The Hittite

by Ben Bova

  Achilles cast another spear, but it went slightly wide. Hector remained in place, or seemed to. I noticed, though, that each time he wheeled to keep his front to Achilles’ chariot, he edged a step or two closer to his own ranks.

  Achilles must have noticed this, too, and jumped out of his chariot. A great gusting sigh of expectation went through both armies. The two champions now faced each other on foot, at spear’s length.

  Hector advanced confidently toward the smaller Achaian. He spoke to Achilles, who spat out a reply, but they were too far away for me to make out their words.

  Then Achilles did something that wrenched a great moaning gasp from the Achaians. He threw his shield down thumping on the bare ground, then unstrapped his helmet and tossed it atop the shield. With the wind tousling his shoulder-length locks, he faced Hector with nothing but his body armor and his last remaining spear.

  The fool! I thought. He must actually believe he’s invincible. Achilles gripped his spear in both hands and faced Hector without a shield.

  Dropping the lighter of his two spears, Hector drove straight at Achilles. He had the advantage of size and strength, and of experience, and he knew it. Achilles, smaller, faster, seemed to be absolutely crazy. He did not even try to parry Hector’s spear thrusts or run out of their reach. Instead he dodged this way and that, avoiding Hector’s spear by scant finger widths, keeping his own spear point aimed straight at Hector’s eyes.

  It is a truth that in any kind of hand-to-hand combat you cannot attack and defend yourself at the same time. The successful fighter can switch from attack to defense and back again in the flick of an eye. Hector knew this; his obvious aim was to keep the shieldless Achilles on the defensive. But Achilles refused to defend himself, except for dodging Hector’s thrusts. I began to see a method in Achilles’ madness: his greatest advantages were speed and daring. The heavy shield would have slowed him down.

  He gave ground and Hector moved steadily forward, but even there I saw that Achilles was edging around, maneuvering to place himself between Hector and the Trojan ranks, moving Hector closer and closer to our side of the field.

  I saw the look on Achilles’ face as they sweated and grunted beneath the hot sun. He was smiling. Like a little boy who enjoys pulling the wings off flies, like a man who was happily looking forward to driving his spear through the chest of his enemy, like a madman intent on murder.

  Hector realized that he was being maneuvered. He changed his tactics and tried to engage Achilles’ spear, knowing that once he made contact with it his superior strength could force his enemy’s point down, and then he could drive his own bronze spearhead into Achilles’ unguarded body.

  Achilles danced away from Hector’s spear, his long hair flowing, then dashed slightly forward. He feinted and Hector followed the motion of his spear for a fraction of an instant. It was enough. Launching himself completely off his feet like a distance jumper, Achilles drove his spear with all the strength in both his arms into Hector’s body. The point struck Hector’s bronze breastplate; I could hear the screech as it slid up along the armor, unable to penetrate, and then caught under Hector’s chin.

  The impact knocked Hector backward but not off his feet. For an instant the two champions stood locked together, Achilles ramming the spear upward with both his hands white-knuckled against its haft, his eyes blazing hatred and bloodlust, his lips pulled back in a feral snarl. Hector’s arms, one holding his long spear, the other with his great shield strapped to it, slowly folded forward, as if to embrace his killer. The spear point went deeper into his throat, up through his jaw, and buried itself in the base of his brain.

  Hector went limp, hanging on Achilles’ spear point. Achilles wrenched it free and the Trojan prince’s dead body slumped to the dusty ground.

  “For Patrokles!” Achilles screamed, holding his bloodied spear aloft.

  8

  A triumphant roar went up from the Achaians, while the Trojans seemed frozen in gaping horror.

  Achilles threw down his bloody spear and pulled his sword from its scabbard. He hacked at Hector’s head once, twice, three times. He wanted the severed head as a trophy.

  The Trojans screamed and charged at him. Without a word of command the Achaians charged, too. In the span of a heartbeat the single combat turned into a wild, brawling battle.

