The second attack came an hour before dawn.

Lysander had been dozing against the barricade, his back against the timber, his sword across his knees. Not sleeping—his body wouldn’t let him sleep—but resting, the way soldiers learned to rest between assaults. Around him, the eastern beach was quiet. The patrols had reinforced the barricade as best they could. The wounded had been carried to the medical tents. The dead had been covered with cloaks and laid behind the line, waiting for morning.

He woke fully at the sound of the signal horn—two long blasts from the northern beach. The pattern was one they had drilled but never used in combat: enemy advancing in force, main assault, all positions stand ready.

Then a third blast. Line is breaking.

He was on his feet before the echo died.

Miros was already at the barricade, his face unreadable in the torchlight. "They’re hitting the northern beach with everything. Hector’s line is holding but barely. He’s ordered a fighting retreat—consolidate at the secondary position where the outer ring meets the wall."

"The eastern beach."

"Yes. We’re the fallback. We hold here until Hector’s men reach us. Then we form a single line."

"And if they break through before Hector reaches us."

Miros didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

Lysander looked at the water. The black ships were still massed beyond the surf on the eastern approach, their torches flickering. They hadn’t attacked yet. They were waiting. Watching. They knew what was happening on the northern beach, and they were waiting for the right moment.

They’ll hit us when Hector’s line starts to fall back, he thought. When we’re stretched between two positions. That’s the moment.

He drew his sword.

The eastern attack came as the sky was beginning to grey.

Not the probing assault of the night before. This was a full commitment. Five ships beached in quick succession, their hulls grinding against the sand, men pouring off them in a tide. They came screaming, their faces pale with ash, their weapons catching the first light of dawn.

Lysander met the first wave at the barricade.

His body was past exhaustion now, running on something deeper than energy. The training took over. Block. Thrust. Sidestep. The sword was an extension of his arm, the shield a part of his body. He killed a man with a bronze axe, stepped over him, killed another. The line was holding. Miros was everywhere, the floating formation flowing around the attackers, plugging gaps before they opened.

But they kept coming.

He saw a patrolman fall—the man on his left, a young soldier named Theron who had been in the training compound every morning for a year. Theron went down with a spear in his thigh, screaming, and before Lysander could reach him, an attacker was over the barricade, his sword rising—

Lysander killed him. He didn’t remember doing it. He just knew that the man was falling and Theron was being dragged back from the line by two fishermen, his blood leaving a dark trail on the sand.

Keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t think.

The line was bending now. The attackers were throwing everything at the centre, trying to break through before Hector’s men could arrive. Miros was holding it together through sheer force of will, his sword never still, his voice cutting through the chaos.

"Left flank! Close the gap!"

"Archers! Focus on the centre!"

"Hold! Hold!"

And then Lysander saw the runner.

He was coming from the northern beach, sprinting along the water’s edge, his armour splashed with blood. He reached Miros, shouted something that Lysander couldn’t hear over the noise of battle. Miros nodded once and the runner was gone, racing back the way he had come.

"Hector’s men are five minutes behind him!" Miros shouted. "We hold until they reach us!"

Five minutes. The line was already bending. Five minutes was an eternity.

Lysander tightened his grip on his sword.

The next few minutes passed in fragments.

He remembered a man with a curved blade coming over the barricade, his teeth filed to points, his eyes wild. He remembered killing him and feeling nothing.

He remembered the fisherman beside him—a man whose name he didn’t know, one of Shebek’s volunteers—taking an arrow in the shoulder and refusing to fall, still thrusting with his spear, still holding the line.

He remembered the sound of the black ships’ oars, still beating in the distance, still bringing more men to the shore.

And then he remembered the moment the line broke.

It wasn’t dramatic. There was no great crash, no heroic last stand. One moment the man on his right was there, and the next moment he wasn’t, and the gap was too wide to close, and the attackers were pouring through.

He was alone.

He killed the first man who came at him. Killed the second. The third was bigger than the others, a giant of a man with a bronze axe and no armour, his chest covered in scars. The axe came down and Lysander got his shield up in time but the impact drove him to one knee, his arm screaming, his grip slipping.

The axe rose again.

He couldn’t get his sword up in time. His shield arm was numb. His body was too slow, too tired, too broken to respond.

This is it, he thought. This is where it ends.

The axe didn’t fall.

Miros came out of nowhere—as he always did, as he had trained to do for two years—and put his sword through the giant’s back. The man crumpled. Miros stepped over him, planted himself between Lysander and the oncoming tide, and held the gap alone.

"Get up," Miros said. He didn’t shout.

Lysander got up.

The line was reforming around them, the patrols pulling back into a tighter formation, the gap closing as more men rushed to fill it. The fishermen were still there, still fighting, their spears red with blood. The archers on the rocks were firing into the mass of attackers, every arrow finding flesh.

And then, behind them, a new sound.

The war cry of Troy’s regulars. Hector’s men, coming off the northern road at a run, their armour bright in the grey dawn. And at their head, Hector himself.

He came like a storm.

That was the only way to describe it. Lysander had seen Hector fight before—in the training compound, in the skirmishes along the coast—but never like this. Never against a tide of enemies, never with the knowledge that if he fell, the line fell with him.

Hector didn’t fall.

He cut through the attackers the way a scythe cuts through wheat. Every movement was precise, economical, lethal. No wasted motion. No hesitation. His sword was a blur, his shield a wall, and everywhere he went, the black ships’ men fell back. They had been winning moments before. Now they were dying.

