The battlefield had not yet breathed again after Sarpedon fell.
Dust still drifted in the air like funeral ash, and the echo of the dying king's final words clung to the throats of his warriors.
Among them, Glaucus knelt—his hands trembling, his face streaked with grime and grief.
The shaft of Teucer's arrow still jutted from his arm, blood slicking his fingers as he clutched it.
He had not wept when the arrow struck him.
But now, seeing Sarpedon—his king, his kinsman, the man he had sworn to follow into fire—lying still upon the Trojan earth…
His breath broke.
For a moment he could not stand.
For a moment he felt the world had ripped itself off its axis.
He lifted his face to the heavens—dust-choked, tearless, fierce.
"Apollo…"
It was not a prayer so much as a broken command.
A desperate plea from a soldier whose world had been halved in a heartbeat.
"Give me strength—if only enough to save my king's body from the hands of the Greeks.
Let me not fail him now.
Not now."
The sun flared.
A warm ripple shivered across his skin, golden and sharp, and the pain in his arm evaporated like breath on cold air.
The arrow slid free beneath his fingers.
His muscles tightened—whole, restored, burning with divine purpose.
Apollo had heard.
Glaucus rose in a single breath, as if some god had lifted him by the shoulders.
He turned, voice cracking—yet loud enough to split the chaos around him.
"Lycians!"
His cry rang like a thrown spear.
"LYCIANS—TO ME!
Your king lies fallen!
Fight for him!
Fight for Sarpedon!"
Shields snapped up.
Swords lifted.
The surviving Lycians gathered around their restored captain, eyes burning, jaws set, grief shaping itself into something sharp enough to kill.
But Glaucus was not done.
He spun toward the Trojans, his voice dropping into a deeper, rawer register—not a command, but a challenge to their honor.
"Trojans! Hear me!
A king crossed half the world for you.
He bled for your walls.
He died for your sons.
Honor him now—
Or let the gods remember your shame!"
A hush flickered across the Trojan line.
Hector's grief-darkened gaze lifted from the dust where Sarpedon had fallen.
Even the wind seemed to pause—as if awaiting the decision of mortal men.
And then—
A roar.
First Trojans, then Dardanians, then the Lycians altogether—
a rising, shaking, throat-tearing roar that rippled through the ranks like the pulse of a vengeful god.
They surged forward, forming a living wall of bronze and wrath around Sarpedon's body.
The battle for the dead king had begun.
The surge came like a breaking wave.
Lycians, Trojans, and Dardanians stormed forward in a single roaring mass—fresh fury in their throats, renewed strength in their limbs, Glaucus's bellow echoing above them all.
"For Sarpedon!"
"Guard the king's body!"
"Drive the Greeks back!"
Patroclus saw the wave forming before it struck.
He braced his shield, grit stinging his eyes as he shouted:
"Myrmidons—advance! Shields tight! Drive into them!"
And the Myrmidons obeyed.
They moved as Achilles had forged them—black-armored, disciplined, terrifying.
Spears leveled. Eyes cold.
No battle cry, no thunderous roar.
Just the mechanized brutality of war.
The two armies met with a sound like mountains cracking.
Spears punched through shields.
Shields shattered under spearpoints.
The first line buckled, then steadied, then buckled again as bodies crashed together.
A Myrmidon to Patroclus's right took a spear through the thigh and dropped screaming, sand turning black beneath him.
Another smashed the teeth out of a Trojan's mouth with the rim of his shield.
A Dardanian vaulted over a fallen corpse and slammed into Patroclus, nearly knocking him off balance.
He recovered with a grunt, driving his shoulder forward.
The Dardanian reeled.
Patroclus's spear found the gap under his arm.
He fell without a sound.
The smell of blood thickened the air—hot, metallic, suffocating.
The crimson rain, which had slowed to a mist, began falling harder again, streaking helmets, turning the sand to red mud beneath their feet.
Men slipped.
Men drowned in it.
Somewhere close by, a Myrmidon gagged as mud and blood filled his mouth.
He clawed at the ground, trying to stand, but a Lycian blade punched down between his shoulder blades, pinning him like an insect.
Patroclus snarled and surged forward, swinging his shield into the killer's face.
Bone cracked.
The man collapsed, choking.
"Hold!" Patroclus shouted over the din. "Hold! Push them off the body!"
But the Trojans and Lycians fought like men possessed.
The death of a king had driven them into madness.
A Dardanian captain leapt into a knot of Myrmidons, hacking wildly, cutting one down before a spear slit his throat.
A Lycian, his left eye running with blood, crawled across the bodies toward Sarpedon's fallen form, shouting his king's name until a Greek trampled him underfoot.
The battle was no longer lines and formations.
It was a whirlpool.
A screaming, grinding, suffocating press of bodies, where no man could see more than three paces ahead and every inch of ground was paid for in blood.
Patroclus felt the line falter.
He slammed his shield forward again, trying to force the Trojans back, but the press was relentless.
