Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities

by Christian Cameron

  Like most of the second-rankers, Satyrus had a heavy spear, not a pike. He had all the time in the world – it was odd, but all the fighting was two critical feet away – to cock his arm back and strike, a simple strong blow just below the crest box of the pirate’s helmet.

  The man dropped, and the spear returned to his hands and Helios stepped into the gap and cut – cut back – into the back of the helmet of the enemy pirate on his right, crushing the man’s skull instantly so that the man’s blood shot out of the faceplate of his helmet.

  Satyrus was ready. He practised every day with Helios – he knew these routines cold. He stepped up behind his hypaspist, in the process stepping on the man he’d put down with his first thrust, and shot his spear across Helios’ back into an oncoming pirate, this time thrusting down onto the man’s outstretched thigh or knee – no way to know what he hit, but the man screamed and Helios all but beheaded him on his own back cut, and now they were deep into the pirates’ formation and Satyrus could see Anaxagoras’ blue and white plume just a horse length to the left, equally deep.

  Satyrus had intended the attack of the sailors’ phalanx as a feint to lure the enemy into going for the flanks.

  No plan ever survives contact with the enemy. The sailors’ phalanx was crushing the pirates against their ships.

  Satyrus stood straight and took a deep breath – the pirates were cringing back – and roared ‘Arete!’ as loudly as he could.

  He counted to three in his head.

  ‘Blood in the water!’ he yelled.

  The answering roar was like surf on a windy day – like the thunder of Zeus, like the rumble of fate closing the scissors. The oarsmen had the measure of their opponents, and their war cry was so loud and so awful that the enemy froze like fawns before a raging lion, paralysed as the tide of bronze and iron swept them down the beach.

  Satyrus set his feet, picked a pirate in a fine helmet and threw his spear as hard as he could. He didn’t pause to see the effect. He slapped Helios.

  ‘I’m out,’ he said, and turned. ‘Let me through!’ he called back, and he pushed against the flowing tide of his own phalanx, slipping back rank by rank – glanced back, and was delighted to see that the colourful side plumes of the pirate officer were gone. He punched out through the back of his own phalanx, paused and took a few deep breaths.

  He felt good.

  Rear-rankers looked at him.

  He undid his cheek-plates and raised his helmet. ‘You!’ he said, pointing at one of Jubal’s deck men. ‘Go to Apollodorus and tell him to charge.’

  ‘Aye, lord!’ said the sailor.

  ‘And you,’ to the ephebes. ‘Tell them to forget the plan and get right down the beach on the widest possible front. Go now!’ Satyrus was shouting when he didn’t need to. He needed these men to understand – to carry his orders.

  ‘Aye, lord!’ the man cried, and dropping his spear, he ran off up the beach, headed north into the rubble.

  Herakles, stand with me. Something is wrong. This is too easy.

  Where are the Argyraspides?

  One thing at a time.

  ‘Jubal!’

  ‘Aye, lord?’

  ‘The whole rear rank – on me, right now. Form up tight.’ Satyrus stood a few horse lengths behind the rear rank and more than a hundred men left the back rank and fell in. Satyrus picked up the spear dropped by the messenger and held it out so that they formed along it – they were sailors, not Spartiates.

  ‘Three deep! Three deep!’ he yelled.

  Sailors and marines milled about, but in fifty heartbeats they were sorted – not pretty, by any means, but the advantage of sailors over phalangites was that sailors didn’t expect any kind of order in a fight. Chaos was natural to them.

  ‘As soon as the right man passes the end of our boys, we will wheel to the left!’ Satyrus yelled to them. ‘Look at me! Understood? We’ll link on our own left file and charge.’ He used the pike in his hands to illustrate.

  Men nodded. Other men looked blank.

  ‘Listen! Look at me!’ A few feet away, the sailors gave a great cry and the phalanx of sailors pushed forward the length of a great ox – and stopped. ‘We link up on that file right there and wheel like this,’ and he waved the pike again. Now he saw more recognition than confusion.

  He was out in front, with nowhere to go when the fighting started.

  So be it.

  ‘Forward!’ he called.

