Legacy of Blood (19 page)

‘We did it!' said Demaratos, appearing at his side. Lysander saw the Fire of Ares glint beneath his cloak. ‘We freed the town. Come on. Let's regroup in the square.'

Lysander found himself alone on the jetty. As the bodies writhed in the water, he felt elated, but uneasy.
Can it be this easy?

He spat into the water.

‘Cowards!' he shouted. ‘Ares turns his head from you in shame.'

One of the men in the water gripped the side of a rowing boat and stared at Lysander.

‘Come on, Messapian!' yelled Lysander. ‘Why do you cower like a crab where I can't get you?' A smile spread across the Messapian's lips, and Lysander felt uneasy. ‘Come out and face me.'

The man stayed where he was, and Lysander looked back towards the square, a sea of red cloaks, where the Spartans who brought up the rear were finishing off the remaining Messapians who were trapped there. Leaving the man, he paced back along the jetty and climbed up on to the sea wall.
Something isn't right.

He saw Demaratos further along the wall, and jogged over to his side. The square below was littered
with dead Messapians.

Into the middle of the carnage came Nikos on his horse, looking every bit the victorious leader. His face was flushed with excitement but Lysander noticed that his sword was not even bloody.

‘The battle for Taras is over!' shouted Nikos from horseback.

The Spartans lifted their weapons and cheered.

‘From now on, the people of Taras will know who their true leaders are. This is a colony of Sparta!'

The men shouted again.

‘Sir,' said Anaxander, running up to the horse's side, ‘we have the Messapian leader – Viromanus.'

‘Bring him out,' said Nikos.

The crowd parted and Lysander climbed on a jetty stone to look over the heads of the men. A ragged man, whose clothes were soaked in blood, was dragged along the ground by two Spartans and thrown at the feet of Nikos' horse. He stood up and faced Nikos. It was strange; despite his bloodied clothes, there was still the light of triumph in Viromanus' eyes.

Something caught Lysander's eyes behind the temple. A flicker of flame.
It must have been set by our men
, he thought. In fact, there were several small fires in the streets above the square, and trails of smoke spiralled into the sky.

‘Nikos will kill him, for sure,' said Demaratos.

Lysander saw several young men scurry across the street up the hill from the square. They had no uniform
or armour. Not Messapians. Citizens of Taras, surely. They made their way towards the fires, carrying something.

Putting out the fires?

Nikos dismounted and called for a spear. One of his men handed him an eight-footer. The crowd had backed away now, leaving a wide circle around Nikos and the Messapian leader.

Silence fell.

Lysander's eyes flitted back up the hill away from the spectacle. He could see more men now, perhaps twenty scattered among the houses around the fire. But they weren't making any effort to douse the flames. Then he recognised the objects in their hands. Bows.

‘Look out!' Lysander shouted. All heads turned in his direction, and he pointed up the slope. ‘They're getting ready to attack!'

A cry went up, and was answered across the breadth of the town. More men flooded out of buildings, dropped down from trees or emerged from empty barrels. They dipped their arrows into the flames, and rested them against their bowstrings. The yellow tips flickered, all pointing into the square.

He remembered the smile of the Messapian in the water. Now it made sense.

The men fleeing into the sea had been a trick; a distraction.

Now Lysander and his comrades were trapped.

‘Take cover!' shouted Lysander.

The air whooshed as arrows sailed from the bows. Lysander leapt from his vantage point. Across the square, men who had shields lifted them above their heads.

The deadly hail fell, thudding into the ground and into men's bodies. Cries came from all over the square, and a Spartan soldier collided with Lysander. They fell together, and Lysander grunted as the man toppled on to him. The air around was suddenly hot with fire.

He wriggled from underneath. The Spartan was a dead weight. One arrow was lodged in the man's chest, another had entered at the base of his neck. Lysander gagged at the aroma of seared flesh, from the dying flames of the arrows. Across the square, panic had set in. Many had fallen, and were either lying still, or writhing across the ground to find shelter. He saw Demaratos breaking the arrows from the front of his shield. The men on the slopes were lighting another volley of arrows.

