Fall of Kings

by David Gemmell

  The rowers pulled into their oars with a will, and the Xanthos leaped forward, the Trojan ships keeping pace. Out in the mouth of the bay the Mykene ships saw the challenge and attacked.

  Once the enemy oarsmen had built up momentum and the two fleets were racing toward each other, Helikaon raised both arms in the air and brought them down sharply. “Reverse oars,” he cried. The powerful rowers leaned on their oars to back water. The Trojan fleet slowed sharply, as if their commander were afraid of contact. Seeing that, the Mykene ships powered on, tempted farther into the bay. For a while they maintained a perfect attack formation.

  Then, as Helikaon watched with narrowed eyes, the ships at each end of the front line hit shallow water and lost their rhythm, veering into the vessels beside them, their tired rowers fouling their oars. Ignorant of this, the front line kept pressing forward into the narrowing channel. Helikaon gave the order to attack again, and once more the Trojan fleet sped forward. At last the officers on the Alektruon realized that the ships at each end of their line were floundering helplessly, oars locked, in shallow water. The order was given to slow down, but by then the second and third lines of ships, rowing hard to get in on the action and pushed by the Scythe, were unable to stop. The fast-moving galleys started ramming the back of their own attack line.

  Helikaon saw a ship in the second line collide with the stern of the Alektruon, making her start to turn. The Xanthos had the Mykene flagship’s beam in her sights. “Ramming speed!” he shouted.

  The Alektruon still was moving forward, her prow drifting helplessly to starboard, and the Xanthos was at full speed when the Golden Ship hit her. Only heartbeats before the impact Helikaon yelled, “Reverse oars!” Again the disciplined rowers started to back water.

  The two ships came together with a sound like a thunderbolt from Zeus. The Xanthos hit her target just behind the prow, shuddered from stem to stern, then pulled away. On both ships warriors were waiting on the foredeck with ropes and grappling hooks, swords and shields, at the ready. But many were thrown from their feet by the impact, and as the Xanthos backed away, there was clear water between the ships before men from either side could jump across. Helikaon felt a cold thrill of triumph. He knew the Alektruon was doomed. At the moment of collision he had felt the fatal give in the other ship as planks below the waterline caved in.

  Panic erupted aboard the Mykene vessels. Their once-proud flagship started listing to port, and ships on both sides of the fleet were foundering in shallow water and thick mud. There were angry shouts and curses as panicking crews blamed one another for their plight. Then, as Helikaon had predicted they would, they let fly with the fire hurlers.

  He ordered his fleet to back off as fast as possible. Some of the flying clay balls flopped into the water near the Trojan ships, but none of the enemy’s fire hurlers had the height and range of those on the Xanthos. Helikaon instructed the crewmen who manned his fire hurlers to stand ready.

  But they were not needed.

  As the Trojan and Dardanian crews watched, two of the nephthar balls loosed by Mykene galleys hit other vessels of their fleet. Helikaon quickly ordered his archers to aim their fire arrows at the two ships that had been hit. Both targets went up in a whoosh of flame. The ships’ hulls had been caulked with pitch, and the fires spread across the fleet with sickening speed. Crewmen dived and jumped into the waters of the bay, some to founder waist-deep in sticky mud.

  Before long the whole Mykene fleet was in flames as the fire reached nephthar balls on other ships and the braziers on listing craft turned over. Crewmen stuck in the center of the melee of flaming ships died screaming. More died as they swam into range of the Trojans’ arrows. Others swam and waded to the shore of the Cape of Tides, where they were killed by the Trojan soldiers holding the headland. A few made it to the eastern beach of the bay, to their own armies.

  From the distance came the faint sound of cheering, and Helikaon looked to the walls of Troy, where crowds had gathered to watch the destruction of the enemy fleet. He ordered two of his ships to pick up survivors for questioning, then strode back down the Xanthos to the aft deck.

  Oniacus shook his head in awe, his face pale. “They have lost more than fifty ships and hundreds of men, and we have just three crewmen with arrow wounds,” he said, scarcely believing what had happened.