He saw Glaucus in the distance—newly healed, blazing with borrowed strength—rallying the Lycians again and again, dragging them forward with sheer will.
The fight over Sarpedon's body was becoming a storm—a storm that threatened to swallow both armies whole.
Patroclus gritted his teeth, breath burning his lungs.
"Push!" he roared, voice cracking.
"For Achilles! For the ships! Drive them back!"
The battlefield answered with steel.
And the storm raged on.
Hector reached the crest of the ridge at a run, breath burning, spear slick with rain and blood.
The crimson mist had thinned, but its memory clung to the air like a curse.
Every step down the slope brought the noise of the battle back into sharp, merciless focus—steel ringing, men screaming, the guttural roar of Lycians locked in their grief.
He saw the chaos before he reached it.
The Myrmidons had formed a brutal wedge, black armor gleaming with rain, cutting a path through Trojans and allies alike.
Patroclus's voice rose above them, driving his men forward with the cold fury of Achilles himself.
Between those heaving lines, Hector glimpsed it—
A body half-buried beneath trampled mud.
Bronze greaves.
A torn cloak.
Dust caked in a once-luminous crest.
Sarpedon.
His heart clenched.
Before he could push through, a figure stumbled toward him—Glaucus, armor cracked, face streaked with blood and rain.
He seized Hector's arm with a grip fueled by desperation more than strength.
"Little care you, O Hector!" Glaucus choked out, voice raw.
"For your allies… for your brothers! Look—look there!
Sarpedon lies slain—Sarpedon! And the Greeks would drag his body through the dirt while you chase glory elsewhere! Will you stand idle while the Myrmidons defile him?"
The words hit Hector like a spear under the ribs.
His throat tightened.
His grip on his spear whitened.
Around him, the Trojans who had followed him into the chaos turned—faces pale, eyes wide with the horror of recognition.
For among all their allies, none had fought with Sarpedon's steadfast courage.
None had led with his calm, unshakable honor.
Hector swallowed hard, voice low.
"Glaucus… I did not know."
"That he is dead?" Glaucus rasped.
"Or that, without him, we falter?"
A tremor passed through Hector's chest—not fear, but grief sharpened into something dangerous.
He lowered his helmet.
Took a long, steadying breath.
Then he raised his spear high.
"Trojans—Dardanians—Lycians!" he roared, voice cracking like a whip across the battlefield.
"Rally! For Sarpedon! Drive them from his body! Do not let the Greeks claim the honor that belongs to the brave!"
The response thundered from a thousand throats.
The Trojans surged forward, fury renewed—shields slamming, spears thrusting, feet pounding the mud.
They smashed into the Myrmidon line with a crash that shook the ground.
Men fell.
Men screamed.
Dust and blood sprayed into the air in a hot, choking cloud.
For a moment, Hector could see nothing at all.
Only the crush of battle.
The Myrmidons held, but barely—Patroclus shouting orders, dragging wounded men back, shoving fresh ones forward.
Hector saw him drive his shield into a Lycian's jaw, teeth and blood flying, before turning to stab another in the gut.
The Greeks rallied.
The Trojans surged again.
A war of inches.
And in the center of that storm—
Sarpedon's body lay motionless, unrecognizable beneath the churned earth and crimson mud.
A king reduced to wreckage, a demigod hidden beneath the trampling of mortal feet.
Hector's breath hitched.
He pushed forward, shield high, cutting down a Greek who lunged at him, and bellowed above the carnage:
"Hold the line! Push them back! Sarpedon must not be lost!"
The two armies crashed again.
Dust rose in suffocating clouds.
Blood darkened the mud to nearly black.
Men fought not for glory, not for plunder—
But for a fallen friend.
A battle within a battle.
A storm with Sarpedon at its eye.
And Hector—the grief burning in his chest—threw himself into the maelstrom, determined that no Greek hand would drag the noble king of Lycia into the dishonor of oblivion.
They crashed together above the body like waves slamming against jagged stone.
The Trojans roared forward in a shield-wall of bronze and desperation, Glaucus at their head, eyes wild with grief.
The Greeks met them with the cold discipline of men who had seen too much death already, Patroclus shouting for the Myrmidons to lock shields, hold fast, and drive them back.
The lines collided.
The sound was sickening—
bronze on bronze, bone on bone, the wet crack of bodies slamming into shields, the splatter of mud and blood as men stumbled or fell beneath the crush.
Sarpedon's corpse lay in the center of it all, half-buried in the churned earth, his once-golden armor dulled by dust and gore.
No one could see his face anymore; the battlefield had claimed even that last dignity.
A Myrmidon seized his arm, trying to haul the body back toward Greek lines.
A Lycian screamed and plunged his spear through the man's back, driving him into the mud.
The body lurched.
Slipped.
Dragged a hand's breadth—no more.
A Trojan grabbed Sarpedon by the cuirass, heaving—
—but a Greek crashed a shield into his skull, dropping him limp over the corpse he fought to save.
