by Iliffe, Glyn
The rest of the forty Thessalian ships followed in the wake of their leaders, while behind them the lines of Myrmidons, Spartans and Ithacans – four deep already, with more still entering the mouth of the harbour – began to move into the attack. But the Trojans were racing out to meet them. Hundreds of horsemen, the ground thudding beneath the hooves of their mounts, poured forward across the plain, the early morning sunshine glinting on their raised spear-points. They were followed by dozens of chariots, each pulled by a pair of horses and carrying a driver and an archer or spearman in the light cars that bounced behind. Finally, row upon row of infantry and swarms of archers came running after them, a mighty roar of defiance thundering out from their throats to fill the air above the plain.
Protesilaus narrowed his eyes at the approaching army, several thousand strong with every man viciously armed and baying for blood. With a last, hurried prayer to Ares on his lips, he gripped the high prow of his ship and waited for the impact as it hit the beach. He glanced across at his brother, who was still behind him and away to his right, then behind at his men, still heaving at the oars. A moment later the broad belly of the galley thumped into a sandy shelf below the waterline. Everyone on board lurched forward, tumbling over each other as the vessel slid to a halt. With a great shout, Protesilaus leapt overboard and landed knee-deep in the water. Clutching his long spear fiercely in both hands, he waded through the surf towards the beach.
The Trojan army was now screened from his sight by a high bank, where the beach rose up to meet the firmer soil of the plain. The ridge was crowned by a curtain of tall, dry grass that quivered in the breeze from the sea. As Protesilaus cleared the water he took another fleeting look to his right, where Podarces’s galley was now juddering to a halt further along the beach, then over his shoulder to where the different-coloured bows of the Greek galleys were racing towards the shore. His own men were now crowding into the prow of his galley, but instead of leaping into the water their eyes were focused on the plain beyond the grassy ridge. Two or three archers released hurried shots, and then Protesilaus heard the drumming of hooves followed by the snort of a horse. He looked up and saw a man on a grey mare standing on the bank at the top of the beach, a long spear held at the ready in his right hand. He was tall and powerfully built. His stern, bearded face looked down at the Greek warrior with a ferocious hatred.
‘When your ghost reaches the halls of Hades,’ he began, speaking in Greek, ‘tell the dead you are the first of many today, and that you were slain by Hector, son of Priam.’
Protesilaus felt a momentary tremor of fear, then with a rush of energy his courage returned the strength to his limbs. In a quick movement he pulled back his spear and aimed it at the horseman. But before it could leave his hand, Hector’s own weapon caught him in the chest, piercing the breastplate and hurling him backwards with such force that Protesilaus was pinned against the hull of his own ship. A howl of anger erupted from the deck above him, followed by a rush of armoured bodies as the Thessalians leapt down into the surf and ran yelling past their dead leader towards the man who had killed him. In response, Hector drew his sword and spurred his horse down the slope to meet them. He was followed by a great pounding of hooves, and a moment later a wave of horsemen swept over the grassy ridge to plunge into the crowd of Greek spearmen.
From the prow of their ship, Odysseus and Eperitus looked on in silence as the Thessalians fell back before the onslaught. The Trojan horses were up to their hocks in the sea, their riders hacking and slashing at the invaders, lopping heads and limbs from bodies and filling the dark waters with corpses. More Thessalians leapt recklessly into the fray from the sides of their galley. The nearest horsemen were caught and dragged from their mounts, to be stabbed, throttled or drowned in the shallow waters. But the Trojans were winning an easy victory, enjoying the advantage of height, momentum and numbers. Hector was at the heart of the fight, a master of battle who led his men by the example of his own ferocity and courage.
The slaughter of the Thessalians was terrible to watch. The water churned all around them from the thrashing of the wounded and dying, and the breakers were scarlet with their blood. Further along the beach Podarces and his men were also hemmed in by cavalry, but a screen of archers firing from the prow of his ship forced the Trojans back and allowed him to form his spearmen into a line. Soon they were pushing along the beach towards his brother’s galley, driving the enemy horsemen before them.
