Chapter 197: Blood on Stone

The ladders hit the wall at dawn.

Not one. Not ten. Forty. Rising from the grey sand like fingers clawing at the stone.

Hector saw them first.

"Archers!" His voice cut the morning air. "Loose!"

The arrows fell. Steady streams. Each archer picking his target. Drawing. Releasing. Drawing again.

On the eastern wall, Paris didn’t look up. Drew. Released. Drew. Released. Two hundred paces to the sand. Each arrow found a hand on a rung. A face above a shield rim. A throat exposed in the climb.

He didn’t count. Counting was for before.

"Second wave!" a runner shouted. "Northern section, fourth and sixth towers!"

Lysander was already moving.

The northern wall. His wall. The section he’d spent two years redesigning.

He reached the sixth tower just as the first Greek crested the ladder.

Young. Maybe twenty. Shield strapped to his back, sword drawn, mouth open in a war cry that died the instant he saw what waited for him.

The gap.

Twenty paces of open stone. No defender standing directly in front of him. Just empty space.

The Greek stepped onto the wall. Looked left. Looked right. Saw the opening and moved toward it, because that’s what men do when they see a gap.

They fill it.

Two steps.

The defender on the left thrust. Short. Sharp. From the shoulder. The spear caught the Greek’s shield and forced him to turn.

He turned left.

The spear from the right took him through the ribs.

He fell. Didn’t scream. Just fell, and the body tumbled back over the wall and hit the ladder below.

Lysander watched. One attacker. Two defenders. One dead Greek.

It worked.

"Next!" a section commander shouted three positions down. "They’re coming in threes!"

Three ladders hit the gap simultaneously. Three Greeks crested within heartbeats of each other.

The first entered the kill zone. Two defenders flanked him. He died in four seconds.

The second saw the first die and hesitated. The left defender stepped forward and drove his spear through the man’s thigh. He collapsed. The right defender finished him.

The third didn’t enter the gap. He stayed on the ladder, shield up, waiting.

"Archers!" Lysander called.

Two arrows hit the shield. A third found the gap between helmet and neck guard. The Greek’s head snapped back. He fell.

Lysander moved. The floating role. Read the wall. Go where the line thins. He reached the fourth tower just as two more Greeks crested there.

The defenders held. Barely.

"Hold the angle!" Lysander shouted. "Don’t chase him! Let him come into the gap!"

The defender on the left almost stepped forward. Almost broke formation. Lysander grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.

"He’s yours when he turns. Not before."

The Greek stepped into the gap. Turned. Died.

"Oil!" Hector’s voice carried down the wall. "Fourth tower! Now!"

The cauldrons tipped. Boiling oil poured over the edge in a thick golden stream. It hit the ladder. Hit the men climbing it. Hit the men below.

Screams. Not war cries. Screams. The kind that came from deeper than the throat.

Men burned on the rungs. Their fingers let go. They fell in clusters, three and four at a time, hitting the sand in smoking heaps.

The smell hit Lysander a heartbeat later. Sweet. Thick. Wrong.

He swallowed. Kept moving.

"Logs!" a section commander bellowed from the seventh tower.

The ropes were cut. Three massive timbers, each thick as a man’s torso, rolled down the sloped face of the wall. They hit the Greek formation at the base like a fist hitting bread.

Bodies scattered. Shields shattered. The line broke.

For a moment, the base of the wall was nothing but dust and groaning men and the wet sound of something heavy settling.

Then the horns blew from the beach.

Retreat.

The Greeks pulled back. Slowly at first, then faster as the arrows kept finding them. They dragged their wounded. They left their dead. They left their ladders.

Forty ladders. Seven still standing. The rest broken, burned, or buried under oil and stone.

On the wall, the defenders stood in silence. Breathing hard. Hands shaking. Some looked at their spears, at the blood on the tips, as if surprised to find it there.

Lysander walked the line. Slapped shoulders. Said nothing. His presence was enough.

"Losses?" Hector asked, reaching him at the sixth tower.

"Nine dead. Fourteen wounded. None critical." Lysander paused. "The gaps held."

"All of them?"

"Every Greek who entered a gap died. Every one."

Hector let out a breath. "Don’t celebrate. They’ll come again."

"I know."

"And they’ll adapt."

On the eastern wall, Paris lowered his bow. His fingers were raw. His shoulder ached. He’d loosed forty-three arrows. He knew because he’d counted every one.

A runner approached. "The king asks your losses."

"Two dead. Five wounded. The Greeks hit us harder on the south face." Paris paused. "But the gaps held there too."

The runner nodded and left.

Paris looked down at the sand. The bodies were small from this height. Dark shapes on pale ground. Some were still moving.

He looked away. Drew a breath. Reached for another arrow.

There would be more.

In the Greek camp, two miles down the beach, Odysseus stood before his tent and watched the wounded being carried in.

Men with arrow wounds. Men with spear wounds. Men with burns so severe their skin had fused to their armour.

And men with a very specific wound. Two puncture marks. One on each side of the torso. Left and right. Always left and right.

Diomedes approached, wiping blood from his forearm. A shallow cut. Nothing serious.

"Forty ladders," Diomedes said. "We got seven on the wall. Lost thirty-three."

"I saw."

"The gaps." Diomedes shook his head. "Every man who climbed into a gap died. Every single one. Two spears. Left and right. No chance to react."

Odysseus didn’t answer. He was watching the wall. The way the defenders stood. The spacing. The angles.

"Tell me what you saw," Odysseus said.

"They left openings. Deliberate gaps. Twenty paces wide. Our men saw the gaps and went for them. Natural instinct. You see a hole in the wall, you go through it."

"And?"

"And two men were waiting on either side. One forces you to turn. The other kills you. Every time. Every gap. Every man."

Odysseus was quiet for a long moment.

Then he smiled.

It was not a warm smile.

Agamemnon found him at the edge of the camp, staring at the walls.

"Report."

"We lost the assault. Thirty-three ladders. Two hundred dead. Another hundred wounded."

Agamemnon’s jaw tightened. "And?"

"And we learned something." Odysseus turned to face him. "The gaps in their line. The spaces between their men. They look like weaknesses. They look like holes where we can push through."

"They’re not."

"No." Odysseus crossed his arms. "They’re killing zones. Designed. Practiced. Every defender knows his angle. Every gap is a trap. We walked four hundred men into those gaps and every single one of them died."

Agamemnon stared at the wall. The stone was dark with oil stains. The sand below was dark with blood.

"Who designed it." Not a question.

"The same mind that built the fire ships. The same mind that has been preparing that city for two years." Odysseus paused. "The third son. Lysander."

Agamemnon said nothing. His eyes stayed on the wall.

Odysseus stepped closer. Lowered his voice.

"The gaps are not weakness, my king. They are traps. And if we send another wave into those gaps tomorrow, we will lose another two hundred men."

Agamemnon turned slowly.

"Then don’t send them into the gaps."

Odysseus smiled again. Cold. Thinking.

"No. I won’t. But I need three days. And I need every carpenter in the camp."

"For what?"

Odysseus looked back at the wall. At the gaps. At the angles.

"To build something they haven’t seen before."

He walked away.

Agamemnon watched him go. Then he looked at the walls of Troy.

The stone was silent.

The stone was waiting.