  His loose, thin line rolled forward, bowing like the amateurs they were.

  ‘To the right! Wheel!’ he roared in his best storm-caller voice, and most of the sailors wheeled, although at different speeds, and the whole front fell apart. Satyrus wanted to weep – this was the sort of manoeuvre his marines or his mercenary Macedonians could perform in their sleep.

  There were pirates teeming around the left face of his main phalanx, and the right-most files of his tiny counter-attack swept them away – and then he was in combat.

  His feet were on sand – they were actually on the beach. A man appeared in front of him out of the confusion of the fight, a small, wiry man with an earring and a bloody axe. Satyrus had lost the pike – where? – and he found that he had drawn his sword, and the little man cut overarm at him with the axe and Satyrus punched with his heavy shield, caught the haft of the axe on the rim of his shield and thrust, pushing with his legs to keep that axe pinned high in the air. The pirate tried to stumble backward, and when that failed he put his helmeted head down and attempted to headbutt Satyrus under the chin, but he got Satyrus’ sword through his neck and fell in a tangle. Satyrus pushed forward, feeling the daemon of combat for the first time in what seemed like months, caught a second man unawares with a clean cut to the neck that didn’t quite sever his head. Then Satyrus swung low against a third man, cutting the backs of his thighs under the rim of his shield, and then two blows hit his shield face solidly, rocking him back so that he stumbled, and a pair of impacts on his helmet staggered him again. He lashed out with his sword, a sweeping blow without skill, a stop-cut to buy himself a few heartbeats.

  He fell to one knee, and now he was one man, alone, and he had a pair of men focused on him, and another in his peripheral vision, an opportunist looking for an easy kill.

  Satyrus shot to his feet with a powerful push of his right leg, slammed his big aspis face into the two men in front of him, bounced off them and lunged – the full length of his reach – against the man to his side, the opportunist, who got the point of a xiphos through his collarbone and neck for his efforts. But as he fell, Satyrus’ sharp sword caught in bone, and the falling man tore the sword from Satyrus’ grip.

  As if Herakles stood and coached him, Satyrus rolled his hips back to the left, reached out as if he’d practised the move a hundred times and caught the wrist of another pirate to his front, smashed his shield into the man’s unarmoured face and took his sword, stripping it from the man’s fingers. He felt that it was a kopis, a heavy chopping blade, and he turned back to his original opponents, pushed forward again with his supporting leg, raised his shield, saw his opponent raise his own shield in answer to the feint – an inexperienced man who was not going to live to learn. Satyrus chopped under the raised shield into hip and groin, and the man toppled like a small, straight ash cut by a strong woodsman and Satyrus viciously pushed the corpse – the man was already dead – into his file partner with his shield arm and followed it with a straight overarm chop and pivot on his left foot – so that the right foot passed the left, the whole weight of his body behind the blow, and the crooked blade of the kopis blew through the pirate’s light shield rim and the thin bronze of his helmet, too.

  Now no one would face him, and the whole of the pirate front bowed back before him and he stood alone, breathing hard like a boar that has slain all the brave hunting dogs and now faces only the curs.

  His own men were hanging back as well. Combat had those moments. Men could only stay locked breast to breast for so long – a hundred heartbea
ts, two hundred for the strongest and best, and then they had to step back and breathe.

  ‘The king!’ called a sailor at his back, and they took it up. ‘King!’ they called. ‘King!’

  Satyrus raised the kopis, and blood from the blade ran down his arm, the warm lick of death on his skin. He inhaled, and he could smell the lion skin of his lord on the wind, and he could see, as if imprinted on his eyes, how he could kill every man facing him.

  But his moment of divinity was stolen when Apollodorus and his marines charged headlong into the pirates at the south end of the beach. Satyrus heard the moment of impact, and it penetrated his battle-fogged head.

  ‘Let me through,’ he barked at the sailors nearest to him, and Jubal swatted a man out of his way.

  Satyrus dashed back through the thin line of sailors – men who had thought themselves safe in the rear rank and had still managed to find the hero in themselves when asked.

  Thank them later.