‘Ready your shields and spears!’ Eperitus ordered, looking back at the rows of soldiers. Like the Thessalians, they were mostly inexperienced and poorly armed. Fear was written clearly on many of their faces, though some seemed eager for their first battle. Others were relaxed and calm, and Polites was one of these. Towering head and shoulders above Arceisius, he chatted happily to the young squire while adjusting the fit of his armour, as if he were preparing for nothing more dangerous than a training exercise. Though the Thessalian had once been an unwelcome bandit in their homeland, the Ithacans around him drew comfort from his massive presence and confident mien.
It pleased Eperitus to see his men and he knew his faith in them was warranted. The long days of training he and Odysseus had given them at Aulis would help them to survive, and in time their experience and fighting instinct would develop. More than that, they were drawn from doughty stock, peace-loving islanders who were slow to anger, but when roused were tough, courageous and fearsome. And though not one of them had experienced warfare on such a scale before, Eperitus was sure that under Odysseus’s leadership they would prove themselves more than a match for the Trojans.
Thessalian ships were thumping into the sand at every point now. Eperitus watched in tense excitement as hundreds of yelling warriors spewed onto the beach, enraged at the death of their leader and seeking vengeance in Trojan blood. But Hector was a skilled cavalry commander. Knowing his lightly armoured horsemen were wasted in a standing fight, he was already leading them back across the plain to safety. But there was another purpose to the practised disorder of their flight, and to Eperitus’s dismay many of the Greeks were taking the bait.
They were led by Podarces, who by then had found his older brother’s body still pinned to the hull of his ship. With tears of grief and rage in his eyes, he led his men through the screen of tall grass to the plain beyond, only to see the cavalry already streaming to safety behind a long wall of Trojan spearmen. Undeterred, the Thessalians now charged towards the disciplined line of tall, rectangular shields hedged with heavy spears. The immediate danger did not come from the infantry, though, but the densely packed archers who stood behind them. At an order from Hector, they let fly their arrows and the Thessalian ranks fell like stalks of wheat before a scythe. They wavered for a moment, then rushed forward again, only to be met by another hail of missiles. This time the survivors, Podarces among them, turned and fled back to the cover of the sloping beach. Not one man had reached the Trojan line.
By this time the first waves of Spartans, Myrmidons and Ithacans were hitting the shoreline, beaching their ships all along the great crescent of sand between the mouths of the Simo¨eis and the Scamander. Eperitus felt a heavy thud beneath the belly of the ship and an instant later the whole mass of wood, leather and canvas came to a halt. Within a moment he had leapt down into the surf, close behind Odysseus, and was splashing up the sloping beach. The rest of the crew followed, pouring over the sides of the galley and shouting like Furies, drunk on fear and courage. All around them masses of other Greeks were surging ashore to join the battered Thessalians, who were already reforming for a second attack.
Out in the bay, flames were blazing up from the Trojan galleys where reckless Greeks had tossed lighted torches over the sides as they passed. Now great plumes of black smoke were carried inland on the sea breeze, darkening the air over the beach and the plains beyond. Then there was a great hum of massed bowstrings released simultaneously, followed by the evil hiss of arrows as they filled the sky. Men looked up in fear, watching as t
he black shafts seemed to hang suspended for a long moment, before plunging down again towards the crowded shore and the galleys behind. Eperitus and Odysseus threw themselves on the sand with their shields above their heads as the deadly hail of bronze-tipped missiles fell. Many clattered on the wooden decks of the Greek ships or snagged in the sails; others hit the water or thumped into the raised leather shields of crouching soldiers. And many found their mark. Men cried out as arrows bit into flesh, toppling dead and wounded alike onto the sand or back into the waiting water. More men tumbled from the decks of the ships, clutching at the long, feathered shafts protruding from torsos and limbs.
‘Keep your shields raised, damn it,’ Odysseus shouted at his countrymen, as more arrows rose into the smoke-filled sky and fell again. More screams of pain rang out and more men fell.