  My men and I ran after Odysseos’ chariot. I couldn’t help but think that the very men who had hoped so dearly that this fight between the two champions would end the war were now racing into battle themselves, unthinking, uncaring, driven by bloodlust and blind hatred.

  Then there was no more time for thought. My sword was in my hand and enemies were charging at me, blood and murder in their eyes. My iron sword served me well. Bronze blades and spearpoints chipped or broke against it. Its sharp edge slashed through bronze armor. We caught up with Odysseos’ chariot. He and several other mounted noblemen had formed a screen around the body of Hector as Achilles and his Myrmidones stripped the corpse down to the skin. I saw the brave prince’s severed head bobbing on a spear and turned away in disgust. Then someone tied his ankles to a chariot’s tail and tried to fight through the growing melee and force his way with the body back toward the Achaian camp.

  Instead of being unnerved by these barbarities the Trojans seemed infuriated. They fought with a rage born of desecration and battled fiercely to recover Hector’s body before it could be dragged back behind our rampart.

  While the struggle grew wilder I realized that none of the Trojans were protecting their line of retreat or even thinking about guarding the gate from which they had left their city.

  I rushed to Odysseos’ chariot and shouted over the cursing and clanging of the battle, “The gate! They’ve left the gate unprotected!”

  Odysseos’ eyes gleamed. He looked out toward the city walls, then back at me. He nodded once.

  “To the gate!” he called in a voice that roared across the plain. “To the gate before they can close it.”

  Screaming his blood-curdling battle cry, Odysseos fought his way clear of the struggle around Hector’s corpse, followed by two more chariots. I ran after them, slashing my way clear until there was nothing between us and the walls of Troy but empty bare ground.

  “To the gate!” I heard another voice bellow, and a chariot clattered past, its horses leaning into their harnesses, nostrils blowing wide, eyes white and bulging.

  Within moments Hector’s corpse was forgotten. The battle had turned into a race for the Scaean Gate. Odysseos led the Achaians who were trying to get there before the Trojans could close it. The Trojan army streamed toward it so they could get inside the protection of the city’s walls before the gate was closed and they were cut off.

  Achilles was back in his chariot, cutting a bloody path through the Trojans, hacking with his sword until the foot soldiers and chariot-riding noblemen alike gave him a wide berth. Then he snatched the whip from his driver’s hands and lashed his horses into a frenzied gallop toward the city gate.

  I saw Odysseos fling a spear into the chest of a Trojan guarding the gate. More Trojans appeared in the open gateway, graybeards and young boys armed with light throwing javelins and bronze swords. From up on the battlements that flanked the gate others were firing arrows and hurling stones. Odysseos was forced to back away.

  But not Achilles. His long hair streaming in the wind, he drove straight for the gate, oblivious to the bombardment from above. The rear guard scattered before him, ducking behind the massive wooden doors. From behind, someone started to push them closed. Seeing that the gap between the two doors was too small for his chariot to pass through, Achilles jumped to the ground, his bloodstained great spear in his hands, and charged at the gate while his charioteer tried to regain control of the frightened horses. Achilles met a hedgehog of spear points but dived at them headlong, jabbing and slashing two-handed with his own spear.

  Odysseos and another chariot-mounted warrior rushed up to help him, their great shields strapped to thei
r backs to protect them from neck to heel from the stones and arrows being aimed at them from above. I saw the main mass of the Trojans not far behind us, a wild tangled melee battling with the rest of the Achaians, fighting to reach the protection of the city’s walls.

  I pushed my way between Achilles and Odysseos’ chariot, hacking with my sword at the spears sticking out from the gap between the doors. I grabbed a spear with my right hand and pulled it out of the hands of the frightened boy who had been holding it. Flinging it to the ground, I reached for another. I grasped the spear and pulled on it, dragging the graybeard holding it until he was within reach of my sword. He saw the blow coming and released the spear, raising his arms over his head and screaming, as if that would protect him. I hesitated for just a heartbeat, but that was long enough for the old man to drop to his knees and scrabble away from me.

