Walking the south wall was hard — and sobering. Twice, Satyrus clambered over the ‘wall’ into what was now the debatable ground: once to listen to see if he could hear sounds of digging, and the second time-
‘Go and wake Jubal and get me twenty men,’ Satyrus said to Helios. ‘No questions, lad. Run!’
Satyrus stood perfectly still, tensed and completely sober, and waited. There it was again.
Chink. Tink.
And then nothing, for a long time.
Just when he wondered if he had torn Jubal from red-hair’s arms for nothing. .
Clink.
‘Here I am,’ Jubal said.
‘Shhh!’ Satyrus hushed him. He was on the ground in front of the wall — fifty feet in front of the rubble wall, out in no-man’s land.
A line of men were picking their way down the rubble slope. They made a lot of noise.
Over in the enemy lines, there was a shout.
‘Get back!’ Satyrus said, as low as he could. ‘Back!’
Charmides froze. He had heard his lord.
A slim figure barked a sharp command. The file turned and began to climb the slope. Melitta was leading his twenty men — probably all the soberest men — and they’d been spotted.
More shouting in the enemy lines.
‘Listen!’ Satyrus whispered.
Clink.
Jubal nodded sharply. ‘Got him,’ he said. He tore a strip off his cloak with his knife, walked a few paces, picked up a section of pike shaft and stuck the rag on the end. Then he lay flat. From his prone position, he said, ‘They mus’ be stopped, lord. If’n they get through-’
Satyrus understood immediately. He tore another strip off Jubal’s cloak as the man lay flat, and he used his sword to cut a second length of spear shaft.
A rock whistled out of the darkness and struck the rubble wall, and gravel and shards of rock sprayed. Satyrus was hit in the back, but he wasn’t knocked down.
Then another rock fell.
‘They jus’ get better an’ better,’ Jubal said. ‘Got him.’ He reached out, and Satyrus put the second flag in his hand, and Jubal crawled a few feet and stuck the shaft between two rocks. ‘One more,’ he said.
Satyrus had to go quite a way to find another spear shaft. A rock came out of the dark — two rocks, he could tell from the impact. Too damned close. Now he had a cut on his cheek.
It occurred to him, lying scared and alone in the dark, at the very edge of the enemy zone, that he was the polemarch and that someone else could have done this. And it burst on him like a rapid sunrise that Miriam had kissed him.
He chuckled, and a hand closed on his mouth.
‘Got you,’ the man hissed.
Melitta waited in the dead ground beyond the rubble wall, her hip pressed — not without careful planning — against that of the musician. ‘What are they doing?’ she hissed.
‘No idea,’ Anaxagoras answered her. ‘He’s like this.’ Anaxagoras laughed silently, and Melitta felt it through their hips. ‘And I thought he’d gone off with Miriam.’
A rock hit the other face of the rubble, and chips sprayed like deadly mud from a child’s pebble, when children throw rocks into a pool after rain.
‘Ah — damn,’ Anaxagoras said.
‘Let me see,’ Melitta said. ‘Keep your head down — you — what’s your name?’
‘Hellenos, Despoina.’ The young aristocrat was relatively sober.
‘Tell the other men to be quiet. And get me Scopasis.’ She waved. ‘The barbarian — one of the other barbarians. Dressed like me.’
‘Yes, Despoina.’ If taking orders from a woman was a rare thing for Hellenos, he had the grace to do it well. He went back along the file of men and women — both aristocrats and their Sakje maiden archers, some marines — to Scopasis.
Melitta looked at the gash left by the rock chip on Anaxagoras’ neck, pulled off the scarf she wore to keep her cuirass from rubbing her own neck and wrapped it around his wound to staunch the blood. Another rock hit.
‘I can’t say I’m fond of this,’ Melitta said.
‘I think it’s very brave of you to come out at all,’ Anaxagoras said.
‘I mean the rocks. I adore a night raid — the taste of an enemy’s blood on my blade, the gleam of the moon-’ Laying it on a bit thick, she thought, but his male dominance annoyed her as much as his music and good looks appealed.
An ugly scream in the darkness; almost at their feet.
‘Raid,’ Anaxagoras said, and rolled to his feet.
The moment the hand clamped on his mouth, Satyrus reacted. It was, after all, something for which Theron and Philokles had trained him repeatedly. Before the hand was over his mouth, his mouth was open and he bit savagely, all but severing a finger — his right elbow shot back, he rolled his right shoulder down, fell heavily on the man on his back-
His assailant was screaming. Satyrus caught movement, ducked-
. . into the blow, so that the man’s hand punched his head instead of the sword cutting into it, and he snapped back, tripped over his first attacker and fell flat on his back — but he still had sword and shield. The aspis he pulled up, over his head and chest. He cowered, fighting for consciousness, trying to get a foot under him, blind.
‘Alarm! Alarm!’ someone was yelling.
His shield gave a great thud as a weapon crashed into it, and a hollow boom as a second one hit the rim. But he had his feet under him, and his sword, and his right hand shot out in a stop-thrust, almost without his volition.
He raised his eyes.
At least three of them — maybe more, but trapped like him in the shallow trench that had been the third defensive line. The trench walls were loose scree on both sides, difficult to climb. One man — with a pick — was above him, trying to get in behind.
Satyrus backed like a crab, praying to Herakles that he wouldn’t catch his foot on a stone.
Two men had spears, and they attacked, confident now that he was retreating.
Five men. Satyrus knew that no one man can take five, so he backed away, watching the man on the edge of the trench-
The man went down, and in falling he fell into the trench, fouling his mates — Satyrus lunged immediately, missed his footing, swung wildly, hit a shield and was toe to toe with an opponent. Both of them swung, their hilts locked a moment, and then the man’s eyes glazed over, something warm sprayed across Satyrus’ shins and the man slumped to the ground, all the fingers of his sword hand severed in a poor parry.
Satyrus stepped back, because the trench behind the wounded man was suddenly full of men in Thracian helmets — ten, fifteen-
‘Herakles!’ Satyrus roared, and charged.
‘That’s fighting,’ Anaxagoras said uselessly.
‘Follow me,’ Melitta said, and ran down the wall of rubble. She didn’t pick her way with risky sobriety — she ran, and left the men behind her with little choice but to follow. She could see men moving beyond the next rise, men like black ants on sand. She made the bottom of the rubble-rampart without falling, pulled her bow from her gorytos, got an arrow on the bow and narrowly stopped herself from shooting the black man with the sword — she knew him from the party, but they came face to face and she could tell he’d come as close as she.
‘My brother!’ she said.
Herakles! She heard — close. She ran.
The men in the Thracian helmets were surprised, their night raid caught in their own trench area, and they had the natural reaction of raiders — retreat. It took them long seconds to realise that they were under attack from one man.
Satyrus’ head rang like his shield under the assault of their spears, but he downed the first man with a thrust over his shield into the man’s eyes — thrusts are more deadly in the dark, as there is less lateral movement to betray the blow — and then he pushed forward over the dying man and got his shield against the next man’s shield and struck him in the moment of impact. Philokles’ trick, as most men brace, even unconsciously, against the pain of the moment where the shields meet. Satyrus’ sword wrapped around unerringly and found the neck between the helmet’s tail and the top of the cuirass, and the man went down without a groan.