My sword glanced off his neck guard, where the yoke of his corslet rose to cover his back, and I lifted it high in the 'Harmodius Blow', an overhand back cut with the legs reversed and the whole weight of a man's body and hips behind it, and I cut his head right off his body – no easy feat with a short sword. Try it the next time you sacrifice a calf.
The stump of his neck jetted blood like a newborn volcano, and he fell.
I won't lie. It was a sweet moment.
Herk caught my wounded left shoulder, and the pain brought me to my senses. 'Well done, lad!' he said. 'Now get out of here, before one of his men fingers you for it.'
The fighting was fading away. It was the ugly part of a fight – when the brave men find how bad their wounds are, and the cowards push forward and bloody their weapons on dead and wounded men, as if anyone can be fooled by such stuff. I had a dozen cuts, and my arms were both hurt.
Hermogenes had to prise the vambrace off my arm. It was twisted, the cut that had numbed my arm had deformed the surface, and he had to deform the metal to get it off me, putting the flat of his eating knife against my skin and using it like a crowbar. But my right hand and arm felt better immediately.
My left arm wasn't so easily fixed. I had four different cuts, and Hermogenes pulled his old chiton out of his pack, ripped it in four pieces and used one of them to wrap my arm. 'This is no life for a man,' he said, out of nowhere. 'Your friend Lekthes is dead.'
That was the first I'd heard, although I've already told you the manner of his passing.
Idomeneus had as many cuts as I had, and a deep gash on the outside of his thigh that wrapped around his hip and on to his buttock. You could see white at the bottom of the wound, where the deep fat was.
'That's not good,' Idomeneus said, looking at his hip, and fainted.
Hermogenes shook his head. 'This is no life for a man,' he repeated. 'Look at yourselves. And this for gold? Who needs fucking gold?' He laid out his leather bag, lit a lamp – he was a monster of efficiency, our Hermogenes, even then – and wrapped Idomeneus, even stitching his arse, which woke the poor bastard. He woke with a scream, but by then Herakleides and Nestor had his arms and he fainted again.
Herk came back with Agios and a wineskin, attracted by the lamp. There was no breeze, and the wounded were calling for water, and the night things were coming.
He handed me a cup of wine, but Hermogenes intercepted it and drank it. Fair enough – he was the one doing all the work.
'Still Thracians in the town,' Herk said. 'Miltiades is anxious to get off.'
Paramanos came up with Stephanos. Paramanos had a bandage around his head, and he sighed and pushed the wineskin away. 'One drink and I'll be out,' he said. 'I owe Lekthes' widow,' he said. 'He traded his life for mine.'
'He was a good man,' I said. The wine cup had come to me, and I poured a libation to his shade. 'Apollo light him to Elysium.'
'Aye, he went down like Achilles,' Herk said.
I handed the cup back to Hermogenes. 'I'm going for the town,' I said. Stephanos stepped forward and I shook my head. 'You gather up the wounded,' I said to him. 'Make sure men go aboard the right ships. Herakleides – I'll bring Briseis to her namesake. Be ready.'
I embraced them all, one by one. 'I don't know if I'll be back,' I said.
They all embraced me again, and then I headed downhill, to the sally port from which Aristagoras had come. Paramanos came with me. When I turned to look at him in the moonlight, his eyes sparkled. 'You need a keeper,' he said.
A party of Aristagoras's men was carrying his body through the gate. A young man had his shield over his shoulder. We followed them.
If there were Thracians, we didn't see them, although we could hear screams and occasional sounds of fighting from lower in the town. We followed the body up two narrow alleys and a long staircase set into an outer wall, and then we were at a torch-lit gate. It was a small place, compared with Kallipolis. There were two sentries, and they were too young and raw to have gone with the sortie.
I don't know what I expected, honey. I think that I thought that she would throw herself into my arms and weep. It wasn't that way at all, of course.
The hall was small, and she was waiting to receive the body. Her handmaidens were around her, and they took his body – the man I'd beheaded an hour before – and they washed it. She caught my eye and started. She raised an eyebrow – that was all the greeting I got – and then went back to her task. Her role. Like a priestess, she had her part to play, and she played it well.
An old woman sewed the head back on. While that happened, I stepped up next to Briseis. She bowed.
'Lord Arimnestos,' she said. 'We are honoured.'
She bowed to me – imagine, Briseis the untouchable bowing to Doru the slave. It was all like a dream.
'I am a poor hostess,' she said, and led the way out of the hall, on to a balcony over the sea.
I still expected an embrace.
'I killed him,' I said quietly, and I think I smiled.
She nodded. 'I know that,' she said. 'And I thank you. Now – go. You should not be here.'
'But-' I couldn't believe it. She was pregnant again, I could tell – about three months. But her beauty was unchanged, and her power over me. 'But I came – to rescue you.'
Such things, once said, sound very weak indeed.
'Why do you think I need rescuing?' she asked. Then she laughed. She stood on tiptoe and kissed me. He tongue darted in and out of my mouth, and then she stepped back and licked her lips. 'Blood in your mouth and all over you,' she said and she smiled. 'Achilles. Now be gone, before people talk. I'm a widow and my reputation will matter.'
'I don't care,' I said. 'I'm your next husband.'
Then she looked – hurt. Not proud, and not angry, and not sad, but as if some deep pain had touched her. She reached out and touched my bloody right hand. 'No, my love,' she said. 'I will not marry you.' She shook her head. 'I have children to protect – beautiful children. And where would we go?'
I felt as if the Persian's axe had got me. 'I want to take you home,' I said.
'To Ephesus?' she asked.
'To Plataea,' I said. 'To my farm.'
She smiled then, and I knew that my dreams were foolish. The gods must have laughed at me all autumn.
'Listen, my love,' she said gently. 'I am not called Helen by other men for nothing. It is not my fate to be a farm-wife in Boeotia, wherever that may be.' Her smile became bitter – the bitterness of self-knowledge. 'That is not my fate. Nor would I want it. I will be the lady of a great lord.' Her hand remained on mine. 'I love you, but you are a killer. A pirate. A thief of lives.'
'You seem to need me from time to time,' I said, and my bitterness was too close to the surface.
She looked past me, into the room where her husband's body was being washed. She had things that she needed to be doing, she said with her eyes. 'Be glorious, so that I may hear of you often, Achilles,' she said softly.
'Come with me,' I pleaded.
She shook her head.
Well, I had my pride, too – and that was my foolishness. When Archi walked away from me, I should have wrestled him to the ground, and when Briseis chose another life, I should have put her over my shoulder and taken her. We'd both have been happier.
But I was proud.
'In the harbour, there will be a ship in ten days,' I said. 'Unless Poseidon takes him. His name is your name, and he is your ship. I took him from Diomedes of Ephesus. The rowers are yours until the end of autumn.'
Then she threw her arms around my neck. 'Oh, thank you!' she said. 'Now I am truly free.'
I turned to leave – but then it struck me. 'You will marry Miltiades!' I said, and there was death in my tone.
Her lip curled in disgust. 'You are worth ten of him,' she said. 'And if it were my fate to be a pirate queen, I would be yours.'
