by Ben Bova
It is a truth of all kinds of hand-to-hand combat that you cannot attack and defend yourself at the same time. The successful fighter can switch from attack to defense and back again at the flick of an eye. Hector knew this, and 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 method in his madness; Achilles’s great advantages were speed and daring. The heavy shield would have slowed him.
He gave ground, and Hector moved steadily forward, but even there I soon saw that Achilles was edging around, moving to stand between Hector and the Trojan ranks, maneuvering Hector closer and closer to our own side.
I saw the look on Achilles’s face as they sweated and grunted beneath the high 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. I had seen that smile before. On the lips of the Golden One.
Hector realized that he was being maneuvered. He changed his tactics and tried to engage Achilles’s spear, knowing that his superior strength could force his enemy’s point down, and then he could drive his own bronze spearhead into Achilles’s unguarded body.
Achilles feinted and Hector followed the motion 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 the great shield strapped to it, slowly folded forward, as if embracing 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’s spear point. Achilles wrenched it free and the Trojan prince’s dead body slumped to the dusty ground.
“For Patrokles!” Achilles shouted, holding his bloodied spear aloft.
A triumphant roar went up from our ranks, while the Trojans seemed frozen in gasping horror.
Achilles threw down his bloody spear and pulled his sword from its scabbard. He hacked at Hector’s neck once, twice, three times. He wanted the severed head as a trophy.
The Trojans screamed and charged at him. Without a word of command we charged too. In the span of a heartbeat the single combat turned into a general brawling battle.
I raced behind Odysseus’s chariot, thinking that the very men who had hoped this fight between the champions would end the war were now racing into battle themselves, unthinking, uncaring, like murderous lemmings responding to some mysterious urge deep inside them.
“You enjoy fighting,” I remembered the Golden One telling me once, long ago. “I built that instinct for killing into my creatures.”
And then there was no time for thought. My sword was in my hand and enemies were charging at me, blood and murder in their eyes. Like Achilles, I slid my left arm free of the cumbersome shield. I did not need it; my senses went into overdrive and the world around me became a slow-motion dream.
My iron sword served me well. Bronze blades chipped or broke against it. Its sharp edge slashed through bronze armor. I caught up with Odysseus’s chariot. He and several other mounted warriors had formed a screen over 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 make his way with the body back toward the Achaian camp.
Instead of being dispirited 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 this struggle grew in fury, 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 the city.
I rushed to Odysseus’s chariot and shouted over the cursing and clanging of the battle, “The gate! They’ve left the gate unprotected!”
Odysseus’s eyes gleamed. He looked up 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 eerie battle cry, Odysseus fought his way clear of the struggle around Hector’s corpse, followed by two more chariots. I ran ahead, slashing my way clear until there was nothing between me and the walls of Troy but empty bare ground.
“To the gate!” I heard behind me, and a chariot clattered past, its horses leaning hard into their harnesses, nostrils blowing wide, eyes white and bulging.
Within seconds Hector’s corpse was forgotten. The battle had turned into a race for the Scaean gate. Odysseus led the Achaians who were trying to get there before the Trojans could close it. The Trojan army streamed toward it so that they could get inside the protection of the city walls before the gate was closed and they were cut off.
Achilles, back in his chariot, was 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 Odysseus fling a spear into the chest of a Trojan guarding the gate. More Trojans appeared at the open gateway, graybeards and young boys armed with light throwing javelins and swords. From up on the battlements that flanked the gate on both sides others were firing arrows and hurling stones. Odysseus was forced to back away.
But not Achilles. 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 pushing them closed. Seeing that the gap between the doors was too small for his chariot to pass through, Achilles jumped to the ground, his bloodstained great spear in his hand, and charged at the gate. He met a hedgehog of spear points but dived at them headlong, jabbing and slashing two-handed with his own spear.
