“Alexandros of Ilion!”
That was Artemisia. Her voice bellowed at us from beyond the wall.
My husband grabbed my hand and we ran up the staircase to the top of the outer wall.
I kept my sword turned on so that we could see. Artemisia stood alone in the field, too far away for an arrow or spear to reach her. The Carians had placed long planks over the trench Suri had dug. It was how those invaders had crossed over.
Artemisia held a torch in one hand and the metal cone that amplified her voice in the other.
“I am giving you this one opportunity to open the gates and surrender. If you do not, every man, woman, and child in this city will be killed. Lay down your weapons and your lives will be spared.” She paused for a moment before adding, “After my men enjoy the spoils of war, as is their right.”
She was so foul and twisted. I yelled back, “You want our weapons? Come and take them!”
Xander squeezed my hand to let me know that would have been his answer as well.
There was a thudding sound beneath us, off to the left, and I held my sword over the wall so that I could see.
A woman had climbed down one of the siege ladders the invaders had used to get over the wall. She was running toward Artemisia.
“Sanctuary! I seek refuge!”
“That’s Erisa,” Xander hissed.
What was she doing?
Erisa had nearly reached Artemisia when her body suddenly jerked and she fell back. Someone had shot her in the neck. Someone behind Artemisia, who we couldn’t see.
“Down!” Xander told everyone on the wall.
“Aren’t they too far?” I asked, crouching down.
“Dolion can reach that distance.”
That made me think his former phratry brother was the one who had just killed Erisa.
And I wondered if he had done it because she was Ilionian, or if he had done it out of some small bit of loyalty he still had toward my husband.
Xander led me down the staircase, and at the bottom of the steps, Demaratus and Antiope were waiting for us.
They looked annoyed that they had missed the fighting.
“Your guards were killed by arrows, and then someone shot slabs of meat over the wall for the dogs, which distracted them,” Demaratus said.
“We need to reward whoever thought of utilizing the geese,” Xander said.
If the geese hadn’t warned us, and the Carians had been able to open that gate ... we would have been caught completely off guard. They would have run through this city like a raging river.
We owed our lives to the geese, who were still honking about their win.
I glanced back up to the top of the wall. Part of me wanted to ride out and confront Artemisia, but I knew I would end up like Erisa.
Artemisia had let a thousand years of her people’s hatred warp her. I could have become like her. I might have, had it not been for the good people in my life. If I had stayed obsessed with destroying my enemy instead of wanting to help my own people—I knew how easy it would have been to let anger and vengeance rule me.
While I understood that Artemisia had to be stopped, not every soldier in the Carian army was like her. Her former general had seemed reasonable. There must have been people who would prefer to create a treaty and broker peace.
Because the alternative, that we would have to destroy their army down to the last warrior, was unthinkable.
“The enemy is at the gates,” Demaratus said. “Tomorrow it begins.”
