Atreus returned, a spectre black in the darkness. ‘I’ve found the postern. Come on!’ Like beads on a jerkily moving string the file traversed the base of the wall. I kept my fingers touching the Marshal’s back. A small dark cavern opened in the glimmer of the stones; he stooped and disappeared. A narrow tunnel twenty steps long pierced Midea’s massive wall; a rock roof brushed my helmet, elbows scraped hewn rock. Atreus rasped his sword from the scabbard. I drew my own.
I shuffled from the tunnel. This was the moment of greatest peril. Wriggling through the postern’s shaft like a worm that a bird has mauled, half in and half outside, we faced the chance of discovery by watchers on the walls. Atreus guided his men into place directly each emerged. With backs to the rampart’s inner face we stood in a slender alley between the wall and a row of houses. Not a light showed anywhere. Serrated rooftops leaned against a grey tempestuous sky. Ragged racing clouds, faint as flying phantoms, sped across a heaven like tarnished lead.
Dawn was not far off.
The Marshal faced his forlorn hope. With a parade ground snap he said, ‘You know what you have to do. Go!’
Feet gritted on the steps which climbed to the battlements. I glimpsed the sheen of helmeted shapes running the rampart walk. A compact block of twenty Heroes followed Atreus. We twisted and turned in canyoned streets and climbed to the citadel’s summit. A flight of broad stone steps, a flagstoned court and a figure which jumped from the shadows. A shout that choked on a squeal as Atreus’ sword went home. A spear rattled on the flags and almost tripped me up. We crashed into the portico.
Men sleeping behind the pillars struggled from their cots and died before their feet could touch the ground. There were more inside the vestibule and Hall - and women too - spearmen of the guard, guests who slept where the wine had felled them, slaves and serving-maids. In tumultuous semi-darkness we killed anything that moved. The first person I slew in my life was a woman: my blade slid smoothly into her belly and slipped as smoothly out. She yelped and fell at my feet.
I faced a shadowy form and caught the gleam of armour, a spearpoint raised for the thrust. The guard commander, I later discovered; a conscientious Hero who slept in all his panoply but had forgotten to find his shield. I lifted mine and lunged full stretch. The sword point gouged his eyeball and pierced the back of his skull. He crashed to the floor, his armour clanged on the paving. I set a foot on his throat and tugged the blade free.
That ended all resistance in the Hall. Atreus bounded through an inner doorway, kicking ahead a wretched cowering slave. ‘Where is Amphiaraus? Take me to the king!’ The tumult had aroused the denizens of the palace: frightened figures flitted from doors and ran along the corridors. I jumped ahead of the trotting slave and cleared the way, ruthlessly cutting down anyone slow to move. Speechlessly our guide gestured to a curtained entrance. Clotted sword in hand, Atreus burst into the room. The naked Lord of Midea sat bolt upright in his bed, eyes starting from his head. A middle-aged woman beside him opened her mouth and screamed.
Atreus wiped his blade on a wolfskin coverlet adorning the bed. ‘Well, Amphiaraus,’ he said pleasantly, ‘I have taken your city. Shall I kill you, or do you yield yourself my prisoner?’
A half-dozen panting warriors bustled into the room, saw the situation under control and hurtled out. Shouts and the clash of blade on blade echoed from the corridors where the raiders quenched the flickers of a rapidly failing resistance: gummy-eyed palace Heroes who snatched the nearest weapons and tried to fight the terrors that sprang from the night.
Amphiaraus resignedly spread his hands. ‘I am at your mercy.’ Atreus said in an undertone, ‘Agamemnon, go swiftly to the ramparts. If we’ve taken the gate tower find wood and fire a beacon. Run!’
Dawn light paled a sullen sky; pandemonium thrashed in the streets; terrified citizens scurried like ants in a nest which a boar has rooted. I mounted to the ramparts, ran along the walk, skipped over bodies and reached the tower. Familiar faces peered from the top. I climbed the ladder quick as a squirrel and repeated Atreus’ order. They hacked the guardroom furniture and built a fire. Flames leaped redly in daybreak dusk.
On the peak of a distant mountain a light like a lambent star answered the beacon’s signal.
I struggled through tumultuous streets to the palace. Atreus had mustered his Heroes in the Hall. Four had died in the fighting. With Amphiaraus and one of his sons found hiding in a store room we formed a wedge, forced through seething mobs and gained the gate tower. A little band of Midea’s Heroes, rallying from the shock, gathered in an alley and prepared to rush the ramparts. Atreus put his swordpoint to the small of his prisoner’s back, forced him to the edge of the walk and shouted in his ear. Amphiaraus lifted his arms and spoke with the feverish passion of a man on the verge of death. His gallant followers lowered their spears and retreated into the houses.