As the archers released, Lysander grabbed the dead man's body and pulled it on top of him just in time. Another two shafts buried themselves in the corpse.

‘Spartans, rally!' shouted one of the leaders. ‘Attack their positions.'

Lysander ran back into the middle of the square, and found the rest of the boys' division gathered around Aristodermus.

A group of Nikos' Spartans were streaming up the hill, roaring at the archers ahead. Lysander took a spear from the ground and headed after them.

‘Stop, Lysander!' It was Aristodermus.

Lysander turned. ‘We need to neutralise the archers, otherwise we're all dead.'

‘Let Nikos' men handle it,' said his tutor. ‘We must stay here to face any who attack from the flanks.'

The Tarantian Spartans were twenty paces from the archers. ‘Take aim!' yelled a voice above the din. They brought their bows level, and fired into the oncoming wall of men. Lysander watched as several from the front Spartan rank collapsed, their places only to be filled with more red cloaks. They reached twenty paces, and the bowmen fired again at point blank range. They couldn't miss, and although most of the arrows slammed into their shields, soldiers collapsed as other shafts pierced their legs or slipped though the gaps. They were scythed down like fresh corn.

‘Keep on them, men!' shouted Nikos from the base of the hill. It was suicide, but Lysander realised that
without the attack there'd be nothing to stop the archers. The Spartan advance was slowed, but still they reformed and trudged on. The archers tried to reload, but there wasn't time. Lysander lost sight of them as the Spartan soldiers leapt the fires and overwhelmed them. The archers fell beneath their spears. Screams were cut short as the points drove through their flesh, or the heavy lizard-stickers smashed their brains from their skulls.

From his right came the rumble of feet, men running. A huge mob, many hundreds strong, careered down the western entrance to the square. Most wore simple tunics, and made no effort to stay in order. Lysander took his place beside Demaratos and Prokles in the front line.

Any remaining people of Taras had finally come out to fight.

‘Fall back!' called Nikos. ‘Back to the square.'

Where had these people been hiding? In cellars and attics, no doubt. Packed together in courtyards watching as the Spartans marched through their streets unchallenged.

From the smattering of matching leather jerkins, Lysander saw there were some remaining Messapian soldiers among the crowd, but most of the fighters looked like ordinary men. They marched to the edge of the square, then drew up, facing the Spartans.

Nikos' men descended the hill again, and quickly took up their positions behind the ranks of boys. Lysander felt better with them at his back. The phalanx
was dense, but would it be enough?

This was happening just as he had said – a few of the enemy soldiers had slipped through their tightening grip, and had marshalled the angry populace.

For the first time since the battle against the Persians, Lysander felt the thud of true fear in his chest. His hands tightened into fists as he tried to control the emotions that whirled through him.

The men didn't hold ordinary weapons. A few carried axes for chopping wood. Some had rough pieces of timber jutting with rusty nails, or strapped with sharpened flints. One man, whose shoulders bulged with muscle was brandishing a blacksmith's mallet. They had no armour to speak of, and wore simple peasant clothes, but Lysander could tell from their eyes that they'd fight to the death.

‘Let go your weapons!' said a Messapian from the front of the Tarantian force. ‘And live.'

All eyes went to Nikos, but he looked around him with uncertainty. Lysander let his gaze travel over the men – there were maybe two hundred and fifty left. The Tarantians numbered twice that many, at least.

He can't surrender!
thought Lysander. The shame would be too great to live with.

He looked backwards towards the eastern entrance to the square. They were hemmed in. To turn and flee that way would be futile.

Aristodermus jumped up on to the edge of a collapsed stall.

‘If you want our weapons, Messapian, come and get them!'

Lysander cheered and the other Spartans joined in the shout of defiance. The lead Messapian turned to his men and raised his sword over his head. He gave a blood-curdling howl. The other men took up the cry and the square was filled with the sound of rage. The Messapian lowered his weapon and pointed. The desperate mob flooded into the square.

