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As you sprint close to the skirmishers, you watch the enemy commander carefully. Despite your gentle touch, the Heraclid has been skewered - he staggers to the side, suddenly uncoordinated, and you see that the your spearpoint has emerged from his right breast. Some men meet their death gracefully, but most do not - your victim is one of these graceless men. Even over the din of battle, you hear his awful, wet barking, as he sprays black blood and bile across his armored chest, causing his dirty horse-hair crest to jerk wildly. You guess that his lung has been shredded, and probably the great life-giving vessels that dwell within his chest have been torn as well. Already, rivulets of his blood are streaming down from the ends of his panoplia, mixing into the mud. Men who suffer such wounds invariably die quickly - and you would know, having seen this many times. As he staggers, he rotates - you watch as he grips the spearpoint protruding from his chestplate, as if to pull it loose with his hands, but perhaps cannot quite manage to will to do so.
You halt your bounding charge when you are only ten strides distant - close enough to hear the man’s last words… but he instead only gasps wetly, falling to his knees and then, facedown into the mud. His armors clatters upon him, and the noise prompts wails of despair from his Dorian troops. Their will is broken, but you have not yet finished:
<span class="mu-s">No enemy of Argos shall escape alive.</span>
Before the enemy soldiers can scatter, you leap over the sprawled corpse of the Heraclid, and your spear blinks out - a Dorian’s skull is shattered, another’s liver is pierced, and a third man’s heart is savaged by your spearpoint. A fourth Dorian, horrified by your instant slaying of his companions, trips backwards, splitting his scalp against a stone, before scrambling away from you in crab-fashion. You prowl forwards and Phobos, <span class="mu-i">daimon</span> of panic, drapes himself about your shoulders as a garland – all pretense of decorum amongst the Dorians is lost as you assault them standing above the corpse of their dead commander, and your honorguard menaces from the opposite direction.
You stand at the center of the Dorian camp, launching Dorian spears at their own masters - the fastest of the enemy scream and sprint for their lives, but they cannot outrun your spearcasts. The slower Dorians, you leave to your honorguard, who promptly run them down. The skirmish lasted for under thirty seconds - the slaughter of survivors takes a leisurely five minutes. The wounded enemy is matter-of-factly executed – you have the need of speedy transit to Argos, and to take these men into slavery would significantly delay your travel. Besides – you have the Heraclid’s bronze panoplia, and this is war-prize enough for your purposes. You had kept one of the wounded Dorians alive for a few minutes for interrogation, learning that his master, true to his word, was Agemedidas, son of Oneitas, son of Heracles.
>cont