  He gazed at Helikaon. “Many Mykene ships are crewed by slaves chained to their oars. What a hideous death.”

  Helikaon knew he was remembering the events at Blue Owl Bay, when Oniacus had argued against such a death for the Mykene pirates.

  “I would not have wished this death on slaves,” he responded. “War makes brutes of us all. This is no victory to be proud of. These Mykene and their slaves were condemned to death by ignorance, arrogance, and impatience.”

  “Alektruon is a cursed name,” Oniacus said.

  Helikaon nodded. “That is true. Agamemnon is unlikely to anger Poseidon by building another one. We have only one problem now.”

  “Yes, lord?”

  “We must get out of the bay before Agamemnon has time to dispatch another fleet from Imbros or the Bay of Herakles. And our way is blocked.” Helikaon cursed. “Those ships could go on burning until nightfall.”

  “Although nephthar burns fiercely, it burns quickly, we’ve found,” Akamas, captain of the Shield of Ilos, called up to them. “Then you will find, Golden One, that the Shield and her sister ships can go where the great Xanthos cannot.”

  As he waited for the fires to die down, Helikaon interrogated some of the Mykene his crews had fished from the bay. Most were simple crewmen who knew nothing. They were killed and thrown back into the water. One officer was rescued, but he died of his burns before he told them anything of importance.

  The sun was sinking in the west by the time the Artemisia set out for the last time toward the Mykene fleet. Using oars as boat poles, the crew of the ship created a narrow channel through the smoldering mass of blackened timbers, finding and clearing underwater hazards and fishing out large pieces of debris. One by one she was followed by the other ships, from smaller to larger, each widening the escape route to the mouth of the bay.

  Finally two of them returned: the Naiad and the Dolphin. The crew of the Xanthos threw down ropes, and the two Trojan ships towed the huge bireme slowly through the channel the other vessels had made. The Xanthos crewmen, oars shipped, watched in silence as they passed the hulls of ghostly galleys bearing hundreds of charred corpses.

  Some of the burned and blackened crewmen still stood, fixed in the moment of death. Most had died chained to the rowing benches, their bodies writhing in the heat of the inferno. Many of the Xanthos crewmen turned away, appalled by the horror of the scene. The timbers of the Mykene ships still were smoldering in places, and the stench was sickening.

  It was a long time before the fleeing ships reached open water and fresher air. Then, as the sun touched the horizon, the Xanthos and her small fleet sped into the Hellespont and out into the safety of the Great Green.

  Andromache stood, as she had stood for most of the day, on the western wall of Troy, watching the events in the bay below. She had not joined in the cheers around her as the Mykene fleet burned. She had stood stiff and silent, afraid that if she opened her mouth, she would break down in tears. In her heart she was saying a final farewell to the man she loved above all others.

  As the day cooled, the crowds around her went back to their homes or barracks, but she stayed on until only she and her bodyguard of four remained.

  Her night journey into the city had proved uneventful. The donkey train had made its way across the plain of the Simoeis and then under the northern edge of the plateau on which Troy stood. As they neared the city, Andromache could make out lights high above. They were the windows of the queen’s apartments, which faced north above the high cliff. There were unlikely to be enemy soldiers stationed beneath the sheer rock face. But as they reached the foot of the northeast bastion, scouts were sent ahead to see if the
way to the Dardanian Gate was clear. They waited in darkness, knowing that they had only a few paces to go but that those paces were the most perilous. If Agamemnon’s troops had reached the Dardanian Gate, they were lost. It seemed an age before the scouts returned to say the road to the gate was still open. The donkey train slipped inside the city to safety.

  Andromache’s reunion with Astyanax was joyous. As she embraced the boy, warm and sleepy and bewildered from being woken in the middle of the night, she saw another child, fair-haired and white-faced, standing in the corner of the room, clad in a nightshirt.

  Still holding her son to her, she knelt down and smiled. “Dex?” she asked gently, and the little boy nodded dumbly. She saw that his face was tear-stained as if he had cried himself to sleep.

