Warriors in Bronze

by George Shipway

  I began to have an inkling, then, of what Atreus intended, and the realization hit me like a blow between the eyes. Nobody fights at night: an idea unprecedented in all the annals of war. (I do not include Hercules' night pursuit to Pylos. Sheer opportunism - and anyway the man was a maniac.) Atreus' purpose dawned slowly on his warriors - Heroes, by and large, are never lightning thinkers - and one or two started to mutter.

  Atreus looked them over. They saw the menace in his cold blue eyes, and the mutterings ceased.

  Winter advanced her vanguards, gales and rainstorms scoured the land. On a particularly vile afternoon - clouds scudding across a lowering sky, wind howling over the moun­tains - Atreus led his party out on yet another exercise - or so everyone imagined. We crossed the hills on cart tracks leading south until, at the fall of a stormy night, we reached an out­lying manor on Mycenae's farthest borders held by an elderly nobleman. Here, surprised and perplexed, we gladly halted. Torches lighted the Hall and meat and bread and wine stood ready on the tables. 'Eat up,' the Marshal said. 'You haven't long.' Rain-sodden warriors devoured the victuals and crowded round the hearth-fire: the night was chilly besides being wet. Meanwhile Atreus, chewing a leg of mutton, watched servants heaping rubble in a corner of the Hall. Squatting on his haunches he arranged pebbles on the top like a toddler building houses in his playground. The audience gazed in amazement; behind the Marshal's back a Hero solemnly tapped his fore­head.

  Atreus rose and slapped dust from his knees. 'Gather round, gentlemen. This mound represents Midea, which we will occupy tonight. Here is the citadel crowning the top of the hill. From the foot a track just passable for wheels winds thus' - his sword point traced a crooked line - 'to the main gate - here. An easy approach - and under observation top to bottom from the gate. We shall not take it. At the side directly opposite a postern pierces the walls - here. There's no pathway to the postern, and the hillside below is decidedly steep. That is the route we will follow.'

  Only the roar of wind on the rooftop broke a stupefied silence. Atreus smiled genially.

  'The wildness of the night will cover our approach, but when we start to climb go quietly as worms. I shall lead, you follow in single file, each man touching the one in front. A spearman in my pay has drawn the postern's bars. When we're inside the walls you, Imbrius, with Cteatus, Philetor and Peirus will mount to the rampart walk and go right-handed killing any sentinel you meet. You, Pylaemenes ...'

  Sketching the routes on his model, Atreus detailed every man by name: parties to sweep the ramparts clear, seize the main gate guard tower, occupy a bastion which jutted on the east. He himself would lead a twenty-strong detachment to the palace, cut the sentries down and capture Amphiaraus. 'I want him alive. Whoever else you have to kill, don't harm a hair of his head!'

  Atreus repeated his instructions and ensured that every Hero understood his part. He stood and settled the helmet firmly on his head. 'Can't see the stars on a night like this, but it must be nearly midnight. I intend to take Midea before the break of dawn. So, gentlemen, let's march!'

  We filed into the dark. A rain-gust slapped my face, the gale snored past my ears. We followed our confident leader on a stony invisible pathway which only he could see.

  * * *

  A flickering light in a byre where some farmer, perhaps, attended a calving cow betrayed the little town that clustered at the foot of Midea's mount. Atreus skirted it widely, trudging miry fields that squelched dismally underfoot. The citadel- crowned eminence loomed blackly from the night. The Mar­shal changed direction; mud yielded to boulders and rock; the ground began to climb. Atreus halted and waited while the warband closed around him. He called the roll, pitching his voice to clear the moan of the wind. Footsore, weary, rain- soaked Heroes answered their names. (Perhaps they recognized, then, the wisdom of those unpopular long-distance marches.) Everyone was present except a warrior who had tumbled in a ravine and broken a leg; and some idiot lost in the dark.

  'Right. Form single file. Follow close!'

