He raised a double-headed axe, wickedly curved like a demon’s grin—and advanced.
They met at the precipice, so near the edge that grit and sand sheared away beneath their sandals. Steel screamed as sword struck axe, sparks spitting into the sea air. Achilles yielded no ground. Blow after blow, he danced away from death’s edge, every motion scored from years of discipline and rage.
The commander whirled the axe in a low arc. Achilles sprang aside on the wall’s eroded edge. His sword flashed back, tapping the man’s thigh with a ringed clang that echoed like a challenge.
Steel struck again in a dazzling clash and sand danced down the wall. Achilles ducked beneath a massive blow, then swung hard … the blade slicing across the commander’s back. He staggered, and Achilles added a second gash along his side, but the Sidonian refused to fall.
The commander’s blades slashed, wild with desperation, but Achilles drove into him, teeth bared in a near grin as he closed in. He stepped inside the man’s guard and his blade sank into flesh, forcing the commander backward until the cliff gave him nowhere left to stand.
There was one last desperate parry, and then Achilles pivoted, his sword arcing upward in a savage sweep. His steel bit through flesh and bone with a sickening rip, and the commander’s head tore free of his shoulders, spinning into the air as blood fountained across the cliff’s edge.
It struck the cliff and tumbled, bouncing stone to stone until it vanished below with a final, dull thud as the Cetus chose that moment to scream.
Chapter57
The battlefield stilled.
Even the monsters froze. The Karybdis’s tentacles hung poised above the surf, dripping gore. The Cetus crouched on clawed limbs at the edge of the beach, its maw still slick with the Hydra’s blood. The Skylla rolled in the waves but did not strike.
They stood as if leashed by some unseen tether. Only Theron moved, his sigils still faintly glowing, his gaze fixed coolly on the chaos below, as though he alone had pressed the world into silence.
For a breath, there was only the churn of the surf, the red tide lapping at the bodies strewn along the sand. Then, one by one, Sidon’s warriors let their spears fall. Shields clattered to the ground as knees bent and hands lifted in surrender.
Air rushed into my lungs in a trembling surge as relief loosened my grip on the rail. My knuckles ached from how tightly I’d been holding it.
It was over. Gods, it was actually over.
“Finish them!” Menelaus suddenly roared beside me. “Leave none breathing. Let Sidon learn what it is to defy Sparta!”
“No!” The word tore from me before I could stop it. “They’ve surrendered! You’ve won—end it here!”
A few soldiers faltered, blades suspended mid-strike, their eyes darting toward me as if my voice had broken through the haze of blood.
Menelaus’s head turned slowly, his bulk shadowing me. His eyes crawled over me with disdain, as though I were some pet that had soiled his floor. “Silence,” he hissed. “You speak like a child who knows nothing of war.” His hand flicked out. “Take her away.”
A soldier stepped toward me uncertainly, his grip tightening on his spear.
I straightened, lifting my chin though my stomach lurched. “No. I will stay.” My voice shook, but I forced it louder, steadier. “I will watch. I will see every drop of blood you spill.”
Menelaus glared, his eyes narrowing, but he said nothing. The soldier hesitated, then drew back at the king’s silence.
Achilles and his soldiers surged forward, swords ablaze with furious purpose. Their warped forms glinted, blades dripping crimson, armor dented and seething with the heat of conquest. Sidonian survivors fell like chaff beneath the threshing iron, hacked apart in brutal precision.
The king turned toward Theron, his hand gesturing with the carelessness of a man playing gods and monsters. “Release them.”
Theron grinned wolfishly, the sea breeze tugging at the ends of his dark hair. “My pleasure.”
He lifted his hand and traced three sigils in the air that shimmered white, then blue, then a shimmering gold. I felt the pulse of magic in my sternum, a thrumming chord that didn’t belong to this world.
Below, the beasts reared to life again. The Karybdis’s tentacles smashed into the surf, dragging men from the shallows and slamming them against the rocks until the beach ran red. The Cetus stalked forward on its clawed limbs, scattering soldiers like frightened birds before snapping them up in its cavernous jaws. The Skylla surged close to shore, bursting from the waves with a shriek, its rows of teeth closing on men too slow to run, pulling them screaming beneath the churning water.
Spartan soldiers moved among them, finishing the broken ones with harsh, absolute finality. Cries echoed through the smell of iron and seaweed.
My stomach lurched, acid clawing upward as the world seemed to spin. It wasn’t enough to watch the brutality of mortal soldiers. Now the beasts, summoned by whatever sorcery Theron possessed, lanced through the battlefield like curses made flesh.
My vision blurred, the world swimming around me in a haze of red and salt. Despite what I’d said, I tore myself from the railing and staggered into the shadow of the flagstaff where Theron stood, the wood rough against my shoulder as I braced myself. A heave tore through me, then another. Bile burned up my throat, spilling onto the deck in a sour stream. It splattered across the planks, some of it dangerously close to Theron’s sandals. A vicious part of me hoped it had touched him.
But the retching did nothing. The sickness remained inside me, coiled and festering.
