The First Heroes

by Harry Turtledove

  As the community dwindled, new unions formed to take the place of the old. Dett married again, to Aip, the widowed sister of one of his brothers-in-law. Aip was a pleasant woman, not as lively as Jolpibb, but kind-hearted, with a young son who regarded Fummirrul with awe and eagerly helped with the sheep.

  Everyone rejoiced when the first warm spring days returned. Mebaw, now Mastersinger, sang “The War Against Winter,” and there was a feast at the Pit to celebrate the binding of the Chill One to the seafloor. They dined on a whale that had beached itself, but Dett found himself savoring the fresh cheese made from ewe’s milk nearly as much as the whale-meat. He had a dream that night, as he did after the feast of venison, but it was an enjoyable one. He saw his dream-self walking on the shore with dream-Fummirrul. The pair of them found tracks in the sand running down into the sea—ones that matched those of Klevey. Dream-Dett surveyed the horizon and rejoiced to see a distant red smudge vanish into the waters.

  He turned to tell dream-Fummirrul, only to discover the boy was crouching, eye-to-eye with the gray seal. “Hail, Seaman,” dream-Dett said. “Have you come to tell us the Red Scourge has returned to the Mother?”

  The seal nodded, and then nosed at the sand just in front of their feet, partially uncovering something. It jerked its head at the object, so dream-Dett pulled it out: a beautiful metal knife, like those the southern trader had. The moment he touched it, the Seaman vanished.

  “A treasure of the south, my son, and a gift of the Seafolk,” dream-Dett said. “I present it to you, in gratitude for your youthful wisdom.” With that, he gave the valuable thing to his dream-son, who beamed with pleasure.

  That morning, he went to relate his dream to the elders, not wanting to wait until the next council meeting. They rather hurriedly brushed him off, being occupied in casting charms over the fishing fleet, which would set out with the tide.

  “This dream clearly does not portend any grave disaster,” said his father. “Rather, it is a good omen, for Dett saw Klevey return to the sea and the Seaman confirmed he is gone. As for the knife, I interpret it as meaning if Dett stumbles across something rare from the south, it is his. Do you all concur?”

  The elders, including his brother the Mastersinger, readily agreed, and returned to their chanting.

  Several days later, Dett was weeding in the fields when his little stepson ran up, urgently calling his name. “Father Dett! Come quickly! There has been a disaster.”

  “What has happened?”

  “Klevey reached up through the waves and smashed Great-Uncle Talloc’s ship! Talloc, Klebaw, and Nerrul have perished!”

  Thoughts raced through Dett’s mind. “Does anyone else know?”

  “No, I just found out because I was gathering shellfish at the harbor. I saw Grandfather’s boat come in. Everyone is busy helping Clett, for he was near to drowning. I came to get you right away.”

  “Good lad. Go tell your mother. I will come shortly.” After the youth pelted off, he ran also—to the sheep meadows, not the village.

  Fummirrul was there, as always, tending the sheep. The remaining dozen old sheep grazed on grass; the new sheep chomped contentedly on their seaweed. Dett quickly told his son the news, and the pair hurried to the village, where they burst into Talloc’s house. They startled Gefalal, but Fummirrul managed to make her understand Talloc was dead. She showed no remorse, which did not surprise Dett.

  They swept her belongings into a heap; Fummirrul proudly carried the bundle himself, muscles straining under the shirt he had clearly outgrown. Dett’s new bride Aip looked on with interest as they piled everything in a corner. “She is to stay here? I do not mind, but perhaps your father will want to claim her. She is a comely girl.”

  “He has two other daughters-in-law still living. Besides, I have the backing of the elders on this,” Dett said with a grin. “For they agreed I should keep a southern treasure if I could find one.”

  “Ah!” Understanding swept over his wife’s face. She glanced at Fummirrul, who was a trifle slower to comprehend.

  “A southern treasure?” he asked, then blushed as he remembered the rest of Dett’s dream, in which dream-Dett gave the treasure to dream-Fummirrul. “Oh, Father, how grand!”