Then one voice rose above all the others. It was a great bellowing shout of rage, a sound that filled even Eperitus with sudden fear. And then, bursting out from the Myrmidon ranks like a raging lion, he saw Achilles. He wore a black-plumed helmet with a bronze visor crafted to look like the face of the war god, its mouth open in a war cry and its eyes frowning in anger. He bore his tall shield before him and in his right hand he carried his fabled ash spear, but no weight of arms could slow the speed of his wrath or his lust for battle. Before his Myrmidons or any of the other Greeks could think to follow, he had sprinted up the beach and leapt through the screen of grass to the plain above. Startled and exhilarated by the ferocity and pace of Achilles’s attack – and desperate to see him in battle – Eperitus forgot the danger of the Trojan archers and raced towards the protective bank. It seemed every other man in the Greek army had the same thought, and the roar of their voices as they charged up the beach was deafening.
Eperitus felt a new surge of energy as he dashed across the sand. Odysseus was at his side – his usually mild features now fearsome to look at – and together they plunged through the tall grass to the plain beyond. Ahead of them, looming like a great cliff in the distance, were the walls and towers of their goal – the city of Troy. In between were the lines of Hector’s infantry, their spear-points bristling as they awaited the heavily armoured Greeks. A great press of archers were behind them, preparing to release a new volley of arrows – this time directly at the front rank of the invaders – while the cavalry had split into two groups and were moving to protect the flanks. Hector sat astride his grey mare behind the rows of waiting spearmen, his burnished armour flashing in the sunlight and his sword raised high above his head. As he saw the mass of Greeks rush out from the cover of the beach, with the lone figure of Achilles sprinting ahead of them, his stern face broke into a satisfied grin. A moment later his sword fell and a thousand arrows carried death to the enemies of Troy.
Eperitus was running with his heavy shield held one-handed before him. Arrows thumped into the thick, four-fold leather; all about him soldiers screamed and crashed to the ground, to be trampled by the men behind. He glimpsed Achilles through the black smoke that rolled across the plain, swatting aside the storm of missiles with a sweep of his shield as if they were nothing more than a cloud of flies. But many more followed, and to Eperitus’s amazement the black shafts broke or sprang away from the prince as if they had hit a pillar of stone. Laughing with the joy of battle and the certainty of his own invulnerability, Achilles charged straight into the Trojan line, to be lost from sight as his enemies closed about him.
The rest of the Greeks followed, hurling their spears before them and bringing many of the Trojans down into the dust. The gaps were closed quickly, though, and as the Greeks drew their swords and renewed the attack – desperate to come to grips with their enemies – Hector boomed out another order. More arrows flew into the press of Greeks, as on their flanks the Trojan horsemen couched their spears under their arms and broke into a charge. At the same time, the infantry ran forward to meet the invaders, their meticulously sharpened spears glinting like points of fire through the clouds of dust.
Many of the Greeks were skewered by the onslaught and carried back into the ranks of their comrades. More fell to the arrows that swept down on them like an unceasing rain, and at the edges of the battle the Trojan cavalry were cutting deep swathes through their disorganized enemy. But if Hector’s force was disciplined, experienced and well led, their numbers were too few to drive the Greek assault back into the sea. Within moments, the shock of their attack had been absorbed by the mass of men still pouring off the ships and up the beaches. Many of the Trojan horsemen had plunged too deeply into the horde of invaders and now found themselves surrounded and cut off from their comrades, where they were killed with spears or pulled from their mounts and butchered. Elsewhere, Podarces had organized a large company of Greek archers who were returning the fire of their Trojan counterparts, killing many and breaking up the effectiveness of their volleys. And where the Trojan spearmen had at first carried their enemies before them, they were now disadvantaged by the length of their weapons against the shorter swords of the Greeks. For all the cleverness and ferocity of Hector’s tactics, the momentum of his attack was being neutralized by the sheer weight of his enemy’s numbers.
