[Troy 03] - Fall of Kings

by David

  Andromache remained silent. The king coughed painfully and went on, his voice harsh. “I declare Aeneas to be an enemy of Troy. He will be executed when he returns to the city. Do you hear me, Polites?”

  “Yes, Father.” Polites caught Andromache’s eye and shook his head slightly. “You are tired now, Father. You must rest.”

  Priam ignored him. “You are not wearing the gown I gave you,” he said to Andromache.

  “My lord?” She looked down at the scarlet dress.

  “The gold-embroidered gown with the dolphin shawl. You said you would wear it today.” The old man leaned forward again and stared at her, frowning. Then he reached out a clawlike hand and dragged her to him. He was still a powerful man, and Andromache felt his sour breath on her cheek, hot and feverish. His grip on her arm was like a vise.

  “Who are you?” he rasped. “You are not my Hekabe. Are you one of the ghosts? I tell you again, you do not frighten me!”

  She said calmly, “I am Andromache, wife to Hektor.”

  “Where is Hekabe?” He released her, pushing her away, and looked around him. “She said she would wear the golden gown.”

  Polydoros stepped forward and offered the old man a drink from a goblet of gold, and Polites moved alongside Andromache. “You can go now,” he said quietly. “I know his moods. He is living in his past, and he does not know you.”

  “Hektor said the king could no longer be trusted. He did not explain further,” Andromache said as they walked from the megaron out into the fresh air.

  Polites told her of the regiments’ retreat from the Scamander and the burning of the bridges, and she listened in horror.

  “But if his Eagles still obey him,” she responded, “Helikaon will be killed when he returns to Troy.”

  Polites smiled sadly. “Father no longer has any Eagles at his command.”

  “But the Eagles in the megaron…” Her voice trailed off as the realization struck her. “I see. They are not Eagles.”

  “No, they are all Hektor’s men, handpicked by him to guard the king. If you looked closely, one of them is Areoan, Hektor’s shield bearer and one of his most loyal friends. They do not do Priam’s bidding. Any order he gives they bring to me.”

  “Then you are truly king in Troy, Polites.”

  He nodded ruefully. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  “Then Hektor should not have left,” she said sharply. “I am sorry, Brother, but you are not a military man.”

  “I told him that myself. Come, let us walk.”

  They wandered into the gardens, where Andromache could see the two little boys playing, watched by their bodyguards. She longed to run to Astyanax and take him in her arms, but instead she paced slowly beside Polites as he talked.

  “People say Priam had fifty sons, you know,” he told her. “But much that’s said about the king is nonsense. Many think my own sons were sired by him. It is something of a joke in the city. But it is not true. My wife, Suso, lived away from Troy for most of our marriage because she feared the king’s advances. She died in the winter. Did you know that?” Andromache shook her head, struck dumb with compassion for a woman she never had known. “It was a coughing fever,” Polites explained flatly, as if talking about the weather. “But our two boys are safe. I sent them far from the city over a year ago. No one knows where they are but me. They were the heirs to Troy before your Astyanax was born, but they will never know that. Even the good merchant and his wife who are raising them as their own don’t know who they are.”

  Polites paused. “But I am straying from my point, Sister. You see, Priam had many sons, but he has been profligate with them. I know for certain he had five murdered, probably more. And now he has lost Dios and my good friend Antiphones and Paris, too. And Hektor, the best of us, is not here. So the only son he has left is poor Polites, who is, as you say, not a military man.”

  Andromache started to speak, but he held his hand up. “Hektor believes the walls cannot be taken, and I think he is right. So there is nothing to do for those of us behind them but to guard and ration the food and water and ensure the Scaean Gate is not opened by treachery.”

  “But if somehow they do break in and you fall, Polites, who will then order the defense of the city?”

  “If I fall, Andromache, its generals will defend the city.”

  At that moment there was shouting from the portico, and an Eagle came running through the open bronze gates and into the courtyard gardens. “The Mykene are attacking the walls, lord! They have hundreds of ladders.”

