I Killed a Man
I killed a man.
"Didn't I ask you where the spear was?!"
"Is the spear the problem right now?!"
The escort's shout set me off, and my voice climbed to meet his.
"Of course it is! I can't run for my life empty-handed!"
The words were barely out of my mouth before I plunged into the warehouse and started tearing through it.
The spear I'd brought from Methone had to be around here somewhere. My mother had given her blessing for me to take it, and I remembered carrying it with me the whole way to Methone. And now that very spear was nowhere to be found — because back in the idle days, with no reason to lug it back and forth between my lodging and the warehouse, I'd simply had the escort stash it off to one side.
Of course it had to be the sloppy shortcuts from the quiet days that came back to bite me.
"My lady!"
"Where did you put it?! I asked where you'd put the spear!"
"It's in the wagon!"
The instant I heard that I spun on my heel and made for the wagon — and the escort grabbed my arm and hauled me back.
"Pull yourself together! The enemy is landing as we speak!"
"I am together — that's exactly why I'm grabbing my spear first! Let go of me!"
Our voices kept climbing over each other.
The escort was obviously frustrated with me, but the feeling was entirely mutual. I knew we had to run. I hadn't lost my mind and decided I wanted to die.
The problem lay somewhere else entirely.
"Is that wagon even going to move? Look outside. Please."
Outside the warehouse was already bedlam. Everyone had been trying to squeeze out of the city at once since earlier, and the road was jammed solid; one loaded cart had tipped clean over on its side. Worse, a startled mule was thrashing against its reins, endangering anyone within reach — and still people shoved past it, hurling curses.
Children had started to wail, and the shouts of people hunting for their families rolled out as if the whole town were draining away. From somewhere far off came the sound of something like an alarm bell.
"You think we can punch through that? In this madhouse?"
"Even so, it beats staying here—"
"If we ditch the wagon and run, can we even make it home?"
At that, the escort shut his mouth again. Without the wagon, Sparta was not a walk away, and there was no telling which road the enemy might come up. Above all, from the moment the Athenian troops had poured out of their ships, no road anywhere nearby could be called safe.
Any modern soldier's first move would have been to secure the withdrawal route and get the vehicles under control. Here, there wasn't even anyone to do the controlling. Everyone was thrashing to save their own skin, and the end result was that nobody was getting out at all.
"Fine — get your spear first, then."
"But why are you so obsessed with that spear, my lady? What's a spear worth!"
"Because without it I'm even more scared."
It was a thought I hadn't meant to say out loud, but out it came. When the escort said nothing more, I started toward the wagon.
A crowd had packed itself around it, so I forced my body sideways through the gaps. Someone cursed at me from behind. I ignored it.
"Move! Just — move!"
Having wedged my way in, I came around to the back of the wagon, undid the bundled cloth wrap, and pulled out the shaft, its butt-spike just visible at the end.
The moment my fingers closed around it, oddly, my heart steadied a little. I had all of a few days' training with this thing, and I certainly didn't believe holding it made me a match for Athenian soldiers. Still, it beat empty hands.
"Now — to the gate."
The moment I looked toward the gate where the crowd had packed in, screams burst from beyond it. And then the crowd came surging back inward through the gate.
"The enemy! They're on the road!"
The shout went up, the flood of people poured in, and everything tangled at once. People trying to get out slammed into people trying to get in, and I stood watching it all churn into pure chaos.
No — honestly, I wasn't watching anything. I was too terrified to think.
As I stood frozen like that, the escort seized my shoulders and shook me, as if to rattle me back to my senses.
"It's too late now. Pull yourself together."
I knew. The gate was finished, and the enemy was coming in from the sea. There was no telling how long Methone could hold, but in a situation like this, digging in inside beat running out.
"Then we go to the wall."
"Why there?"
"Because somebody has to know what's blocked and what's still open."
"My lady—"
"We can't run anyway. I'm not going to just stand here waiting, knowing nothing."
Once I was up on the wall, I could see exactly why Methone was in such trouble. The defense was a shambles, and so were the fortifications. The wall was desperately short of men, and the few with weapons stood waiting for someone — like men who had never once commanded anything. It showed. There was no regular garrison here.
There were men holding weapons, but properly armored ones were rare, and above all, nobody had settled whose orders anyone was supposed to follow.
"Anyone with a spear, get up top!"
Someone was bellowing.
"Bring stones too! Block the gate first!"
From the other end came completely different orders. Plenty of shouting, zero organization.
I'd been through this exact situation countless times in my past life. In disasters and training accidents — never battles — watching people flap about in a panic was just an ordinary day. And the first thing to collapse in these moments was always the flow of information. When nobody knows who's doing what, half the crowd duplicates the same task while the one job that actually matters goes undone.
So in the end, I grabbed one of the men near me.
"Where's the water for putting out fires?"
"What?"
"I said, where's the water! And if there are any big jars, go fetch them — now!"
The man stared at me blankly, then scowled.
"Why should I take orders from y—"
THUD.
A heavy impact rolled in from somewhere in the distance. Every head turned, and there, close to the shoreline, men came sprinting toward us.
Athenian soldiers.
The man's face went rigid at the sight of them, and I shouted straight into it.
"If something catches fire, the whole town burns! Get the water!"
This time he didn't argue. He bolted. I watched him go, then rounded on the escort.