  She put her arm around him and hugged him to her. “I am Andromache,” she whispered, “and I will look after you if you wish. Would you like to stay here with Astyanax and me?”

  She sat back and looked into his dark eyes. He said something, but it was so quiet that she could not hear it. She put her ear close to his lips and said, “Say that again, Dex.”

  The little boy whispered, “Where is Sun Woman? I can’t find her.”

  Now, standing on the western wall, she watched as the pall of smoke hanging over the fleet of dead ships was blown away by the north wind. She realized that the fog that had clouded her thoughts for the past days, a fog born of conflicting emotions, fear, and exhaustion, had dispersed. She was glad to be back in Troy, where she belonged, with her son beside her and his little orphan cousin. She was no one’s lover, no one’s daughter, no one’s wife. If they were all to die, as she feared they would, they would be together. She would protect the children to the last and would die with them.

  She waited until the Xanthos reached the mouth of the bay, raised her arm in an unseen farewell, and, her heart at peace for the first time in days, made her way back to the palace, to her home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  TRAITORS AT THE GATE

  On the west wall Khalkeus also stood watching, but as the Mykene ships started to burn, he turned and walked away, head bowed. He knew the Golden One would escape the inferno and make his way out to sea in the Xanthos. Khalkeus had no wish to see any more.

  Truly it was called the Death Ship, he thought, the name given to it by the Kypriot carpenters who had built it but refused to sail on it, fearing it was a challenge to Poseidon, who would sink it for its arrogance.

  But Khalkeus had designed the Xanthos to be a trading vessel, to hold more cargo and to be faster than its competitors, and, crucially, to be strong enough to brave the heavy seas of spring and autumn and prolong its sailing season well past the days when other ships returned to their safe harbors. And it had exceeded his wildest expectations, sailing the treacherous waters of winter all the way to the far west and back in the search for tin. Khalkeus had looked forward to its return so that he could discuss the ship’s travels with the Golden One, hear him praise Khalkeus’ skills as a shipwright, and talk about modifications he could make to the vessel.

  Instead, as on that cursed day at the Bay of Blue Owls, he had watched men burn when the Death Ship sailed.

  The Mykene were a callous and ruthless race, he told himself. They brought destruction down upon themselves. But the fire hurlers were his invention; he had built them for Helikaon to fight off pirates and reivers, and now his mind was clouded by sorrow for the men killed so cruelly in their hasty bid to copy the Xanthos’ fire weapon. The Madman from Miletos, they called him. Perhaps they were right, he thought. Only a madman would create such a weapon of death.

  He elbowed through the excited crowd of Trojans who were pointing and cheering at the blazing ships, then climbed down the steps from the western wall and made his way northeast through the maze of streets. He looked around him as he walked, seeing the city with troubled eyes. When he first had arrived, Troy had been a remarkable sight, a city unlike any other in the world. The great palaces of the mighty were roofed with bronze and decorated with red and green marble, their walls carved with creatures of legend. Priam’s palace boasted a roof of pure gold, which shone in the sunlight and could be seen from far out at sea. Wide stone avenues were thronged with noble men and women garbed in rich brightly colored clothes, glinting with jewelry, eager to see and be seen. The whole world came to Troy to gasp at its beauty and profit from its wealth.

  Now the world had come to Troy to bring it to its knees and plunder that wealth.

  The streets around him were filled with shacks and shanties built by refugees from the lower town who hoped for safety behind the great walls. Their rough wood and hide shelters, hundreds of them, leaned low against the tall palaces of the rich and powerful. Traders and craftsmen lived in those hovels, some working—if they had the materials—but most living on the hope that one day the war would end and they could return to their trades and prosper again.

  There was an atmosphere of fear and anger in the streets, and few ventured out after dark. Food was becoming scarce, and the stores of grain were guarded closely, the bakeries, too. Water was also a problem. There were two wells within the walls, but most of the city’s water had come from the Scamander, now behind enemy lines, and the Simoeis, from which cartloads of water barrels still were brought from time to time. The city wells also were guarded to ensure that fighting did not break out among the waiting crowds of thirsty people and protect the meager water supply from poisoning by agents of the enemy.

