‘The attack on the mole will, at least, even if we fail, provide a diversion,’ Satyrus said when they gathered the commanders.
And the
boule
voted to take the risk. All the knucklebones in one helmet.
It took an hour to get the men to their oars. They were in armour, with helmets and swords and spears which were lashed in piles on the main gangway – the trireme wasn’t a cataphract and lacked a main deck above the rowers.
Outside the ship, the wind howled like the living embodiment of wind, and the stern of the ship crashed into the stone wharf again and again, even in the inner harbour of Rhodes. A stade away, across the harbour, the waves broke on the mole and arched up to the height of two men, even three, in the cool night air, and the wind brought the spume across the harbour.
‘Bastards on the mole ain’t too comfortable,’ Neiron said.
‘They’ll be awake,’ Satyrus said. ‘Take the helm, friend. I’ll go in with the marines.’ He had Draco with him. Apollodorus was ashore, at the sea gate opposite the mole, awaiting some signal that the attack was on the mole before he led a hundred picked men out into the dark and up the landward face – the piled rubble, old barrels and sacks of sand with which Demetrios’ men had built their temporary wall.
‘Cast off,’ Satyrus said softly, and men sprang into action. Xiron, the new oar master – better known now as the right file in the phalanx, a hard drinker called the Centaur by his men – called the beat softly, beating time with a spear butt, and the oars dipped, held water and moved.
Aphrodite’s Laughter
sprang across the harbour. It took fewer than four strokes for the crew to remember their profession, and then the warship moved at ramming speed.
Neiron had practised this route over and over, the last few hours, rehearsing how he would turn. His intention was to keep the ship hidden by the anchored ships in the inner harbour until the last
possible
second, and he’d talked them through it, every oarsman standing in the agora in torchlight, so that no man could say later he hadn’t known the route.
Under the stern of a big grain freighter, and then a sudden turn to starboard, and another to port, and they were flying up a line of anchored hulks – a dozen once beautiful triemiolas now stripped to their decks, a wooden wall protecting the town, a screen. Only the most observant man on the mole might glimpse
Aphrodite’s Laughter
running up the line – almost as far as the harbour entrance.
‘Ready, all decks!’ Satyrus called. He risked a yell – everything depended on this one turn.
The handful of oblivious men were slapped by their oar-mates. Men rose a little on their haunches, ready to back their oars.
‘Ready about!’ Satyrus called from amidships. The full weight of the sea wind caught them, but they’d planned for it, and the bow was already slipping south, just as they wanted it to—
‘Hard to starboard!’ Satyrus called, in case some laggard had forgotten the drill. ‘Port side reverse benches all aback starboard ahead full row – row – ROW!’
Simultaneously, Jubal dropped a pair of heavy stones from the stern – stones roped by hawsers to the mainmast stanchions, so that the ship became a horizontal pendulum at the end of a pair of anchor ropes belayed amidships.
The bow came around like a living thing. For a second, their whole port side was exposed to the gale, and the wall of wind took them and moved the ship the length of a house,
sideways
and rolled them so far that some starboard-side oarsmen got their hands wet in the ocean and their oars were almost straight up and down, or so it seemed. But they held their ground and pulled like they had held their ground in the phalanx and the port-side men pulled like heroes, and the ship shot about in her own length, her force keeping her out against the hawsers of the fulcrum – turned at racing speed.
Jubal, armed with a great axe, chopped at his hawsers and they parted with the sound of close-in thunder.
Like a great arrow from the god’s bow,
Aphrodite’s Laughter
shot out of the storm-lashed darkness at the mole. Satyrus ran forward from amidships to join the marines.
‘Ares!’ Satyrus could see forward now – over the marines, every man already soaked to the skin – and he saw now that Demetrios had
not
recalled the flanking ships. Half were sunk, their ruptured timbers showing above the water like spiky teeth, and the others were rolling into the mole with mighty crashes, pounding themselves to flinders. ‘Poseidon!’ Satyrus prayed, and ran aft.
‘The mole’s still full of ships!’ Satyrus yelled.
‘Then we don’t need to back water!’ Neiron roared in reply.