Odysseus and another chariot-mounted warrior, whom I later learned was Diomedes, rushed up to help him, their great shields strapped on their backs, protecting them from neck to heel from the stones and arrows being aimed at them from above. I saw the main mass of the Trojan troops not far behind us, a wild tangled melee battling with the rest of the Achaians, fighting its way to the protection of the city’s walls.
I pushed my way between Achilles and Odysseus, hacking with my sword at the spears sticking out from the gap between the doors. I grabbed one spear with my left 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.
Somewhere deep inside my mind I heard myself asking why I should be killing Trojans. They are men, human beings, creations of the Golden One just as I am. What they do they do because the Golden One drives them, manipulates them, just as he drives and manipulates me.
But I answered myself: All men die, and some of us die many times over. The goal of life is death, and as long as these creatures serve the Golden One, even unknowingly, unwittingly, then they are my enemies. Just as they would kill me, I will kill them.
And I did. I pulled on the spear in my left hand, 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. My blade bit through both his arms and buried itself in his skull.
A teenager thrust his spear at me while I worked my sword free. I dodged it, wrenched the blade from the dead man’s bloody head, and swung it at the youth. But there was little purpose in my swing, except to scare him off. He backed away, but then came forward again. I did not give him a second chance.
The struggle at the gate seemed to go on for an hour, although common sense tells me it took only a few minutes. 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 shouted 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 our own Achaians had been trying to escape from Hector’s spear a few days earlier.
Despite our efforts, the Trojans still held the gate ajar and kept us from entering it. Only a few determined men were needed to keep an army at bay, and the Trojan rear guard at the gate had the determination born of sheer desperation. They knew that once 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 began to slip through the open doors, fighting as they retreated to safety.
Then I saw the blow that ended the battle. Everything still seemed to move in slow-motion for me. Arrows flew through the air so lazily that I thought I could snatch one in my bare hand. I could tell where warriors were going to send their next thrust by watching their eyes and the muscles bunching and rippling beneath their skin.
Still fighting at the narrowing entrance to the gate, I had to turn almost ninety degrees to deal with the Trojan warriors who were battling their way to the doors in their effort to reach safety. I saw Achilles, his eyes burning with bloodlust, his mouth open with wild laughter, hacking at any Trojan who dared to come within arm’s length. Up on the battlements a handsome man with long flowing golden hair leaned out with a bow in his hands and fired an arrow, fledged with gray hawk feathers, toward Achilles’s 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 half-dozen furiously battling men and reached for Achilles as the arrow streaked unerringly to its target. I managed to get a hand on his shoulder and push him out of its way.
Almost.
The arrow struck him on the back of his left leg, slightly above the heel. Achilles went down with a high-pitched scream of pain.
Chapter 16
FOR an instant the world seemed to stop. Achilles, the seemingly invulnerable champion, was down in the dust, writhing in agony, 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. Odysseus and Diomedes joined me and 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 Achilles up in my arms while Odysseus 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 round, shocked eyes. Achilles’s 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 gate.
“I was offered a choice,” he muttered, behind 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 hardly heard him.
Halfway across the bloody plain six men carrying a stretcher of thongs laced across a wooden frame met us, and I laid Achilles on it as gently as I could. He grimaced, but did not cry out or complain.
Odysseus put a heavy hand on my shoulder. “You saved his life.”
“You saw?”
“I did. The arrow was meant for his heart.”
“How bad a wound do you think it is?”
“Not too bad,” said Odysseus. “But he will be out of action for many days.”
We trudged across the dusty plain side by side. The wind was coming in 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 tunic.
“You fought very well,” Odysseus 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 the narrow opening.”
Odysseus nodded agreement. “Do you think your Hatti troops can really build a machine that will allow us to scale their walls?”
“They claim they have done it before, at Ugarit and elsewhere.”
“Ugarit,” Odysseus repeated. He seemed impressed. “I will speak with Agamemnon and the council. Until Achilles rejoins us, we have no hope of storming one of their gates.”