  Polites’ expression darkened. “Where?” he demanded.

  “The east and west walls, my lord.”

  “Who commands the walls today?”

  “Banokles’ Scamandrians have the west, Lucan the east.”

  “Then I will go to the west wall. Soldier, go and fetch my armor.” Polites glanced at Andromache. “A prince must be seen in his armor,” he explained shyly.

  He turned to go and almost collided with a redheaded man making his way toward the palace. Andromache recognized Khalkeus the bronzesmith. The old smith was covered with dust, and he looked exhausted, as if he had worked all night.

  “I must see the king,” Khalkeus told him curtly.

  “You cannot see the king now,” Polites answered.

  “Then I wish to see you, Prince Polites,” Khalkeus said, folding his arms and planting himself in the prince’s path. “It is very important. I must have more resources. My work is vital.”

  “Another time, Khalkeus. The walls are under attack.”

  Khalkeus raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Under attack? With ladders?” Polites nodded and pushed past him. “Interesting!” the smith said. “I will come with you.”

  Andromache watched them hurry off: Polites with his long white robes flapping around skinny legs, stocky Khalkeus trotting along behind him. Her heart full of dread, she turned and walked back to the two boys playing in the sunlit gardens.

  Khalkeus followed in the footsteps of the king’s son as he made his way through the city, flanked by a troop of Eagles. He had forgotten completely his concerns about the forge, his interest piqued by this new turn of events. He long since had dismissed the possibility of the enemy attacking with ladders. The great walls were too high, and the slant of the lowest section meant that the ladders would have to be unusually long, which would make them heavy to maneuver and extremely unstable.

  The scene on the west wall was one of calm control. The battlements were defended strongly by the Scamandrian regiment. At only one point had the enemy managed to climb to the top. Khalkeus watched the obnoxious Mykene renegade Banokles and his men kill them, strip their armor, then throw the bodies back over the wall.

  He peered cautiously over the wall at the scene below. More than fifty ladders had been thrown up against the stones. They were all just short of the battlements, and once the enemy troops had started climbing them, their weight made the tops of the ladders hard to dislodge. Nevertheless, the Trojan soldiers were doing an efficient job, leaning over, hooking the ends of ladder poles to the top rungs, and then pushing them away and down, sending enemy warriors crashing back among their fellows, breaking arms, legs, and heads.

  “Slide the ladders!” Polites yelled, seeing what was happening. “Wait until they have plenty of men on them, then slide them sideways. Then they’ll take others down with them.”

  Arrows flew over the battlements, targeting the soldiers who were trying to dislodge the ladders, and Polites hurriedly donned his breastplate and helm when they were brought to him. Khalkeus looked around him, wrenched a helmet from a dead Trojan soldier, and hastily put it on. It smelled of blood and sweat.

  A troop of Phrygian archers came running up the stone steps, prepared to target the bowmen on the ground. But tall Kalliades, the general’s aide, stopped them with a shout. “Don’t shoot! They are too far away for accuracy. Let them keep shooting at us. We may need their arrows later.”

  Kalliades glanced at Polites
, who nodded his agreement. “Yes, we need their arrows. And we need other missiles. They are an open target, all those enemy soldiers milling down below us.”

  Banokles strolled up to them, wiping blood off one of his swords on a piece of cloth. “That was fun,” he commented.

  He leaned over the battlements, then jumped back as an arrow glanced off his helm. “Boiling oil, that’s what we need,” he said, echoing Polites’ words. “Or water. That’ll give them something to think about.”

  “There is little oil and no spare water in the city,” Polites answered. “We cannot use the water we might need to drink come the end of summer.” The men looked at each other, all no doubt thinking the same thing: Will we still be here come summer’s end?

  Khalkeus stepped forward. “Sand,” he said. The three men looked at him. “Sand is what we need. Ordinary sand from the beach. Plenty of it. Is there any inside the city?”

  Polites frowned. “Sand is used in the royal gardens. There are piles of it there. It is mixed with soil for plants which need drainage.” He saw Kalliades’ and Banokles’ expressions of surprise and smiled slightly. “As has been said already today, I am not a military man. But I do know about plants.”

