Caput XXIII
***CCLXIX***
The ram neared the Buelé Gate, with trailing auxiliary cohorts of archers sending volley after volley towards the defenders. As Kassandra of Cephalonia knelt behind the crenulations, she cursed them. For while Hunters prided themselves on precision bow shots, it appeared the Romans were content to rely upon the lesser mark of archery – accuracy by volume. The arrows rained down upon the parapets. While Greek archers returned fire, the sheer number of arrows fired at the walls kept their losses to a minimum as the ram crept slowly closer.
***CCLXX***
"Once the gate is breached, the Third and Sixth Cohorts will mount the wall and push to the east. The Fourth and Fifth, the same to the right. The Second will punch through the first manned resistance and then serve as the reserve and the First, with me, will claim the hill." Percy looked about the assembled centurions and tribunes. None questioned his orders, not that he expected they would. Though it did pain him that just six effective cohorts enumerated all his surviving soldiers. The other four had been integrated into the six, allowing those six to maintain combat effective strength. That integration allowed for the full functionality of the six.
***CCLXXI***
The volume of missiles allowed the ram to reach the gate. Even those stationed at the Propylaea heard the heavy booms as it began its destructive task. The remaining Spartans, those proud heirs of Leonidas, stood silent. True to their heritage, dory and shield filled their hands, while a kopis hung from their belt. Eight hundred sons and daughters of Lacedaemon joined with eighty archers and twenty-five Hunters of Artemis in the final defense. Another eight hundred Spartans occupied positions along the Acropolis Wall. This did not serve as the primary plan, but far fewer defenders reached their secondary positions than the leaders anticipated. Clarisse looked to Annabeth from her position at the far right of the mora of Spartan infantry. As polemarch, she could have avoided the line, serving as a commander in the rear. Instead, if this would indeed be their end, she would ensure it a glorious one.
Annabeth stood against the wall of the Temple of Athena Nike. The temple sat sixty feet below the Propylaea and sixty feet above the Beulé Gate. Above her, the frieze displayed the battles of the Persian wars. Marathon, Salamis, Plataea – images of Hellenic superiority. Below this bastion of Athenian splendor, stood the woman with long, blonde hair. Its natural waves cascaded over the shoulder straps of her armor. Unlike the heavy bronze cuirasses of the Spartans, Annabeth's was of layered linen. The linthothorax, formed in her likeness, it fit well, but not so much so it made her feel like one of the flawless depictions of Aphrodite spread across Greece. She had shorn away several inches of her already shortened peplos, granting her even more maneuverability. Pteruges hung over the material. Leandros, prior to his death, affixed the owl of Athena to the armor's front. An aspis leaned from the ground to her lean leg, where two leather greaves shielded her shins. A xiphos hung on her left hip, a dagger from her right. Her gray eyes fell upon the Beulé Gate. In her mind it was the only place to hold them back. The Propylaea offered the only pathway though the sheer sides of the Acropolis hill, but at over twenty-five yards in width, only hoplites and iron stood in their path.
With a great crash, the gates came down. The two hundred defenders just inside the gate raised their shields and set themselves to hold. However, as pila filled the air, gaps appeared, and the gladii of the attackers shot forth to fill them. Though the Greeks would not know it, these were men of the Second Cohort, whose sole mission meant to clear them out. The brave two hundred held for precious minutes, giving the Greek missile troops time to rain death upon the Romans. But as those on the ground gave their lives in the name time, they were swept away. The four following Cohorts broke through their brethren's bloodletting and two per direction mounted the walls. The battles raged on both sides of the ruined gate, through which the Roman commander marched, the men of the First Cohort at his back.
Only now, her perimeter breached, did Annabeth resign herself to retreat. Resign herself to one last line of defense. One that even if it held against this force, would have to do so thrice more. If they could hold against the Twenty-first. If they could hold against him. She passed through the ranks of this final stand of the children of Greece. Behind her the Romans reformed their ranks as she climbed to the top of the Propylaea. From its peak, Annabeth looked over the city. Fires burned throughout the lower city. Siege engines had begun the blaze with flaming projectiles. They had been expanded upon by rampaging soldiers. Pinpricks of light, each representing a soldier, looked to be filling the city.
"Testudinem formate!" came the shout from the Son of Poseidon below. All about him, legionaries arranged their shields in the scaled protective formation. This hid his blue plumed helmet and near black cuirass. His personal shield of black with golden eagles formed the center of the formation. The arrows of the Hunters sparked off the shields. While exceedingly accurate, the tight formation gave little for the Hunters and archers to target. Romans would fall with a scream, others would die as the gap in their shields was taken advantage of, but then more shields would fill the gap. Soon they had closed to within fifteen yards of the Spartan phalanx.