The Marshal leaned arms on the parapet and gazed across the mist-hung plain surrounding Midea’s mount. A noise like a tumbled hive buzzed from the town far below; a column of spearmen crawled up the zigzag track. ‘They haven’t a hope,’ he said. ‘No one can take Midea by storm. All we do now is await reinforcements.’
At midday a watery sun gleamed on the trappings of chariots, on twenty-score spears and brazen mail crowding the road from Mycenae. King Eurystheus led his Host through the gates his Marshal opened.
***
The Warden of Asine, pressed by his captive Lord, looked at the force Eurystheus brought and prudently surrendered. Within the space of a day a rich and fertile territory fell into Mycenae’s hands. Because there had been no sack of either town, and consequently no looting, the king ordered confiscations and awarded every Hero who survived the night attack two female slaves apiece, a talent of bronze and fifteen head of cattle.
Atreus received a dozen farms, and immediately gave me half. ‘You’ve killed your man and won your greaves, and a Hero must have a demesne. You’ll be an absentee landlord, I fear: no question of your rusticating on a Midean manor away from the hub of affairs. As the Marshal’s heir Mycenae’s the place for you until you’re old enough to warrant an important post in government. I’ll have to see about that.’
Atreus flayed alive the spearman he bribed to open the postern, and nailed his skin to the wall above the gate. ‘A warning to traitors. Treachery is a terrible crime. Unless we make it expensive,’ the Marshal asserted gravely, ‘nobody can feel safe.’
Eurystheus ceremonially bestowed on me a pair of silver-limned greaves. Immersed in the blissful euphoria of joining the Heroes’ ranks I shared happily in the glory which aureoled Atreus’ reputation. Heroes throughout Achaea discussed the operation, dissected it step by step and wagged their heads admiringly. A night attack - unprecedented! May be something in it after all!
Thus emboldened King Augeas of Elis hurled his Host in the dark at a stronghold in Arcadia - and was bloodily repulsed. In the slapdash way of Heroes he neglected the rigorous training and meticulous planning - a meal before battle, a soldier suborned, the chain of beacons summoning Eurystheus - which made Atreus’ exploit such a shattering success. Augeas’ defeat discouraged a repetition: commanders reverted to orthodox habits and fought their battles in daylight.
I have lingered over this episode for two reasons: it introduced me to combat and, more important, invigorated the expansion of Mycenae’s power which began when Electryon stormed Corinth sixty years before; continued when King Sthenelus laid Nemea under tribute; and had wilted since in Eurystheus’ languid hands. The escalade at Midea helped to found the mighty empire Mycenae rules today.
It also had another curious aftermath. A quarter-century later, brooding on Scamander’s banks, I remembered Atreus’ tactic and devised the fall of Troy.
***
As a newly-fledged Hero I abandoned my palace quarters near Atreus’ and my mother’s apartments and started a separate establishment in a commodious house by the northern gate. Supported by revenues from my Midean estates I furnished the room
s luxuriously, buying marble tables inlaid with rosettes of ivory and gold, cedarwood chairs intricately carved, bronze cauldrons and tripods, vases of dark green mottled stone from Laconia, patterned rugs and hangings woven in the town. Tunics and mantles and gaudy robes filled beechwood chests in store rooms, and jars abrim with fragrant oil and mellow vintage wine sentinelled the walls. Clymene was pleased, but not so pleased when I sent to Nauplia for slaves and she found herself sharing favours with a brace of willowy Cretans: good housemaids, handy at the looms and remarkably agile in bed. Clymene sulked.
‘Who expects one woman to satisfy a Hero?’ I asked her brusquely. ‘You run the house and order the servants. Isn’t that enough?’
‘Common peasant bitches,’ she sniffed. ‘I wonder you bear the smell!’
‘It’s part of your job to see they wash - and don’t be such a snob. When next we sack a city I’ll take a royal daughter. That’ll put your nose out of joint - your father in Pylos was only a lordling!’
Clymene feigned humility. ‘My breeding is coarser than yours, I know - who can match Pelopian blood? - but all my arts in love I learned from you.’ She smiled demurely. ‘Is Agamemnon’s pupil less versatile than a couple of Cretan sluts?’
