of unwed maidens – perhaps at the temple of Artmeis at Brauron. I was holding up a ball of pure white beeswax, and telling them that it was the very thing to use on their best white linen thread.

  Well, I think it’s funny.

  The trip down river from Ludunca was uneventful. We reached the Inner Sea at the old Phoneician port at Arla. I’m not ashamed to say that I threw myself down on the beach and kissed the sand and the water. I was not alone. We ran up and down the beach, and then we ran again, until the running became a kind of celebration.

  The boatmen were cautious about the edge of the sea, but they got their barges all the way along the coast to Massalia, almost one hundred stades, poling along the beaches. It is a protected part of the sea, but it seemed dangerous to me, perhaps because I had been through
so much that I feared the loss of everything at the very end.

  But one fine day in late autumn – just the edge of winter, with a bitter wind blowing out of the west, and a chill in the air that could make a man ill – we sighted Tarsilla. People came down to the water’s edge, and we landed on the beach, landed our pigs of tin, our little remaining silver, our bee’s wax, Gallish wine, hides and all. We moved them all into Vasilios’s shed that he had used to protect our ship when he was building it.

  We had a feast on the beach, and the next day we celebrated the Feast of Dionysus in style, with wine and song and even a play done by one of the teams of actors from Massalia.

  Two more days, and Demetrios of Phokia arrives with sixty men and a pair of oxen to kill, and gave another feast for our return. We spent two days telling him of our travels.

  He spent both days telling us of war with Carthage.

  Carthage had struck at Sicily in our absence. And not just Sicily – the Carthaginians were using force to get absolute mastery of all the trade routes in the western Inner Sea. Carthage had been involved in wars on Sardinia for fifty years – and had squandered armies and fleets attempting to dominate the stiff necked peoples of the island. By the time Telesinus was Archon in Athens, Carthage had at last dominated the Sardana, and was now attempting to use her new ports to attack Greek colonies like Massalia – and Syracusa.

  But the Greek world had not stood still during the year I had been away. Gelon, the Tyrant of Gela and Naxos, had seized power in Syracusa.

  That was news. I knew a Sicilian Greek aristocrat named Gelon – in fact, I had enslaved him. It couldn’t be the same man – the Sicilian Tyrant had never been any man’s slave – but I wondered if my Gelon had made it home.

  At any rate, Gelon – the tyrant – was unifying the Greek cities of Sicily and Magna Greca against Carthage. Not everyone joined him. Rich cities like Himera on Sicily and Reggium in southern Italy chose to remain independent.

  Really, it was the Ionian Revolt played out in miniature. It had been going on for years – as one or another Greek state rose to prominence and led the resistance against Carthage, and was conquered or bought off, another would come. But Gelon of Gela – a right bastard, if Dionysius the Phocaean was to be believed – had at least achieved the building of an alliance.