Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

  Deep night’s descent?

  In this case, yes. Instant death. There was no need for Peneleos to follow it up; the man was no more. But he whipped out his sword and slashed down at the drooping head, hitting at the neck.

  ‘Just making sure!’

  Chopped head and helmet together tumbled in the dust.

  Like a summer poppy fallen to the scythe . . .

  Or like a chopped-off head still wearing its helmet. What else does a chopped head look like? This one still had the spear jammed through the eye and sticking out of the neck. Poppies didn’t come into the picture by any stretch of the imagination. Peneleos held up the spear with its spitted head and jeered.

  ‘See what I’ve cropped? A blackhead! That’s how a Greek can reap, you worthless cunts!’

  He planted his foot on the face, wrenched out the spear and ripped off the helmet. Then he picked up the head by the bloodstained hair and lobbed it high over the lines.

  ‘Have it back! For the family! I’ll keep the armour! And the dogs can dine on what’s left – bollocks and all!’

  The eyeball was still stuck to the spear-point. Peneleos flicked it off. The fight raged on. And once again it was the hour of the Greeks.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Zeus wakes to merry hell. What he sees wipes the love-smile from his lips and the post-coital tenderness from his dewy eyes. The Trojans are fleeing the Greeks like small fry from dolphins, Poseidon pursuing like a killer whale, and Hector stretched out helpless on the ground, gulping up black blood.

  The great god rises in fury and all hell breaks loose on Olympus. Poseidon is called off and Hera threatened with the punishment she fears most: to be dangled cosmic high, with her hands lashed together above her head and anvils hanging from her ankles. She’s suffered it once before and shudders at the thought. So she is brought back at once into line, submitting to the wrath of her lord, and the tide of battle suddenly turns.

  So much for the web.

  Fortunes change in war, that’s for sure, whatever directs them – accident, anger, the blind hammer. All we saw was the sea-change. Literally. The storm that had assisted us died a sudden death, and we couldn’t believe what we were now seeing: fucking Hector not only fully recovered and back in action but marshalling his troops again and looking lethal. As if the gods really had come down to fight on the Trojan side, give Hector the eternal antidote and fuck us all to Hades.

  Our immediate strategy was the only possible one, to mass troops by the ships and put the crack regiment in the vanguard. This worked, and for a time the two front lines never wavered. For a time. Till the blackheads made another huge fucking push and broke our ranks.

  Oh for the Myrmidons!

  A faint fucking hope. We suffered a flurry of casualties and gave ground. We could hear Hector screaming at his men to advance on the ships.

  ‘Any shirkers and I’ll chop your fucking heads off on the spot! Come on girls, get your arses into action and shit all over those ships! Never mind the fucking spears – torches, torches, torches! Charge, you fucking ladies, charge!’

  It was like a tidal wave rolling the wrong way. They surged over us and kicked in the trench, destroying the banks and using the collapsed soil and rubble to fill up the ditch. Then they poured through the breaches, chariots and all, and in no fucking time at all they were at the hulls.

  Ajax and Hector contested the first ship. His men hurled hundreds of torches, flaming with pitch, and many of the bastards found their mark. But a man hurling a torch instead of a spear provides a perfect target, and Ajax took out whole ranks of the fuckers as they threw, his men passing him spears and grabbing the torches wherever they landed, lobbing them backwards onto the wet shining sands and into the surf. Men and torches went out together one after another. Goodbye, bright spark of life! Salutations to the shadows!

  Then Hector ran up close to the ship, risking his life. He hurled at Ajax, a perfect shot. But Ajax swerved and the spear struck his old squire Lycophron in the head just above the ear and drove through the bone, deep into the brain. Lycophron fell soundlessly onto the sounding sands.

  ‘Bastard!’

  Ajax yelled for Teucer to come up and return fire in their time-honoured fashion. He stood by Ajax and aimed at Cleitus, who was busy with the reins of his horses and wasn’t even looking when the arrow plunged into the back of his neck.

  ‘Nice one!’ shouted Teucer.

  ‘A fucking beauty!’

  Ajax clapped him on the back. Cleitus toppled from the chariot, clawing at his throat with both hands.