  Khalkeus wove his way through the confusing pattern of alleys created by the shanties. It seemed to change from day to day. At one point the alley he was following came to a dead end, and he cursed in frustration. He thought he was alone in the smelly, shadowy alley, but then a voice said, “Give you a ride to remember, lord. Only one copper ring.” A skinny whore was sitting in the doorway of a shack, her eyes heavy-lidded with fatigue and disappointment, bright splashes of red paint on her cheeks. She cocked her head and smiled at him, and he saw that her teeth were gray and rotten.

  He shook his head nervously and hurried back down the alley, finding his way at last to the square before Priam’s palace. The great doors were open, and the red-pillared portico in front of the palace was flanked, as always, by a line of Royal Eagles in bronze breastplates and high helms with cheek guards inlaid with silver and white plumes.

  Khalkeus looked up at the gleaming gold roof, a symbol of Priam’s wealth and power. The bronze had been torn off the roofs of the other palaces at Hektor’s command to fashion into weapons. Only this remained, a shining beacon drawing Priam’s enemies, taunting them to come and take it.

  He walked on. At the Dardanian Gate beneath the northeast bastion he was forced to stop and wait for a train of donkey carts to come in. Two of the carts carried water barrels. The others were loaded with families and their possessions, tearful children and their anxious mothers, their menfolk plodding alongside. One was piled high with wooden crates filled with chickens.

  A burly gate guard strolled over to him. “You again, smith. You like to take your chances, don’t you? One of these days Agamemnon will attack this gate; then we have orders to close and seal it. It wouldn’t do if you were stuck outside.”

  “It is not in Agamemnon’s best interests to seal the city, not yet,” Khalkeus replied, reluctant to get into a conversation with the man.

  “He’s letting families out,” the soldier continued. “My wife and children left two days ago for the safety of Zeleia.”

  “How many have gone out today, and how many have come in?”

  The man frowned. “I’ve been here since dawn, and I’ve seen more than fifty people come in. Two families have left.”

  “So more are coming into the city than going out,” Khalkeus snapped, irritated by the man’s lack of understanding. “Can’t you see, you idiot, that’s what Agamemnon wants—Troy packed with refugees, eating the stores of grain, drinking the precious water. They are of no use to the city. They do not bring weapons
; most of them cannot fight. They are farmers and their families. They bring only fear”—he gestured to the women and children and sputtered—“and babies!”

  The guard looked angry. “Then why are the enemy letting people out?” he demanded.

  Khalkeus held his tongue with difficulty and moved toward the gate. In his own mind he knew the soldier’s family members were already dead, had died as soon as they had traveled out of sight of the walls. Agamemnon would not allow children to leave the city, knowing that Hektor’s son and the Dardanian heir were inside.

  Outside the walls he glanced to the south, where the enemy was camped a mere two hundred paces away. Then he followed the stone road around the north of the plateau, hunching his shoulders against the wind. Eventually he reached the line of empty forges.

  Troy’s forges had lit up this area since the birth of the city. The wind scythed in from the north, hitting the high hillside and making the furnaces roar in a way no man-made bellows could. But when the war had started, Priam had ordered all his forgemasters behind the walls, and those furnaces were abandoned. Except by Khalkeus.

  Since he had been very young, the bronzesmith realized, he had thought in a way different from that of other people. His head constantly brimmed with ideas. He was impatient with those who could not understand the solution to simple problems that seemed obvious to him. He was curious about the world and spotted challenges everywhere. When he saw oarsmen rowing a ship, he wondered what could be done to make it go faster. He understood instinctively why one house would fall down in a winter gale while another nearby remained standing. Even as he had shunned the whore’s advances that day, part of his mind had been wondering what the red paint on her face was made from and why some people’s teeth rotted faster than others.

  But his obsession for ten years or more had been his search for the perfect sword.