  “Interpretations aside,” Dett said, “I thought it best to settle her here before anybody else got any ideas. As you say, she is comely, though too thin.” Dett privately thought Talloc—blessings upon his spirit—did not treat the girl as well as he might have. He was more eager to share his extra grain with the village than feed the stranger girl. Small wonder her courses had been delayed. No matter. Fummirrul still had a few years till manhood himself.

  Gefalal clearly wasn’t understanding what was said around her. Her fingers nervously played with her skirts.

  Dett was wondering what to say, how to put the girl’s new circumstances into simple words, but his son spoke first. He took Gefalal’s hands, then said something that sounded like gibberish. Gefalal smiled broadly and nodded. She squeezed Fummirrul’s hands.

  “What did you say, my son?” Dett asked.

  Fummirrul grinned. “I do not know her word for ‘welcome,’ so I said, ‘This is home to you.’ I think she understands.”

  Perhaps no event of the Bronze Age is better known than the Trojan War, and this is also one of its most famous puzzles. Homer’s Iliad speaks of the sack of Ilios—of Troy. Heinrich Schlieman found the remains of a destroyed city in western Anatolia, a city contemporary with the Hittite empire farther to the east. The Hittite palace archives speak of “Wilusa” and the “Ahhiyans.” Could they mean “Ilios” and the “Acheans”? Historians and archaeologists can only speculate if the Hittite kings might have come to know the Trojan War centuries before Homer sang his first verse. Lois Tilton, wise to the true nature of war, speculates how.

  The Matter of the Ahhiyans

  LOIS TILTON

  So now I am to be a spy.

  Well, I have been many things besides a scribe in the service of the Great King Tudhaliya, ruler of the Land of Hatti, and his father before him. I have traveled to many foreign lands to set down the terms of the treaties made by his ambassadors. I have gone with him to his wars, writing accounts of his battles and victories for the palace archives.

  Now the king of Wilusa has written to plead for aid against the sea-raiders from Ahhiya.

  Priamos King of Wilusa to the Tabarna, the Great King Tudhaliya, the Sun, Lord of the Land of Hatti:

  You know for how many years I have been your loyal servant and obeyed your commands, for how many years I have sent tribute to you, of gold and silver, and of high-necked horses, how I have sent soldiers to serve in your distant campaigns. Now my domain is threatened with destruction. The king of the Ahhiyans has come in his ships to lay waste the whole land of Wilusa. He has burnt my cities and carried off my people into slavery. My palace at Taroisa is now under siege.

  Now if I have ever been the Great King’s loyal servant, I beg you to come at once with your chariots and your footsoldiers to drive these invaders back into the sea, or else the land of Wilusa may be lost.

  When I finished reading this letter, the Great King cursed the Ahhiyans. “Always, they cause trouble! Even in my father’s day and his father’s day they were always raiding our lands and inciting insurrection among our subjects, even when my father wrote to the Ahhiyan king as an equal and a brother, offering a treaty. They pledge their good faith, and at the same time they are conspiring with our enemies. Whenever our armies meet them on the battlefield, they retreat in their ships and we cannot touch them. We can drive them into the sea, but always they come back to make more trouble in our lands!”

  Indeed, I knew the truth of this, for I had been on campaign with his father when he fought the Ahhiyans over the matter of Wilusa, years ago. Yet as I reminded Tudhaliya, we were now supposed to be at peace with Ahhiya. Perhaps this was the moment for diplomacy, not armies.

  So I set down the words of the Great King, using the language of the
Ahhiyans:

  I, the Great King Tabarna, the Great King Tudhaliya, the Sun, Lord of the Land of Hatti, to Agamemnon King of Achaia:

  King Priamos of Ilios writes to me saying: The king of the Achaians has attacked my lands. But the king of Ilios is my servant, and his lands are my lands. Why therefore have you attacked my lands? Are we not at peace? Is there not a treaty between us? Are we not as brothers?

  Now if Priamos has given you just cause to make him your enemy, then tell me of it, and I will send my army to punish him. But if you have attacked Priamos without just cause, then know that I, the Sun, will come with my whole army, my chariots and my infantry, to drive you back into the sea.

