The Hittite

by Ben Bova

  I dashed toward the archers. Most of them turned and ran, although two of them stood their ground and managed to get off a pair of arrows at me. They thudded into my shield as I ran at the archers. I caught the first one on my spear, a lad too young to have more than the wisp of a beard. His companion dropped his bow and tried to pull out the dagger at his waist but I knocked him spinning with a swipe of my shield. He toppled off the platform screaming to the street below.

  The other archers had retreated down the platform that ran along the battlements. The men of my squad were fighting the Trojan guards who had rushed them. For the span of a heartbeat I was alone. But only for that long. The Trojan nobles were charging along the platform toward me, a dozen of them, with more climbing the ladder behind them.

  I hefted my long spear in one hand and threw it at the nearest man. Its heavy weight drove it completely through his shield and into his chest. He staggered backward into the arms of his two nearest companions.

  I threw my shield at them to slow them down further, then picked up the bow from the archer I had slain. It was a beautiful, gracefully curved thing of horn and smooth-polished wood. But I had no time to admire its workmanship. I fired every arrow in the dead youth’s quiver as rapidly as I could, forcing the nobles to cower behind their body-length shields, holding them at bay for a precious few moments more.

  Once the last arrow was gone and I threw down the useless bow, the leader of the nobles facing me lowered his shield enough for me to recognize his face: handsome young Paris, a sardonic smile on his almostpretty face.

  “So the herald is a warrior after all,” he called to me, advancing toward me with leveled spear.

  Sliding my sword from its sheath, I replied, “Yes. Is the stealer of women a warrior as well?”

  “A better one than you,” Paris taunted.

  Stalling for time, I said, “Prove it. Face me man to man, your spear against my sword.”

  He glanced past me, at my men battling at the top of our siege tower. “Much as I would enjoy that, today is not the day for such pleasures.”

  “Today is the last day of your life, Paris,” I said.

  As if on cue, a piercing, blood-curdling war cry screeched from behind me. Odysseos!

  Paris looked startled for a moment, then he yelled to his followers, “Clear the wall of them!”

  The Trojans charged. They had to get past me before they could reach Magro and my men. A dozen spears against my one sword. I shifted to my left, wishing I hadn’t been foolish enough to throw away my shield. I barely avoided the first spear point aimed at my belly and hacked at another spear, cutting its haft almost in two with my iron blade. I backed away another step and then stepped back once more—onto empty air.

  As I tottered on the edge of the platform another spear came thrusting at me. I banged its bronze head with the metal cuff around my right wrist, deflecting it enough to save my skin. But the motion sent me tumbling off the platform. I turned a full somersault in midair and somehow managed to land on my feet. The impact buckled my knees and I rolled on the bare dirt of the street. A spear thudded into the ground scant fingers’ widths from me. I saw a pair of archers aiming their arrows at me and ducked behind the corner of a house before they could fire.

  Looking up, I could see, against the brightening morning sky, Paris and his men rushing along the wall toward the spot where the siege tower stood. My undersized squad of Hatti soldiers were battling the Trojans while Odysseos and his men clambered over the wall’s battlements and joined the struggle. But dozens more Trojans, roused so rudely from their sleep, were scurrying up ladders and rushing along the platform to overwhelm them. We needed a diversion, something to draw off the Trojan reinforcements.

  I sprinted down the narrow alley between houses until I found a door. I kicked it open. A woman screamed in sudden terror as I stamped in, sword in hand. She cowered in a corner of her kitchen, her arms around two small children who huddled against her, wide-eyed with fright. As I strode toward them they all shrieked and ran along the wall, screeching and skittering like mice, then bolted through the open door. I let them go.

  A small cook fire smoldered in the hearth. I yanked down the flimsy curtains that separated the kitchen from the next room and tossed them into the fire. It flared into open flame. Then I smashed a wooden chair and fed it into the blaze. Striding into the next room, I grabbed straw bedding and threadbare blankets and added them to the fire.