  He turned to Khalkeus. “You can have all you want, smith, but what do you want it for?”

  At that moment a powerful Mykene warrior levered himself over the wall beside them. As he cleared the battlements, Kalliades leaped toward him and skewered his heart with a sword thrust. The man slumped across the wall, his sword clattering to the stone floor. Kalliades and Banokles grabbed an arm each and threw him back over. Khalkeus peered down and saw the warrior’s leg catch on the ladder he had climbed and bring it down, along with four men climbing behind him.

  “They’re just wasting their men,” Banokles snorted. “We can go on doing this all day. It makes no sense.”

  “You’re right,” Polites replied, his face creased with worry. “It makes no sense. Agamemnon is an intelligent man.” He looked to Kalliades, his face suddenly clearing. “It is a diversion!”

  Kalliades ran for the steps. “If they attack the east and west walls, they will expect us to pull our troops away from the south!”

  “The Scaean Gate!” Polites shouted, following him. To Banokles he yelled, “Bring some men!”

  Instead of pursuing them down the stone steps, Khalkeus trotted hurriedly along the top of the western wall, then along the south wall as far as the Great Tower of Ilion. Below him, behind the Scaean Gate, there was a furious battle going on. The guards, defending the gate desperately against a group of dark-garbed warriors, were being forced back. As he watched, the last of the guards was brought down and the attackers sprang for the great oak locking bar. It took six men to lift the bar, Khalkeus knew, but there were eight men, and they had just laid their hands on it when Kalliades and Banokles arrived at a run.

  Banokles charged into them with a roar, half beheading one and slashing a second across the face. The locking bar had cleared its support at one end. There was a tremendous crash from outside, and the gate shifted inward slightly under the blow. Kalliades leaped onto the end of the bar and threw his weight on it, helped by soldiers who had arrived behind him. The huge oak bar locked back into place just as a second blow hit it from the outside.

  On the wall above them, Khalkeus hurried to the other side and looked down. Outside the gate the massive trunk of an oak tree was being wielded as a battering ram by fifty or more men. Behind them warriors waited, armed and armored. The battering ram powered forward once again, but the great gate barely shuddered. It was firmly locked.

  As the bronzesmith watched, one of the waiting warriors turned his gaze up toward him, and Khalkeus saw it was the king of Ithaka. Their eyes locked, and Khalkeus slowly shook his head. Odysseus sheathed his sword, then turned and walked away from the gate.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  KINGS AT WAR

  Odysseus tore off his helm angrily as he stomped through the streets of the ruined lower town. Just as he had predicted, the Trojans had seen through the ploy quickly. Agamemnon’s diversionary tactic had not been a bad idea, he admitted to himself. If it had worked, it might have been worth sacrificing the hundreds of men injured and killed in the attack on the walls. But it had not worked, and they had wasted brave soldiers and, more important, lost eight agents inside the city. Those of the eight who survived would be interrogated, but they knew nothing that would help the Trojans. The Ithakan king had no idea how many agents Agamemnon had infiltrated into the city, but he was certain there would be no more now. Hektor or whoever commanded in Troy certainly would seal the last gates now to stop more refugees—and Mykene spies—from getting in.

  Odysseus always had predicted that sooner or later there would be a bid by the attackers to scale the great walls. He thought back to two nights previously. He and some of his crew from the Bloodhawk were camped in the courtyard of a palace once owned by Antiphones, now the home of Achilles’ Myrmidons. There had been no fighting that day, but fresh deliveries of wine had arrived, and the mood was festive.

  Achilles’ shield bearer Patroklos, standing with a goblet of wine in one hand and a hunk of roasted sheep in the other, was arguing for an attempt on the walls.

  “Look at them,” Patroklos argued, swaying a little as he spoke, waving his goblet toward the south walls. “A child could climb them. Plenty of handholds between the stones.” He swigged wine and swallowed.

