by David
As the huge pyre blazed, Kalliades saw King Priam being helped out onto the balcony of the palace to watch. He was too far away to see the old man’s face, but Kalliades felt a stab of pity for him. Hektor had been the king’s favorite son, and, Kalliades believed, Priam loved him as much as he was capable of loving anyone. Now all his sons were dead except Polites. Priam had the boy Astyanax close by his side on the balcony. The child had cried out in excitement and clapped his hands as the crackling flames had climbed high into the night sky.
After the funeral rites, back on the walls the familiar lethargy had returned. The duel and the death of Hektor had angered the men, and the coming of rain had refreshed them. For two days they had walked with pride. Like Hektor, they were warriors of Troy and would fight to the last for the city. But quickly the lack of food and the long uneventful days had taken their toll, and they had lapsed into idleness and boredom again.
Kalliades was watching a dust cloud in the far distance. The dry earth had sucked all the rain into it, and the ground was as dusty now as it had been before the storm.
Boros the Rhodian was standing alongside Kalliades and Banokles. “Can you see what that is?” Kalliades asked the flaxen-haired lad. “Your eyes are younger than mine.”
“I’m not sure, sir,” the soldier admitted. “Is it a cow?”
Banokles looked at him in amazement. “Is what a cow, you moron?” he asked.
“Over there.” The young soldier was pointing toward the tomb of Ilos, where a stray bullock, destined for sacrifice, was chewing grass.
“I meant in the distance beyond the Scamander,” Kalliades said. “There is a cloud of dust, probably riders, maybe a battle.”
The soldier squinted his eyes and confessed, “I don’t know.”
Banokles suggested, “Perhaps it’s a herd of pigs being driven to Troy for roasting.” He frowned. “They’d have to be invisible pigs to get past the enemy. But,” he argued with himself, “we cannot open the gates, so how will they get in? Then they must be invisible poxy pigs with poxy wings, ready to fly over the walls straight onto spits.”
Kalliades smiled. Boros, apparently encouraged by his ramblings, said to Banokles, “General, I have a request.”
“What?” Banokles grunted without interest.
“When we have won this war, I would like to return to my family in Rhodos.”
“Why tell me? I don’t care what you do.” Banokles scowled at him.
Boros regarded the general uncertainly as he would an unknown and possibly dangerous dog, then said, “But I have no rings, sir. I have been with the Scamandrians more than a year, but I have only been paid once, at the Feast of Persephone, when I received three silvers and six coppers. That is all gone now, and my brother’s rings were plundered from his body. I cannot return to Rhodos unless we are paid.”
Banokles shook his head. “I don’t know why you’re worrying about getting home. We’ll probably all die here, anyway,” he said. “Of hunger,” he added gloomily.
Kalliades grinned and clapped his friend on the back. “What have I told you about motivating the men, General?” he asked.
Banokles grunted. “Well, there’s no point worrying about poxy rings when we’ve got these goat-shagging lumps of cow turd to deal with first.” He waved at the enemy camps below them.
Banokles was right. Besides, Kalliades knew there was nothing left in Priam’s treasury for the regular troops. The mercenaries from Phrygia, Zeleia, and the Hittite borders had been paid. Trojan troops, he thought, are expected to die for Troy without pay.
“If we live, I will see you get rings enough,” he promised Boros, knowing his promise was probably meaningless.
“More of the enemy have left,” the lad commented. “That is a good sign, isn’t it?” he asked hopefully.
“It is not a bad sign” was all Kalliades could say. They had watched as the Myrmidons had marched out along with two other armies, but he could not tell whose. He wondered at the political infighting between the western kings that had brought this about. Achilles had been poisoned, but by whom? It certainly had not been Hektor. Even the enemy did not believe that. His body had been returned to the city with honor by the soldiers of Thessaly. Had Achilles been murdered by someone on his own side? It was a mystery Kalliades knew he was unlikely ever to solve.
“What will you do if you return to Rhodos?” he asked Boros.