***CCLXXII***
"Tecombre! Et cuneum formate!" In practiced ease, the cohort broke from their testudo and Percy at the lead charged the Spartan formation. Arrows tore into his now more exposed Romans, but there was nothing that could be done to stop the charge now. More than a few leading Romans met their end on the tip of a Greek spear, but not enough. At the leading edge of the Roman formation closed with the phalanx, Percy used his scuta and sword to smash aside three Spartan spears. His shield pressed against theirs and trapped the dory overhead. His sword suffered no such issues. He thrust under the aspis before him and ripped it savagely to the side. The man with now half a leg screamed as he fell. Before his compatriots could react, Percy slipped his blade behind the left-hand man's thighs and slit both of his hamstrings. With two of the first rank down, he pressed forward. He felt an arrow pierce his shoulder, he ignored it and thrust his sword overtop the aspis before him. He felt it strike something. He did not wait to find out what, thrusting to his side and into the flank of another Spartan.
With each Spartan he put out of commission, more of his Romans filled the breach. Even as more Spartans drew their swords, the short gladii of the legionnaires existed solely for this purpose. Their blades soon joined Percy's in the carnage bridled penetration of the Greek line. None could doubt the bravery and skill of the Spartans, but in the rapidly deteriorating fight of unit against unit into one of individual against individual, the Spartans were being beaten.
***CCLXXIII***
Annabeth watched. The Spartans continued to fight, hunting for the ever-elusive glorious death. But as another cohort committed itself, the battle expanded beyond the Propylaea and the entire open ground of the Acropolis, complete with survivors and refugees, became the battlefield. She turned to her brother.
"Pull them all back. Everyone who can escape, mortal or otherwise, get them to the Labyrinth." Already she could see Greeks surrendering. Some of them were accepted. Some of them were heaved over the side of Acropolis or lifted on ropes. She watched a Greek man offer his daughter to approaching Romans, another offered his wife to them. Both offers were accepted, and the offerees hurled from the cliffs.
***CCLXXIV***
Percy cut down a Spartan with a sword strike. The blade cut through the front of Spartan's armor and as he looked at the wound, Percy thrust the sword through his heart. A second arrow had struck him above his left hip. Like the one from his shoulder, only the broken shaft remained. An unarmored man with a speared rushed toward him. Percy sidestepped and removed his head with a backhanded strike. He looked across bloody stone toward the Athena Promachos. The blonde-haired Greek commander, Athena's Heir, stood before her mother's statue. Percy began to walk for her.
***CCLXXV***
Zoë heard them before she saw them. Gravely Latin tones and clinking armor, before the two legionaries in blood-soaked armor appeared. She was alone, Myrinne having just led the last group of twenty into the great maze. Time must have moved differently, for while in Zoë's they were gone just minutes, after each of the seven returns, Myrinne seemed closer to exhaustion. The look on the men's faces turned lecherous as they found the alone and seemingly defenseless woman. She buried her usual confidence and a look of fear settled on her face. Afterall, she remained nearly immobile, reliant upon this cart for movement at all.
"A bit damaged, but as long as everything between her legs works," one of the Romans muttered, unaware she could understand their speech. Zoë shifted her legs, feeling the replacement knife under her left thigh. In the very back of her mind, she admitted the fear was not far from the truth. These men were not possibly as good as their commander, but because of him, she was not as good as she normally was. She was healing, but not quickly.
Both men moved toward her, one already shedding his arms and armor, adjusting his small clothes while at it. He is number two, she thought. Primary would be the man with a weapon. The gladius, however, oriented toward the floor, intended for intimidation, not violence. Well, she thought, not combat. Violence extended beyond death and battle wounds. Just two feet divided them when her expression shifted from prey to predator.
The first strike took the swordsman from the left thumb up and across his wrist, severing tendons and arteries. The second man, distracted by his own hand currently coaxing his manhood awake, did not react quickly enough. Zoë stabbed directly at that hand. The man's animalistic howl echoed through the stone chambers. She followed the first stab with four more, climbing the man's torso. Soon he bled from his navel, diaphragm, lungs, and neck. The first man grasped for his sword, blood loss already affecting him. Zoë thrust the knife into his neck and ripped it to the rear. Blood showered the room.
Blood also began to fill the cart, as wounds barely beginning to heal reopened.