"You — get the people moving the grain in the warehouse deeper inside."
"Is grain what matters right now?"
"It beats watching it burn or getting looted!"
Truthfully, there was some self-interest in it too — those were the jars I'd spent days stacking myself. A war starting didn't turn them into clutter. If anything, this was exactly the kind of supporting materiel that mattered most of all.
The escort looked at me, nodded, and went.
And then, at last, I was alone.
Maybe the tension had finally snapped — my hands started shaking.
No. They'd been shaking the whole time. I just hadn't noticed.
My fingers had been trembling from the start. I bit my lip to hold it together, and blood ran down my chin.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck...."
It's fine. Nobody's even fighting yet.
Do the next task, then the one after that, and you can get through anything. One thing. One thing at a time.
The very words I'd roared at my juniors a thousand times in my past life. Now I was the one who had to give the orders — to myself.
Most of the people outside Methone had made it in — but plenty hadn't. And the Athenian force was closing faster than I'd expected.
Shouts erupted along the wall, and arrows flew. But the Athenians weren't near enough to take hits; the volleys amounted to wasted shots. Maybe even those wasted shots bought a few seconds, though, because down below the wall I was helping people move — hauling water, sending the spearmen up top, small favors that only half-counted as reinforcing the wall.
Then, dwarfing all of it, a cry laced with screams rang out close by.
"Over there! The wall's gone!"
I turned at the shout and saw it: the low, old stretch of wall — the same low section I'd pointed out that very morning. And beyond it, unfamiliar helmets.
'They're here already?'
Even as the thought formed, one of those helmets rose higher, and an Athenian soldier hauled himself onto the walltop. A man above lunged and stabbed — wide. In the same breath the Athenian shoved with his shield and sent one defender sprawling backward, and through the gap a second soldier came up.
"Block them! Now!"
At the scream, I ran. No time to think. I couldn't even have told you why I ran — only that gap could not be allowed to open.
By the time I reached the foot of the wall, the first Athenian was already climbing down the inside.
Not a figure out of a movie — a living man, gasping for breath as he closed in on me. Our eyes met, and for an instant he faltered. Whether it was my clothes or the fact that I was a girl, I couldn't say.
But the moment was brief.
The motion I had repeated hundreds of times over the past few days. The one my brother had humored me through time and again — and my body would not move.
'That's a person. Right now, in front of me, that's a person.'
The thought took root: if I put this through him, he dies.
But while I drowned in it, the Athenian's hand moved first. The spearpoint came flying at me.
"Arista!"
Someone screamed my name, and my body reacted before I did. The shield I'd treasured beyond everything wasn't there. All I could do was twist sideways, slip the point — and send my own spear forward.
Thk.
Something about it felt wrong.
Nothing like the straw bales — the point broke through something hard, and beyond it came a soft resistance. A sensation I felt from my fingertips clear up to my shoulder, like driving steel through meat—
"......Huh."
The Athenian's eyes went wide.
I couldn't make a sound. Couldn't move a muscle. The point was buried in his body, and he clutched my spear shaft, mouth opening around words that never made it out — only blood did.
At last his knees buckled and he toppled sideways with a dull thump. A man had just died, and the sound of it was so much smaller than I'd imagined.
...
I stared at the man in front of me without breathing. He wasn't moving — and that stillness was telling me exactly what I'd done.
'I... killed a man.'
The sensation still lived in my palm. The give of the spear sinking in, the jolt of him seizing the shaft — and the moment the memory of the blood's smell hit me, my stomach turned itself inside out.
"Urk. Hurk."
I doubled over and opened my mouth, but nothing came up. Tears started falling, one after another. Tears I couldn't have sorted into fear or nausea if I'd tried.
"Fuck."
Even the curse shook coming out of me.
"Fuck......"
I knew that if I hadn't killed him, he would have killed me. It didn't help. Not one bit.
"Arista! Another one's coming!"
The voice came from behind me, and my bowed head lifted. The second Athenian was already climbing down, and I still couldn't make myself move — fear had me nailed in place. The soldier had seen his comrade die, and in the instant he came lunging for me—
WHAM!
Something came charging in and bowled the Athenian clean off his feet. He reeled backward, and soon a mass of unfamiliar men was overwhelming the intruders.
Shields.
These weren't enemies pouring down from the same direction. Bronze shields, crimson cloaks, helmets of a familiar make.
"Push them back! Don't let those bastards inside!"
With the roar, a hedge of spears drove forward. The Athenians who watched it coming were shoved back out over the wall.
Spartan soldiers.
Behind me, soldier after soldier was swarming up onto the wall, crushing the enemy, saving the city. And the man at their head looked down.
At the fallen Athenian. At me, standing there, my spear dropped from my hand.
His gaze swept over me for a moment, then stopped on the Athenian sprawled at my feet.
"Did you do this?"
I barely managed a nod, and his eyebrow shifted — the tiniest fraction. That was all.
"To the gate! Drive back the ones already inside!"
"Don't strip the walltop!"
Only then, looking at the soldiers around me, did it land: these weren't the men who had been holding Methone. These were men who had just fought their way in from outside.
Then someone shouted toward him.
"Brasidas is here!"
Brasidas.
I looked down at my bloodstained hand, then slowly raised my head. And for the first time, I truly looked at the man's face.