  Teucer’s next shot was intended for Hector. But the bow-string snapped and the shaft went wide, falling harmlessly to ground. Hector’s time had not yet come.

  Instead, he smelled victory.

  ‘They’ve just lost their prize bow! On them, lads! They’ve fuck-all left now! Let’s finish it!’

  ‘Do you hear that?’ shouted Ajax. ‘He says we’re fucked. And do you know what? He’s right. But do you know something else? That’s what makes it so easy! Don’t you see? We’ve no fucking choice! We’re out of options! It’s save the ships and live, or lose them and die. Unless you plan on swimming back to Argos – and that’s one long haul! So it’s shields and spears now, and keep your arses to the sea! We can do this, lads! We can hold them! We can hold the fucking line!’

  And we did hold it too. And so the stand-off continued, with lopped limbs and chopped heads on either side, spilled brains and strewn bowels and arrows that would never come out again without taking all that mattered with them, and none too soon. Life lingered bitterly, loath to leave. And few died fast on the field.

  You want euphemism? euphony? poetry? sweet lies? Study the web.

  Hector’s eyes flash fire and his mouth foams. You can see the white stuff blown from his beard like the spume from a wave-beaten rock, like the hot froth from the nostrils of the war-horse, charging madly into battle, terror in his eyes. That was Hector – a wave of the sea, a steed in the fray. See the cliff-wall of the Greek army assaulted by the battering-rams of the Trojan breakers, their screaming the sound of the shrieking ocean winds, the voices of the storm. The breakers won’t stop, and neither will the cliff-face give way. Until, at last Hector, insane in his assault, bursts through the line, a lion in the fold, a man on fire from head to foot, his long hair flaming like a mane as he plunges into the herd and the herdsmen scatter and the beasts are terrified.

  That’s vivid, vital, beautiful. Is it enough? If not, there’s more. See the Trojans follow their leader, falling on the Greek lines like the great swollen waves that sweep unstoppably over a ship. They crash across the gunwales, pounding stem and stern. The decks disappear, hull and masts are lost in the welter of water, the wind shrieks in the shrouds and the seamen’s hearts freeze as they hear it yelling in their ears, and they wade up to their armpits now, feeling the cold ocean in their mouths and death in their bowels, and they catch from afar the wailing of women within palace walls and a sore sobbing in Argos.

  We didn’t see it quite like that. But we knew we were facing the end. Only Nestor refused to buy it, old as he was. Old and indomitable. You’d have thought he’d have been the readiest to go. Well, fuck that, he said. His white hair flying, he brandished his spear and gave us the old heroic stuff. For our glorious dead, for our beloved country, for our wives and children.

  ‘Hold the line or you’ll never see them again!’

  Ajax sprang into action. Inspired, he leapt from ship to ship, swinging a gigantic pole, whirling it among the torchmen as they swarmed up the hulls and over the gunwales. He brained the bastards dead by the dozen and they fell back off the ships like fireflies, dropping their torches. Fucking heroic. That was how Ajax snuffed them out. That was the battle of the ships.

  But it was far from over.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Myrmidons were sat on their arses, and Patroclus was still in his tent applying ointment to his hurt friend when his bed-slave shouted to him to come out and
take a look. He left the wounded Eurypylus and stuck his head out.

  ‘Hades in a fucking bucket!’

  He ran to Achilles, who was sleeping off one more session of sweet fuck all. He dragged him from the sack and hauled him outside.

  ‘Go on, rub your fucking eyes – and tell me what you see!’

  Men down everywhere, the best men stretcher cases, the ships about to be fired and the blackheads crawling all over them like fucking ants. Ajax’s last stand was in ruins.

  ‘Achilles, is this enough for you? Are you satisfied now? Or are you so full of malice that you’ll see us all go down, including me? And you!’

  Eyes of green iron. The muddy-blond locks waved in the wind. No, he didn’t fucking relent. Not even then.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with me. It’s that arsehole that’s to blame, as you well know, that so-called leader. I told the bastard, I gave him his chance, he wouldn’t take it. Hell mend him then, the cunt! He’s fucked the entire army, he’s shat on the lot of you, and now they can all wallow in it, his mess of fucking turds!’