I laughed, and fondled her breasts; and hastened out to inspect a pair of thoroughbred sorrels a dealer had brought from Euboia.
Besides providing myself with horses I had to order armour from the smiths. While tradition governs warriors and war, and accoutrements remain unchanged through many years, in the matter of mail two schools of thought contend. One swears by the ancient fashion - somewhat modified - our ancestors brought from Crete: a leather corselet, helmet and greaves - all of which depend for proper protection on a body-length shield of the waisted or concave kind. (The bards insist that Zeus and his followers fought naked, disdaining even corselet and greaves.) This school - the traditionalists - say a soldier so equipped is quicker and more active than one weighed down in mail.
Their opponents hold the opposite view: Heroes riding chariots don’t jump around like fleas; a warrior wounded is a warrior the less, so protection is of paramount importance. Hence they wear the strongest armour that hammer and bellows can forge, virtually impenetrable by any brazen blade. These clanking Heroes deride the conservative school and pride themselves on moving with the times - though the type of mail they favour was introduced, so Atreus said, by a former Lord of Midea far back in Perseus’ time.
The fossilized thinking of military minds was a factor that hindered me later.
I held no strong opinion either way and followed the example of Atreus, a convinced ‘modernist’. The smith forged me backplates and breastplates, chin-high gorget, shoulder-guards and arm-shields and a knee-length skirt descending in triple overlapping flounces. All were solid metal, tried and tested bronze. The leather-workers’ guild constructed a close-fitting oxhide casque and sewed upon the outside boars’ tusks ranged in rows. Interwoven straps lined the helmet’s interior and rested on a skullcap made of felt. A horsehair plume dyed scarlet bannered the crest. I favoured a waisted shield five hides thick, a ten-foot spear and thrusting sword, and brazen greaves fastened at the back by silver wire. The whole outfit cost fifteen oxen; and until I grew accustomed I waddled beneath the burden like a pregnant woman eight moons gone.
Though Eurystheus did not evict the men who held the Midean manors, their tributes flowed to Mycenae; Atreus became a richer man and the king extremely wealthy. Overruling his Marshal, who advised for dynastic reasons that the man was better dead, he banished Amphiaraus. He went to live in Argos; it was rumoured he had foretold Midea’s fall, and thereafter earned a reputation as a seer. Following a lenient policy - pointless to sack towns and devastate land whence he intended to gather tribute - Eurystheus allowed Amphiaraus’ son Alcmaeon to rule Midea in his stead. Everyone was reasonably happy; and ox-carts from Midea’s cornfields swelled Mycenae’s granaries.
‘Which removes for a time the threat of famine,’ Atreus said, ‘but the people will still go short. Sooner or later we’ll have to break the Theban hold on Orchomenos.’
About this time - or perhaps a little later; nowadays my memory is apt to go astray - Jason returned from Colchis. Word arrived from Tiryns that Argo had anchored in Nauplia’s bay. Jason, the messenger added, resolutely refused to beach his ship or allow anyone on board: he held a cargo for delivery to none but King Eurystheus in person. Rumours of his return had reached us from Iolcos where he first made port; stories of his exploits during a two-year expedition multiplied like maggots in a corpse. He, his ship and crew were names in everyone’s mouth; men wanted to meet the mariner and hear the truth from his lips.
Eurystheus renounced dignity - you don’t normally summon kings -- and escorted by palace Heroes drove to Nauplia.
Galleys bristled a sandy beach in rows; every owner had his own particular slip. A wharf of quarried stone jutted from the tide mark a bowshot out to sea; here ships were moored to offload heavy cargo. Seamen clustered in groups on wharf and beach, squatted beside the galleys and cobbled sails and cables, planed the oars. Away to the left reared Nauplia’s natural breakwater, a rocky arm of land two hundred foot-lengths high; on the seaward face a cliff fell sheer to the sea. (Aerope’s Leap, the people called it, after a doom-laden day in the future.) Solitary in the bay a long black penteconter rocked lazily on the swell.
Eurystheus drove down the beach till the wheels sank deep in sand, dismounted and greeted Thyestes who, surrounded by attendants, waited to receive him. The Warden of Tiryns wore a gold-embroidered cloak and a vindictive expression, and gestured angrily towards the galley.
‘The harbour master commanded the fellow either to beach or moor at the wharf; he refused both. Spearmen went in a boat to enforce the orders; Jason, damn him, manned the bulwarks and fended them off. Is his cargo too precious for ordinary men to see?’
