Brennus, the Galatian mercenary

You stand in line with your fellow Galatians on a field a few hundred yards from Athenapolis’ crumbling walls, watching as the stones from the Thebians’ catapults pound the wavering stretch of stone that is all that’s left to protect the city.

About ten minutes ago a portion of the wall finally collapsed to form a breach about ten yards wide, where a band of mercenaries unfortunate or dumb enough not to leave the city and members of Athenapolis’ pathetic excuse for a militia has gathered in a last-gap attempt to defend the city. You can’t help but curse the leaders of the besieging army, knowing that if you had been in charge the breach would have been exploited before the defenders had had time to react, but then it’s the Galatians' task to take it. And the Galatians are foreigners, thus making them brutes and barbarians whose lives can easily be thrown away.

As a Galatian, you’ve been exposed to this contempt for your origins, your language and your feeble gods, though the wiser of the mercenaries and soldiers know to respect you, some of them you would even consider as friends, regardless of whether they happen to be fighting with you or against you.

You’re tall, most Galatians are, your long legs making you easily a head taller than the average dweller of Athenapolis, and fair-haired, your hair being dark blonde in the summer and pale brown in the winter, while your handsome, muscular build is adorned with a multitude of scars, the most prominent of which is the one on your left cheek, where the spike in a club pierced the skin but failed to damage your teeth or your tongue, and a four inches long one on your left peck which was caused by a Thracian striking you with his falx.

Since you are quite experienced, you’ve managed to gather various bits of equipment that makes you look every bit the cosmopolite. In your right hand, there’s a spatha, a sword that is about a yard long, meaning that it’s considerably longer than the standard gladius, while your left is clutched around the handle of an eastern shield that’s made from unusually sturdy wood and amply strengthened with iron.

For protection beyond your shield, you’re wearing a Chalcidian helmet which protects your head and which has cheek plates, a nasal bar and a neck guard to shield those parts of your head that main part of the helmet doesn’t, while a suit armour made from the finest Corinthian leather covers your torso and upper arms.

Your fine equipment, along with the reputation that you have among your peers for being an accomplished warrior, has granted you a spot in the front, not at all that far away from the leader of this quickly gathered war band.

Finally, the horn sounds to signal that you are to advance, and you begin to move in sync with the men around you once your leader has raised his sword into the air and let out a short war cry. You don’t all break out into a mad charge, since its still two-hundred yards or so to the breach, but walk in a steady pace towards it, you joining in with the others who have shields by banging your weapon against it to create a rhythmic drumming noise, while others begin singing songs of war and bravery.

You’re the first wave, partly because you’re good at acting like shock troops and partly because everyone expects you to act undisciplined and break up to get whatever plunder you can get your dirty, barbarian hands on as soon as the wall is yours, an expectation that you and yours have every intention of confirming.

When you’re a hundred and fifty yards out, the defenders begin shooting at you, though the distance is still far too great and few arrows even manage to cross it, meaning that they’re doing little but wasting their ammo.

Indeed, their aim is so poor that barely a dozen of you have been hit when you get within fifty yards of the walls. There, your walking is quickly turned into a mad rush, every last one of you screaming as fiercely as you can as you begin your charge.

The defenders are wavering even before you reach them, and you come running up across the small pile of smashed wall to attack them, noticing that few of them look like they belong on a battlefield.

With the gap being so narrow only a few of you can get through it at one time, but the dozen or so of you who can have soon pressed the defenders backwards so that more of your comrades can file through the breach.

You’ve already killed two men when you see a spearman thrust his weapon at the man directly to your left, who can do little to stop it since he’s armed with an axe so large that it requires a two-handed grip. Thrusting your shield out, you stop the thrust, feeling your arm protest as it bears the brunt of the impact, while you use your sword to parry the blow which a man armed with a gladius has tried to land on you.
Seconds later, the axe-wielder has leaned over your shield and chopped of a good chunk of the spearman’s right arm while you’ve stabbed your sword into the other man’s stomach.

There were about a hundred of you to begin with, though no one knows for sure as men are constantly going from one war band to another in the hopes of finding the one with the most men from his clan in it, and you doubt that there’s less than eighty of you left when the defence breaks apart and the breach is yours.

Soon enough, hoplites will follow after you and take down the Drake-wires so that those pesky riders can sweep down on the city and pretend like they won the battle. When that happens, however, you intend to have gotten your hands on a healthy amount of plunder.

There are three streets directly in front of you, one of which runs along the inside of the wall and the other two leading further into the city itself, one on your left side and the other on your right.