Warrior in Bronze

by George Shipway

  We marched before sun-up and straggled along the Isthmus track, the most horrible road in Achaea. On one side a precipice sheers to the sea, on the other are vertical cliffs. The road itself gives a goat to think. At a place called Sciron’s Rocks the mountainside in ages past had fallen into the sea, the track weaves through jag-toothed boulders big as houses. Charioteers dismounted and warily led their horses. (The pass is named after a bandit chief whose band of rogues and outlaws, years before, lived in the crags and murdered solitary travellers; until a Corinthian warband sent by Eurystheus wiped them out. Afterwards, happily ignoring dates - the man was a babe at the time - Athens fostered a tale that Theseus killed Sciron. A typical Athenian invention to collect some undeserved credit - but The Lady knows they need every scrap they can filch.)

  The Host emerged from Sciron’s Rocks in considerable disorder. Alcmaeon exhorted the king to halt for a while and allow the column to close. Eurystheus refused; incandescent sunlight rebounded from the rocks and enclosed his ageing body in a heat like an over-stoked oven. Megara beckoned, half a day’s journey ahead. The troops rambled on, sometimes twenty bowshots separating chariots.

  Hillsides retreated on either hand, the Isthmus road debouched on the Megaran Plain, a featureless scrub-blotched flat-land patched by cultivated strips and isolated farmsteads. Menelaus sprung his horses for the first time since Mycenae. ‘Slow down,’ I told him. ‘Give our retinue a chance!’ I scrutinized my sweating spearmen and troupe of slaves and carts - one missing over a cliff at Sciron’s Rocks - the scattered clumps in rear, each trawling its private dust cloud. We closed on Eurystheus’ bodyguard marching in the van.

  Dust plumes feathered the plain in front, came near and resolved into galloping scouts who reined in a spurt of pebbles and gestured towards the sun-hazed flats. Eurystheus halted abruptly, Heroes jostled around him.

  ‘Enemy in sight!’

  Menelaus hauled on the bits, the chariot rocked to a standstill. He mopped his brow and said, ‘Blasted scouts can’t tell a spearman from a swineherd. Ruddy nonsense - the Heraclids were reported last night at Eleusis, a day’s march further on!’

  Though Eurystheus likewise doubted the scouts’ unlikely news his innate prudence directed precautions. He issued hurried orders: Heroes wheeled about and galloped to hasten laggards. All the chariots present - roughly half the total - formed a ragged line, each with attendant spearmen tramping behind. Baggage detachments were left where they stood, forlorn blobs on the tawny plain.

  I dubiously watched a scrambling deployment, and told Menelaus to station the car on a flank. ‘There’ll be horrible collisions when this mob starts to move - let’s keep clear as long as we can!’ The Host - such as had made their ground - halted in line of battle and waited for the dawdlers to arrive.

  ‘I hope the king won’t keep us extended all the way to Megara,’ Menelaus observed. ‘Damned difficult driving in thorn-scrub.’

  I shaded my eyes and stared into the haze. A shimmering curtain of dust banded the horizon. The sun flicked slivers of light on the mist like gold-specks scattered in sand.

  ‘Scrub or no scrub, brother, your driving is going to be tested. The Heraclids have stolen a march and sprung a surprise. We’re only half assembled, and they’re closing on us fast!’

  Commanders had seen the enemy; orders and counter-orders rattled along the line. Indecision and argument eddied like leaves on a flooded stream. The discussion continued far too long: an elderly palace Hero solemnly quoted encounters from wars Electyron waged. The majority wanted to stay where they were till the Host was fully mustered; young hot-headed Heroes advised an instant attack. Gelanor of Asine - a most impetuous youth - ordered his chariot forward, his spears obediently followed. Others copied his example, chariots bowled from the ranks. Eurystheus shouted commands that were drowned in the crunch of wheels, struck hand to brow despairingly and pointed his spear to the sky. Like a wavering breaker spent on shoals the battle-line advanced.

  ‘Incline to the left,’ I told Menelaus. ‘Keep well on the flank if you can.’

  I settled my helmet firmly, tested the chinstrap, fronted shield and hefted the ten-foot spear, scrubbed a sweaty palm on the warm dry figwood rail. From a throat that was suddenly dry as a stone I instructed the spearmen to close on the chariot’s tail.

  A wheel lurched over a boulder, Menelaus cursed. I recovered balance and planted my feet on the plaited leather floor, screwed eyes against the sun-glare. I distinguished garish helmet plumes, and silvery harness-trappings; a line of cantering chariots fronted a rolling dust cloud.