  Two houses, three, and then a whole row of them I set ablaze. People were screaming and shouting. Men and women alike raced toward the fire sloshing buckets of water drawn from the fountain at the end of the street.

  Satisfied that the fire would grow and occupy more and more of the Trojans, I started up the nearest ladder to return to the battle on the platform. Achaians were pouring over the parapet now and the Trojans were giving way. I leaped at them from the rear, yelling out to Magro. He heard me and led what was left of my men to my side, cutting a bloody swath through the defending Trojans.

  “The watchtower by the Scaean Gate,” I shouted, pointing with my reddened sword. “We’ve got to take it and open the gate.”

  We fought along the length of the wall, meeting the ill-prepared Trojans as they came up in knots of five or ten or a dozen and driving away those we didn’t kill. The fire I had started was spreading to other houses now, a pall of black smoke hid the palace from our sight.

  The watchtower was only lightly guarded: most of the Trojans were fighting against Odysseos and his Ithacans on the western wall. We broke into the guard room, using spear butts to batter down the door, and slaughtered the few men there. Then we raced to the ground and started to lift the heavy beams that barricaded the Scaean Gate. A wailing scream arose, and I saw that Paris and a handful of other nobles were racing down the stone steps of the tower toward us.

  We had them on the horns of uncertainty now. If they allowed Odysseos to hold the western wall, the rest of the Achaians would enter the city that way. But if they concentrated on clearing the wall, we would open the gate and allow the Achaian chariots to drive into the city. They had to stop us at both places, and stop us quickly.

  Archers began shooting at us, but despite them my men tugged and pushed to open the massive gate. Men fell, but the three enormous beams were slowly lifting, swinging up and away from the doors.

  I ducked an arrow and saw Paris running toward me across the open square behind the gate.

  “You again!” he shouted at me.

  Those were his last words. He charged me with his spear. I dodged sideways, forced it down with my right forearm, and drove my iron sword through his bronze breastplate up to its hilt. As I yanked it out, bright red blood spattered over the golden inlays of his armor and I felt a mad surge of pleasure, battle joy that I had taken the life of the man who had caused this war.

  Paris sank to the ground. I saw the light go out of his eyes. At that moment an arrow struck me on my left shoulder. I felt a sudden flare of pain. More annoyed than injured, I yanked it out and flung it to the ground.

  Even as I did so, more Trojans came at me. But they stopped in their tracks as a great creaking groan of bronze hinges told me that the Scaean Gate was swinging open at last. A roar went up and I turned to see chariots plunging through the open gate, bearing down directly on me.

  The Trojans scattered and I dived out of the way. Agamemnon was in the first chariot, spear raised triumphantly over the plume of his helmet. His horses pounded over Paris’ dead body and the chariot bumped, then clattered on, chasing the fleeing Trojan warriors.

  I stepped backward, dust from the charging chariots stinging my eyes, coating my skin, my clothes, my bloody sword. The battle lust in me began to ebb as I watched Paris’ mangled body tossed and crushed by chariot after chariot. Magro came up beside me, a gash on his cheek and more on both his arms. None of them looked serious, though.

  “The battle’s over,” he said. “Now the slaughter begins.”

  12
r />   Suddenly I was bone weary. I leaned my back against the rough stone wall of Troy.

  “You’re hurt,” Magro said.

  “It’s not serious.” My shoulder was covered with blood, but the wound had already clotted.

  The rest of my men gathered around me, each of them bleeding from wounds. There were only six of us now. They looked uneasy. Not frightened, but edgy, nervous.

  “Now’s the time when soldiers collect their pay,” Magro said tightly.

  Loot, he meant. Stealing everything you can carry. Raping the women and then putting the city to the torch.

  “Go,” I said, realizing that I myself had set the first fire. “I’ll be all right. I’ll see you back at camp when the sun goes down.”

  Magro touched his fist lightly to his chest, then turned to the four remaining men. “Follow me,” he commanded. “And remember: don’t take any chances. There are still plenty of armed men left alive. And some of the women will try to use knives on you.”