***CCLXXVI***
Flames danced across the roofs of Athenian homes. The chorus of screams and howls filled the night air. Greeks, demigod and mortal, flung themselves at the mercy of Roman soldiers. Through it all however, he approached. While smoke and fire rose above the city of Athena, the Roman with a cuirass of leather marched forward. While Greeks surrendered themselves to the potential of slavery, the Roman commander killed. From her position next to the Athena Promachos, she watched him. She watched a Hunter of Artemis, an experienced girl named Helen, rush at him with a blood soaked kopis. She watched his hand reach up and arrest her strike by gripping her forearm. She watched as he plunged his sword deep into her chest and then stepped over her as she bled out on the stone. Clarisse attempted to close with him, but four hardened legionaries blocked her path. Phoebe appeared at her side.
"You are still here?" Annabeth asked.
"Some of our number were able to escape. We are here until the end," Phoebe answered solemnly. They both watched as the best fighter amongst the Hunters, Kassandra of Cephalonia, charged the Roman commander. The first two strikes of Kassandra's knives sparked off his armor. The general appeared to study the marks then his shoulders rotated, and he lifted his sword. She attacked again.
The Roman dodged the first knife, the second he parried with his sword. During her next lunge, the Roman caught one knife across his vambrace, the other slid along the length of his blade. As the two blades hissed in their connection, the general flipped his wrist and the sword tip cut into Kassandra's upper arm and her knife was thrown aside. It skidded across the stone. Kassandra's right arm was covered in blood. The left defiantly held her remaining knife. Kassandra adjusted her grip and charged again. The Roman's sword was tossed through the air, and he caught it in his left hand, just in time to intercept Kassandra's strike. With his right, he caught her wrist. As the knife remained elevated, the general swung his fist into Kassandra's midriff. Weakly, Kassandra swung at him again. He caught her wrist in his powerful hand and twisted, the snap of bone audible from even here. Now he raised his sword. Phoebe looked away as the sword descended. Annabeth watched and saw worse than Kassandra's death. She saw the pommel of the Roman's sword come down upon her temple and as she slunk to the ground the Roman commander motioned to a few of his soldiers and they grabbed the Hunter and began to drag her away.
"Get out of here," Annabeth told Phoebe. The daughter of Apollo protested her suggestion. Now there was no time. Two more had fallen to the Roman's blade, a Greek and a Hunter. Annabeth stepped in front of the Athena Promachos. The shield on her left arm bore the owl of Athena. The xiphos was not her primary choice of weapon. But Chiron had provided the blade many years before. As he approached the Roman spun the blade in his hand with practiced ease. The blade whistled as it rotated. The Roman's face was impassive as he approached. He wore an unruly beard that did not match what she expected out of Romans, but then again, nothing had been as she expected with him. At her side, Phoebe settled into a crouch and gripped her hunting knives. Well, knife, she had lost one and only a single knife was in her hand, the other held a kopis. The general flipped the sword's grip in his hand and pointed pommel of the swordat the two of them. Annabeth recognized it as the face from many years before, the one that had saved her life on the road to Athens when the defeated remnants of Brutus' army had attacked her caravan. The bastard, she thought.
"This is your choice now, surrender to me and I save what I can of Athens. Don't surrender, and I carry off everything and everyone you've ever loved." His Greek bore a Corinthian accent. He still spoke it like someone who had been born speaking the language, but he was the Roman general.
"We've seen what happens to those who surrender to you. Their bodies hanging from crosses. Their screams loud against the night."
"They paid your price for rebellion against Rome."
"I will die with a sword in my hand," responded Phoebe. The general's response was colder than the twilight over Greece's brief revival. The brightness of its rebirth was now outshone by flame and ash. The rise of wisdom overcome by the wave of Roman iron.
"You will fight with a sword in your hand. Your death, will be mine to decide."
****CCLXXVII***
The Hunter lunged forward. Her kopis collided with Perseus' shieldand the resounding clang echoed throughout the courtyard. The Hunter staggered as the momentum of her blow ended immediately. Held his position seemed to be unfazed. He moved forward without hesitation. His eyes swept the two Greek demigods. The Greek commander lunged while the Hunter pirouetted in attack. Percy's sword intercepted the Greek's, while his feet carried him between the two allies, separating them. With a vicious left cross utilizing his shield, he bashed the Hunter's left cheek with the shield's boss while with a simple lean of his head he avoided her blade's strike. The Hunter collapsed with a cry of pain and then silence, as the metal handhold split wide her cheek and blood flowed over her face. She was unconscious by the time she hit the stone covered ground. Percy regripped his sword and leveled it at Annabeth.
