Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3)

by Christian Cameron

  Two days later, we guested with Collam, and I brought him some Persian saffron and some pepper from the beach market in Massalia. He offered to let my little war band stay for some time, and he sent riders out to the south and east.

  I passed a very pleasant week. We hunted deer and wild boar, and I showed him how the Greeks hunt rabbit and he laughed himself silly. Even when I came back with a pair of coneys, he was still laughing. No Gaul aristocrat will do anything on foot if it can be done on horseback, and the sight of me running the trails of his forest naked was apparently the very height of Gaulish humour.

  Summer was coming, and the grain was ripening in the fields, and all I could think about was the tin, and Demetrios. There was a girl in Collam’s hall – well, I was quite taken with her. She had beautiful big eyes and a wonderful laugh. She was by no means a great beauty, except in a lithe, flat-chested sort of way . . . Ah, I beg your pardon, girls. But she made the time pass quickly, and the enthusiasm with which she opened the pins on her dress and let it fall—

  Ah, blushes all round. I really shouldn’t tell these stories. I merely want you to see that I was coming back to life in every way. I’m ashamed to say I don’t remember her name, but she was no slave. One of the very finest things about the Keltoi is the freedom of their women – in that respect, there’s a great deal the Hellenes could learn from them.

  Collam’s son came back from the south with a rumour that there was an early cart train coming up from Korbilon, which, after some talk, proved to be a town on the mainland opposite the Venetiae islands. I was worried that the Venetiae might hold a grudge, although, if you’ve been listening, you’ll know that we did them no harm. But as I have said elsewhere, merchants guard their trade routes the way farmers guard their fields. Dicca, as I called the lad, told that over the hills, men said the cart train was guarded by a black man with magical powers.

  That seemed hopeful.

  Sophia! That was her name. Or perhaps that was her name in Greek. At any rate, I was enjoying her, and in no hurry to leave, once I knew that Doola was coming. My host had tribal problems – a fractious neighbour, and Gwan’s father still owed the Venetiae, and was still a hostage with them.

  Collam sat down with me – we’d been there a full week, and perhaps more. We’d eaten a feast of pork, and the wine bowls were passing. I was sitting with Sophia, my arm around her waist – the Keltoi encouraged such behaviour in public, whereas in Greece it would have excited comment, to say the least.

  Collam looked at Sophia and nodded. ‘Be sure you get a boy off him,’ he said.

  She threw back her head and laughed. ‘I’m past all that,’ she said. But she smiled at me.

  Collam leaned back against the table and twirled his moustaches. ‘Let me make you a proposition,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ Sophia said. ‘He wants you to fight.’

  She grinned and Collam frowned.

  ‘I want you to fight,’ Collam admitted, and tossed the woman a false glare. They weren’t brother and sister – I never fully understood their relationship, but it was deep. He looked back at me. ‘Listen – I can help you, and you can help me. The Venetiae, they want to move their goods without paying a toll. And my brother-in-law,’ he paused, ‘is willing to make concessions to them. Concessions he shouldn’t be making. But they are buying him against the rest of us, instead of paying their tolls.’

  ‘Ahh,’ I said, or something equally intelligent.

  ‘He’s assembled a strong force: he has Venetiae cavalry and his own charioteers and several hundred infantry.’

  ‘And you want to take him on,’ I said.

  Collam nodded. ‘He’s a rich man – far richer than any of us. But if the smaller lords band together, we can take him. And you are a famous warrior. And you have twenty warriors at your tail – a fine company. If you fight beside me, I’ll give Gwan any Venetiae prisoners to trade for his father.’

  I shook my head. ‘I didn’t really plan to come here and make war,’ I said. ‘I need to find Doola. I won’t do anything to annoy the Venetiae while Doola is still on the river or the road.’

  It was a good thing to say, but the Lord of the Biturges had other ideas. I suppose he heard that my host was making alliances and causing trouble, because Genattax of the Biturges marched against us with twelve hundred men, and he came almost without warning.