  “Any bitch who tries to cut me will regret it,” growled Manetho, the oldest man of my squad.

  “Any bitch who sees your ugly face will probably use her knife on herself!” Magro jeered.

  They all laughed and marched off together. Five men. Out of my original twenty.

  For a while I stood near the wall and watched the Achaian chariots and foot soldiers pour through the open, undefended gate. The smoke was getting thicker. I squinted up at the sky and saw that the sun had barely topped the wall. It was still early in the morning.

  So it is done, I said to myself. The city has fallen. What ever gods the Trojans prayed to have done them no good. I felt no exultation, no joy at all. Killing a thousand men and boys, burning down a city that had taken so many generations to build, raping women and carrying them off into slavery—this is not triumph.

  Slowly I pulled myself erect. The square before the gate was empty now, except for the mangled bodies of Paris and the other slain men. Up the rising main street, behind the first row of columned temples, I could see flames soaring into the sky, smoke billowing toward heaven. A sacrifice to the gods, I thought bitterly.

  I looked down at what was left of Paris. We all die, prince of Troy. Your brothers have died. Your father is probably dying at this very moment.

  But my sons still live. And my wife. I’ll take them to night. Whether Agamemnon agrees or not I will reclaim my sons and my wife and leave this cursed city.

  Then I thought of Helen. Beautiful Helen who was the cause for this slaughter, the woman who used me as a messenger, who used all the men around her to do her bidding. But what else could she have done? How else would she have survived? She was fighting for her life, using the only weapons the gods had allowed her.

  Where is she? Is she waiting in the temple of Aphrodite, as Odysseos told her to do?

  I decided to find out.

  13

  I strode up the main street of burning Troy, sword in hand, through a morning turned dark by the acrid smoke of fires I had started. Women’s screams and sobs filled the air, men bellowed and laughed raucously. The roof of a house collapsed in a shower of sparks. I thought of my father’s house, where he lay buried beneath its ashes.

  Up the climbing central street I walked, my face blackened with dust and smoke, my shoulder caked with my own blood. The gutter along the center of the cobbled street ran red.

  A pair of children ran shrieking past me, and a trio of drunken Achaians lurched laughingly after them. I recognized one of them: Giant Ajax, lumbering along with a wine jug in one huge hand.

  “Come back!” he yelled drunkenly. “We won’t hurt you!”

  I climbed on, toward the palace and the temples, past the market stalls that now blazed hot enough to singe the hairs on my arms, past a heap of bodies where some of the Trojans had tried to make a stand. Finally I reached the steps in front of the palace. They too were littered with fallen bodies.

  Sitting on the top step, his head in his hands, was Poletes. Weeping.

  “How did you get here?” I was stunned with surprise.

  He looked up at me with tear-filled eyes. “I rode on the back of a chariot. I had to see for myself …” His voice choked with anguish.

  Sheathing my sword, I asked, “Are you hurt?”

  “Yes,” he said, bobbing his bald head. “In my soul.”

  I almost felt relieved.

  “Look at the desolation. Murder and fire. Is this what men live for? To act like beasts?”

  I grasped him by his bony shoulder and lifted him to his feet. “Sometimes men act like beasts. They can build beautiful cities and burn them to the ground. What of it? Don’t try to make sense of it, just accept us as we are.”

  Poletes looked at me through eyes reddened by tears and smoke. “So we should accept the whims of the gods and dance to their tune when they pull our strings? Is that what you tell me?”

  “What else can we do?” I replied. “We do what we must, old moralizer. We obey the gods because we have no choice.”

  Poletes shook his head.

  “Go back to the camp, old man. This is no place for you. Some drunken Achaian might mistake you for a Trojan.”

  But he didn’t move, except to lean his frail body against the pillar behind him. Its once-bright red paint was blackened by smoke and someone had scratched his name into the stone with a sword point: Thersites.

  “I’ll see you back at camp, to night,” I said.