  Patroclus looked hard at his friend. Hurt pride and hatred had turned him into what he was now, a cruel, pitiless man. No point in pleading with him then.

  Except perhaps for one brilliant possible solution. A way out.

  ‘Achilles, I understand you, I do. And I fucking love you. And respect you. So I won’t try to change your mind. But here’s what I propose. If you won’t provide backup, then let me do it. Let me do as Nestor suggested and lead the Myrmidons into the field. Let me wear your armour. If I’m taken for you it may just break the Trojan spirit. But in the end all of Greece will know the real truth – that you refused to budge, that you held on to your honour. And I’ll be covered in glory! What do you say?’

  What could he say? It was an exit strategy, just as Patroclus had said. And one of the oldest tricks of the trade, among the stratagems of war. But the oldest tricks work best. And it was definitely an opportunity for Patroclus to prove that he was more than just Achilles’ eternal friend.

  Achilles gave it one second’s thought.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Save the ships if you can. But if you succeed, for fuck’s sake don’t get carried away and run yourself into a trap, all right? Turn the tide and leave it at that. Above all, don’t go chasing after fucking Hector. Don’t mess with that cunt, do you check? Once you’ve got him on the run, turn around and report back here to me. We’ll take it from there. But for now, no unnecessary heroics. Have you got that?’

  Patroclus nodded, little knowing that he’d begged for his own death. And Achilles gave him the armour, not knowing that he was giving him that death.

  A fateful moment then. And a glorious one. And one worthy of a speech. Of quality.

  Achilles delivered it.

  ‘Great god, if only they’d wipe each other out, to the last man, Greeks and Trojans, and you and I would be the only ones left – how contented I’d be then, to pull down Troy’s proud towers, all by ourselves, just the two of us!’

  And then sail happily into the fucking sunset. Yes, the green-eyed golden god of the web gave the speech all right. But Patroclus didn’t hear it. He listened to Achilles’ last instructions and waited for the glorious armour to be strapped on.

  Back at the ships, Ajax was in all kinds of shit. Missiles were pelting him from all angles. They were bouncing off his helmet, making his head ring, and his left arm and shoulder were aching from the constant effort of swinging that monstrous fucking shield of his from left to right and over his head to keep off the terrible iron rain.

  Hector saw that Ajax was exhausted. Braving the friendly fire, he shot out without warning and advanced on him. He hacked at Ajax’s spear just below the socket, slicing the blade clean off. Ajax stared into Hector’s eyes for less than a second and looked at the spear-shaft in his hand. He shot his shield right up in front of him and fell back, unable to take him on. The blackheads cheered and made another surge. They threw in all their torches and fire flamed up from the first ship. The rest of them would be torched in a matter of minutes. The fleet was fucking tinder.

  Achilles and Patroclus heard the cheer, looked across and saw the glare. Patroclus let fall the breastplate with a clang.

  ‘Too late. The ships are ablaze. We’re fucked.’

  Now Achilles acted.

  ‘No, it’s only one ship, look! Arm yourself, as fast as you can! I’ll assemble the men! Move it!’

  Patroclus armed himself to the eyeballs and looked every inch Achilles, formidable in the shimmering bronze, like the sun on the sea in the early morning light. He chose Automedon as charioteer, who yoked for him Achilles’ famous wind-drinking horses, the rapid stallions Xanthus and Balius. They looked legendary in life and scarcely needed the fabulous pedigree – foaled for their sire, the Western Gale, by the storm-wind filly Lightfoot when she was out grazing in the fields by the far-off Ocean Stream. And into the traces went the superlative Pedasus, Bold Dancer, not an immortal horse, but the best of the thoroughbreds, who could easily keep pace with the fabled pair.

  The Myrmidons were eager for action: fighting is better than boredom for the dogs of war. And as there was no time for a load of bullshit, Achilles cut short the harangue.