  The enemy were nearer than I’d thought.

  It is hard to recall impressions on the threshold of your first big battle. From epics sung by bards I cherished vague conceptions of chariots charging in rank, thundering hooves and singing wheels, warriors bellowing war-cries and maddened horses neighing, an ear-splitting clash when they met. Then a furious, swirling melee0 till one or the other broke, a galloping pursuit and killing, killing, killing.

  It was not like that in the slightest.

  Companions curbed their horses for fear of outstripping the spearmen running behind. The line dissolved in fragments before it had gone a bowshot; Heroes examined the enemy ranks for details of horses and mail, forms and faces - maybe seeking personal foes in order to settle scores, or fighters famously formidable to be avoided at any cost - and directed their drivers accordingly. Chariots swerved, criss-crossed, scraped hub against hub in flurries of violent language. Panting troops of spearmen followed the erratic tracks.

  The leading cars clashed wheel to wheel, spears lifted, hovered and plunged.

  The combatants dispersed in individual duels. Chariot circled chariot, Heroes hacked and stabbed, spearmen battled spearmen - holding the ring, as it were, while their principals fought it out. Companions adopted traditional tactics and manoeuvred to take opponents in the rear where spears met shieldless backs; their opposite numbers wrenched on bits to counteract the moves. Vehicles swirled in circles like puppies chasing their tails. Dust-towers spiralled from every fight and mingled in a canopy. Triumphant yells and death-shrieks resounded from the murk.

  Whatever I expected, it was certainly not this.

  Menelaus edged far to the wing and overlapped the Heraclid line. No immediate enemy presented himself in front. I ordered my brother to halt, and tried calmly to assess the scene. King Eurystheus gave battle with barely half his troops, and kept no reserve in hand - an elementary error Atreus had often condemned. The individual duels ensured a protracted struggle. A very untidy battle, the outcome most uncertain. Prudent to hold my hand and see how affairs turned out.

  A contest an arrow-shot distant came to a gory end. A Mycenaean warrior - I recognized Gelanor’s piebald horses - pierced his adversary’s guard and skewered him through the buttock where cuirass jointed brazen skirt. The spearhead spitted bowels and bladder; the Heraclid lurched from the chariot and his armour clanged around him. His Companion dropped the reins and ran; the dead man’s spearmen sheltered his flight and then, their Hero killed, fled like hunted deer. Gelanor and his retinue stripped the corpse’s armour, piled it in the enemy car and trotted with his prizes briskly from the battlefield.

  Similar little scenes were everywhere repeated. Victors in the duels on either side quickly collected booty while spearmen stood on guard. Triumphant loot-laden Heroes drove from the conflict in both directions; the scattered personal tussles grew noticeably fewer. Did the result, I wondered, depend on the ultimate duel? - or on which side won the heaviest load of plunder? Only round Eurystheus, conspicuous in gilded armour, did organized fighting continue: he and his sons, a compact brand, battled a cloud of chariots.

  ‘Get moving, Agamemnon,’ Menelaus growled impatiently, ‘else we won’t win any booty, and I’ll never win my greaves!’

  So that, I concluded dimly, was why Heroes fought so heroically. Remember I was young and extremely inexperienced.

  A violent interruption whipped de
cision from my hands. A chariot whirled from the dust-fog, the Hero brandished a spear and bawled at the stretch of his lungs: ‘Who’ll fight Theseus of Athens, Theseus of Athens!’

  I surfaced sharply from a stupor the weird manoeuvres had induced. ‘Take him, Menelaus! The idiot’s out of control. Whip up and turn behind him!’

  Theseus thudded past, the naves of his wheels whirred a foot from our own, an ineffectual spear-jab thumped my shield. Menelaus swung his team in a tight two-cornered turn, and flailed his whip. The chase led across the battlefield’s front, we swerved round interlocked chariots, skirted bunches of spearmen and slowly gained on Theseus whose driver wrestled the reins to curb his bolting horses. We crashed through a group of Locrians swinging slings of fine-spun wool; a stone bounced off my helmet. Menelaus closed on the quarry, guided his chariot abaft the nearside wheel. Theseus frantically twisted about, tripped on the rocking floor-thongs, cowered behind his shield. I lifted my spear for the thrust.

  ‘The Lady save us!’ Menelaus howled. ‘Look to your left!’

