Morning. The war room.
Hector sat at the table. His face was cleaned but the cut above his eye was still dark. His cracked helmet sat on the floor beside him. He had refused a new one.
Lysander stood. The cut on his bicep was bandaged. His hands were still black from the fire.
"Numbers," Hector said.
"Two hundred dead. Three hundred wounded. Eighty critical. Asterion is gone. Six section commanders dead."
"The Greeks."
"Four hundred dead on the wall. Maybe more. They hold fifty paces of the outer wall — sections three through eight. They are fortifying the parapet as we speak."
Hector looked at the map on the table. The northern wall was marked in charcoal. Fifty paces of it — from the third tower to the eighth — was shaded dark. Greek held.
"The inner gate."
"Stone and bronze. It will hold against rams for weeks. But they will build them. Diomedes is a siege engineer. He knows how to break gates."
"How long."
"Weeks. Not months. Weeks."