There was no chance to gather into formation, no time to assemble the phalanx. This was fighting beyond Lysander's training. He had a sword, a shield, and his courage. As the two armies clashed, Lysander picked a Messapian carrying a spear. The point thrust towards his head, an elementary mistake.
Always aim at the biggest target – the body
, Diokles had said. Lysander dodged and jumped forward, piling his knee into the soldier's stomach. As the man bent over, he adjusted his grip and rammed his sword downwards into the spinal column.

He was pulling out his sword when a blow caught him on the upper arm. As he spun around, a Tarantian bore down on him, swinging a poker. Lysander half ducked, half stumbled out of the way. The man's eyes were wild.

The Tarantian took a swing, and was momentarily off balance. Lysander stabbed and drew blood from his torso. When the man's glance dropped to his wound, Lysander finished the job, hacking down into the neck. The corpse sank at his feet, gurgling blood.

The square resounded with the thud of metal on wood, and the shouts of pain, fear and anger. Lysander found himself attacking anyone who wasn't in a red cloak. Someone crashed into his back and he spun round, sword raised. Prokles stood there, short spear poised and dripping with blood. For a heartbeat they stared at each other.

‘Save some for me, comrade,' he said, then plunged back into the crowd.

A Spartan soldier tumbled like a felled tree in front of Lysander, dead before he hit the ground. The side of his head was brutally caved in. Lysander saw why. A man wearing the charred leather apron of a blacksmith held aloft a mallet.

‘Are you ready to die, Spartan?' he shouted.

‘A Spartan is always ready to die,' said Lysander.

The man growled and swung his mallet with ferocious speed. It connected in the centre of Lysander's breastplate. He flew backwards through the air, feeling every bone shake, and slammed into a market stall, jarring his back.

His ears and head rang, and his vision blurred double. He lay back on the wood, and tried to find his breath.

A shadow loomed above him, and the mallet arced towards his face, ready to crush his skull. Groggy, Lysander rolled sideways and heard the hammer crunch into the wood, showering his face with splinters. As the man struggled to free the head, Lysander sliced across
the back of his legs, severing the tendons under his knees. The man gave a throaty groan like an ox being slaughtered, and smashed face first into the stall. The wooden structure fell in from above, burying him.

Lysander tried to stand, but his chest was in agony from the hammer blow, and he saw that the bronze of the chest plate was heavily dented. He managed to hobble towards the temple. Two men were struggling hand to hand at the base of the statue, and Lysander realised one of them was Aristodermus. He'd lost his helmet and his hair was as white as the marble of the temple. The man he was fighting had a short dagger in his hand, and Aristodermus was gripping his wrist. Aristodermus suddenly turned, and threw the man over his hip. With a clever twist of the wrist the knife was in his hand, and he slashed the inside of his enemy's arm, through the artery. The man screamed and gripped the wound, but the sound was cut short when Aristodermus stamped on his exposed throat.

Lysander swallowed a lungful of smoke and coughed. The fires had caught nearby, and black clouds were drifting across the square, temporarily obscuring the fighting men. They cleared for a moment, and Lysander saw Demaratos and Leonidas side by side, fighting with short spears and swords. They faced four locals, who were circling them. One carried a harpoon and a fishing net. Demaratos caught a blow with a club to the ear, which made Lysander flinch, and his friend fell out of sight. His attacker lifted the club high and
for a terrible moment, Lysander thought Demaratos would be killed.

He jumped down from the steps and ran. As he approached, Leonidas caught one of the attackers in the belly with his spear and the man keeled backwards, screaming as he clutched his punctured bowels. But at the same time, the Tarantian with the net had entangled Leonidas's feet.

Lysander ran through the crowd as the man stabbed at Leonidas with the harpoon. His friend managed to block the movement with his hand, but the point tore his skin, and blood coursed along his arm. The man raised his weapon to stab again but Lysander buried his sword up to the hilt in the man's side. The point emerged on the other side, streaked with gore, and the blood rushed over Lysander's knuckles.

‘Thanks, friend,' said the prince.

Lysander searched the ground.

‘Where's Demaratos?'

‘He was here a moment ago.'