“A fine suit, Nikomedes,” the silver-tongued warrior declared approvingly, while purposefully drawing his fur cloak back to reveal his own resplendent armor.
It had gold inlays which glittered even in the shade of the tent, and appeared to have been specifically crafted for his body. It bore no signs of wear and tear, but Nikomedes knew that a master armorer could remove any such signs if his skill—and the pay—was equal to the task.
“I have formed a team,” he said, pointing to a quartet of men standing on the other side of the tent. He recognized none of them except Horatio, who had brought the armor he now wore, and they looked on in silent appraisal as Kallistos continued, “We need only a sixth member. Will you join us?”
Nikomedes suspected it was a trap of some kind, but he decided to play along. With sixteen warriors in the field, a team of six would have a decisive advantage one of the other teams or a modest advantage over both, depending on if the other two teams evenly divided the remaining warriors or split into groups of six and four.
It seemed that Kallistos’ silver tongue had already won him first pick of the field—assuming he, Kapaneus, and Zenobios stood as rivals to each other like Nikomedes suspected they did.
“Regardless of the outcome,” Kallistos said, gesturing to the far side of the tournament field, “all who join my team may dine upon the bull which my men brought from my mother’s estate, and have been roasting since noon. They should be finished in time for the festivities,” he said before leaning in close to add, “Men knows those trail rations leave a bit to be desired, eh?”
Nikomedes hesitated purposely, his eyes moving to the still-unattached handful of warriors conversing on the opposite side of the tent. He then looked out at the bull—which did look genuinely delicious as the cooks slathered its spit-roasting carcass with a thick, red sauce—and decided nothing would be lost by joining Kallistos’ team. It was, after all, for only one round of the competition.
It also seemed as though Kallistos had assembled a group of men who had experience fighting together, since they seemed to share a measure of camaraderie evidenced by their tightly-clustered formation and open, relaxed postures.
“Very well,” Nikomedes agreed.
“Excellent,” Kallistos beamed, placing his bare hand on Nikomedes’ large, metal pauldron before gesturing to a white-bearded man standing beside the lone opening to the tournament field, “we should inform Nazoraios that our team is settled so we can set up our defenses on the field.”
As he followed Kallistos, he saw that several large boulders had been placed on the field along with dozens of logs with thicknesses ranging between his forearm and thigh, and lengths measuring between three and seven meters.
Nikomedes had to stifle a snort as he realized that for the price of a bull—and doubtless other minor concessions made to his longtime ‘allies’—Kallistos had secured his team first pick of the materials which they would fashion into defensive barricades.
Of course, this also indicated that Kallistos intended to defend, rather than purely attack, which was an interesting revelation in itself.
“Nazoraios serves as Master of Ceremonies for the tournament,” Kallistos explained as they neared the elderly, but still formidable man with the long, white beard, “he will log the names of our team’s members before we enter the field.”
Nikomedes nodded silently as he eyed the old warrior, who did likewise as Kallistos’ team approached. “Have you completed your team’s formation, Kallistos?”
“I have,” Kallistos declared loudly in his melodious voice, his long, brown hair billowing about his shoulders in the quickly rising winds. “As usual, my team will include Dareios, Horatio, Flavius, Hesperos, myself,” he turned to Nikomedes, “and a new member: guardsman Nikomedes, who took the head of Kyrillos this past week.”
Nazoraios narrowed his eyes before a serpentine grin played upon his lips, “And what of Titos? He has stood at your side for each of the last four tournaments.”
Kallistos shrugged indifferently, “He has, but during the last one his failure to hold the center resulted in our being routed by Kapaneus’ team, which led to an unacceptable first round exit.” His expression soured as he spoke, but he turned to Nikomedes with a triumphant look as he declared, “I think Nikomedes here qualifies as an upgrade, don’t you?”
Nazoraios turned a skeptical eye to Nikomedes, “He has length, but his girth leaves something to be desired for a keystone—something Titos had, if anything, in excess.”