  I tracked Atreus a step in rear. For a hundred paces or so the slope was fairly gentle; then the steeps began. I crawled round enormous jagged crags, scrambled over smaller boulders, slip­ped on screes the winter torrents gouged. Thorn scrub whipped from the dark and clawed my face and legs. For most of the way, shield slung aback, I crept on hands and knees. The climb seemed endless; every sinew ached and my chest heaved like a bellows. I heard during lulls in the wind-blast the scrape of feet and painful gasps from the men who clambered behind me.

  Atreus, barely visible in front, made no sound at all.

  I bumped his back. He hissed in my ear, 'Stand still!' Like sable curtains draping the dark the walls of Midea reared from the crest. The Marshal felt his way along huge rain-slippery blocks. The man behind me hauled himself up and started to mouth a question. I clapped a hand on his teeth.

  Atreus returned, a spectre black in the darkness. 'I've found the postern. Come on!' Like beads on a jerkily moving string the file traversed the base of the wall. I kept my fingers touch­ing the Marshal's back. A small dark cavern opened in the glimmer of the stones; he stooped and disappeared. A narrow tunnel twenty steps long pierced Midea's massive wall; a rock roof brushed my helmet, elbows scraped hewn rock. Atreus rasped his sword from the scabbard. I drew my own.

  I shuffled from the tunnel. This was the moment of greatest peril. Wriggling through the postern's shaft like a worm that a bird has mauled, half in and half outside, we faced the chance of discovery by watchers on the walls. Atreus guided his men into place directly each emerged. With backs to the rampart's inner face we stood in a slender alley between the wall and a row of houses. Not a light showed anywhere. Serrated rooftops leaned against a grey tempestuous sky. Ragged racing clouds, faint as flying phantoms, sped across a heaven like tarnished lead.

  Dawn was not far off.

  The Marshal faced his forlorn hope. With a parade ground snap he said, 'You know what you have to do. Go!'

  Feet gritted on the steps which climbed to the battlements. I glimpsed the sheen of helmeted shapes running the rampart walk. A compact block of twenty Heroes followed Atreus. We twisted and turned in canyoned streets and climbed to the citadel's summit. A flight of broad stone steps, a flagstoned court and a figure which jumped from the shadows. A shout that choked on a squeal as Atreus' sword went home. A spear rattled on the flags and almost tripped me up. We crashed into the portico. Men sleeping behind the pillars struggled from their cots and died before their feet could touch the ground. There were more inside the vestibule and Hall - and women too - spearmen of the guard, guests who slept where the wine had felled them, slaves and serving-maids. In tumultuous semi-darkness we killed anything that moved The first person I slew in my life was a woman: my blade slid smoothly into her belly and slipped as smoothly out. She yelped and fell at my feet.

  I faced a shadowy form and caught the gleam of armour, a spearpoint raised for the thrust. The guard commander, I later discovered; a conscientious Hero who slept in all his panoply but had forgotten to find his shield. I lifted mine and lunged full stretch. The sword point gouged his eyeball and pierced the back of his skull. He crashed to the floor, his armour clanged on the paving. I set a foot on his throat and tugged the blade free.

  That ended all resistance in the Hall. Atreus bounded through an inner doorway, kicking ahead a wretched cowering slave. 'Where is Amphiaraus? Take me to the king!' The tumult had aroused the denizens of the palace: frightened figures flitted from doors and ran along the corridors. I jumped ahead of the trotting slave and cleared the way, ruthlessly cut­ting down anyone slow to move. Speechlessly our guide ges­tured to a curtained entrance. Clotted sword in hand, Atreus burst into the room. The naked Lord of Midea sat bolt upright in his bed, eyes starting from his head. A middle-aged woman beside him opened her mouth and screamed.

  Atreus wiped his blade on a wolfskin coverlet adorning the bed. 'Well, Amphiaraus,' he said pleasantly, 'I have taken your city. Shall I kill you
, or do you yield yourself my prisoner?'

  A half-dozen panting warriors bustled into the room, saw the situation under control and hurtled out. Shouts and the clash of blade on blade echoed from the corridors where the raiders quenched the flickers of a rapidly failing resistance: gummy- eyed palace Heroes who snatched the nearest weapons and tried to fight the terrors that sprang from the night.