“I will join my father, who is a goldsmith. He will train me in his craft.”
Kalliades raised his eyebrows. “Great Zeus, lad, if my father were a goldsmith, I would have stayed at home and learned his trade and not sold my skills with a sword.”
“My mother is a Trojan woman, and she told me I must fight for the honor of our city. And she wanted me to find out if Echios was still alive. He was her firstborn, you see. She had not seen him for fifteen years.”
Banokles narrowed his eyes against the sunlight and commented, “Horsemen.”
The far dust cloud had resolved itself into two dust clouds, and both were heading for Troy. They were moving fast, as if one group of horsemen were chasing the other. Kalliades leaned forward on the battlement wall, frustrated by his inability to see more clearly at that distance. He glanced at Boros and saw that the young man was peering in the wrong direction. Kalliades moved as if to hit the lad on the left side of his face, pulling his punch at the last moment. Boros did not even flinch.
“Boros,” he said. Boros turned his head, then jumped when he saw Kalliades’ fist close to his face.
“Can you see anything out of your left eye?”
The lad shook his head. “No. I used to be able to see light and shadow, but that has gone now. Everything is dark. I was injured in Thraki, you see.”
Kalliades knew that a one-eyed soldier could not last long in a pitched battle. It was remarkable the lad was still alive.
He turned his attention back to the horsemen in the distance. There were two groups of riders. In front were about fifty men being chased at a furious pace by maybe two hundred. They had crossed the Scamander and were racing across the plain toward the city. The men on the walls shouted to their comrades to come and watch the race, and below them enemy soldiers were being ordered from tents and from the shadows of ruined houses. They were arming themselves quickly, putting on sword belts and helms, collecting lances and spears, bows and quivers of arrows.
Then someone cried out, “The Trojan Horse!”
Now Kalliades could see that the riders in front bore the black-and-white crested helms of Hektor’s cavalry. They were lying low on their horses’ necks, urging their mounts on with whipped reins and shouts. The chasing horsemen were hampered by the dust being thrown up by their quarry and had fallen back some way as both groups galloped up the slope from the plain toward the city.
As the front riders thundered across the wooden bridge into the lower town, enemy soldiers started loosing arrows at them, and from all sides lances and spears were thrown. Some appeared to hit their targets, and two horsemen on the edge of the group went down. The soldiers watching from the walls were yelling to urge their riders on.
Kalliades found his heart in his mouth as the leading horsemen galloped up through the ruined town. Come on, he thought. Come on, you can make it! The enemy riders seemed to have slowed further.
“Open the gates!” someone shouted, and the cry was picked up all along the walls. “Open the gates quickly. Open the gates! Let them in!”
Then realization hit Kalliades like a blow to the face. His blood went cold. “No!” he shouted. Pushing desperately through the ranks of cheering soldiers, he raced along the wall to the battlements above the Scaean Gate. Below him men were gathering eagerly to lift the massive locking bar and open the gates.
“No!” he bellowed down at them. “Stop! Don’t open the gates!” But his voice could not be heard above the shouts of hundreds of men, and he ran down the stone steps, waving his arms and yelling frantically.
“Don’t open the gate
s! By all the gods, don’t open the gates!”
But the massive oak doors already were groaning open, and with split-second timing, the riders thundered through the gap. There were more than fifty of them, garbed in the armor of the Trojan Horse and armed with spears. Their horses’ hooves kicked up a storm of whirling dust as they slowed and circled inside the gates. Behind them the guards started to close the gates again.
They were heaving the locking bar back into place when one of them fell with a spear in his belly.
Kalliades drew his sword and ran for the nearest rider. He shouted, “Kill them! They’re the enemy!” and lanced his blade into the man’s side, behind his breastplate.
He saw a sword sweeping toward his head from another rider. He ducked under the horse’s belly and leaped up to spear the man from the other side. As the rider fell, Kalliades grabbed his shield.
He glimpsed Banokles beside him. His friend powered into the enemy horesemen, slashing and killing. Kalliades shouted to him, “Defend the gates!” But both of them were blocked from reaching the gates by the press of horses and riders.
