“You little lion.”
“Take it to hell.”
The ranks pushed off in silence. The slope was wide now, broken by patches of scrub spruce and fennel. The formation achieved a pace, maintaining the line. Our tread crunched on coals.
Where was the foe? We had gone a hundred yards. One fifty.
Suddenly a crock of flaming naphtha pealed out of the dark and shattered, slinging fire. “There they are!” an enemy voice cried ahead.
With a shout the line bellied forward, elevating shields to high port. Fire flared underfoot, embers and brands of the foe's blazes.
The hair of one's legs caught and sizzled; already terror made each man edge right, to the shelter of his mate's shield. “Upfield!” Lion bellowed. Advance straight!
Now each hunkered and fanned at the trapezius, seating the nasal and cheek pieces of his helmet against the sweat stain at the upper rim of his shield, eye slits alone exposed for vision, or such purblind daze as the infantryman calls by that name, and locked bronze to bronze, bracing to receive the onslaught that must come, and soon. We could hear the first projectiles ringing off aspides fore and aft. Each man's left shoulder set into the concavity at the upper rim of the shield. Simultaneously his right fist, clutching his nine-footer at the upright, seized as well the hempen grip cord at the right of the inner bowl and, using the shaft of his spear as a brace, secured it by its two iron collars to the outboard edge of the shield, locking it against the concussion to come. Every sinew from heel to crown tensed within the swinging, lengthening stride.
Now came the storm of rock and bullets. “On, boys! They're only pebbles!” “Courage, men! Strong knees!”
As a trekker on the crestline plants his soles and leans, shoulders drawn, into a hailstorm, so the attackers' ranks waded against the gale of stone and lead.
“Who'll be a brave man?”
“Who'll strike the foe first?”
Ahead in the fire-flare: archers.
“Toothpicks!”
Ironheads drummed into the bronze facings of the shields, caromed off the upright spears above. The aspides of the front ranks filled like quill cushions with the enemy's shafts, which ripped through the bronze to bury in the oak chassis beneath, thick as a kitchen cutting board and as impenetrable. One heard the rebounds clatter at his feet and the misses screaming overhead.
“Keep moving!” Lion bawled. All were shouting now, as men called upon heaven and advanced into the rain of death.
Here came moonrise.
We could see the rampart ahead.
“Javelins!”
The marine at my shoulder cried once and dropped. Now descended the fusillade of sheathed ash. There was no wind, so the shafts came on warhead-foremost, no deflection. Lion went down beneath a thunderous strike. “I'm all right!” He hauled to his feet beside me. A second hit. I fell. “Get up, you son of a whore!”
The line is everything.
Terror must not break it; one must not flee.
The line is everything.
Fury must not break it; one must not dash forward.
The line is everything. If it holds we live; if it breaks we die.
“I hate this! I hate this!” Lion was roaring. The enemy broke before we hit them. Our line poured over. Men were cheering.
“Shut up! Break up the fires!”
The Etruscan rallied our mob into a perimeter against counterattack. Exhaustion hit like a maw!. You could hear helmets clatter against the limestone and the crash of shield and kit as they fell.
“On your feet! Facing out! Stay in ranks!”
We had taken the first fort. The second took two more hours, and nearly broke our backs with heat and fatigue. Of six fallen in our platoon, only two were lost to wounds. The others were groin and hamstring pulls, broken bones, mishaps of weariness and thirst, plunges into defiles in the dark. We were all cramping terribly. All construction gear had long since been dumped; we would send parties for it later.
Rumors pealed along the line. Our companies attacking from the Circle fort had been routed; Gylippus had led another five thousand from the city; he held the counterwall, the final position we must seize and occupy. True or not, this report fired the troops with vigor. Nail that beansucker and Syracuse is taken. We slugged water and wine and strapped up to move.
This second bastion was not yet Chalk Hill, not the linked series of redoubts the foe had built last autumn when he drove us off the Heights, but a new one, higher-walled and at the peak of a steeper slope. The enemy had thousands here; it must be stormed.
He had cleared fields of fire to two hundred yards and spiked this expanse with bales of faggots, doused with pitch. Mounds of thorn had been piled on both flanks to channel attackers into the missile troops' killing zone. These our incendiaries set ablaze. A yellow moon burned through the haze. The order came to hold till the obstacles burned down. But the troops could not contain themselves, from fever for the fight, fear of Gylippus' reinforcements, or apprehension spawned by their own blood-sapping fatigue. The ranks piled unordered into the inferno, using shields to plough apart the blazing packets, while the enemy concentrated fire on the avenues down which the Athenians, Argives, and allies now advanced.
Our brigade was second from the front. The first hundred hit the wall. Its face was stone, bristling with stakes. From the crown the enemy rolled boulders. We turtled up, shields across backs, tearing at the stones with our bare hands. The light troops raced up behind. You could hear their shafts and sling bullets shrieking overhead. A boulder from above hit me square in the spine, pounding me into the spiked wall. The stones were knitted too tight to tear. “Climb!” all were shouting. A body fell on me. Some whore's son drilled by our archers. I tried to mount, keeping him on my shielded back. The bugger came to life! I felt fingers claw my sockets and heard the scrape of a blade seeking my throat. I jammed the flange of my helmet down, sealing the seam against the cuirass, and rose with the strength of terror. He went limp, shot by his own from above.
“Climb!” Lion was screaming beside me. I saw, or felt, his stumpy form clamber up the face. Shame seized me. I mounted beside him. The defenders were dumping flaming pitch on us. Up we went. They backed before their own blaze. Our javelineers poured volleys into the enemy atop the wall. As I hit the crest, a man rose before me swinging a gut-cutter; I lowered and butted him. We plunged entwined. He had no helmet; I bashed in his skull with my bronze. I heard cheering. The second companies surged past, spewing sweat and spit as they fell on the backs of the fleeing foe. I sank to all fours on the smoking stone.
“Lion!”
“Here, brother!”
We jacked helmets back, enough to confirm each other's survival, and collapsed from relief and exhaustion.
The moon stood full up now. The men rallied, surging over this second fort. “Get up, get up!” We must not yield to fatigue, not while the counterwall stood and Gylippus had time to fortify it with more troops. The men had been climbing and fighting four hours. The night had not cooled one iota. The troops' tongues hung like dogs.
We heard Argive accents. A colonel of the elite Thousand burst from the darkness. He was closing up the line. “One more rock to take!”
The call came for officers. Lion was puking and cramping, so I went. Demosthenes was there. His brigade had started up before ours, against the fort at Labdalum; either he or we were completely out of order. His lieutenants directed the men to eat, but who could choke down bread absent wine or water?
The troops are spent, sir, one captain reported. The third wave is still behind us, mounting from Euryalus; should he hold here and let them take the advance?
Demosthenes stared as if the man had gone mad.
“The moon is up. We take this shithole now.”
A colonel said he didn't know if his men could do it.