  I might have wondered why Collam was so glad to see me that spring, or why he was so eager to send scouts out to the south. In fact, his son and his other horsemen were watching every road and path for Genattax all spring, and my search for Doola was merely fortuitous.

  But I wasn’t going to ride off and leave Collam in the lurch. And the rumour was that the black man and his convoy were ten days away. Maybe less.

  Why did things have to be so complicated?

  Collam used me as a recruiting tool, showing his Greek warrior off to his neighbours. He had me demonstrate pankration with Seckla, and sometimes with some unlucky Gaulish lad. I felt as if I had become some sort of slave prizefighter, but by the time Genattax came at us over the hills, we had a thousand men, almost a third of them cavalry.

  Seckla was hesitant, but the rest of the men were game to fight. Fighting for strangers can be a testy business – you don’t really know who can be trusted, and there’s always the possibility of out-and-out betrayal, but I trusted Collam.

  We dismounted and fought with his tribal infantry. I’m not very good at fighting on horseback, and I thought that I could do something to stiffen the javelin-throwing peasantry.

  We formed on a hillside, with the enemy in full view, also forming – chaos, really. Men wandered up to the battle, and when they formed their phalanx, each man chose his own place. It was alien, and yet somehow familiar – after all, even in Plataea, men generally stand beside their brothers and cousins. I wanted us to form quickly and attack across the valley while the enemy was still forming, but Collam laughed at my notions of tactics and said that such a fight would decide nothing. So instead, both hosts formed, and moved carefully down the ridges towards the streambed at the bottom. It wasn’t very full. There was marshy ground to our left, and all of our cavalry formed on our right. All the enemy cavalry was there, too. They had more cavalry than we did, and more chariots, and we had more infantry.

  May I say that war looks a good deal less necessary when you are fighting for strangers? As far as I could tell, the differences between Collam and his brother-in-law could have been resolved in an hour over a cup of wine. Perhaps a Gaul would have felt the same about Datis and Miltiades. At any rate, I didn’t feel fired with enthusiasm for the conflict, and as morning wore into afternoon, I was increasingly aware that the enemy’s mounted flank outnumbered ours and also overshadowed it, as their line went well beyond ours to the right.

  But they wouldn’t cross the stream, and neither would we. I understood why we wouldn’t – we were outnumbered. But they had the numbers, and that trickle of water wouldn’t have slowed their cavalry.

  After some discussion, I found that it was only my ignorance. The chariots couldn’t cross the river, and that meant neither side was anxious to engage.

  Well, they aren’t professional warriors. They have their own ways, and they are, after all, only barbarians.

  We stood across the stream from them for hours. They would chant, and our side would chant. Sometimes a lone man would emerge and bellow a challenge.

  I stood with Seckla and watched.

  As the sun began to go down, a big man with a red beard emerged from the enemy infantry and whirled his great sword over his head and smacked his shield boss with it. I remember thinking – why not?

  In fact, I dared myself. I had never been so close to conflict and felt so little.

  I was afraid – afraid I was losing my taste for war. I was going to become one of those old men who love babies.

  Who knows what I feared. I am now an old man, and I love babies. Hah! The things young men fear.


  At any rate, I kicked off my sandals and walked to the edge of the stream. He came down – I don’t think he was delighted to have his challenge taken up, after an afternoon when no challenges had been answered.

  Since he hesitated, I jumped the stream. Immediately, a great shout went up from our lines, and men clattered their spears on their shields and roared.

  He was obviously surprised. Nor did he have a spear, and I did. He backed and backed, and we began to circle.

  I tried some old tricks to draw and attack, but I began to fear that I was dealing with a very experienced warrior. He would not be drawn. He wanted me to commit to my attack so that he could counter it, come inside and hit me with his sword.

  I wasn’t sure his strategy was sound – I wasn’t sure that his long sword could even hurt me through my armour. He wore no armour – just a silver torque and trousers.