“And little hope even with Achilles,” I said.
He looked at me sternly, but said nothing more.
Poletes was literally jumping up and down on his knobby legs when I returned to the camp.
“What a day!” he kept repeating. “What a day!”
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 and too confused for him to make out.
“And what did Odysseus 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?”
He set out a feast of thick barley soup, roast lamb and onions, flat bread still hot from the clay oven, and a flagon of unadulterated wine. And he kept me talking with every bite.
I ate, and reported to the storyteller, as the sun dipped below the western sea’s edge and the island mountaintops turned gold, then purple, and then faded into darkness. The first star gleamed in the cloudless violet sky, so beautiful that I understood why every culture named it after its love goddess.
There was no end of questions from Poletes, so finally I sent him to see what he could learn for himself of Achilles’s condition. Partly it was to get rid of his pestering, partly to soothe a strange uneasiness that bubbled inside me. Achilles is doomed, a voice in my head warned me. He will not outlive Hector by many hours.
I tried to dismiss it as nonsense, battle fatigue, sheer nerves. Yet I sent Poletes to find out how bad his wound really was.
“And find Lukka and send him to me,” I called to his retreating back.
The Hatti officer looked grimly amused when he came to my fire and saluted by clenching his fist against his breast.
“Did you see the battle?” I asked.
“Some of it.”
“What do you think?”
He made no attempt to hide his contempt. “They’re like a bunch of overgrown boys tussling in a town square.”
“The blood is real,” I said.
“Yes, I know. But they’ll never take a fortified city by storming defended gates.”
I agreed.
“There are enough good trees on the other side of the river to build six siege towers, maybe more,” Lukka said.
“Start building one. Once the High King sees that it can be done, I’m sure he’ll grasp the possibilities.”
“I’ll start the men at first light.”
“Good.”
“Sleep well, sir.”
I almost gave a bitter laugh. Sleep
well, indeed. But I controlled myself enough to reply, “And good sleep to you, Lukka.”
Poletes came back soon after, his face solemn in the dying light of our fire, his gray eyes sad.
“What’s the news?” I demanded as he sank to the ground at my feet.
“My lord Achilles is finished as a warrior,” said Poletes. “The arrow has cut the tendon in the back of his heel. He will never walk again without a crutch.”
I felt my mouth tighten grimly.
Poletes reached for the wine, hesitated, and cast me a questioning glance. I nodded. He poured himself a heavy draft and gulped at it.
“Achilles is crippled,” I said.
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Poletes sighed. “Well, he can live a long life back in Phthia. Once his father dies he will be king, and probably rule over all of Thessaly. That’s not so bad, I think.”
I nodded agreement, but I wondered how Achilles would take to the prospect of a long life as a cripple.
As if in answer to my thoughts, a loud wail sprang up from the Myrmidones’s end of the camp. I jumped to my feet. Poletes got up more slowly.
“My lord Achilles!” a voice cried out. “My lord Achilles is dead!”
I glanced at Poletes.
“Poison on the arrowhead?” he guessed.
I threw down the wine cup and started off for the Myrmidones. All the camp seemed to be rushing in the same direction. I saw Odysseus’s broad back, and huge Ajax outstriding everyone with his long legs.
Spear-wielding Myrmidones guards held back the crowd at the edge of their camp area, allowing only the nobles to pass them. I pushed up alongside Odysseus and went past the guards with him. Menalaos, Diomedes, Nestor, and almost every one of the Achaian leaders were gathering in front of Achilles’s hut.
All but Agamemnon, I saw.
We went inside, past weeping soldiers and women tearing their hair and scratching their faces as they screamed their lamentations.
Achilles’s couch, up on a slightly raised platform at the far end of the hut, had turned into a bier. The young warrior lay on it, left leg swathed in oil-soaked bandages, dagger still gripped in his right hand, a jagged red slash from just under his left ear to halfway across his windpipe still dripping bright red blood.