  A teenager thrust his spear at me. I dodged it and swung at the youth, but there was little purpose in my swing except to scare him off. He backed away slightly, then came at me again. I did not give him a second chance.

  The struggle at the gate seemed to go on endlessly, although common sense tells me it took only a few moments. The rest of the Trojans came up, still battling furiously with the main body of the Achaians. Chariots and foot soldiers hacked and slashed and cursed and screamed their final cries in that narrow passage between the walls that flanked the Scaean Gate. Dust and blood and arrows and stones filled the deadly air. The Trojans were fighting for their lives, desperately trying to get inside the gate, just as the Achaians had been trying to escape Hector’s spear only a few days earlier.

  Despite our efforts the Trojans still held the gate ajar and kept us from entering it. Sometimes a few determined men can keep an army at bay, and the Trojan rear guard at the gate had the determination born of sheer desperation. They knew that if we forced that gate their city was finished: their lives, their families, their homes would be wiped out. So they held us at bay, new men and boys taking the place of those we killed, while the main body of their army slipped through the open doors, fighting as they retreated to safety.

  Then I saw the blow that ended the battle. Still fighting at the narrow entrance to the gate, I had to turn to face the Trojan warriors who were battling their way to the doors in their effort to get inside the city’s walls. I saw Achilles, his eyes burning with battle fury, his mouth open with wild laughter, hacking any Trojan who dared to come within his spear’s reach. Up on the battlements one of the Trojans leaned out with a bow in his hands and fired an arrow toward Achilles’ unprotected back.

  As if in a dream, a nightmare, I shouted a warning that was drowned out in the cursing, howling uproar of the battle. I pushed past a halfdozen furiously battling men to reach Achilles as the arrow streaked toward its target. I managed to get a hand on his shoulder and push him out of the way.

  Almost.

  The arrow struck him on the back of his leg, slightly above the heel. Achilles went down with a high-pitched scream of pain.

  9

  For an instant the world seemed to stop.

  Achilles, the seemingly invulnerable champion, was down in the dust, writhing in pain, an arrow jutting out from the back of his left ankle.

  I stood over him and took off the head of the first Trojan who came at him with a single swipe of my sword. Odysseos and another Achaian lord jumped down from their chariots to join me. Suddenly the battle had changed its entire purpose and direction. We were no longer trying to force the Scaean Gate; we were fighting to keep Achilles alive and get him back to our camp.

  Slowly we withdrew, and in truth, after a few moments the Trojans seemed glad enough to let us go. They streamed back inside their gate and swung its massive doors shut. I picked up Achilles in my arms while Odysseos and the others formed a guard around us and we headed back to the camp.

  For all his ferocity and strength, he was as light as a child. His Myrmidones surrounded us, staring at their wounded prince with shocked, disbelieving eyes. Achilles’ unhandsome face was bathed with sweat, but he kept his lips clamped together in a painful white line as I carried him past the huge windblown oak just beyond the Scaean Gate.

  “I was offered a choice,” he muttered, his teeth clenched with pain, “between long life and glory. I chose glory.”

  “It’s not a serious wound,” I said.

  “The gods will decide how serious it is,” he replied, in a voice so faint I could hardly hear him.

  Halfway across the body-littered plain six men ran up to meet us, puffing hard, carrying a stretcher of thongs laced across a wooden frame. I laid Achilles on it as gently as I could. He grimaced, but did not cry out or complain.

  Odysseos put a heavy hand on my shoulder. “You saved his life.”

  “You saw?”

  “I did. That arrow was meant for his heart.”

  “How bad a wound do you think it is?”

  “I’ve seen worse,” said Odysseos. “Still, he’ll be out of action for many days.”

  We trudged across the blood-soaked plain side by side. The wind was coming off the water again, blowing dust in our faces, forcing us to squint as we walked toward the camp. Every muscle in my body ached. Blood was crusted on my sword arm, my legs, spattered across my leather jerkin. I could see swarms of flies already crawling over the dead bodies that littered the field.