  He ran up the beach to the soft sand, which ate his remaining energy the way a dog eats fresh meat. He turned, and looked over the beach.

  It was not the battle he’d wanted – it was all being fought on the open beach west of the temples, not in the choked streets of the ruined town, out on the flanks where his well-armoured men could eat these ill-armed pirates in alleys at no cost to themselves.

  So be it. You made plans, and they evaporated. His men were winning – despite that the pirates were still landing fresh men, farther out so that they had to wade ashore hip-deep. And men out there – really, only a quarter-stade away – were hesitating. He could see them waiting at the side of the light rowing boats, unsure whether to clamber over the side or stay aboard.

  But while this attack was serious, all of Golden Boy’s real soldiers were somewhere else.

  Satyrus took the time to watch carefully the scene at his feet.

  Apollodorus was cutting through the loosely formed pirates like an iron chisel through hot bronze – slowly but inexorably, the drive of the marine’s legs like a great hammer pushing his spear point home. A few light pirate ships made to land men behind him on the beach, but Idomeneus and the archers had reacted without orders and the nearly naked pirates were being punished hard for their temerity.

  No crisis there.

  At the north of the beach, the ephebes advanced slowly and cautiously, but on a wide front, only four deep. They had doubled their width, confident in their armour, their training and their youth. They were not mistaken, and the pirates flinched and flinched away.

  The fight on the beach was minutes from becoming pure slaughter.

  To the south, though, there were ships trying to force the defences of the main harbour for the first time. They were taking heavy punishment from Panther’s carefully sighted engines. Satyrus watched for a long time – the time it took forty pirates to die – before he decided that he was watching a feint: Demetrios had sent ships to tie Panther down.

  But why?

  He had no idea what had gone wrong, but he could feel it as surely as if he’d taken a wound.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Abraham asked. He’d emerged from the rear face of the phalanx, breathing like a blacksmith’s bellows. He sank to his knees in the sand. ‘I’m out of shape.’

  Satyrus continued to watch. The pirates were at the point of breaking – too many dead, and water licking at their ankles. Rearrank men were throwing their shields away and swimming.

  Curiously, they weren’t shattered by Apollodorus or by the ephebes or even by the sailors pounding away at their front. What broke them, even as Satyrus watched, was the desertion of their boats – as suddenly as a school of silver fish attacked by a dolphin, the pentekonters and rowing boats that had brought the assault force ashore turned and ran, abandoning their comrades on the beach. Instantly their morale collapsed – a visible movement in the front ranks, and suddenly pirates were throwing down their arms in all directions and trying to swim, and they received no quarter. Satyrus’ oarsmen – many of whom had been slaves – reaped them like a farmer reaps the last crop of barley, hurrying against the winter wind and the rain, gaffing them with long pikes as they swam or punching daggers into men trying to surrender.

  ‘I need Apollodorus,’ Satyrus said.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Abraham offered.

  ‘Good – go fast. I need him, and as many men as he can extricate. I need them now.’ Satyrus gave Abraham a slap on his backplate, and noticed that blood was running out of Abraham’s helmet and over his back.

  ‘You’re wounded!’ he said.

  ‘Bah – it’s nothing.’ Abraham got his helmet off and dropped it on the beach. It had a hole in it, and his hair was a matted mass of blood.

  Satyrus turned his attention back to the fight on the beach.

  The ephebes had joined the slaughter with all the impetuosity of youth.

  Satyrus kept backing up the beach, trying to get high enough to see what might be happening at the south end of the harbour – the inner harbour. Panther’s area.

  Helios emerged from the slaughter and came up the beach.

  ‘Good lad,’ Satyrus said. ‘Breathe.’

  Helios’ right hand was all blood, and his arm to the elbow, and his entire right side was spattered by the blood dripping from his spear. ‘I can’t get it out of my hand,’ he said in a strange voice.

  The blood had dried, sticking the spear grip to his hand.

  Satyrus poured his canteen over the younger man’s hand, and gradually the glue-like blood loosened, and then they shared the rest of the canteen.

  Abraham returned, running well, with long strides. ‘Apollodorus is going to break off.’