‘It wouldn’t surprise me,’ Eurystheus said quietly. ‘Call to him, my lord: tell him the king is here.’
Thyestes cupped hands and bawled across the water. The anchor thumped aboard; oars rattled on tholes and paddled Argo to the wharf. Sailors whipped ropes round bollards. Jason leaped ashore and saluted, back of the hand on forehead.
Sun had burned the mariner’s features brown as plough-turned soil, sea rime cindered his beard. Smilingly he said, ‘I come to repay my debt, sire. Half of all I brought from Colchis awaits you in the hold. Care to see it?’
He handed king and Marshal on deck; a jerk of Atreus’ head signalled me aboard. Thyestes stayed on the wharf, muttering in his beard and eyeing with growing interest a vivid apparition sitting in the sternsheets: a remarkably beautiful woman, red-haired, red-lipped, fierce green eyes in a face like flawless marble. Seamen lifted planks which covered the hold. Leather sacks reposed on the garboard strakes. Jason unknotted thongs, opened wide the mouths. Gold dust glittered like sun-rays in the darkness of the hold.
The king’s mouth opened; silently he counted. ‘Fifteen sack-loads. And this is only half?’
‘Exactly half. The rest, after rewarding my crew, I deposited at Corinth’s port.’
Atreus scanned the sailors who busied about the ship, stacking oars, coiling ropes, lowering the mast. ‘These are not the Heroes who sailed with you to Colchis?’
‘No. They left me at Iolcos and later landfalls in Achaea. I recruited ordinary seamen in their place.’
‘Where did you leave Hercules?’
‘That blasted nuisance! He behaved like a thundering pest from the start. Never, to my knowledge, been to sea before. Didn’t stop him trying to interfere. You’d think his strength would help the rowing. Not so. Clumsy lout kept breaking his oar. After clearing the Hellespont we beached one day in Mysia. I told the crew to stay by the ship - the natives can be hostile on these unknown foreign shores. Hercules defied my orders, wandered into the woods. When he hadn’t shown in the morning I re-embarked and left him.’ Jason grinned. ‘We all felt better afterwards.’
&nbs
p; ‘You marooned him?’ asked Atreus, startled.
‘Just that. Mysia’s not very far. The bastard will find a way back. Unfortunately.’
Atreus, like his brother, had not failed to notice the woman aboard. He nodded in her direction and said lightly, ‘A slave you bought on the way, or perhaps a captive taken from the enemies you encountered? She’s extraordinarily lovely!’
Jason made a face. ‘My wife Medea, daughter of the King of Colchis. I meant to leave her in Iolcos, but a palace revolution killed my brother Pelias and we had to sail in a hurry. She won’t let me out of her sight. Medea is not,’ said Jason ruefully, ‘a lady to be tampered with.’
(The mariner, I learned later, told less than half the truth. Medea, hoping to put her husband on Iolcos’ throne, had instigated Pelias’ murder in a rather horrible way. His son, discovering the facts, chased her and Jason out. Undoubtedly a woman worth avoiding!)
Slaves off-loaded the precious cargo and piled it into wagons under Alreus’ watchfull eye. Thyestes detailed an escort; oxen strained at the yokes and the convoy trundled away on the Argos road. Eurystheus invited Medea and Jason to dine in Tiryns’ Hall. Thyestes swiftly ousted his Companion from the chariot, mounted the lady instead and took the reins. Jason, riding in my car - I had not yet found a Companion and drove myself - missed none of this little ploy, and observed wryly, ‘I wish the Lord of Tiryns luck - but really he hasn’t a chance. Medea won’t look at another man, and she’s jealous as a lioness in whelp.’
Jason described during dinner the hazards of his unique voyage to Colchis: adventures since renowned, embroidered and exaggerated, a favourite epic sung by the bards in every palace Hall. Eurystheus listened entranced; Atreus showed more interest in the mercantile side of the quest.
‘I understand these Colchians are more or less barbarians?’
‘Fairly savage, yes, but endowed with primitive cunning.’ Jason drained his cup, and appreciatively smacked his lips. ‘Vintage Pramnian, if I’m not mistaken - a change from the muck I’ve been drinking lately. They have little idea of their gold dust’s value but are keen as knives when it comes to barter. Cleaned out all my trade goods, and demanded more. An ugly crisis developed, but Medea calmed them down. She’d fallen arse over tip in love, did anything I wanted. So I married the girl and promised to return. Otherwise we mightn’t have escaped.’
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