  Amphiaraus resignedly spread his hands. 'I am at your mercy.' Atreus said in an undertone, 'Agamemnon, go swiftly to the ramparts. If we've taken the gate tower find wood and fire a beacon. Run!'

  Dawn light paled a sullen sky; pandemonium thrashed in the streets; terrified citizens scurried like ants in a nest which a boar has rooted. I mounted to the ramparts, ran along the walk, skipped over bodies and reached the tower. Familiar faces peered from the top. I climbed the ladder quick as a squirrel and repeated Atreus' order. They hacked the guard­room furniture and built a fire. Flames leaped redly in day­break dusk.

  On the peak of a distant mountain a light like a lambent star answered the beacon's signal.

  I struggled through tumultuous streets to the palace. Atreus had mustered his Heroes in the Hall. Four had died in the fighting. With Amphiaraus and one of his sons found hiding in a store room we formed a wedge, forced through seething mobs and gained the gate tower. A little band of Midea's Heroes, rallying from the shock, gathered in an alley and pre­pared to rush the ramparts. Atreus put his swordpoint to the small of his prisoner's back, forced him to the edge of the walk and shouted in his ear. Amphiaraus lifted his arms and spoke with the feverish passion of a man on the verge of death. His gallant followers lowered their spears and retreated into the houses.

  The Marshal leaned arms on the parapet and gazed across the mist-hung plain surrounding Midea's mount. A noise like a tumbled hive buzzed from the town far below; a column of spearmen crawled up the zigzag track. 'They haven't a hope,' he said. 'No one can take Midea by storm. All we do now is await reinforcements.'

  At midday a watery sun gleamed on the trappings of chariots, on twenty-score spears and brazen mail crowding the road from Mycenae. King Eurystheus led his Host through the gates his Marshal opened.

  * * *

  The Warden of Asine, pressed by his captive Lord, looked at the force Eurystheus brought and prudently surrendered. Within the space of a day a rich and fertile territory fell into Mycenae's hands. Because there had been no sack of either town, and consequently no looting, the king ordered confisca­tions and awarded every Hero who survived the night attack two female slaves apiece, a talent of bronze and fifteen head of cattle.

  Atreus received a dozen farms, and immediately gave me half. 'You've killed your man and won your greaves, and a Hero must have a demesne. You'll be an absentee landlord, I fear: no question of your rusticating on a Midean manor away from the hub of affairs. As the Marshal's heir Mycenae's the place for you until you're old enough to warrant an important post in government. I'll have to see about that.'

  Atreus flayed alive the spearman he bribed to open the pos­tern, and nailed his skin to the wall above the gate. 'A warning to traitors. Treachery is a terrible crime. Unless we make it expensive,' the Marshal asserted gravely, 'nobody can feel safe.'

  Eurystheus ceremonially bestowed on me a pair of silver- limned greaves. Immersed in the blissful euphoria of joining the Heroes' ranks I shared happily in the glory which aureoled Atreus' reputation. Heroes throughout Achaea discussed the operation, dissected it step by step and wagged their heads admiringly. A night attack - unprecedented! May be something in it after all!

  Thus emboldened King Augeas of Elis hurled his Host in the dark at a stronghold in Arcadia - and was bloodily repulsed. In the slapdash way of Heroes he neglected the rigorous training and meticulous planning - a meal before battle, a soldier suborned, the chain of beacons summoning Eurystheus - which made Atreus' exploit such a shattering success. Augeas' defeat discouraged a repetition: commanders reverted to orthodox habits and fought their battles in daylight.

  I have lingered over this episode for two reasons: it intro­duced me to combat and, more important, invigorated the ex­pansion of Mycenae's power which began when Electryon stormed Corinth sixty years before; continued when King Sthenelus laid Nemea under tribute; and had wilted since in Eurystheus' languid hands. The escalade at Midea helped to found the mighty empire Mycenae rules today.

  It also had another curious aftermath. A quarter-century later, brooding on Scamander's banks, I remembered Atreus' tactic and devised the fall of Troy.