  I turned my head. A solid wall of chariots raced like a tidal wave, a roaring, thundering breaker galloping wheel to wheel. Long hair streamed in the wind of the charge, tawny naked bodies - absolutely naked - manned the hurtling chariots, a bugger and his catamite in each, and every one hell-bent on death or glory. They wore neither helmets nor shields; a menacing cable of spears glittered like frost in the sun.

  The Heraclids’ hidden reserve flung in at the critical moment: the Scavengers of Thebes.

  My spear haft slid from a paralysed hand. ‘Run!’ I shrieked. ‘Turn right! Drive like the wind!’

  Menelaus needed no telling. We tore from the field of Megara like men possessed by furies, overtook panic-struck Heroes who had also seen the horror, scraped past slower drivers, jolted over corpses, smashed through scrub and bushes. Like a gathering storm behind us we heard the Thebans’ war-cries, the roll of drumming hoofbeats and strident bronze-tyred wheels. Menelaus flogged his horses, I gripped the rail and struggled to keep my feet, glanced fearfully over my shoulder.

  Gradually but certainly our fast Venetic thoroughbreds outstripped the Theban horde.

  We left the plain in a welter of flying vehicles that crammed the hill-girt funnel gating the Isthmus road. Ruthlessly my brother thrust sluggish teams aside, tipped in the ditch a lumbering three-horse chariot - an artful trick, nave lifting nave - and overhauled satisfied Heroes who had left the battle early with chariot-loads of plunder. The track, approaching Sciron’s Rocks, made overtaking difficult; I pretended I carried to Corinth the king’s victorious tidings, and demanded right of way. Grumbling, they shuffled aside. Having gained the lead I shouted that the Scavengers were loose; if they wanted to save their skins they had better move like lightning.

  Menelaus cracked his whip; we hurriedly drove on.

  He passaged Sciron’s Rocks at an unbelievable trot. I averted my eyes from a vertical cliff which plunged below the nearside wheel to rocks like fangs and a boiling sea. The track thereafter seemed level and broad as a highway newly paved. In the glow of a crimson sunset we saw Corinth’s grey-walled citadel perched on its craggy mount, and walked our weary horses up the serpentine track to the gate.

  Conveying bad news is always unpleasant, and often highly dangerous if the recipient loses his temper. Bunus, Warden of Corinth, became neither flustered nor angry. He seated us in the Hall and offered watered wine - I emptied a double-handled cup without drawing breath - and heard our tale in silence. I confessed we had fled from the fight and therefore could not describe the finish of the Scavengers’ tempestuous charge. I surmised that the attack, so furious and surprising, must have swept Mycenae’s forces from the field.

  Bunus summoned his captains; trumpets on the watch-towers blared alarm; spearmen manned the walls and Heroes donned their armour; messengers ran to the town below. A long procession - men, women, children, cattle, sheep and horses - ascended to the citadel for refuge. By sundown Corinth was ready for escaladers.

  None appeared. Instead the gates admitted a trickle of survivors : exhausted, staggering warriors, many badly wounded. Among them my old tutor Diores, his forearm gashed from elbow to wrist. I embraced him almost in tears - delayed reaction was setting in - fed him meat and wine and bound the wound. Remnants of a defeated Host crowded the palace Hall; torchlight conjured movement from leaping boars and lions painted on the walls and sculpted the faces of grave-eyed Heroes listening to Diores’ tale - a story that crowned calamity.

  King Eurystheus was dead.

  ‘They caught him at Sciron’s Rocks, pulled him from the chariot and hacked him in pieces,’ Diores said tiredly. ‘I was driving a bowshot in front, and saw it happen. Hyllus cut off his head and stuck the skull on a spear - which so delighted the bastards they sang a paean of triumph and danced around the trophy. Checked the pursuit. Only reason I escaped.’

  He dragged his hand across a dusty sweat-caked face. ‘Some of our Heroes dismounted and fled on foot through the hills; but there won’t be a lot of survivors - you don’t get quarter from the Scavengers. The Athenians’ prisoners might ransom themselves if they’re lucky. Otherwise ...’ The hand that lifted a cup to his mouth shook like a leaf in the wind.

  I strove to collect my shattered wits. The king’s death changed the disaster’s whole complexion: from a military defeat now stemmed a political vacuum whose implications were serious indeed. The chance Atreus awaited fell unheralded from heaven - and he was far away and unaware. I recalled through mists of fatigue his appreciation, years before, of the course events would take when Eurystheus died: a short sharp bicker between Marshal and royal sons, the Heroes supporting Atreus and a peaceable accession.

