Chapter 219: Ash and Blood

The fire died at the third hour.

Not because they put it out. Because there was nothing left to burn. The western wing of the northern granary was gone — timber roof collapsed, stone walls blackened, the grain inside reduced to ash and smoke. The eastern wing held. Half the grain survived. The other half did not.

The oil reserves were gone. Every jar. The fire had reached the storage room and the clay had cracked in the heat and the oil had fed the flames and the flames had eaten everything.

Lysander stood in the smoke. His face was black. His hands were black. His cloak was burned at the edge where a spark had caught.

Four months of grain. Gone. Two months burned. The oil — gone.

He did not count. Counting was for later. Counting was for when the fighting stopped.

The horns were still blowing.

He ran.

The northern wall was hell.

Lysander reached the parapet and stopped. The scene was worse than anything he had imagined. Worse than the black ships. Worse than the first platform assault.

Eight platforms had reached the wall. The boards had worked. The tar was cracked — dried by two days of sun, split by the weight of the wheels. The platforms slid across the broken tar like ships across water. They hit the wall. The men poured over.

The kill zones were broken.

Not in one section. In three. The Greeks had come in numbers that the zones could not absorb. Fifteen men per platform. Eight platforms. A hundred and twenty men on the wall in the first minute. The defenders — twelve per section — could not kill them fast enough.

Section three had fallen first. The Greeks poured through the broken gap and swept along the walkway. The defenders retreated. The kill zone that had been a trap became a corridor.

Section six fell next. Then section eight.

Asterion was at section six.

Lysander saw him from thirty paces. The wrestler was fighting alone. The defenders around him had fallen or retreated. He stood in the centre of the walkway with his sword and his broken nose and his leather vest and he killed everything that came at him.

A Greek thrust. Asterion caught the blade on his forearm — the leather took the cut — and drove his sword through the man’s chest. Another Greek swung. Asterion ducked, grabbed the man’s arm, and threw him off the wall. A third came. A fourth. A fifth.

He killed five men in eight seconds.

The sixth caught him. A spear from the side. Not a thrust — a hook. The spearhead caught behind his knee and pulled. Asterion’s leg buckled. He went down on one knee. The seventh Greek drove a sword into his back.

Asterion did not scream. He reached behind him, grabbed the Greek’s wrist, and pulled the man forward. The Greek stumbled. Asterion headbutted him. The Greek fell.

Then Asterion fell.

He did not get up.

Lysander reached section four. The gap was broken. Three Greeks on the walkway. Two defenders down.

He killed the first. Thrust to the throat. The second swung — Lysander caught the blade on his sword, stepped inside, drove his pommel into the man’s jaw. The third hesitated. Lysander did not hesitate.

"Reset the gap! Now!"

The defenders scrambled. But there were too many Greeks behind the first three. The wave kept coming. Over the parapet. Onto the walkway. Into the gaps that were no longer traps.

"Fall back!" Hector’s voice cut through the noise. "Fall back to the inner gate! The outer wall is lost!"

Lysander looked at the situation. Fifty paces of the northern wall — sections three through eight — were in Greek hands. The Greeks were on the walkway. They were fighting toward the inner gate.

Retreat.

"Move!" Lysander shouted. "Back to the inner gate! Fighting withdrawal — do not turn your backs!"

The defenders pulled back. Some ran. Most fought — stepping backward, thrusting, stepping again. The Greeks followed. The walkway became a corridor of blood and bronze and the sound of metal on metal.

Lysander was the last off the outer wall. He backed through the gate, his sword red, his arm burning where a cut had opened across his bicep. Three Greeks tried to follow through the gate. He killed the first. An archer behind him killed the second. The third retreated.

The inner gate closed.

Hector was inside. His shield was gone — shattered by an axe blow. His helmet was cracked down the middle. Blood ran from a cut above his eye. He held his sword in his right hand and the gate bar in his left.

"Losses," he said.

Lysander looked at the defenders gathered behind the inner gate. Fewer than before. Far fewer.

"Two hundred dead. Three hundred wounded. Asterion is gone."

Hector’s jaw tightened. He did not close his eyes. He did not bow his head.

"The Greeks."

"Four hundred dead on the wall. Maybe more. But they hold the outer wall. Fifty paces of it. Sections three through eight."

"Can they breach the inner gate."

"The inner gate is stone and bronze. It holds. But they will bring rams. They will try to break it."

"How long."

"Days. Maybe a week. The gate is strong but it is not the wall. The wall was the first defence. The gate is the second."

"And the third."

Lysander looked at him. "The citadel. The palace. The inner walls."

"If the gate falls, we fall back to the citadel."

"Yes."

"And if the citadel falls."

Lysander did not answer.

Hector looked at the gate. At the blood on the stone. At the sound of Greeks on the other side, hammering, building, preparing the next assault.

"Paris," Hector said.

Paris was on the eastern wall. He had not retreated — the eastern wall had not been attacked. He stood at his position, bow in hand, arrows spent, his quiver empty. He had loosed every arrow he carried. Forty-seven. He knew because he counted.

"Paris is alive," Lysander said. "The eastern wall holds."

"Good." Hector set the gate bar in its brackets. "Get me numbers. Get me a count of every man still standing. And get me Daidalos — I need to know what the inner gate can take."

Lysander turned to go.

"Lysander."

He stopped.

"The fire. The granary."

"Partially burned. The western wing is gone. The oil reserves are gone."

"How much grain."

"Half the northern stores. The western stores are intact. The fishermen’s dried stores are intact."

"How long."

"Four months. Maybe five if we cut rations again."

Hector was quiet. Four months. Before the fire, it had been six. The Greeks had taken two months of food from them in a single night — along with fifty paces of wall.

"Go," Hector said. "Get me the numbers."

Lysander walked toward the supply office. The city behind him was quiet — the kind of quiet that meant people were hiding. The lower town was dark. The streets were empty. The only sound was the distant hammering of the Greeks on the outer wall, building, preparing, preparing.

On the outer wall, Achilles walked.

He had not fought. He had not needed to. The platforms had done the work. The men had climbed. The wall had fallen. And now he stood on the stone he had been staring at for weeks — the parapet of Troy’s northern wall — and looked south.

The inner gate was there. Stone and bronze. Behind it, the defenders. Behind them, the citadel. Behind the citadel, the palace.

He could see Hector. Behind the inner gate. Blood on his face. Sword in his hand.

Achilles raised his spear. Not in threat. In recognition.

"I am here now," he said.

Hector did not answer. He stood behind the gate and looked through the narrow gap between the bronze doors and saw the golden figure on the parapet — the man who had come across the sea to kill him.

The distance between them was fifty paces. Stone and bronze and war.

Achilles smiled.

Hector did not.