Enomotia [Seleucid pseudo-AAR]
Hekatolympos
The stench of dead assaulted Nikolas' nostrils, he never grew used to it, despite the fact this was the seventh seige since he had taken up residence here as a child refugee from Alexandria-Eschate nearly 20 years ago, which had fallen to the Pahlava soon after he had left with his family and all he could carry, abandoned to save the province of Margiane to its south. No matter how much death he saw, he never grew used to the smell, he could handle even the most gruesome sights after so much experience, but the smell permiated the city for weeks afterwards, just like the chips knocked out of the walls by careless spear and sword strikes. Soon they would be the only testament to the hard fight fought by Nikolas and his friends atop the walls that had probably seen more use in the last two decades than the walls of Babylonia had ever seen or would ever see in the next two centuries.
The Persians came here, as they did at Ektrabana in the West, to break the ring of stone that had been placed around the Caspian settlements that had fallen in the first few years of the war, Zadrakata chief among them. Only once had the militia forces that defended those settlements ever gone on the offensive, Nikolas had never seen such slaughter in his life, he still had nightmares of the Pahlavan horse sending huge arrows into his friends and family from close range, arrows that had punched through the shields the spearmen carried and killed them regardless, and of arrows aimed at the feet of the spearmen to stop them from retreating.
Less than a third of the spearmen from that expedition had returned, Nikolas himself loosing his officer and six of his closest friends on that god forsaken peice of Persian desert.
But now they were fighting on there own ground, and they had the advantage, they could endure seige after seige, all the while growing more experienced and better trained...... they were already the best trained group of shopkeepers and small merchants in the entire plateau, with most other cities on the frontline having better grade soldiers available, perhaps even the armoured soldiers of the Thuderepoi, but still the mighty field armies in the West did not turn east to face them, the last courier who had arrived before the seige told of the seige of Mazaka, its breaking and the subsequent offensive on Pontos, one of the many lesser diadochi.
One of his few surviving friends appeared around a corner, holding his spear in one hand and an axe in the other, his shield already stacked in the armoury with the others that needed holes patching and blood washed off. "Hey Nikolas, Ive got something for you!", he flipped the axe for end and proffered it to Nikolas haft-first.
"Where did you get this?" he said as he accepted it and felt its weight in his right hand, noting that his friend already had one hooked to a fresh loop on his tunic.
"Off the bodies of the Phalangites that tried to force the left wall, we outnumbered them three to one and still they came up those handful of ladders..." his expression went from his normal jovial one to something far darker, "they got Theodoros, someone hit him with the end of a broken sarissa".
Nikolas stopped thinking about the axe and tried to think who Theodoros was... and then came up with the answer, he was the blacksmith in the next street, a kindly old man who you would never believe was an officer in the militia, it was hard to believe he had ever held a weapon in his life. Suddenly he had a desire to return to his house and curl up with his wife, and not worry about the crew that were dismantling the seige weapons for steel and wood, not worry about the war for just a few hours of peaceful bliss.
He thanked his friend for the axe, tucked it into his belt, said his farewells and started up the street towards his house, where it rested under the boughs of the Cypress tree.
OOC: A cookie to who gets the reference to popular culture
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