‘Brace!’ called the men in the bow. Satyrus threw himself flat and grabbed a stanchion.
The bow hit something with a gentle tap, and then something else – Satyrus kept his helmeted head down, well clear of the stanchion, and felt impact after impact – four, five, a great shudder and a ripping noise, as if the veils that hid the world of the immortals from men had parted asunder, and then a crash forward.
Satyrus was on his feet without actually thinking that the way was off the ship, and he ran forward – the foremast had snapped off cleanly and lay over the bow, right across the deck of a half-sunk trireme – and onto the mole.
Satyrus ran down the deck, already knowing what he had to do. Because only a god could have delivered the foremast like a boarding plank, cutting across the half-sunk wreck the way that Herakles cut across most of the problems posed to him.
At full charge, Satyrus leaped onto the butt of the fallen mast and ran –
ran
along the rounded, slippery bridge, eyes locked on the mole, blocking his fear – fear of heights, fear of slipping, fear that no man would follow him. He ran across the fallen mast and slipped – at the very end – and skidded on his knees at the edge of the mole to fall in a heap—
—on the mole.
Only his greaves kept him from ripping all the skin off his knees, and the salt-water spume hurt like a hundred avenging furies, but he was up on his feet in a heartbeat, his spear still in his hand, shield on his shoulder – he’d hurt that shoulder falling, hell to pay later – and he looked back to see Draco coming across the foremast, jumping effortlessly onto the surface of the mole.
‘Let’s kill every fucker here,’ he said, and ran off down the mole into the dark.
The oarsmen were clambering off their benches, impeded by their armour, but the marines were coming across the mast. Satyrus didn’t wait for them.
He turned, and ran down the mole after Draco.
The whole length of the mole seemed deserted.
And it seemed to stay that way until he heard a scream, and then a massive lightning flash lit up the scene.
Draco was killing men. And the mole was packed –
packed
with men. All the men from all the ships.
Zeus sent lightning from heaven to give them light, Poseidon blew wind and rain at the men on the mole, and Satyrus and his puny handful came out of the storm and started to kill.
Satyrus ran shield first into a clump of men illuminated by the levin-bolts. The thunder seemed to roll on now in one continuous peel, and the rapid flashes of the storm strobed together in an almost continuous light that nonetheless had a terrifying quality to it.
Most of the men closest to him were unarmed oarsmen. Satyrus killed them anyway, because a night assault in the heart of a storm is not a time when a man shows mercy. He was economical, fighting as only a veteran of dozens of hand-to-hand combats can fight – killing as only the veteran knows how to kill, shallow jabs to eye and throat and abdomen, no long thrusts – the needle-sharp point of his best short spear was a reaping scythe, into temples, through skull-fronts, into necks – any stroke that left the victim dead without risk to the attacker, risk of a wound or of his weapon binding in the wound.
The storm roared. It gave the fight an Olympian quality, as no sound of mortal man could be heard.
Men came up out of the storm, more marines and more and more again, and then Jubal and the deck crew – and the oarsmen, packed like herd animals died without response, their screams lost in the scream of the storm.
But behind the living wall of oarsmen were good soldiers, professionals, men who knew how to shelter themselves on a stormy night, and knew when they were under attack, knew that their lives were forfeit if they failed. The oarsmen died to buy them time, and they awoke, took up their weapons and formed.
Satyrus could see them forming, and he tried to cut his way through the last fringe of terrified oarsmen, who now pressed back into the forming ranks of the enemy soldiers – now the enemy soldiers were killing the oarsmen as ruthlessly as Satyrus’ men, defending the integrity of their formation. All in the lightning-lit roar that filled the senses.
Satyrus broke through the last rank of oarsmen, face to face with an officer in a bedraggled double crest. He thrust – hard – and his spear point caught on the other man’s breastplate and knocked the man down, but failed to go through the heavy bronze. Satyrus stepped in, kicked the man in the groin and went for the kill—
A spear caught his in the descent, parried him, swung up, inside his guard – Satyrus sprang back and the counter-thrust
just touched
the front of his helmet under the crest, a killing blow a finger’s width from its target.