Kalliades gutted one enemy warrior and parried a blow from a second, backhanding his shield into the man’s face. He glanced desperately at the gates again. Enemy warriors in the stolen armor of the Trojan Horse had their hands to the locking bar and were attempting to lift it. Kalliades slashed and cut, pushed and shoved his way toward them. He brained one of the men with his shield and threw his weight onto the locking bar.
He realized that young Boros was at his side and yelled, “Help me here, soldier!”
Boros grinned at him, then punched him hard on the jaw.
As Kalliades staggered back, Boros kicked him in the face. Kalliades went flying, dazed, barely holding to consciousness. Bright lights were whirling around his head. He lay stunned, watching in horror as more of the enemy horsemen grabbed the great oak locking bar and heaved it off its brackets. The high gates started to open slowly and then more quickly as they were pushed from the outside.
And the enemy poured in.
Kalliades, lying shielded in the space behind one of the open doors, tried to get to his feet, shaking his head to clear it. Then he realized that the flaxen-haired soldier was standing looking down at him. As Kalliades tried to rise, the young man placed the point of his sword at Kalliades’ throat, pushing him back to the ground.
“Boros!” he whispered.
“Boros died long ago, at the battle for the Scamander,” the soldier replied triumphantly. “I am Asios, first son of Alektruon, loyal servant of Agamemnon King, and I am here to avenge my father and bring the proud Trojans to their knees.”
He leaned forward, pressing on the sword at Kalliades’ throat. Blood started to flow. Kalliades could not speak or move.
“It was so easy to take that idiot’s place when his entire company had been wiped out and when the general of his regiment couldn’t even be bothered to learn his soldiers’ names. And it amused me to fool the great Kalliades, the thinker, the planner—the traitor to Mykene. Die, then, traitor!”
His face hardened, and he tensed to thrust his sword through Kalliades’ neck. At that last moment Kalliades saw Banokles step up behind the boy, sword raised. With one ferocious sweep of his blade he beheaded him. Hitting the gate, the head bounced onto the ground.
Banokles put out his hand and dragged Kalliades to his feet. “He was talkative,” he observed. “Always a mistake. Are you all right?” Kalliades nodded, swallowing blood, still unable to speak.
“Come on, then,” Banokles said grimly. “We’ve got a city to die for.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE LAST BARRICADE
With enemy warriors hard on their heels, Kalliades and Banokles ran up the stone steps to the west of the Scaean Gate. On the top of the wall Banokles nodded to his comrade, then turned and raced away. He was heading for the next steps down so that he could work his way around behind the new barricade. Kalliades would stay and ensure that the wall was secure.
A Mykene warrior, heavily armored, appeared close behind him at the top of the steps. Two Trojan soldiers were waiting, eager for a chance at the enemy. One hacked at the warrior’s sword arm, and the other lunged for his throat. He fell, blood gouting from his neck. He clattered down the stairway, knocking down the man behind him.
Kalliades grinned at the two defenders. “Pace yourselves,” he ordered. “There will be plenty more.”
Looking down from the wall, he surveyed the killing ground inside the gates.
The Trojan generals had been planning this day for a long time. If Agamemnon’s forces won the freedom of Troy’s streets, the only sanctuary for the city’s defenders would be the king’s palace. Because the best hope lay in keeping the enemy confined at the gate for as long as possible, soldiers had labored throughout the summer to demolish buildings high in the upper city, taking them apart stone by stone. The stones had been used to fill in the roads and alleyways all around the Scaean Gate, blocking them to twice the height of a man.
Fire gullies had been dug all around the circle of open ground inside the gate. They had been filled with anything that would burn: brushwood, the branches and twigs of dead plants, and fuel left from Hektor’s funeral pyre. Amphorae filled with the last oil in the city stood ready at points around the killing ground.