Kallistos’ eyes twinkled as he said, “Who said anything about keeping our old formation, Nazoraios?”
“Oh?” Nazoraios asked with mild, or possibly feigned, surprise. “Ah,” he said after a moment’s consideration, apparently realizing what Kallistos meant to do, “an interesting, if unorthodox, approach; I will watch your team with great interest.” He stopped to write their names in a small, leather-bound ledger before gesturing, “You may enter.”
As they made their way onto the field, Nikomedes saw the light expression vanish from Kallistos’ face. The other man turned to him, proffering a pair of dark red sashes as he said, “Tie these to your helmet and pauldrons; they will mark you as a member of our team.”
Nikomedes watched the other members of the team do as Kallistos was instructing him to do—and noted that Kallistos had already done so with a trio of his own sashes—so he obliged while asking, “What is your team’s record in this tournament?”
“You mean in total or the past year alone?” Kallistos riposted easily, his features remaining schooled into a neutral mask but his voice betraying his smug satisfaction at the smooth retort.
“Either,” Nikomedes replied, letting the irritation he felt at the other man’s affect flavor his voice.
“In truth, I have forgotten the total,” Kallistos said with false brevity, likely so he could omit an unfavorable number prior to the record accrued in the most favorable recent period, which turned out to be eight such events, as his next words revealed. “But for the past eight tournaments, spanning nearly nineteen months, we have emerged from the first round with top honors in five of them.”
Nikomedes knew that if the other man was speaking truthfully, it bespoke Kallistos’ ability as a unit commander that he was able to have a winning record over a field of at least two opposing teams. He also knew that eight tournaments in nineteen months indicated just how much Nykator must value these tournaments, having subjected his best and brightest to them on such a regular basis.
“We should arrange a series of barricades,” Kallistos explained, “but they should not be overly large. We shall only seek to provide sufficient defenses for three of our number, but they should be tall in order to prevent a quick climb over them.”
Nikomedes thought he understood the plan well enough, so they set about to erect their defenses as the other two teams remained outside of the field.
Chapter XVII: Playing Along
“Competitors, are you ready?” the surprisingly strong voice of Nazoraios called out across the tournament field. Nikomedes and the rest of Kallistos’ team had finished erecting their defenses some ten minutes earlier, and
Nikomedes stood ready in his new armor, with the practice blade and shield in his hands. A proper defense would have included spears and pikes, but while the team nature of the event gave the illusion of organized warfare, Nikomedes understood that it was more about individual achievement than displays of joint capability.
When each of the team members raised his sword into the air, Nazoraios turned to the Hold Mistress and Protector. Hold Mistress Zosime flitted a brief look in the wizened warrior’s direction before nodding, prompting Nazoraios to declare, “Begin!”
Nikomedes stood with a pair of Kallistos’ teammates, Horatio and Flavius, before the hastily-erected barricade behind which Kallistos now stood with Hesperos and Dareios. Across the field was a similarly defensible position which was considerably larger, having been built by the other team of six men wh
ich was led by Zenobios.
The other four men, who appeared to be veritable clones of each other in frame and bulk, were led by Kapaneus and they had only entered the field a few moments before Nazoraios’ declaration that the games should begin. They therefore had the smallest number of the three teams, as well as no defensible position, but Nikomedes knew that a man would not become Hypatios Nykator’s top commander and protégé without having fully mastered many—if not all—of the arts of warfare.
“Take it to them, Flavius,” Kallistos instructed, and the warrior who had been placed in command of the three man unit in which Nikomedes found himself nodded before setting off toward the other fortress.
As they jogged across the field, Nikomedes spared a brief glance in the direction of Adonia Akantha Zosime, who looked on with a mixture of disinterest and impatience at the spectacle unfolding on the field. The cold look of disdain in her eyes when they met his own fueled his determination to emerge victorious, and together with Flavius and Horatio, he quickly came to stand before the fully-manned position occupied by Zenobios and his men.