Satyrus planted his feet, caught the replacement blow on his shield and went
in
with the other man’s spear safe on his shield, and now the other man sprang back.
Time to think
this man is a brilliant spear-fighter
and then a flurry of blows, blocking on instinct, and an overarm swing with his spear point to catch what he couldn’t see – pure luck, his bronze saurauter caught the man in the side of the helmet – just a tap, but it staggered him and they fell apart, and five flashes of lightning showed Satyrus that he was facing Lucius, who he’d seen before.
Lucius must have recognised him. The Italian grinned, showing all his teeth. ‘Let’s dance,’ he said. And rifled his spear overarm, a beautiful throw.
Perhaps Herakles or Athena lifted his shield. Perhaps it was just the wind. The spear, meant for his eye, sprang off the bronze of his aspis rim and leaped high in the air over his head.
Lucius was right behind it, having quick-drawn his sword, and his swing blew chips out of the aspis. He was inside Satyrus’ spear.
Satyrus dropped his spear and punched his open hand at Lucius’ face, a
pankration
blow – he only caught the man’s armoured forehead but he rocked his head back, powered forward on his leg change and knocked the Italian off his feet and went for his own sword, but the Italian’s legs came up and kicked him square in the chest and he was down, his aspis rolling away into the light-punctuated darkness.
Satyrus had no idea which way the fight was oriented now, and he’d lost Lucius when he fell. He ripped his sopping chlamys over his head and rolled it on his left arm, shoulder burning – and took a pair of blows on his back, but neither was hard and he got to his feet, head swinging like a hawk’s, looking for the Italian, terror stealing his breath.
And then he saw the Italian – the man had the officer he’d knocked down in his first rush by the heels, was dragging him clear.
Satyrus pushed forward and found himself facing an enormous man with a spear that hit as hard as an axe, and Satyrus was forced to one knee to parry the spear with his cloak. He couldn’t take another such blow, so he powered forward, like a man tackling a goat, and cut behind the man’s knees as the man’s spear-butt crashed on his helmet – he smelled blood, saw a bright light and continued forward and the man fell back, cursing, fell to the ground, his hamstring cut, and Satyrus pinned his shield to his chest and thrust his sword point through the man’s eye—
As he realised that he had just killed Nestor, the captain of his lover’s guard. His friend, from childhood. Guest friend, sworn friend—
Satyrus screamed into the god-filled night, a cry of pain and rage as loud as his lord Herakles had ever bellowed, a cry so loud that it carried over the roar of the storm.
Men flinched from that scream. Something died in Satyrus with that scream, which tore from him whatever shreds of youth still clung to him, so that the sound leaving his throat might have taken something of his soul with it out of the trap of his teeth and into the hateful night.
Draco’s head snapped around – because a man who has just lost a friend of forty years knows exactly what is contained in that scream – and the Macedonian fought his way to Satyrus’ side and pulled him to his feet, heedless of the enemy, who had mostly fallen back to cower against the wall.
Satyrus looked at the enemy, eyes blank with hate – not hate for the men who faced him, either.
‘Amastris!’ he roared at the night.
Aphrodite’s Laughter
, he thought.
I hate the gods.
Draco plunged back into the cold inferno of the fight. Satyrus stumbled back, watching his life burn before his eyes as surely as if a lightning bolt had hit him.
Amastris was helping Demetrios. With her best. And Satyrus had just faced Stratokles, and Lucius, and … Nestor.
He wrenched his helmet off his head, wiped the streaming water from his eyes and pulled the helmet back on.
The storm was less severe, now, and men were pouring over the makeshift wall at the south end of the mole – Apollodorus and his marines.
Satyrus watched a boat pull away from the mole into the teeth of the storm – three times its pair of oarsmen tried to leave, only to be smashed alongside, but the boat didn’t capsize and the oarsmen kept their nerve and then the boat was away, climbing a breaker into the storm.
Lucius and Stratokles, of course.
Satyrus’ face worked like that of a horrified child, and he ran to the edge of the mole, roared ‘Amastris’ at the storm and hurled his sword at them. It arched up into the storm and vanished into the huge waters.
The boat slipped over the height of the wave and vanished into the darkness.