  We circled again, and men shouted insults. They wanted us to get on with it. Easy to say, when you aren’t the one facing three feet of Keltoi steel.

  And then, he crossed his feet – a foolish thing to do at any time – and dropped his shield just a bit. We were ten feet apart, and he thought I couldn’t hit him.

  I stepped forward and threw my spear; he raised his shield and I was already drawing my sword, and my spear went in under his shield and into his thigh, and he grunted. I use heavy spears, and the blow went well in, and he couldn’t get it out.

  He screamed and fell to his knees, and of course that hurt him more.

  I carefully pinned his sword hand with my shield – dying men are dangerous – and cut his head off with my kopis.

  It was a good stroke, and he was positioned for it, and Ares himself held my hand. I have cut men’s hands off before, but I don’t think, until that moment, that I had ever beheaded anything but rams in sacrifice. Blood fountained out of his neck, and his body twitched and fell forward, and his eyes blinked from the severed head – I swear it. It shook me.

  Our whole phalanx set up a wild bellow of approval, like so many oxen.

  I went and retrieved my spear. And then, well. Apparently my interest in war had not waned. I started walking towards the enemy.

  ‘Send me another hero,’ I shouted.

  The enemy phalanx was not very tightly formed. As I have said, every man stands where he will, and their spacings are not ideal, and men who dislike each other leave gaps, as do strangers. All in all, they form at something more like our fusin or normal order, not the sunaspismos or close order that a phalanx more typically fights in. I walked forward slowly, and the men opposite me shuffled back.

  Well.

  A young man without a torque came out. He was probably someone’s bondsman, and although he was well muscled, he didn’t know much about using a spear.

  I killed him.

  A tall man with heavy moustaches came out. He had a magnificent torque and a shirt of scales, and a helmet with a pig on top. His shield was long and narrow, like two boards together, with a long central boss. He had a good spear, and he crouched like a boxer as he approached me.

  He tried to shield-bash my aspis. He hadn’t fought a Greek before. The round face of my shield ate most of his energy, and the willow splits resisted the rest, and he backed away. I stabbed for his feet and got one. My spear came away bloody, and he roared in pain and leaped.

  I wasn’t prepared. No one had ever leaped into the air in front of me before, and instead of gutting him in the air, I ended up slamming my spearhead into his helmet – better than nothing, but he came down on my shield and we went down in a tangle. I went over backwards, my legs trapped under me, and something snapped – very painfully – in my right foot as I went down. I was under him, but he was just barely moving, and I had time to get the knife out from under my arm and put it under his chin.

  By Heracles, my foot hurt. When I looked down, my toes were swollen. I’d broken it.

  What an inglorious wound.

  The next man was already dismounting from his chariot. By Greek standards, the Keltoi have very little sense of honour. I’d put three of theirs down, and they just kept sending champions. This new one was somebody – his men cheered, and he had a long shirt of polished scales and a beautiful helmet with eagle’s wings – real ones – on either side of his head.

  I got my aspis back on my arm and I sheathed my dagger, and my kopis, and got my spear back.

  He stood by his chariot and shouted his lineage – descended, apparently, from the War God.

  I was breathing like a horse after a race, and he was fresh.

  He picked up his shield, hopped once and hurled his spear like Zeus’s thunderbolt.

  The hop gave him away, however, and I deflected it with my aspis.

  He reached up and his charioteer handed him another spear, and he threw it.

  I began to get angry. And his second throw wasn’t any more decisive than the first.

  And he reached for a third spear. The bucket in the chariot had six.

  You can run on a broken foot. Really, you can.

  I didn’t run at him. I ran at his horses. They wanted to shy, but the charioteer held them.

  I killed one.

  Heh.

  Then I killed the other one.

  Then I killed the charioteer. He was yelling at me as if I’d committed some sort of foul.

  Kelts don’t kill charioteers, apparently.

  Then I turned and started hunting the lordling.

  His daimon had already left him. He tried to keep away from me. And he was yelling – demanding that I stop, that I had broken the laws of a duel.