As the blood-hungry invaders poured in through the gate, they found themselves trapped in a space less than forty paces across, with the high walls of stone buildings all around. There were just three ways available to them: up the steps to the battlements on either side of the gate, up the steep stairs inside the Great Tower of Ilion, and straight ahead.
Straight ahead was the only road left unblocked, the stone avenue that led to the heights of the city and Priam’s palace. Polites had ordered the entrance to the road barricaded on both sides, with only a central gap remaining for daily traffic.
It was there that defenders were converging from all parts of the city.
Kalliades turned to the battlement door in the wall of the great tower. It would be easy to hold. To get to it the enemy had to climb the steep tower steps in darkness. When they reached the door, they would be emerging from dark into light, through a narrow doorway above a high drop. One steady warrior could defend the door all day, sending enemy after enemy falling to break his bones on the stone floor far below.
There were a hundred men holding that part of the wall. Kalliades knew that not one of them would fall or step back without a fight to the last.
After the long summer of waiting it was almost a relief that this day had arrived. Kalliades looked around him and breathed deeply. The air seemed fresher, the colors clearer. This is what you know, he told himself, the only life you have ever known. If you are not a warrior, what are you, Kalliades?
An enemy warrior appeared at the tower door. A Scamandrian soldier leaped forward and lunged at his chest. The Mykene had his shield up, but the force of the blow unbalanced him. He fell back into darkness with a cry. Any invaders braving the tower steps would have to pass a mounting pile of dead and injured men, Kalliades thought with grim satisfaction. In time that would wear on their resolve.
He surveyed the scene below. More and more invaders were pushing in through the Scaean Gate, eager to get in on the action, and the killing ground was packed with armed men. The Trojan defenders had fallen back, as planned, to the narrowest section of the great road. There just thirty men, Eagles all, were facing the main thrust of the enemy attack. Behind them the gap in the barricade they were defending became narrower as soldiers labored to close it with stones, timber, and rubble.
Kalliades watched with pride as the Eagles battled to hold back the enemy horde. When ordered, one by one the warriors at each end of the line stepped back and slipped through the gap. Finally just three Eagles remained. Kalliades heard the order for them to retreat. Instead, as one, they charged! They were cut down swiftly, but the gap behind them was plugged, and the barricade secured.
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Then an order was given. The brushwood was doused with oil, and flaming torches were thrown in from the heights of the surrounding buildings. Within heartbeats the fire had run along the length of the gullies, the oil-fueled flames leaping high and setting alight anything close by. The enemy soldiers nearest to the gullies tried desperately to get back from the flames, but more warriors were pushing in through the gates behind them. The padded linen kilt of a Kretan soldier caught fire, and within moments he was a screaming, writhing human torch, blundering into his comrades and setting them ablaze. Other men near the fire gullies were set on fire as the leaping flames were blown about by gusty winds.
For a moment it looked as though the flames would jump from man to man, dooming them all. But the disciplined Mykene warriors were not to be panicked. Those armed with lances used them ruthlessly to kill the burning men or hold them at bay until they dropped dying to the ground. Dozens of burned and blackened soldiers lay moaning on the stones, but the fires had been stopped.
On top of the buildings all around the Scaean Gate and on the walls behind the invaders, bowmen were gathering. Arrows started to pepper the enemy troops from all sides, and Kalliades saw several go down, hit in neck, throat, or face.
Satisfied that the south battlements were well defended, Kalliades followed Banokles’ footsteps and ran around the wall and down the steps to make his way to the rear of the main barricade. There he found Polites conferring anxiously with General Lucan and Ipheus, the commander of the Eagles.
“Your Eagles are fine warriors,” Kalliades told Ipheus. “Would that we had a thousand of them.”
“Would that they followed orders,” Lucan growled. “Those three at the barricade died needlessly. Three warriors might have made a difference come the last days.”
“They were valiant men,” Ipheus said quietly.
“I’m not denying it,” the old general grunted. “But just as we have learned to conserve food and water and weapons, so we must learn to conserve valor. We have deep reserves of it, but it cannot be thrown away on suicidal adventures.”