  “We wait for a dark night; then the Myrmidons will be over the west wall before the Trojans see us coming. Fight our way to the Scaean Gate, and the city is ours. What do you say, Odysseus?”

  “I say my climbing days are over, boy. And the west wall is a poor choice. Because everyone knows it is the lowest, the weak link in the chain of walls, it is more heavily defended than the others.”

  “Which would be your choice, Odysseus?” asked Achilles, who was lying on his back, staring at the stars.

  “I would try the north wall.”

  Patroklos snorted with derision. “A vertical cliff face with sheer walls above? I wager no one could climb that.”

  “I wager,” Odysseus replied, “that you couldn’t climb the west wall.”

  Patroklos never could resist a wager, as the Ugly King knew well. He and Odysseus and Achilles, followed by a happy wine-soaked band of Myrmidons and Ithakans, left the palace and made their way around to the west wall. Framed by the starlit sky, the walls soared high above them.

  “What will you wager, old king?” Patroklos asked.

  “Five of my ships against Achilles’ breastplate.”

  Achilles raised his eyebrows. “Why my breastplate?” he queried.

  “Because it is well known that Patroklos has not a copper ring to his name and always reneges on his wagers. You, on the other hand, are a man of honor and will pay your friend’s debts, as you always do.”

  Patroklos grinned, uncaring, and Achilles shrugged. “So be it,” he said. “What if Patroklos climbs the wall and is killed when he reaches the top?”

  “Then the wager stands and you win five Ithakan ships.”

  The young warrior tied his braided blond hair back at his neck, kicked off his sandals, and ran at the wall, leaping lightly onto the first high stone. Then, finding easy hand-and footholds, he swiftly climbed to the point where the wall became vertical. There he paused, looking up. He found a handhold to his right and, stretching, just managed to catch the tips of his fingers to it. He moved his feet up carefully one at a time, then looked for a new handhold to the left. There wasn’t one. The top of the huge stone he was clinging to was far above his searching hand.

  Seeing his predicament, the Ithakans began jeering, but Odysseus hushed them. He glanced at the top of the wall. He could not see sentries in the darkness but knew they were there.

  Patroklos carefully moved his right foot up to a narrow crack in the stone. He wriggled his bare toes as far as he could into the poor foothold. He glanced up again to check where he was
going. Then, taking a deep breath, he leaped for the top of the stone. He just made it, clinging with his fingertips. His right foot slipped, but he managed to get his right hand to the top of the stone and held on, scrabbling for a foothold.

  But the sound had alerted the sentries. Odysseus saw a soldier peer over the battlements high above and pull back quickly, shouting to his fellows. An archer leaned over with his bow, an arrow to the string. Patroklos was an easy target.

  Then, from his right, Odysseus saw a flash of movement. In a heartbeat Achilles had drawn a dagger and thrown it at the bowman high above them. Odysseus saw it flash through the air, turning over and over in the moonlight, and thunk into the dark shape of the bowman’s head. It was an impossible feat: so small a target, at such a height, and in starlight.

  Achilles dashed forward. “Get down, Patroklos, now!”

  His shield bearer quickly climbed down the wall, jumping down the last section, and the two ran back to the Myrmidons who were covering their retreat, shooting arrows up at the gathering Trojan bowmen. Patroklos was laughing when they reached the waiting Odysseus.

  “Well, old king,” he said. “What of our wager now?”

  “You did not reach the top of the wall.”

  “I was stopped by enemy action.”

  “Enemy action was not taken into account. It was a flawed wager.”

  Patroklos shrugged amiably, and they all returned to the palace. But word had reached Agamemnon of the young warrior’s climb, and the next day the Battle King had come up with the doomed plan to scale the walls and take the Scaean Gate.

  Odysseus smiled to himself as he walked back through the sunlit town two days later. He liked Patroklos. Everyone did. He was always cheerful, often playing the fool to amuse his king, and he was as brave as a lion. Strange, Odysseus thought, that the fact that Patroklos clearly liked Achilles made the Thessalian king, often brooding and uncommunicative, more well liked among his troops.