Two men of the opposing team stood before a wall composed of vertically-lodged, slightly outward-angling timbers which presented a reasonable barricade against a frontal assault. A pair of similar walls extended back from those, and even Nikomedes was impressed at how quickly, efficiently, and powerfully the five meter long wall had been erected by the six men. Zenobios was clearly an engineer of no small ability, and his men had followed his instructions to the letter so as to provide themselves with the greatest chance for victory.
But Flavius’ team had gone over their assault plan in great detail prior to setting off, and Nikomedes’ job was to deal with the warriors before the ramparts before they could be reinforced by those behind and atop them. A platform of logs had been built five feet from the ground behind the ramparts, and while they would likely provide a less-than-ideal surface for dueling, they would serve adequately for permitting Zenobios to make attacks from above while Nikomedes’ team attempted to scale the walls.
Breaking forward, Nikomedes lashed out with his blade at the nearest warrior standing guard before the mini-fortress. The warrior blocked it easily enough, but Nikomedes followed up with a brutal, clearly unexpected front kick which sent the warrior backpedaling nearly into the barricade behind him.
Using the brief opening Nikomedes had just created to the flank of that warrior’s companion, Nikomedes smashed his shield into the other man’s shield. The force of the blow drove him two steps from where he had initially prepared to receive the charge of Kallistos’ team.
Nikomedes drew back as the second warrior launched a vicious counterattack, his blade whistling through the air where Nikomedes’ neck had been prior to withdrawing. The first warrior also rejoined the effort after gathering his feet beneath him, but by the time he had done so Nikomedes had already compromised his position—just before Flavius and Horatio entered the fray.
Keeping a wary eye on Zenobios, who stood atop his fortress like a commander surveying a battle before him, Nikomedes parried the first warrior’s brutal, yet predictable attacks with deliberate movements of his own. At no point in this battle could Nikomedes afford to use his real physical gifts, since he would need to use those against his rivals at a key moment later in the competition for the Land Bride’s hand.
But he was large—larger even than half of the men on the field that day, including Kallistos—so he saw no reason not to utilize his full physical strength, so long as he kept his speed and agility as much a secret as possible while learning all he could of his opponents’ abilities.
So he parried traditionally and blocked with less-than-inspired footwork, but he managed to turn aside the other warrior’s blade and hold his ground while Flavius and Horatio picked the other warrior apart with a series of fast strikes that moved that warrior’s shield out of position. Just as Horatio moved to finish the warrior with a bone-crushing, flat-of-the-blade blow to the side of his head, a stone crashed into Horatio’s shoulder and he went to the ground with a cry of pain.
Nikomedes barely managed to avoid a similar fate by deflecting such a boulder with his shield. The stone would have killed him if it had struck him squarely in the head, since the armor which Nykator had gifted him had pointedly lacked such a helmet—a fact which had prompted him to keep his leather helmet for the battle. The realization of how serious this battle actually was filled him with that now-familiar feeling of bloodlust which so many other men seemed to find so easily on the field of battle, but which had always seemed to elude Nikomedes.
Slamming his blade into his opponent’s, he deflected the other man’s attack far enough that he brought his knee up into his foe’s shield, driving it up and out of position as he brought his blade around on a backswing to slam into the warrior’s head.
He briefly wondered why they had not endured even more attacks from above like those which had just come at them, but a quick glance to his right gave him his answer.
Kapaneus and his team had surged toward the fortress, prompting three of the warriors to climb over their ramparts and take up a defensive position in front of the fortress’s facing which would receive Kapaneus’ team. The fortress was triangular in shape, which meant that only one face was now undefended, and Nikomedes realized as he blocked and parried his opponent’s attacks that Kallistos and Kapaneus had pre-arranged their teams’ strategy before the battle had even begun.