  At least, that’s what I think he said.

  Eventually, when he was pressed almost back to his own foot soldiers, he stopped. We went shield to shield. I used mine with a push of the shoulder to roll his down, and I pricked him with my spear – I got him, but his scales saved him from the worst of it.

  He stabbed at me, but I had turned him with my stronger shield and he stumbled away.

  My spear licked out and struck his helmet.

  He stumbled.

  I struck his right foot with my spear.

  He gasped, but his shield was still steady as I leaped forward, and our shields went crack as we struck at each other. My spear went into his throat, and his spear rang off my helmet.

  I stumbled back. If I had not killed him, he would have had me then.

  Now their line was backing away from me.

  Seckla came across the stream at my back. He rightly assessed that I was hurt.

  But he didn’t come alone. The rest of my men crossed with him – and Collam’s infantry. Although they owed me no loyalty, they apparently thought that this was a signal and then began to cross, and suddenly, our whole line was crossing the stream.

  But the enemy were falling back.

  Our cavalry didn’t move. They sat on their side of the stream and watched our infantry push the Biturges up their ridge.

  They began to run.

  The Senones leaped forward like hungry wolves, gave a bellow and it was over.

  Well, except for the actual battle.

  The infantry didn’t decide Keltoi battles. Cavalry decided Keltoi battles. The Biturges cavalry watched their infantry run, and they turned on us.

  I couldn’t keep up with the runners. My foot hurt too much. So I was standing, breathing, leaning on my spear when the Biturges cavalry charged into the Senones infantry. It was an insanely stupid thing to do – they abandoned the streamside and charged our victorious infantry out of loyalty to their own infantry, I assume.

  The way Collam tells it, he couldn’t believe his eyes for several long breaths of a man. It seemed to good to be true.

  But as the last of the horsemen cantered uphill away from the stream, he decided it must be true. And he led his cavalry across the stream, and that, my friends, was the end of the battle. Collam captured half a hundred noble cavalrymen and twenty chariots.

  Of course, the Biturges cavalry had had ten minutes to che
w on us, and I missed the end because I was lying face down in the grass.

  I missed everything. Doola came upriver with ten more pigs of tin, his wife and twenty barrels of wine, as well as three hundred Gaulish refugees looking for a new life on the Inner Sea.

  Collam made a treaty with the Venetiae on his own terms, and traded them six of their merchant aristocrats for Gwan’s father and his debt.

  I was two weeks returning to consciousness, and I had headaches and black depression – the result, a Greek doctor told me later, of a bad blow to the head. I never saw the man who put me down – I was alone, and a great many of them came for me because, of course, I’d downed their champions.

  My recovery was slow. I caught something – one of Apollo’s arrows – that made me drip at both ends, and my foot swelled and got purple so that I thought it would have to come off. And then I lost more time – off my head, I think, with a fever.

  Doola nursed me. Bless him, and his wife. I was a hero to the Gauls, but with so many prisoners, so much loot and the trade negotiations, I was largely forgotten.

  It was a month before we left. Even then, I’d lost weight, and I could just barely ride, and it was Doola, not me, who led us back across the passes to Lugdunum. We had many parting embraces and declarations of friendship, and I had enough golden torques given me to start a collection.

  And in fact, gold is always good.

  When Doola rode south to find his wife, he found Oiasso destroyed – the villages burned, the hall flattened. But the people were scarcely touched; they simply retreated into the hills.

  The Carthaginians encouraged the local Iberians to attack again. And winter set in with no crops harvested. The whole community of Oiasso had to depend on relatives in neighbouring communities for food.

  As soon as the hill thawed, Neoptolymos and Alexandros led a hundred men on a counter-raid into the mountains, and they took flocks and grain. And tin.

  Doola convinced them that they should pack their belongings and leave. It was a fine tale, and one that I heard told several times and never fully understood. I did learn that Tara and her brother died defending their hall; that the Phoenicians had come back twice, and had four ships the second time and five ships the first time.