Chapter Thirty-two
THE GATES OF TROY
Eperitus and Odysseus had met the assault together, turning aside the Trojan spears with their shields and bringing their swords to bear in the confined press of sweating, heaving bodies. Side by side, they could see fear in the dark faces of their opponents as they struck them down, hacking and slashing indiscriminately with an energy born from the desperate will to survive and the heart-thumping joy of bringing death and destruction. As warrior after warrior fell to his sword, Eperitus felt as if – like Achilles and Ajax – no weapon could harm him. Though soaked in the gore of his victims, he shouted with the elation of battle, baying for more blood as he stood on a knife’s edge, balanced between death and Hades on the one side and Olympian glory on the other.
At Eperitus’s side, Odysseus was also a man transformed. The lust of war had consumed him and with his normally pleasant face now a red mask, he looked more like a savage beast than a man. The experienced, hard-fighting Trojans were unable to withstand the ferocity of his attacks, and many of their number lay dead around the Ithacan king. Beside him was Antiphus, who was proving himself to be as deadly with a sword as he was with a bow, while – to Eperitus’s satisfaction – Arceisius was also in the thick of the fighting, using the skills his captain had taught him with the ability and temerity of a hardened veteran.
The Ithacans were killing and being killed in large numbers, littering the ground with bodies – both Trojan and their own – so that it was almost impossible to move. Those who had an instinct for fighting were realizing the power that a sword or a spear gave to them and revelling in the slaughter of their opponents; those who did not were being killed by the true warriors in the Trojan ranks. On both sides there were men who turned and tried to flee the horror of combat, though few found a passage through the solid mass of men behind them and were quickly brought down by a sword or spear through their unprotected backs. But where Odysseus and Eperitus fought, the Trojan spearmen were laid out in heaps and the line was thinning dangerously. Suddenly the last few soldiers turned and fled, leaving the two Ithacans facing the open plain with only a handful of mounted officers between them and the walls of Troy.
Seeing the danger, three horsemen urged their mounts straight at the gap in the line. At their head was a tall man with a long spear couched under one of his muscular arms. He had cruel eyes and his mouth was drawn back in a hateful sneer that revealed his broken yellow teeth. The two others were on either side of him, yelling furiously with their swords held high above their heads.
Odysseus and Eperitus raised their shields against the attack, but without their spears they knew their defence would be shortlived. Determined to save his king, Eperitus stepped forward to take the full force of the charge, but as the black stallion of the lead rider approached – the heavy fall of its
hooves shaking the ground beneath his feet – a gigantic figure lumbered past him, running straight at the charging horse. The stallion panicked and tried to turn away, but Polites threw his great arms about its neck and pushed it into the flank of the horse to its right. Both fell, pinning their surprised riders beneath them and sending up a cloud of dust from the sun-baked earth.
The other horseman, who had veered aside as Polites ran out, now tugged at the reins of his white mare and spurred it back towards the huge Greek soldier who had felled his comrades. Polites heard the beat of hooves behind him and turned as the Trojan’s sword swept down towards his face. With a reaction that belied his size, he threw up his arm and caught the rider’s wrist, pulling him from the back of his horse as it galloped past and throwing him to the ground, where he stepped on his neck and broke it.
A moment later, Hector’s booming voice called out and suddenly the surviving Trojans were pulling back.
‘We owe you our lives,’ Odysseus said, as he and Eperitus reached Polites’s side.
‘I have simply repaid you for sparing me on Samos,’ Polites replied, before turning to watch the retreating Trojans.
Heedless of the archers who were covering their retreat, the three men looked on in admiration as the spearmen reformed into ordered ranks and began to withdraw across the plain. With equal discipline, the surviving cavalry were now hovering at each flank, threatening to swoop down on any pursuit. Then, as they watched their opponents marching at a steady pace back to the Scaean Gate, the Greeks let out a triumphant cheer.
‘Silence!’ Odysseus ordered, his deep voice clearly audible over the shouting. ‘You can celebrate when the battle is over. Ithacans, form ranks on me. Badly wounded to return to the ships as best you can.’