  Were they alive, those sons - my friends Perimedes and his brothers whom last I had seen fighting around the king? I put the question sharply to Diores.

  He opened drooping eyelids. ‘Can’t say for certain. Damned unlikely. Probably killed with Eurystheus.’

  Which, if true, opened without hindrance the Marshal’s path to the throne - or the way of any Hero bold enough to seize it, someone on the spot.

  Thyestes.

  The name rang in my ears like a death-cry. I must summon Atreus from Pylos; not a moment could be lost. I forced jaded limbs from the stool and addressed the Warden. ‘Lord Bunus, I want fresh horses. I go at once to Mycenae.’

  Bunus eyed me searchingly. The Heraclids might be anywhere. You will travel the road tonight?’

  ‘Tonight.’ Menelaus sagged in a chair; I shook him awake. ‘Come, brother - let us try your driving in the dark.’

  ***

  Moonlight silvered the track, carved sharp-edged ebony cloaks from clefts and crags. Menelaus drove in a daze, ready to drop from fatigue - nothing is so dispiriting as defeat. Periodically I relieved him at the reins, and sombrely reflected on the reverses a day had brought. My baggage and spearmen lost - but easily replaceable - the throne at risk, a battle incompetently fought, Heroes contending like brigands hunting loot, Mycenae’s Host destroyed.

  Our methods of making war warranted speedy reform. A vision of the Theban charge flashed on moonlit scarps: an irresistible onslaught combining velocity, vigour and order.

  That was the way to win battles.

  The horses, mettlesome and frisky, tugged my aching arms. The armour weighed like mountains on my shoulders. ‘Menelaus,’ I said, ‘there was something horribly wrong with our tactics today!’

  Menelaus, asleep on his feet, snored gently in reply.

  Chapter 4

  We reached Mycenae at cockcrow. Figures flitted like wraiths in the half-dark heralding dawn: peasants carrying mattocks, women bearing pitchers for filling at the Perseia spring, ploughmen driving ox teams to the fields. The long night’s journey had subdued our horses, which hung on the bits and plodded up the hill to the citadel. A sleepy guard was unbarring the gate, the chariot rattled through. I tumbled tiredly out.

  During the journey from Nemea onwards I k
ept wondering whom I could trust to carry the news to Pylos. Neither Menelaus nor I had slept from one sunrise to the next; battle-strain and incessant driving had taken toll; we were in no condition for a whirlwind non-stop trip across Achaea. Moreover I had to stay in Mycenae and try to control events till the Marshal arrived. I could not entrust the message to anyone guarding the citadel; he might inform Thyestes - the very last thing I wanted.

  A young squire crept furtively past, clearly hoping to escape our notice. (He was returning, he told me afterwards, from bedding the wife of a merchant away in Argos, who lived in a house overlooking the Chaos Ravine.) I knew him well; for moons he had dogged my footsteps, silently adoring, and asked me once to take him into my household. I refused because his pedigree was not entirely noble - an unfortunate mesalliance between his grandfather and a slave girl - and only men of the purest blood should serve the Marshal’s heir. But he was likeable and dependable - and this was no time for priggishness.

  ‘Talthybius,’ I called. ‘Come here.’

  Torn between guilt and eagerness he shuffled from the shadows. I said, ‘Talthybius, I am entrusting to you a mission of vital importance. On you will depend Mycenae’s fate; you must not fail. Take this chariot to my house, yoke fresh horses from my stables - the Kolaxian greys are the best - ask Clymene for food and a wineskin. You will drive to Pylos as fast as the horses can go. Change horses at Sparta; leave the greys in payment. Go like the wind till you’re climbing the mountains past Lerna - by midday you must be beyond pursuit. At Pylos give Atreus my signet ring and tell him: “King Eurystheus is dead. Thyestes holds Mycenae. Return at once.” You will not mention this to another soul; and I expect the message to be delivered within two days.’

  I slipped from a finger the ring with my personal seal - a jasper bezel portrayed my ancestor Zeus grappling a lion in either hand - and made the lad (he was just fifteen) repeat the instructions word for word. Talthybius made no bones about it, asked no questions. Serious and slightly portentous, a youth abruptly cloaked in a mantle of responsibility, he grasped the nearside bit to lead the chariot off. I added, ‘When you return, Talthybius, I’ll take you as my squire and, after you pass the tests, make you my Companion.’