Ben Thomas
The Surprise Attack
Somewhere in eastern Mesopotamia — 395 BC
Leander woke to shouting, and to the feel of dirt and gravel on his face. All around, men were running and shouting “Throw me my helmet!” and “Spear! Where’s my spear?” and in the air were humming and zipping sounds, and thuds and angry screams, and an arrow fell from nowhere and buried itself in the tent.
Then two more — zip-thud, zip-thud — in the dirt near his head.
He was up and running for the tent, finding it empty, heaving his breastplate onto himself and tying it on quick as he could, strapping on his sword and grabbing his helmet and shield, racing across the camp through the tents in the direction the arrows were coming from.
So many of those arrows, dozens of them every moment, raining like hail into the tents and the fire-pits and the legs and shoulders of men who fell to the ground screaming, and others who limped along with two or three of the wood shafts sticking out from them, howling about “Gods shit on Persia” and “I’ll skin your children” and other things that made no sense that came out of angry men in agony.
Nearby on the ground lay three of the Corinthian women in their pretty pastel dresses, two dead and bleeding out with arrows through their eyes and chests; the third one huddled on the ground next to them, covering herself with some dead man’s shield, her hair undone and gold pins fallen everywhere as the arrows clattered onto the shield and she wept and screamed at everything around her.
Leander crept forward in a crouch with his shield held over him, feeling it thump against his back each time an arrow hit it, two hits, then three, then more, and he must’ve been carrying at least twenty arrows by the time he found Cratippus and a few of the other commanders.
A few of his men were here, too; though Daxos wasn’t. Together, they huddled under an overturned arrow-bristled supply wagon.
“This was a stupid place to make camp,” Leander said as he climbed under the wagon.
“This was orders,” said Cratippus. “Direct from the Generals. This place was supposed to have visibility over all the surrounding hills.”
“What happened? Did the sentry fall asleep?” Leander asked.
“Sentry was one of the first to die,” said Eusebios. “They came up just before dawn, we don’t know where from. Just lay up in the hills and started raining arrows on us, the dog-fucking cowards!” He howled in the direction the arrows were coming from.
“Must be at least a few hundred of them, judging by the arrows,” said Leander.
“Trying to cut us off from the main army,” said Eusebios. “Divide and kill.”
“We need to get in close to them,” said Metrophanes, the swordsman who’d sung so sweetly the night before. “They’ll only have the one line of heavy infantry. If we can get close we can smash them.”
“I sent a runner to Diokles and his boys,” said Cratippus. “But he’s probably dead by now.”
“I’d say that’s a good bet,” said Eusebios.
“We just need to wait awhile,” said Leander. “They can’t keep this up for long. I’d say it’s more than half over already. When they stop, we gather up whoever’s left and run straight for their line. They won’t stand a chance.”
“Unless they’ve got some other surprise for us,” said Eusebios.
“They might,” said Leander. “And we’ll deal with it when we get there. We don’t have a choice.”
Cratippus and Eusebios looked at each other. “You’re right,” said Eusebios. “We don’t.”
Leander started counting his breaths. In-one-then-out. In-two-then-out. By the time he’d counted up to one hundred twenty-three, the hail of arrows was thinning. By one hundred thirty, it had stopped completely. The screams and curses were still coming, though, from all over camp.
“Let’s go,” said Cratippus, and they pushed up and out from under the wagon and ran at a dead sprint across camp toward the source of the attack, shields slung across their backs, praying no more arrows were coming.
“To us!” they were all shouting, and more men came running out from under other wagons, or from tents and pits where they’d huddled under their shields — all studded thickly with arrows — and joined their gathering charge for the edge of camp.
Many of them were stuck with a wood shaft or two in an arm or shoulder, and were bleeding dark brownish blood. Every one of them bore cuts and deep gashes where arrows had sliced their faces and hands.
They made their way between arrow-studded wreckages of tents, long rows of them, where men and camp-women lay pinned to the ground in lakes of blood, forests of feathered shafts sprouting where they lay. Some were alive enough to groan, others awake to howl and shout curses.
When they ran close by one of those in agony, one of the men would dash over and thrust a sword into the sufferer’s chest or neck, stopping the screams; and they’d all mutter a prayer for the dead man, promising before running onward to come back later and lay coins on his eyes.
By the time they’d reached the edge of the plateau, their group was about a hundred men strong — fewer than ten percent of the ones who’d been alive the night before, but more than Leander had expected. Still no sign of Daxos, though.
They caught sight of the Persian archers — about two hundred of them, Leander guessed, in brightly colored trousers and vests, without a plate of armor among them. They were running back into the woods en masse; some on foot, a few on horseback. Not a single heavy infantryman to be seen. Too far away to catch up to now, especially if you were wearing heavy armor.
“Gods-damned cowards,” Metrophanes screamed at them. “Cowards!”
“They’re probably out of hearing range,” said Leander, catching his breath.
“I piss on your mothers!” Metrophanes shouted anyway. “All of you!”
The last of the archers vanished into the trees.
Cratippus shook his head slowly. “Why can’t they just fight like men?”
“They used to, sometimes,” Leander said. “Remember Cunaxa? All of them along the left bank, thick as wheat in a field. All those spears.”
“That was six years ago,” said Eusebios.
“Six years ago,” said Cratippus, “we had an army worth fighting. Now they just pick us off out here in the wilderness, like ducks by a lake.”
“This is no way for men to fight,” said Eusebios.
Leander shook his head. “No way for anyone to fight.”
Once they were sure the Persian archers weren’t coming back, they walked slowly back to camp, and spent the rest of the day gathering up what they could carry from the tents and supply wagons, and looking for survivors.
The men with a little medical experience did their best to patch up the wounded who might make it. Most of the others begged to be put out of their suffering and have coins placed on their eyes and prayers said for them, and the men fulfilled their requests as quickly as they could. Leander didn’t see anyone crying. They were probably too tired, he thought.
He did hear someone singing “How Far From the Sea,” though. The slow, mournful song filled his eyes with tears. He blinked them back.
He found Daxos’ body not too far from their band’s part of camp. Daxos had taken an arrow to the back of the head and had probably died instantly. So there was that, at least.
After he’d fallen he’d taken a few dozen more arrows, to all parts of his body. Leander snapped off the shafts and rolled him over, and put coins on his eyes and said a prayer for him, and now the tears burned in his eyes until they rolled down his cheeks and mixed with the dirt and the blood, and this time, he didn’t care.
As the sun began to set behind the mountains, the survivors picked up everything they could carry — swords and shields and sacks of food and wineskins — and marched out of camp to the south, where they hoped the main army would be. What was left of it, anyway.
They sang no marching songs, and no one played pipes. There was only the crunch of sandals on gravel, the soft, slow panting of the men, the occasional cry from someone who moved the wrong way and felt an arrow still stuck in him, and the cloud of dust rising up from the road. Through the long afternoon and into the evening they walked, down from the rocky hills and out onto the plains.
Leander was too tired to think. He walked to the edge of a small crowd gathered around a fire pit, and sat down and looked into the flames.
He lay down and fell into a nervous half-sleep, drifting into fitful dreams of Daxos and the others calling out to him for help, and not being able to reach them before the arrows came.