Poseidon's Spear lw-3

by Christian Cameron

  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 kill
ed 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 chew 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.

  ‘They were hunting us,’ Doola said.

  We said goodbye to Gwan at Lugdunum and rode south, moving in easy stages. I was still recovering, and our Gaulish horde needed food and rest. But it was a fine summer, and we had Doola’s tin to trade — ill-gotten gains from the Iberians.

  Midsummer saw us at Arelata, and men said that Phoenician ships had been on the coast all summer. And there had been raids.

  Massalia had been attacked, and had repelled the attack.

  My stomach clenched, and then rolled. No one at Arelata knew where Tarsilla was, but they all agreed that the Phoenicians had attacked every town on the coast that was Greek.

  At Arelata, we prepared for the last dash to home. We elected to do it by land, because everyone at Arelata said the coast was too dangerous. There were no tin shipments moving into — or out of — Massalia.

  And Sittonax and Daud were leaving us. They had helped get the convoys out to Arelata, where all of Tara’s people were planning to settle. There was good farmland all the way up the hillsides, and these were people used to terracing.

  But the last night, Sittonax and Daud both changed their minds. Daud and I embraced, and we both wept a little.

  And then he said, ‘Fuck it. I’m coming.’

  Sittonax looked at him as if he’d grown an extra head. And then shrugged.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll come too.’

  So we all drank more wine. The next day, we offered sacrifices for our own safety and for that of our friends at Tarsilla, and we headed for home.

  15

  Tarsilla was not a smoking ruin. We came down the steep ridge behind, already aware that the town was safe from our friends among the herdsmen and shepherds, but still peering over every hill for a sign.

  The timber temple of Apollo was still there. The theatre — a small one — was still there.

  There were ships on the beach.

  I knew Lydia as soon as I saw her. She was perfect — the finest trireme I had ever seen. Vasileos had outdone himself. And her twin sister was next to her. Gaius’s vessel, and although I did not know it at the time, she was at that moment just a day old, all complete, the traditional ceremony just complete, the oarsmen sleeping off the festivities under awnings.

  Gaius called her Iusticia. Justice.

  Demetrios’s house was closed and boarded. The wine shops certainly looked as if the Phoenicians had landed and smashed the town, but the rest looked good, and our house was secure, the main gate closed. Giannis opened the gate and embraced me, and we were home.

  The thing I remember best about that homecoming was Doola and Seckla. Doola had brought his wife, of course. Seckla helped her down from her mule, and we all knew — right there — that all was well. She smiled at him, perfectly aware that this was an important moment. Then Doola went and embraced him. Seckla cried.

  Well, lots of us cried. But we were home, and we�
�d done it.

  We had done it.

  I haven’t mentioned Neoptolymos. Of course he was with Doola. He had done great deeds of arms in the south, with the Vascones, and against the Iberians. And when I recovered from my wounds, I found him as big as ever, his frame filled out, but calmer and happier, too. He had married a Vascone woman, Brillix, who was as much the opposite of the blond Illyrian as a human being could be. Where he was tall and pale, she was small and dark. He was taciturn and morose, and she was cheerful, funny, endlessly talkative. I’ve heard that opposites attract, but Brillix was the most opposite I could imagine to my vengeful Illyrian friend. And she made him — better. She made him happy. Happiness is better than revenge.

  Nonetheless, she also gave him a reason to want both wealth and security. He was no longer a sword for hire. He was a husband and, it was obvious, about to be a father. Brillix was as close to perfectly spherical as a woman could be when pregnant.

  We drank a lot of wine that day, and handed out more to the oarsmen.

  It’s not all war, my friends. Sometimes, life is just sweet. The next few weeks — oh, there’s no story to tell, except that watching Brillix wander the house, cooking, cleaning, feathering her nest — watching Doola and Seckla rebuild their friendship, with Doola’s wife as an ally — caulking and preparing our triremes for sea, training our oarsmen, drinking at the edge of the Middle Sea It rivals any time in my life. I missed having a love of my own, but to be honest, watching Neoptolymos and Brillix, or Doola and his wife, I was not interested in buying a slave and pumping away at her. I wanted a wife.

  I wondered if Lydia were still available. But it had been more than two years. And to a marriageable young woman Still, one of the things my teacher, Calchus, had taught me over and over again, when I was a boy at the tholos tomb above Plataea, was that you never know until you ask. I had thought about Lydia many, many times in two years. I had behaved badly — shockingly badly, really, by my own standards. But her father was not without error, either. It began to occur to me that in my new status, as a rich shipowner, I might have a certain appeal.