  This was the letter the Great King sent to the King of Ahhiya. But to me privately he admitted, “Hantili, you understand the problem I face in this matter. I dare not risk sending my army so far west as Wilusa, not now.”

  I understood his reasons well. In the east, Assyrian armies were on the march in the borderlands near the Euphrates. In the north, the Kaska tribes were raiding again, probing for weakness. He dared not withdraw his armies from these borders just to repel a few sea-raiders from Wilusa, so far away from Hattusa, the center of the kingdom.

  Yet if the Ahhiyans took the citadel of Taroisa, they would be in a position to control all the sea traffic through the straits into the Black Sea. They could strangle our trade. They might even make an alliance with the Kaska tribes along the coast. The Great King knew he could not allow this to happen.

  In due course there came a reply from the Ahhiyan king Agamemnon:

  Indeed I am at peace with the Land of Hatti, my brother. I have only attacked Priamos at Troia because the gods require me to avenge a great sacrilege. Paris, son of Priamos, has violated the guest-friendship he had with my brother Menelaos, king of Sparta. He came to the palace of Menelaos and stole from the altar the golden figure of the goddess Helene. He took with him also treasure and women from the palace. The gods would destroy me if I ignored such a crime.

  I have taken a sacred vow to punish Priamos and restore the golden goddess to her altar. But let this not be the cause of war between us, my brother, between the land of Achaia and the Land of Hatti. My quarrel is only with Priamos and Paris his heir, not with my brother the Great King of the Hittites. In token of my good will I send you these gifts, a gold and crystal flask of scented oil and a two-handled silver cup, embossed with images of the Wine God.

  When I had finished reading the letter, the king was greatly troubled. “Sacrilege. This is a grave charge. But how can I be sure of Agamemnon? Gifts are no guarantee of the truth.” He turned the silver cup in his hands, admiring its workmanship.

  “Yes,” I replied, “it is a gift fit for a king, but I have to wonder—was it looted from one of your subjects in Wilusa?”

  “There is one way to find out,” he said finally. “Hantili, I send you now to Wilusa so you can report to me on this matter as you see it with your own eyes. I know it may be hard to make such a journey at your age, but there is no one I trust more to tell me the truth. Let me know: Was there truly sacrilege committed by Priamos’s son Paris? Have the Ahhiyans attacked in force? With what strength—how many men, how many chariots? Do they come for conquest or only for revenge? Tell me whether I need to send my army to Wilusa.”

  Now I am in all things the servant of the Great King. I go at his command.

  By the time I arrived at the citadel of Taroisa in Wilusa, Agamemnon and his Ahhiyan sea-raiders had already sailed away, taking the spoils of their raids onto their ships and returning to their own lands in the west, across the sea. Men here tell me, men who know the sea, that contrary winds and the risk of storms make it impossible to set sail into open waters once the summer has come to an end.

  Men here in Wilusa speak the language of the Ahhiyans, whom they call Achaians. Many of them have Achaian blood. In the past, in times of peace, much trade with the Achaian lands has passed through this harbor, making Wilusa a rich land and ripe for plunder.

  Men tell me the Achaians were raiding up and down the coast, sacking the towns, carrying off the horses and livestock, carrying off the women into slavery. They say they struck the nearby islands, as well—Tenedos, Lesbos, Lemnos—though I have not seen these places with my own eyes. But with my own eyes I have seen the homesteads of Wilusa in ashes, the fields and groves despoiled. I have seen the orphans and the old people starving at the roadsides, begging for bread. This seems to me as if Agamemnon was more interested in plunder than in avenging sacrilege.

  At Taroisa, which men here call Troia, the evidence of war is everywhere. I myself have seen the tar-stained marks at the shoreline where the Achaian ships were drawn up out of the water—a great host of ships, and men tell me that each one can hold fifty men, to row and to fight. This was a large force! I saw the earthen rampart, also, that they threw up to protect their ships, though the men of Troia have by now demolished it. They seem convinced the raiders will return in the next season.