  Helios pulled his helmet off and dropped it to the sand.

  ‘I need you to run to Panther,’ Satyrus said to Helios, who nodded without speaking.

  ‘Get me a report. Fast as you can. Go, now.’ Satyrus knew he was using the boy up, but his options were limited and the feeling of doom was growing. And the only knucklebone he had was that the pirates had died fast, leaving him with a reserve and some options. Perhaps. Maybe.

  Down in the slaughter, Anaxagoras was cutting a swathe through the pirates. His blue and white plume was unique, and Satyrus had no trouble watching him. His wrath was terrible, like something from the Iliad.

  ‘I do hope we don’t take any casualties wiping them out,’ Satyrus said, and his voice was like Ares’ voice – a thing of bronze, inhuman.

  Abraham watched for a moment. ‘A moral man would say that they are men, like us,’ he said. He turned, and his eyes had no trouble meeting Satyrus’ eyes. ‘But they are not men like us, and their deaths give me nothing but pleasure.’

  ‘Kill them all,’ Satyrus said. By his estimate – he found it remarkable how clearly he was thinking – there were three or four thousand of the curs caught in the pocket, facing a quarter of their own number, and dying. He could never feed so many – he couldn’t even dare to accept their surrender, as they were men of no worth whose word could never be trusted. They would rise against him and slaughter his men if they ever understood the superiority of their numbers. Only Tyche – luck – and good planning had delivered them into his hands. He felt no mercy.

  All this in three rapid beats of his heart.

  ‘Tell the phalanx to kill them all,’ Satyrus repeated to Abraham, and turned away when he heard his name being screamed from the ruined temples.

  ‘Satyrus!’

  He looked right and left. Helmets made such searching difficult.

  ‘Satyrus!’ Closer.

  It was Miriam. She had blood on her face and in her hair.

  Satyrus caught her in his arms – not his intention – as if his body acted without him.

  She went into his embrace, blood and sweat printed on her chiton, so that the outlines of his shoulder armour could be traced on her for the rest of the day.

  But she murmured no endearments.

  ‘The enemy is in the town,’ she said, her voice controlled,
her own panic carefully held back. ‘They are behind the agora, and a soldier I met says they are coming in through the west gates.’

  Satyrus turned his head.

  Apollodorus was coming up the beach, his two hundred intact.

  Thanks, Lord Herakles, for the warning. May I be in time.

  ‘In the streets behind the agora?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s what I believe,’ she said. Her voice trembled. ‘I don’t know.’

  He wanted to say something like, ‘Welcome to war’, but there wasn’t time. ‘Get every woman you can, get onto the rooftops and drop tiles on them,’ he said. ‘Every woman you can find in the agora – listen. I may be sending you to your death, Miriam, but if your women can’t slow them in the alleys, we’re dead.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said.

  ‘I love you,’ Satyrus said.

  She shot him a look from under her eyebrows that suggested that, even in the grip of fear, she had the wits to question his choice of words. ‘I’ll try not to die, then,’ she said lightly. She pulled up her skirts and ran, her long legs flashing in the afternoon light, a rare sight on a battlefield.

  Satyrus turned to Apollodorus. ‘Enemy in the town behind us,’ he said.

  ‘Zeus Sator! Apollo, Kineas, be with us,’ Apollodorus said.

  ‘Follow me.’ Satyrus led them up the beach, and his fears almost robbed him of the ability to run – had the town already fallen? Usually, once the enemy penetrated the walls, the defence collapsed although Rhodes was so big and so deep that both Satyrus and Panther had been using its depths as a defence.

  He ran back across the rubble, ignoring the growing pain in his right ankle, through one of the tunnels and the fallen Temple of Poseidon and into the agora.

  It was not a mass of enemy soldiers. It was a mass of panicked civilians, with Miriam trying desperately to motivate some of them to join her.

  Even as Satyrus ran up, Panther’s wife Lydia, and Aspasia, and other town leaders – the priestesses and the healers – stepped out of the mob and began to harangue them, and the mob fell silent.

  Through the silence, Satyrus could hear the screams from the west.