  He nodded sadly. “Yes, when mighty Agamemnon divides the spoils and decides how many of the women and how much of the treasure he will take for himself.”

  “Go to the camp,” I said, more firmly. “Now. That’s not advice, Poletes, it’s my command.”

  He drew in a long breath and sighed it out.

  “Take this sign.” I handed him the armlet Odysseos had given me. “It will identify you to any drunken lout who wants to take off your head.”

  He accepted it wordlessly. It was much too big for his frail arms, so he hung it around his skinny neck. I had to laughed at the sight.

  “Laughter in the midst of the sack of a great city,” Poletes said. “You are becoming a true Achaian warrior, my master.”

  With that he started down the steps, haltingly, like a man who really didn’t care which way he went.

  I walked through the columned portico and into the hall of statues, where Achaian warriors were directing slaves to take down the gods’ images and carry them off to the boats. Into the open courtyard that had been so lovely I went. Pots were overturned and smashed, flowers trampled, bodies strewn everywhere staining the grass with their blood. The little statue of Athene was already gone. The big one of Apollo had been toppled and smashed into several pieces.

  One wing of the palace was afire. I could see flames crackling through its roof. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to picture in my mind the chamber where Helen had spoken to me. It was where the fire blazed, I thought.

  From a balcony overhead I heard shouts, then curses. The clash of blade on blade. A fight was going on up there.

  “The royal women have locked themselves in the temple of Aphrodite,” a man behind me yelled. “Come on!” He sounded like someone rushing to a feast, or hurrying to get to his seat before the opening of the final act of a drama.

  I snatched my sword from its scabbard and rushed up the nearest stairs. A handful of Trojans was making a last-ditch defense of a corridor that led to the royal temples, fighting desperately against a shouting, bellowing mob of Achaian warriors. They were holding the narrow corridor, but being pressed back, step by bloody step.

  I realized that behind the locked doors at the Trojans’ backs must be the temple of Aphrodite. Aged Priam must be waiting for the final blow in there, together with his wife, Hecuba, and their daughters and grandchildren.

  And Helen.

  I saw Menalaos, Diomedes and Agamemnon himself thrusting spears at the few remaining Trojan defenders, laughing at them, taunting them.

  “You sell
your lives for nothing,” shouted Diomedes. “Put down your spears and we will allow you to live.”

  “As slaves!” roared Agamemnon.

  The Trojans fought bravely but they were outnumbered and doomed, their backs pressed against the doors they were trying so valiantly to defend. More and more Achaians rushed up to join the sport.

  I sprinted down the next corridor and pushed my way through rooms where soldiers were tearing through chests of gorgeous robes, grabbing jewels from their gold-inlayed boxes, pulling beautiful tapestries from the walls. This wing of the palace would also be in flames soon, I knew. Too soon.

  I found a balcony, climbed over its balustrade and, leaning as far forward as I dared, clamped one hand on the edge of a window in the rear wall of the temple wing. I swung out over thin air and pulled myself up onto my elbows, then hoisted a leg onto the windowsill. Pushing aside the beaded curtains, I peered into a small, dim inner sanctuary. The walls were niched with small shrines, each lit by a flickering candle. The tiles of the floor were so old they had been worn to dullness. The small votive statues in the niches were decked with rings of withered flowers. The room smelled of incense and old candles.

  Standing by the door, her back to me, was Helen.

  14

  Apet, standing in a shadowy corner, saw me and hissed, “The Hittite.”

  Helen whirled to face me, her fists pressed against her mouth, her body tense with terror.

  “Lukka,” she whispered.

  She stood there for an uncertain moment, dressed in her finest robe, decked with gold and jewels, more beautiful than any woman has a right to be. She ran to me and pressed her golden head against my grimy, bloodstained chest. Her hair was scented like fragrant flowers.

  “Don’t let them kill me, Lukka! Please, please! They’ll be crazy with bloodlust. Even Menalaos. He’ll take my head off and then blame it on Ares or Athene! Please, please protect me!”