Chapter 198: The Third Spear

The horns did not blow once. They blew everywhere.

North. East. South.

Three long blasts, echoing off the stone walls, overlapping until the sound was a single, continuous roar.

Hector stood on the northern parapet, his helmet strapped tight. He looked left. He looked right.

"They’re not focusing," he said.

Lysander stood three paces behind him, watching the Greek lines pour out of the camp. "They’re attacking every wall at once."

"Stretch us thin," Hector said. "Make us choose where to send the reserves."

"Then we don’t send reserves," Lysander said. "We hold the gaps. Every section holds its own."

Hector nodded. "Go. Be the floating role. If a gap breaks, you plug it."

Lysander drew his sword. "I’m gone."

The ladders hit the stone.

Not forty this time. A hundred.

The sky darkened with arrows. The Trojan archers fired back, but the Greeks were moving too fast, spreading across the entire perimeter.

On the eastern wall, Paris knelt behind the crenellations. He didn’t look at the whole army. He looked at his sector.

Draw. Anchor. Loose.

A Greek soldier fell backward off a ladder.

Draw. Anchor. Loose.

Another fell.

But there were too many. The Greeks hit the wall like a wave, and the wave did not stop.

At the eastern gate, Diomedes did not run. He walked.

He wore heavy bronze armor, his shield scarred from a dozen wars. He watched his men climb the ladders near the gate. He watched them reach the top.

And he watched them die in the gaps.

"Stop!" Diomedes shouted.

The horn blew. The climbers halted, clinging to the rungs.

Diomedes pointed at the gap above the gate. "Look at it! It’s a kill box. You go in one by one, they spear you from the sides."

He turned to his shield-bearers. "Bring the long shields. The tower shields. Now."

Ten men rushed forward, carrying the massive, heavy shields used for siege ramps.

"Form a roof," Diomedes ordered. "Over the gap. Don’t step into it. Push the shields across the opening and hold them down. Blind the spearmen on the sides."

The men nodded. They climbed.

On the eastern wall, the Trojan defenders waited in the gap.

Left spearman. Right spearman.

They heard the Greeks reaching the top. They tensed, ready to strike the moment a helmet appeared.

But no helmet appeared.

Instead, a massive wooden shield slid over the gap. Then another. And another. They locked together, covering the twenty-pace opening, blocking the sunlight.

"I can’t see them!" the left spearman shouted.

"Push it off!" the section commander yelled.

Three Trojans thrust their spears up, trying to lever the shields away.

But the Greeks on the other side were pushing back. And while the shields covered the gap, other Greeks were climbing the ladders outside the gap, stepping onto the wall where there were no defenders.

"They’re bypassing the gap!" a defender screamed.

A Greek soldier vaulted over the parapet, sword drawn. He swung wildly, hitting the right spearman in the shoulder. The spearman dropped his weapon.

The gap was broken.

Lysander was running before the scream faded.

He sprinted along the wall walkway, dodging arrows, his boots slipping on blood and oil. He reached the eastern gate just as three Greeks poured through the broken gap.

The Trojan defenders were backing away, panic in their eyes.

Lysander didn’t shout. He didn’t give orders. He just stepped into the space.

He became the third spear.

The first Greek lunged. Lysander sidestepped, catching the man’s wrist with his left hand and driving his sword into the unarmored armpit. The Greek collapsed.

The second Greek swung a heavy axe. Lysander ducked, swept his leg, and brought his pommel down on the man’s neck.

The third Greek hesitated.

That hesitation was all Lysander needed. He threw his weight forward, driving his shoulder into the man’s chest, pushing him back toward the edge of the wall. The Greek stumbled, lost his balance, and fell backward into the empty air.

"Hold the line!" Lysander shouted, his voice cracking. "Left and right! Reset the gap!"

The defenders scrambled back into position. Lysander stood in the center, breathing hard, his sword dripping.

He looked up.

Above the gate, Diomedes was climbing over the parapet himself.

Diomedes dropped onto the wall walkway. He saw Lysander. He saw the dead Greeks. He saw the gap resetting.

"You’re the mind," Diomedes said, his voice low and dangerous. "The one who built the traps."

Lysander didn’t answer. He raised his sword.

Diomedes smiled. He drew his blade. "Let’s see if you can fight, too."

Diomedes moved fast. Too fast for a man in heavy bronze. He struck once, twice, three times. Lysander parried the first, dodged the second, but the third caught his forearm.

Pain flared. Blood ran down Lysander’s wrist.

He stepped back, his boots sliding on the stone. Diomedes advanced, raising his sword for the killing blow.

Thwack.

An arrow buried itself in the wooden frame of Diomedes’ shield, inches from his face.

Diomedes flinched, turning his head.

On the high tower, fifty paces away, Paris was already drawing his next arrow. He didn’t look panicked. He looked cold.

Draw. Anchor. Loose.

The second arrow hit Diomedes in the thigh, finding the gap in his bronze greaves.

Diomedes grunted, dropping to one knee. He looked up at the tower, then back at Lysander.

"Lucky shot," Diomedes spat.

"He never misses twice," Lysander said.

The Greek horn blew. Retreat.

Diomedes stood, snapping the arrow shaft, and backed toward the ladder. "Next time, Trojan. Next time."

He dropped over the wall.

The sun set. The Greeks pulled back to their camp, leaving their dead at the base of the walls.

Lysander sat on a wooden crate, letting Antiphus wrap his forearm in clean linen. The cut was deep, but it wouldn’t scar badly.

Hector walked over. His armor was dented. His face was covered in soot.

"Casualties?" Hector asked.

"Forty-two dead. Eighty wounded," Lysander said. "The eastern gate almost fell."

"I heard. Diomedes?"

"He changed the tactic. Used tower shields to blind the gap. If Paris hadn’t shot him, I’d be dead."

Hector looked out over the wall. The Greek camp was lighting its fires. Thousands of them, stretching across the beach.

"They’re learning," Hector said quietly. "Every time they attack, they learn."

"And we have to be perfect every time," Lysander said. "They only have to be lucky once."

In the center of the Greek camp, Agamemnon stood before the map table.

Odysseus and Diomedes stood opposite him. Diomedes was leaning heavily on his good leg, his face pale.

"We lost three hundred men today," Odysseus said. "The gaps are holding. Even when we blinded them, they adapted. The third son—the one they call Lysander—he plugged the breach himself."

Agamemnon stared at the map. At the thick black lines representing the walls of Troy.

"Diomedes," Agamemnon said. "You fought him."

"I did."

"Is he a warrior?"

Diomedes shook his head slowly. "No. He fights like a man who knows he’s going to lose, but refuses to die. He fights with his eyes, not his arms. But the archer... the archer is deadly. They are protecting him."

Agamemnon was silent for a long time. He listened to the wind outside the tent. He listened to the groans of the wounded in the healer’s tents.

"The walls will not fall to ladders," Agamemnon said finally.

"No," Odysseus agreed. "Not while the mind behind them still breathes."

Agamemnon looked up. His eyes were cold. Empty of frustration. Full of calculation.

"Then we don’t attack the walls," Agamemnon said.

He pointed to the map. To the green fields outside the city. To the blue lines of the rivers and aqueducts feeding Troy from the hills.

"Burn their fields," Agamemnon said. "Poison the aqueducts. Cut the roads to Anatolia. Let the mind behind the walls watch his city starve."

Odysseus smiled.

"When do we start?"

"Tomorrow at dawn," Agamemnon said. "Let them keep their walls. We will take everything else."