  ‘Men, I know some of you may think I’m an absolute cunt and that I’ve let you down. But if I am, and if I have, it’s all down to a bigger cunt, and you all know the one I mean. I won’t help him, not now, not ever. But I’m letting Patroclus go in my place, to save the ships if he can, and save the expedition. You take your orders from him. Clear? CFB, boys – it fucking better be! This is what you’ve been waiting for, so go for it, go for fucking glory! Come back on your shields if you have to, but don’t come back without them!’

  To loud cheers he turned and went into his tent, where he poured himself a long drink, a bitter grin twisting his lips as he thought about Agamemnon. He spoke softly into the cup.

  ‘His hour of need. And I never lifted a fucking finger for him. Patroclus will be the one to save the cunt’s miserable skin. Fuck him!’

  Achilles opens the lid of a beautiful inlaid chest, presented to him by his goddess mother, the silver-footed sea-nymph Thetis. Among glittering tunics, thick rugs and cloaks, he keeps a golden goblet untouched by any lips but his and from which he pours out libations to no other god but Zeus. This he fumigates with sulphur, rinses in a rill of fresh water and fills to the brim with the best of the sparkling wine.

  Then he throws up his eyes to the sky, pours out the libation and prays to Zeus, to whom the Pelasgians pray, the lord of wintry Dodona, to crush the helmets of the enemy, to splinter their shields and break their spears, to let Patroclus spill their brains, save the ships and cover himself in glory. And then return unscathed in his armour with not a hair of his head harmed.

  And thunder-loving Zeus hears every word but only half bends his head and shakes his ambrosial locks ever so slightly. It means that he’ll grant only part of the prayer and withhold part. He intends to give the glory to Patroclus in saving the ships – but he denies his safe return. Such is war. Some soldiers go on to glory and never come back to bask in it or to wear the laurels they have earned. Their immortality exists in the listening ears of their proud, broken families and friends. And in their remembering mouths and their brimming eyes. That’s how it is with Patroclus. He will never see Achilles again.

  And now, like wasps that fizz out from a nest sliced in two by tormenting boys, the Myrmidons pour out from behind the ships with a bloodcurdling din, through which the voice of brave Patroclus can be heard, urging them to slaughter. And as soon as the Trojans catch sight of what they take to be Achilles in his armour, leading the flower of the armies of Argos, their hearts sink, the lines weaken and waver and break, and each man, sensing death, glances frantically around for an avenue of escape.

  Leading from the front, as is Achilles’ wont, and imitating the great hero’s war-cry to perfection, Patroclus is the first to throw himself into th
e throng by the burning ship. He hurls his javelin into the seething mass of men and at once strikes dead the Paeonian leader Pyraechmes, who led his men so proudly in their purple-plumed helmets all the way from Amydon and the banks of the ample Axius. He receives the lance in the right breast between the shoulder and the nipple and falls on his back with a crash, clutching at the shaft now cruelly rammed through flesh and jammed behind bone.

  The Paeonians panic when they see their proud captain and their best fighter fall. They disperse like the chaff at threshing time on a warm and windy day when the winnowers and the winnowing wind work together and the husks fly up and apart and are scattered harmlessly upon the early autumnal air. So the proud Paeonians are dispersed and strewn by the threshing Myrmidons, leaving their king and captain humbled in the dust.

  This allows the Greeks to breathe. Patroclus swiftly extinguishes the fire on the half-burned ship and sweeps it clear of Trojans, who begin to fall back at once when they see their allies crumbling.

  Patroclus’s second target is Areilycus. He takes a spear in the thigh, a bone-breaking thrust that cripples him instantly. No time to limp, though, for his life is quickly cut short by the chariot wheels, the charging hooves and the rain of spears.

  Thoas dies at once. Menelaus strikes him over the upper rim of the shield and runs him exactly through the heart – happiest of deaths in the field.

  Amphiclus makes a rush at Meges, his spear aloft, aiming for the head, but Meges ducks low under it and forestalls him with a thrust right on the root of the thigh, where the muscles are bunched thickest and toughest. Meges twists his weapon savagely, tearing apart the sinews, and leaves Amphiclus to share the fate of Areilycus, fast mangled among the plunging hooves and flying wheels. The Greeks are picking off the Trojan leaders.