  Troia has the look of a place long besieged. It is evident that the hardest fighting has been on the plain that lies below the walls, between the city and the sea. The land there has been trampled to dust by the two contending armies, the hooves of their horses, the wheels of their chariots, the feet of their infantry. And there is the stench of the city, of too many bodies crowded together behind walls for too long. It is not a thing a man forgets, once he has known it: the odor of war, the odor of death.

  Yet Troia’s walls still stand. They are strong walls, well-built walls. I recall that the citadel fell in the time of the Great King Hattusili, but it is apparent that the ramparts since have been rebuilt, stronger than before. The citadel occupies the summit of a hill, and the walls rise above it, thick and well-sloped. There is a good, deep cistern inside the walls, and an ample supply of grain put by in the king’s storehouses. I do not think Troia will fall easily.

  All this I have seen myself, with my own eyes. But on the question of the sacrilege Agamemnon has claimed he must avenge, it is harder to discover the truth. Some men insist that Agamemnon lies and Paris committed no theft. Others tell me it was not the golden figure of Helene that he took from Menelaos, but Menelaos’s wife, who was named Helene for the goddess. A few others say that Helene the wife of Menelaos is the goddess herself, but of course this is the sort of foolish notion that a man will hear if he goes seeking information from strangers in the marketplace and the harbor.

  As far as I can tell the truth of it, this is what I have learned: Of all the sons of Priamos, and there are many, only two have ever been considered as heirs to his throne—Paris and Hektor. Paris is the elder, but he was passed over because of an unfavorable prophecy at his birth. Most men have always favored Hektor to be king after Priamos.

  But several years ago, an oracle proclaimed to Paris: When golden Helene comes as a bride to Troia, then will her bridegroom take a throne. Or at least Paris claimed to have such an oracle, and Priamos believed it, for when Paris returned from his raid on the palace of Menelaos with the golden figure of Helene, the king named him heir and gave him the wife of Menelaos as his wife. Other men say it was Priamos who had this prophecy in a dream. In any case, say the supporters of Paris, the theft was the will of the gods, no sacrilege at all.

  But the men who favor Hektor deny this, and many of them curse Paris as the cause of this war.

  The people here are hungry and full of fear. The fields, the orchards and groves surrounding the city have all been despoiled, the herds all driven from the pastures. I have seen a few ships in the harbor, bringing grain, now that the Achaians have finally sailed away. But of course the price is high. The poorest people are already reduced to selling their children or themselves to buy food. So it is always in a siege.

  But Priamos is still rich, and men say that he has sent word to the kings of nearby lands, offering them gold and silver if they will come to his aid. For men all say the Achaians will return in the spring to renew their attack on Troia, as s
oon as the winds allow them to sail.

  I have found a house here and a couple of slaves to keep it, a woman and a boy. Now that the Achaians have returned to renew their war, they have plenty of captives to sell, and the price is low.

  I deal in these matters with Agamemnon’s steward, a man named Glaukos, a man of my own kind: men who write and keep accounts, the records of what goods have been taken and distributed to the soldiers in camp; men who know the price and cost of things. I have decided to set up as a merchant, a dealer in the spoils of war. This will give me a chance to observe the Achaians without arousing undue suspicion. I expect I will make a good profit from it as well, for the Achaians can only transport home as much plunder as will fit into their ships. The rest they must sell.

  I have spoken with Glaukos over a cup of wine that should have gone to the king’s table. The painted cups are really very fine work. There used to be an extensive trade in Achaian wares through this port. I would like to get more of such cups before I leave this place, for they would be worth a great deal in Hattusa.

  Glaukos tells me that Agamemnon has brought to Troia not only his own army but soldiers from many other lands of the west. There is a company of soldiers here from Knossos and one from Rhodos, and many others from places I have never heard of. These seem for the most part to be his allies, not his subjects. Agamemnon is not a Great King, to command the obedience of other kings. Still, they follow him here, and it is a great host, many times outnumbering the army of Priamos, which Hektor leads. And Glaukos says they are more men this year than the last, more men joining them to reap the spoils of war.

  “Some men say,” I suggested, “that your army has come here more to plunder the palace of Priamos than avenge the crime of sacrilege.”

  “How can an army make war without plundering? How else can they eat, unless they take cattle from the enemy?”