The patrols rallied around him. The line, which had been bending, straightened. The attackers, who had been pouring through the gap, found themselves trapped between Hector’s relief force and Miros’s reformed position.

It was over in minutes.

The black ships’ men broke. Not a retreat—a rout. They ran for their vessels, throwing down their weapons, scrambling over the bodies of their dead. Some of them didn’t make it. The archers on the rocks cut them down as they fled. The patrols pursued them to the water’s edge.

And then there was silence.

Lysander sat on the sand, his back against the barricade, his sword still in his hand. He couldn’t let go of it. His fingers wouldn’t uncurl.

The beach was littered with bodies. Black ships’ men, mostly, but Trojans too. The patrols were moving among them, identifying the dead, carrying the wounded toward the medical tents. The sun was fully up now, the sky a pale, washed-out blue. It seemed wrong that the sun should be shining on a beach covered in corpses.

Miros found him. The man’s armour was torn in three places. There was blood on his face, a long cut above his eye that he didn’t seem to notice. He sat down on the sand beside Lysander and didn’t speak for a long moment.

"You held," Miros said finally.

"Barely."

"Barely is enough."

Lysander looked at the bodies on the sand. "Theron. The patrolman on my left. Is he—"

"Alive. The spear missed the artery. Antiphus has him."

"And the fisherman. The one with the arrow in his shoulder."

"I saw him walking to the medical tent. He’ll live."

Lysander closed his eyes. The exhaustion was like a weight pressing him into the sand. He could have slept for a week. He could have slept for a year.

"Hector," he said.

"On the northern barricade. He’s counting the dead."

"How many."

"I don’t know yet." Miros paused. "Too many. But fewer than there would have been if the line hadn’t held."

They sat in silence. The waves washed against the beach, erasing the footprints, carrying the blood out to sea. Somewhere behind them, in the city, the bells were ringing the all-clear.

"The fishermen," Lysander said. "The volunteers. They held. When the line broke, they didn’t run."

"I know. I saw them."

"We should train them. Properly. They’ve earned it."

"Yes." Miros stood. "They have."

He offered Lysander his hand. Lysander took it and pulled himself up. His legs were unsteady. His shoulder ached. His sword arm felt like it belonged to someone else.

But he was alive.

He walked up the beach, past the bodies, past the wounded being carried toward the tents, past the patrols who were already beginning the work of repairing the barricade. He found Hector at the northern edge, looking out at the sea.

The black ships were gone. All of them. What was left of the attacking force had fled north, back the way they had come, taking their dead and their wounded with them. They had lost too many men to continue. They wouldn’t be back.

Hector turned as he approached. His armour was covered in blood, none of it his. His face was grey with exhaustion. But his eyes were clear.

"You held," he said.

"Barely."

"Barely is enough." Hector looked at the sea. "They won’t come back. Not after this. We’ve shown them that Troy is not a village they can burn and forget. We made them pay for every inch of sand."

"How many did we lose."

"Twenty-three dead. Twice that wounded. Most of them from the northern beach." He paused. "It could have been much worse."

Lysander nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

"My mother was right," Hector said. "About the fishermen. About giving people something real to hold onto. They fought because they had something to fight for. They held because they knew what they were holding for."

"Yes."

Hector turned from the sea. "Go get some rest. You’ve earned it."

Lysander walked back through the settlement. The evacuation was being reversed now, families returning to their shelters, children running ahead of their parents. The city was waking up, shaking off the terror of the night, beginning the long work of recovery.

He passed the medical tents. Antiphus was still working, his hands steady despite the hours of surgery. Reos and Demas were beside him, moving among the wounded, their voices calm and unhurried. Deia was there too—thirteen years old, holding a basin of water while Antiphus washed the blood from his hands. She looked up as Lysander passed. Her face was pale, but her eyes were steady.

"Theron," Lysander said. "The patrolman with the leg wound."

"He’ll walk again," Antiphus said without looking up. "I’ve done what I can. Now it’s up to him."

"Thank you."

Antiphus grunted. It was as close to an acknowledgment as he ever gave.

Lysander walked on.

He found Arsini in the supply office. She was standing at the table, a tablet in her hand, but she wasn’t reading it. She was looking at the harbour through the window, where the freighters were still at anchor and the barrier pilings were still intact.

She turned when he came in. Her face was pale, her hair escaping from its binding, her eyes red-rimmed from a night without sleep. She looked at him—at the blood on his armour, the exhaustion in his face, the sword still clutched in his hand—and for a moment, neither of them spoke.

"You’re alive," she said finally.

"Yes."

"I counted the bodies they brought in. I kept waiting to see yours."

"It wasn’t."

She set the tablet down. Her hands were trembling. "The supplies held. The medical stores. The bandages. Everything we stockpiled. It was enough."

"Good."

"Antiphus says three of the wounded might not survive the night. The rest will recover."

"Good."

She looked at him again. "You should sleep."

"I know."

"But you won’t."

"No."

She nodded. She understood. She always understood.

"Then I’ll make tea," she said. "And we’ll go over the supply reports. There’s a lot to do before the next attack."

"The next attack won’t come. They’re gone."

"Not them. There will be others. There are always others."

He sat down at the table. She brought tea. They worked through the reports as the sun rose higher over the harbour and the city slowly returned to life.

Outside, the sea was empty. The black ships were gone. The dead were being buried. The wounded were being healed.

And somewhere to the north, beyond the horizon, the war that was coming was still gathering its strength.

But that was for another day.

Today, they had held.