"She will go back to Rome, a prisoner of Rome. You," the point of the Vercingetorix' swordleveled upon the Greek, "you will hang from a cross atop your mother's temple for all of Greece to see."
***CCLXXVIII***
The Roman swung his sword at her. Annabeth intercepted the blow with her shield. The force of it drove her backwards toward the statue of her mother. Her left arm was nearly numb from the violent force transferred to her limb. She swung her sword, he easily caught the blow upon his shield before bashing it against her torso, throwing her backward.
She struggled to her feet, feeling a stabbing pin in the left side of her chest. Another equally forceful blow sped at nearly inhuman speeds toward her. She dodged and the blade collided with the foot of the massive statue of the virgin goddess standing in the courtyard. The blade, by both its construction and the wielder's strength, bit deeply into the bronze covered foot of Pallas Athena. The Roman general brought his sword back and swung it again. She dodged again, knowing she could not take another of his blows on her shield, and again his sword slashed into the statue's base. He swung a third time.
***CCLXXIX***
A resounding clang echoed throughout the square of the Acropolis as Vercingetorix's sword slammed against the Greek aspis. The force of their impact threw him backwards, landing on back he slowly stood looking to the woman that now stood below the statue and between he and the Greek commander.
The woman before him was tall. While her eyes matched the blondes in color and rage, they held power the other woman's did not. With a great aspis in one hand and spear in the other, he was struck by her form. Graceful, yet powerful. Feminine, yet warlike. A Corinthian helmet covered her face and head, brown curls appearing from beneath it. She wore no armor, merely a flowing Athenian peplos. Her movement, however, betrayed confidence that she did not require it.
Percy rose, his arm throbbing. He adjusted his shield and his sword grips. He settled into the slight crouch, the position that formed the last image so many enemies from Greece to Gaul to Germania to Africa had seen. There was a wicked gleam in the woman's eyes.
"You attack Greece, you ravage my city, and now," she looked to the great gashes in the bronze leg of the Athena Promachos, "you have the gall to attack me."
***CCLXXX***
Clarisse lifted Annabeth, "We must go."
"But my mother…"
"Your mother is a goddess and may do as she wills. You and I have no such luxury, we leave, or we die. If your mother elects to wipe out an entire roman, army, that is her wont, but I do not foresee other gods merely watching that occur." Annabeth now found her feet. "We must get to the Labyrinth."
***CCLXXXI***
If the Huntress had been a lioness, the speed of the goddess's strikes surpassed that of a viper. Sweat ran down his body, mixing with the blood of both fresh and reopened wounds as Percy attempted to dodge. A mere graze to the left side of his helmet rent it open to the extent he was forced to abandon it. He rolled right, avoiding a strike that shattered stone. He could not dodge the follow-on buttstroke to his shield and tumbled to the ground.
Percy's skull struck the stone, and it took several heavy blinks to remove the cobwebs and stars. He looked at his arm, the bones shattered under the ruined scutum. His eyes watered and he gasped aloud as he pulled the damaged limb from the shield's bindings. He hated to put such a noble weapon to such use, but he required the Sword of Vercingetorix as a cane to stand.
"You're plague upon Greece is over." She pulled back the dory and thrust.
Contrary to all logic and everything his mind told him, he spun toward her. Leading with his left side, the worthless flopped as first his back and then right side closed with her. The Gallic sword hissed through the smoke-filled air with every ounce of his remaining strength powering it.
***CCLXXXII***
Malcolm watched his mother's reaction. Fury played across the visible sliver of her face. Near her knee, a three-inch gash in the material of the peplos appeared. Barely an inch of the Roman's sword brushed at the garment. In rage, Athena threw her shield into the man's back and his body traveled ten feet before slamming into the stone. Malcolm nearly felt pity for the man, but he began to limp for the Erechtheion. The bastard had it coming.
***CCLXXXIII***
Percy struggled to even roll over, his body seemingly failing its most basic task – survival. He saw the goddess approaching. His thoughts turned to Tiberius, the first time he felt as a father should, despite having been one for years. To Jason, who still likely carved through the inhabitants of Athens, because despite his unflinching loyalty to Rome and orders, he would regret his actions because he was a good man. To Reyna and all that lay between them. The children he would not know. Finally, to Rome, the city serving as an impetus for nearly all his actions and why he would die in Greece, where he was born.
She stood over him now. "Thus is the will of the gods." She raised the spear high, and her fury only built as the man beneath her merely closed his eyes in resigned acceptance. The sauroter, not the blade aimed at the chest of Publius Ventidius Bassus Perseanus. Then, it began its rapid descent.