  As a newly-fledged Hero I abandoned my palace quarters near Atreus' and my mother's apartments and started a separate establishment in a commodious house by the northern gate. Supported by revenues from my Midean estates I furnished the rooms luxuriously, buying marble tables inlaid with rosettes of ivory and gold, cedarwood chairs intricately carved, bronze cauldrons and tripods, vases of dark green mottled stone from Laconia, patterned rugs and hangings woven in the town. Tunics and mantles and gaudy robes filled beechwood chests in store rooms, and jars abrim with fragrant oil and mellow vintage wine sentinelled the walls. Clymene was pleased, but not so pleased when I sent to Nauplia for slaves and she found herself sharing favours with a brace of willowy Cretans: good house­maids, handy at the looms and remarkably agile in bed. Cly­mene sulked.

  'Who expects one woman to satisfy a Hero?' I asked her brusquely. 'You run the house and order the servants. Isn't that enough?'

  'Common peasant bitches,' she sniffed. 'I wonder you bear the smell!'

  'It's part of your job to see they wash - and don't be such a snob. When next we sack a city I'll take a royal daughter. That'll put your nose out of joint - your father in Pylos was only a lordling!'

  Clymene feigned humility. 'My breeding is coarser than yours, I know - who can match Pelopian blood ? - but all my arts in love I learned from you.' She smiled demurely. 'Is Agamemnon's pupil less versatile than a couple of Cretan sluts?'

  I laughed, and fondled her breasts; and hastened out to inspect a pair of thoroughbred sorrels a dealer had brought from Euboia. Besides providing myself with horses I had to order armour from the smiths. While tradition governs warriors and war, and accoutrements remain unchanged through many years, in the matter of mail two schools of thought contend. One swears by the ancient fashion - somewhat modified - our ancestors brought from Crete: a leather corselet, helmet and greaves - all of which depend for proper protection on a body-length shield of the waisted or concave kind. (The bards insist that Zeus and his followers fought naked, disdaining even corselet and greaves.) This school - the traditionalists - say a soldier so equipped is quicker and more active than one weighed down in mail.

  Their opponents hold the opposite view: Heroes riding chariots don't jump around like fleas; a warrior wounded is a warrior the less, so protection is of paramount importance. Hence they wear the strongest armour that hammer and bel­lows can forge, virtually impenetrable by any brazen blade. These clanking Heroes deride the conservative school and pride themselves on moving with the times - though the type of mail they favour was introduced, so Atreus said, by a former Lord of Midea far back in Perseus' time.

  The fossilized thinking of military minds was a factor that hindered me later.

  I held no strong opinion either way and followed the example of Atreus, a convinced 'modernist'. The smith forged me backplates and breastplates, chin-high gorget, shoulder- guards and arm-shields and a knee-length skirt descending in triple overlapping flounces. All were solid metal, tried and tested bronze. The leather-workers' guild constructed a close- fitting oxhide casque and sewed upon the outside boars' tusks ranged in rows. Interwoven straps lined the helmet's interior and rested on a skullcap made of felt. A horsehair plume dyed scarlet bannered the crest. I favoured a waisted shield five hides thick, a ten-foot spear and thrusting sword, and brazen greaves fastened at the back by silver wire. The whole outfit cost fif­teen oxen; and until I grew accustomed I waddled beneath the burden like a pregnant woman eight
moons gone.

  Though Eurystheus did not evict the men who held the Midean manors, their tributes flowed to Mycenae; Atreus be­came a richer man and the king extremely wealthy. Over­ruling his Marshal, who advised for dynastic reasons that the man was better dead, he banished Amphiaraus. He went to live in Argos; it was rumoured he had foretold Midea's fall, and thereafter earned a reputation as a seer. Following a lenient policy - pointless to sack towns and devastate land whence he intended to gather tribute - Eurystheus allowed Amphiaraus' son Alcmaeon to rule Midea in his stead. Everyone was reason­ably happy; and ox-carts from Midea's cornfields swelled My­cenae's granaries.