Chapter Text
Zagreus grinned fiercely as he held his spear.
Finally, finally he was going to do something! His father said going to war was a foolish decision, but at this point Zagreus had moved beyond giving a damn what his father said. He’d been kept from helping defend his home for years, first because he was too young, but then because his father supposedly needed him to help run the family business. As if Zagreus wasn’t useless at paperwork. As if Zagreus wouldn’t accomplish a thousand times more on the battlefield than behind a desk.
His stepmother had gently said that his father only worried for Zagreus’ safety, but Zagreus was a demigod, a goddess’ son! He was stronger and faster and closer to immortal than anyone else on the field of battle but the dreaded Achilles himself.
Eventually his restlessness and sense of useless helplessness had finally become too much, prompting him to defy his father’s wishes, and now he was here, among the ranks of the newest of Troy’s defenders.
Admittedly he didn’t look like much. He was short, even for an ordinary mortal. Achilles was said to be nine feet tall, though Zagreus wasn’t sure he believed that. Zagreus was nearly a head shorter than anyone else present except one recruit who was so baby-faced he had to have lied about his age. On the other hand he was as broad and muscular as any of them; most were very obviously city boys, though a few had the muscles of hard work.
Zagreus had always found it easy to build strength. Something from his mother, no doubt. But he had worked for it all the same. Goods had to be moved and hauled, and he’d always liked that part of his father’s business best, even if his stepmother always said it was below him. The endless paperwork felt like literal hell, but the physical labor was merely boring.
Now, though! Now he had a spear in his hands and was about to go off to defend his home against the invading Greeks.
After a month of drilling with the spear, learning to keep in formation, learning to hold it this way to march and level it just so to form the hedge-wall of battle, he was ready. More than ready, he felt, for he’d repeatedly been proven the strongest and fastest of his fellow recruits. He lined up with said fellows, clad like them in knee-length tunics of bright red. He had his breastplate, his helmet, and a set of bronze bracers, though not everyone had the latter, there hadn’t been enough to go around. Zagreus had been suddenly glad to be short, because he’d fit a pair that nobody else did. He had on sandals too, much to his disgust. He hated covering his feet. He couldn’t say why, but he’d gone barefoot whenever he could his whole life.
That was the tiniest possible annoyance, though, and entirely drowned out by the singing excitement of war and glory that raced through him. As he and his fellows marched towards the city gates for the attempt to break the siege that was to be his first battle, Zagreus sent a silent prayer to Ares, for courage and luck both in the coming fight.
He wished he knew who his mother was. His father had been clear that she was a goddess, and everything—including Zagreus’ left eye, an unnaturally bright green that was nothing like the ordinary, mortal brown eye on the right—supported that tale. If she was, perhaps he was kin to Ares, and to the other gods he’d prayed and sacrificed to all his life. Perhaps if he won glory in battle he might be noticed by them, might finally be able to meet and be acknowledged by his mother.
No, he wouldn’t think about that. He needed to concentrate on what he’d learned, on how to fight. His goal now couldn’t be glory, it had to be to merely survive and learn. Demigod he might be, and confident in his strength, but he wasn’t so arrogant as to think he’d outshine the hardened veterans the first time he fought.
The staging ground behind the gates was dusty and crowded, but the commanders knew how to organize their men, and rank by rank the soldiers formed up. The very best would be the wedge, the first out the gate, the ones to drive into the enemy, while behind them the line of battle opened out from the narrow egress and hopefully formed up firm and solid enough to sweep the enemy before them. Zagreus was neither near the front nor the back, but that was fine. He was ready to fight well and return having learned what he could of battle, all the better to find the gory he sought at some future occasion, when perhaps he might find himself opposite Achilles himself, or one of the other enemy heroes, and exit victorious.
The gates swung open, and men began to march out. There were arrows in the air the instant the first soldier stepped onto the battle plain, Zagreus noted, and he tensed. He was confident he could defend against any spear, but the only defense he had against an arrow was that of his armor. Suddenly he was glad of the helmet in a way he hadn’t been until this very moment.
Soon it was his turn to march. He held the spear just as he had while marching across the training ground, the way of it familiar by now, moving level with his fellows but not worrying about matching steps. This was combat, not a parade.
There were shouts, screams, and the sound of metal on metal in the distance. Then he was through the gate, his commander calling for double-time as they rushed to fan out into their place in the line, and the sounds were no longer distant but there, ahead and to the side, where dust rose and where the wedge that formed the head of the line he was now part of had indeed driven into the Greek army.
The enemy line was folding around that point, Greek soldiers rushing forward, and it seemed like no time at all before there was a line of lowered spears rushing towards his own line. Zagreus felt his heart racing. The commander called out, but Zagreus didn’t need the shout, he’d lowered and braced his own spear already.
Everything after that was a blur. Zagreus was lost in a strange hyper-focus, where he was immensely aware of the line to either side of him, of the way he needed to stay with his fellows and not get out alone in the middle of the enemy. He was aware of where every spear beside him was, and every spear that struck out at him, and he knocked them aside with his spear or his bracers, ducking his head when he must, so that any blow from above might fall on his helmet. But it was as if the spears were all that existed. He knew he must have struck out against the enemy soldiers, and must have connected, for his spear’s point was red almost from the first, but there were no faces, no expressions, not even the color of their tunics, though he knew they would be mostly green. There were only spears to be hit, weak spots in enemy armor to find, and blows to block.
He was still focused on that when something about the sound of battle to his left changed. The sound of combat was louder, more frantic, more…fearful. He realized dimly that he was hearing screams of pain but also cries of terror. One of them penetrated Zagreus’ battle-haze enough for him to recognize a name. “Achilles!” Zagreus glanced to the left, and saw that the line had shattered only a few men down from him, where a tall Greek with an absurdly ornate spear was leading a wedge of his own deep into the Trojan ranks. Zagreus was about to get flanked, with Greek soldiers both ahead of and behind him.
Hell. There hadn’t been anything in training about how to deal with this, maneuvers were the job of the commander. Whose place in the line had been just about where the tall Greek—not nine feet tall, but tall enough he almost had to be Achilles—was now.
Hell and damn.
Then the line shattered even further as somebody a few places down turned and ran. The boy next to Zagreus—he thought boy because the young man was barely eighteen and had not impressed Zagreus with his maturity during training—broke too, spinning to flee.
Spinning with his spear still leveled, so that the shaft of it caught Zagreus across the side of his head.
His helmet rang like a bell and he dropped like a rock.
Then somebody else, either an attacker advancing or another one of his cowardly fellows fleeing, tripped over him, the impact hitting him right in the face, stunning Zagreus.
He’d lost his own spear somehow, and he couldn’t even think about looking for it or rising for a long, long moment. When his ears finally stopped ringing and he began to lever himself upright, he found a spear’s point immediately set at his throat.
Hell, damn, and also fuck for good measure.
“Yield or die, Trojan,” spat the Greek soldier, like the simple name of Zagreus’ home was a curse.
Not seeing any other option, Zagreus raised his hands and said, “I yield.”