  “You fought well,” Odysseos said. “For a few moments there I thought we would force the gate and enter the city at last.”

  I shook my head wearily. “We can’t force a gate that is defended. It’s too easy for the Trojans to hold a narrow opening.”

  Odysseos nodded agreement. “Do you think your men could really build a tower that will allow us to scale their wall?”

  “We’ve done it before. At Ugarit and elsewhere.”

  “Ugarit,” Odysseos repeated. He seemed impressed. “I will speak to Agamemnon and the council. Until Achilles rejoins us we have little hope of storming their gate.”

  “And little hope even with Achilles.”

  He looked at me sternly. Odysseos didn’t like hearing that, but he said nothing.

  “My sons,” I reminded him. “My wife.”

  He closed his eyes briefly. “I will speak to Agamemnon about them.”

  “I want them.”

  “I understand.” Then Odysseos smiled wryly. “I have a wife, too. And a son. Back at Ithaca.”

  Perhaps he did understand.

  Poletes was literally hopping up and down on his knobby legs as we entered the camp, following Achilles on his stretcher.

  “What a day!” he exclaimed. “What a day! The bards will sing of this day for all time!”

  As usual, he milked me for every last detail of the fighting. He had been watching from the top of the rampart, of course, but the mad melee at the gate was too far away from his old eyes and too confused for him to make out.

  “And what did Odysseos say at that point?” he would ask. “I saw Diomedes and Menalaos riding side by side toward the gate. Which of them got there first?”

  I could do nothing more than shake my head. “I was too busy keeping Trojan spear points off me to take notice of such things, storyteller.”

  “Who fired the arrow that wounded Achilles? Could it have been Prince Paris? He has a reputation as an archer, you know.”

  The women set out a meal of thick barley soup, roast lamb and onions, flat bread still hot from the clay oven and a flagon of unadulterated wine. Poletes kept asking questions with every bite.

  I saw that my men were eating as I tried to satisfy the old storyteller’s curiosity. The sun dipped below the western sea’s edge and the island mountaintops turned gold, then violet, then faded into darkness. The first star gleamed in the cloudless purple sky, so beautiful that I understood why it was named after Asertu.

  There was no end to Poletes’ impatient questions, so I finally sent him to the Myrmidones’ camp to learn for himself of Achilles’ condition. Then I stretched out on my blanket, glad
to be rid of the old man’s pestering.

  Magro came over and squatted on the sand beside me. “A hard day.”

  I sat up and asked him, “How’s your arm?”

  “It’s nothing. A little stiff, that’s all.”

  “Good.”

  He hesitated a heartbeat, then asked, “What do you think of today’s battle?”

  “Hardly a battle,” I replied. “They’re more like a bunch of overgrown boys tussling in a playground.”

  “The blood is real.”

  “Yes. I know. But they’ll never take a fortified city by storming defended gates.”

  “They don’t know anything about warfare, do they?”

  “Not much.”

  Magro lifted his eyes. “There’re enough good trees on the other side of the river to build six good siege towers, maybe more.”

  “We need the High King’s permission first,” I said.

  Magro spat, “The High King. He’s a fathead.”

  “But he’s the High King.”

  Hunching closer to me, Magro whispered, “Why don’t we just get up and leave? Why should we get ourselves killed for them?”

  Before I could answer, he went on, “We could march into Agamemnon’s camp to night and take your wife and sons. They’ll only have a couple of sleepy teenagers on guard. We could slit their throats before they utter a sound and get away from here with your family.”

  I suddenly realized that the same thought had been hovering in the back of my mind. But then I wondered, “And go where?”

  “Anywhere but here!” Magro said fervently. “This place is a death trap. Nothing good will come from this fighting.”

  I thought he was right. But then I thought of Helen. She would be at the mercy of her former husband if the Achaians conquered Troy. Or she could become Queen of Troy if they could drive the Achaians away.