It was a realization which nearly robbed him of the focus necessary to keep from being driven out of position by his opponent. He felt his enemy slam his metal-armored shin into Nikomedes’ thigh, and had Nikomedes been wearing his old leather armor the power of the blow might have robbed him of his balance. As it was, he countered the ensuing onslaught of attacks by briefly giving ground before reversing his grip on the practice blade and initiating a series of powerful, criss-crossing attacks which the other warrior blocked as he quickly gave up the ground Nikomedes had just given him.
Then an opening came, and without even thinking about doing so Nikomedes’ shield lashed out and slammed into the warrior’s sword arm. The practice blade fell from his opponent’s grip, and before his foe could steady himself Nikomedes brought his reverse-gripped sword down on the man’s forearm, following that attack with a sweeping kick to his foe’s inner calf.
The man’s feet slid apart just as Nikomedes had expected they would do, and he had already begun to bring his sword into the man’s helmet where it struck cleanly, sending the man to the ground where Nikomedes delivered a powerful kick to his midsection which made him go limp.
Flavius and Horatio had also dispatched of their enemy, while Kapaneus’ team was tearing apart the three men which had come out to meet them. Nikomedes heard Nazoraios call out, “An alliance between the Red Team and the Blue Team has nearly overcome the Green Team’s usually impenetrable defenses. Zenobios stands alone on his fortress as Kallistos approaches the open wall.”
Nikomedes looked up to see Zenobios was launching himself up and over the last facing of his fortress, and Kallistos was there to meet him. But instead of launching into an attack with Dareios and Hesperos—an attack which would be difficult for any man to withstand—Kallistos waited patiently for Zenobios to step forward from the fortress.
Zenobios gripped his blade and shield tightly as he stomped toward Kallistos, who struck a pose like some sort of heroic statue and Nikomedes could not keep from snorting contemptuously. He saw Kapaneus’ team had already submitted the three men before them, and his eyes briefly locked with the smoldering gaze of Kapaneus himself as the rival warrior signaled for his men to move toward Kallistos’ now-abandoned fortress.
Nikomedes saw Horatio signal that his arm was injured and would require him to depart the field, prompting Nazoraios to say, “The Red Team loses one warrior to the siege of Zenobios’ fortress; a small price for seizing such a valuable piece of terrain. The Blue Team is moving to occupy the Red Fort while its original team
seeks to complete their victory over Green Team.”
It was not lost on Nikomedes that Nazoraios had called Zenobios out by name, but had referred to the other teams by their colors. The significance of that contrast was not yet something Nikomedes understood, but he knew it would bear pondering in the future.
“Nikomedes,” Kallistos said, beckoning for Nikomedes to approach while Dareios and Horatio scaled the triangular fortress’s walls to claim ownership of it for the Red Team.
Nikomedes made his way to Kallistos, who stood several paces from Zenobios. Zenobios’ eyes were burning with anger—anger which could only have come from a betrayal, which Nikomedes now suspected he had fallen victim to at the hands of either Kallistos or Kapaneus.
“What do you want?” Nikomedes asked gruffly as he approached Kallistos.
The preening warrior—whose blade had not yet been drawn during this round of the tournament—gestured toward Zenobios and said, “If you defeat him in front of the assemblage, it will earn you the very prestige for which you have come.”
Nikomedes’ eyes narrowed as he considered why Kallistos might be trying to get him to fight the other man. It was clear that Kallistos was curious about Nikomedes’ true abilities, and that he would dearly like to see those abilities on display so he could better judge him. But what was less certain was why Kallistos would not wish to do the deed himself.
“Why would you give me this prize?” Nikomedes asked stiffly, meeting Kallistos at his own game of twisted words.
Kallistos chuckled, “Zenobios and I are like brothers. Brothers know who is better in any given contest, and Zenobios has yet to best me in a duel—a fact of which we are both aware. But if I can use his fortress against Kapaneus,” he explained, gesturing to the quartet of warriors led by Nykator’s top lieutenant, who were brutally dismantling Kallistos’ fortress rather than taking up residence within it, “I will consider that the only victory I require for this round.”
The Forge of Men Page 27