The dead king lay between them like a prize in some monstrous contest, pulled an inch one way, an inch the other, every gain paid for in spilled life.
Dust rose around them in thick, choking clouds.
Men coughed and swung blind.
Blood turned the ground to a sucking mire that swallowed sandals and boots alike.
The shouts blurred into a single, maddened roar.
"Push! PUSH!"
"Hold the line! Don't yield an inch!"
Patroclus fought like a man possessed, his spear darting in and out with terrible precision.
He slammed his shield into a Trojan's chest, bones crunching, then hooked an arm beneath a fallen Greek and dragged him clear of the trampling boots.
His armor was slick with blood—some his, most not—but he didn't slow.
"Guard the body! Don't let them break through!"
The Trojans answered with equal fury.
Glaucus tore a spear from a dead man's hand, his own bleeding fingers struggling to grip the shaft.
He thrust again and again, each blow punctuated by a ragged cry.
"For Lycia! For our king! For Sarpedon!"
The lines surged.
A Myrmidon slipped in the mud; a Trojan hammered his skull into the ground, then lunged for Sarpedon's body—
—but Patroclus was there, shield slamming sideways like a thrown anvil, sending the Trojan sprawling.
Another step forward.
Two steps back.
No one yielded.
The struggle became a grinding, suffocating brawl.
Men grappled in the mud.
They clawed at each other's helmets.
They bit, punched, stabbed with broken spearshafts or jagged stones when blades were lost.
A Greek tackled a Lycian over Sarpedon's legs, both men rolling across the corpse, smearing fresh blood over old.
Nearby, a Myrmidon screamed as a Dardanian's spear found the gap beneath his arm. He fell across Sarpedon's chest, his dying weight pinning the dead king deeper into the red earth.
No one noticed.
No one cared.
The body was dragged another foot toward the Greek line—
—only for the Trojans to surge again in a foaming wave, forcing the Myrmidons back a half-pace.
Then another.
The earth trembled beneath the sheer weight of men.
Hector pushed through the fray, shield shattering the guard of a Greek who dared stand before him.
He didn't have to speak—the sight of Troy's champion, armor drenched in rain and battle-grime, was enough to reignite the Trojans' strength.
The line buckled.
The Greeks felt it.
Patroclus gritted his teeth.
"Hold!" he snarled, stabbing over the rim of his shield. "HOLD, DAMN YOU!"
But the Trojans' grief was stronger than his discipline.
A final heave—
A roar that tore from a hundred throats—
And the Myrmidon line broke just enough for Hector to seize Sarpedon's body by the shoulder, dragging him free from the crush of Greek hands.
The Trojans rallied behind their prince, forming a wall around the fallen king.
The Greeks fell back a yard, panting, bleeding, furious.
The tug-of-war was not over.
But for the first time since Sarpedon fell,
the Trojans had him.
And the battlefield knew it.
he Trojans held him.
Sarpedon's body, cradled in the mud and blood, seemed almost sacred beneath their hands.
The cries of men—Lycians, Dardanians, Trojans alike—rose like a living storm, a thunderous heartbeat echoing across the battlefield.
But even in this moment of victory, a shadow lingered.
The Myrmidons had not broken entirely.
Their eyes, cold and sharp, traced the edges of the battlefield.
Patroclus was breathing like a furnace, spear ready, fury coursing through every muscle.
Hector felt it—a tension beneath the victory.
Not a doubt in his own strength, nor in his men, but the sense that the storm was far from over.
The air trembled with anticipation.
Somewhere, unseen, fate was shifting.
Glaucus knelt briefly over Sarpedon, whispering a prayer no one could hear.
Then he rose, shoulders squared, eyes wild with grief and determination."We have him… but the Greeks will come again. And they will come with all the cunning they have left."
The battlefield seemed to hold its breath.
For a heartbeat, time stilled.
Blood-soaked mud, shattered shields, broken spears—all frozen in a suspended, violent silence.
Then a distant shout rose—farther back in the lines, faint but deliberate.
Patroclus's gaze flicked toward it.
Hector's heart clenched.
A warning.
A challenge.
A signal that the war's tide was far from spent.
Sarpedon's body rested in their hands.
For now, it was safe.
But the battlefield had already begun whispering of the next storm.
And somewhere, above the war-torn plain, the gods watched.
Their eyes glinting in the crimson mist, unreadable, eternal.
The threads of fate were taut.
And somewhere between the dust, blood, and clashing bronze…a single choice would unravel what remained of the day.
Hector tightened his grip on his spear, Glaucus at his side, and looked across the battlefield.
The Greeks were regrouping.
The Myrmidons would strike again.
And the fight for Sarpedon—for honor, for vengeance, for the gods themselves—was only just beginning.
A wind swept over the field, carrying the metallic scent of blood and the faint echo of mourning.
Hector exhaled.
The battle was far from over.
But the Trojans had taken their first stand.
And in the distance… a shadow moved.
A new threat.
Unseen, but coming.
Patient. Calculating. Merciless.
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End of Chapter 16