Troy: A Brand of Fire

by Ben Blake

  *

  There was some sort of uproar building up outside. Mursili hesitated, but there was no reason for him to keep on wasting time in the building he’d been given to use as a smithy. He went to the door, noting glumly how high the lintel was above his head, and headed out into the tangle of curving streets.

  Trojan homes were oval, one family living in each half of the building. They entered through doorways on the upper floors, reached by ladders or stone steps cut into the walls. Often walkways ran from roof to roof, providing easy access without need to descend. Up there Mursili thought it must be easy to find your way around the city: Troy was not nearly so big or complex as Hattusa. It should be difficult to get lost here.

  But at street level it was easy. The streets were narrow and wove to left and right as they swerved around the oval houses, so there was almost never a line of sight beyond the next wall. The city stood on flat ground as well, which meant there was no gradient to act as a guide. Mursili had managed to lose his way twice this morning as he tried to find the building given to him near the city wall, and had finally done so only by reaching that wall and following it halfway around the city.

  He thought he’d hit on a way to navigate, though. The houses were painted in a variety of scenes, some natural and others not, executed often by deft artisans but sometimes by ham-handed amateurs. Almost every building sported some kind of decoration. If he could memorise those, he might be able to find his way back after he saw what the disturbance was.

  He walked slowly, letting the citizens flood past him as they hurried towards the main road through the middle of the city. That was straight, at least, and wide enough for laden wagons to pass besides. He couldn’t see it though, and didn’t try, instead concentrating on the murals. Antelopes by a stream on the left, then chariots racing on my right.

  The chariots each had three horses. That seemed an indulgence almost beyond imagining to Mursili. Even the ceremonial chariot of the great King in Hattusa only had two. Quality horseflesh was so rare that the King imposed his personal control on the movement of stallions, and set prices as well, a level of control only matched in the silk and gold markets. Horses were bought for the royal family from Scythia, sometimes even from beyond Assyria when relations with that sprawling empire were in one of their easier phases. But the best horses of all came from Troy, from the lush plain spread out below and around the city walls. The King would pay almost any price for new-tamed tarpans which had cropped that grass; he’d pay twice over to stop such animals going to Egypt, or Assyria, whose armies might use them against him.

  Troy had grown rich through its horses. If there was one place in the world where three horses to a chariot was ordinary, taken for granted, it would be right here.

  Two boys boxing on my right, then women performing what looks like a ritualised dance just beyond it… and Mursili came to the back of a crowd, packed thickly across the curved street. He could go no further, and he couldn’t see what had the citizenry in such a froth of excitement, even if he stood on his tiptoes. He sighed and started to turn around, and a hand fell on his arm.

  “Wait, my friend,” the man at his elbow said. In nešili, the language of Mursili’s own people. The stranger called up to someone on a rooftop, switching to the Trojan tongue Mursili couldn’t understand at all. He’d spent most of this morning trying to explain to a thick-witted soldier why the forge building wasn’t fit for purpose, reduced to gestures and scribbled pictures because neither of them spoke a word of the other’s language.

  “Up that ladder,” the newcomer said, again in nešili, “and quick, or you’ll miss her.”

  Caught off balance, Mursili didn’t even think to ask who the man meant. He scrambled up the ladder and found himself on the flat roof of a house, along with perhaps a dozen other people all crowded along the edge, staring down at the wide street and chattering excitedly. Mursili could tell that, even if the words made no sense. Several of the Trojans looked him up and down, then turned to more interesting things. This really was a cosmopolitan city, where outlanders were common enough not to be remarkable. Mursili turned to the man who’d accosted him.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Phereclus,” the man said. “An outlander, like yourself. Oh look, here they come.”

  Mursili turned to see a pair of chariots advancing up the avenue, one behind the other. Each was driven by a soldier in a light cuirass, and each carried a woman as passenger. The one in the rear car looked like a servant to him. The one in the front was different.

  She was wearing a dress with a tight bodice, quite high-cut, and a floor-length wrap skirt. White beads had been sewn into her raven hair. But it was the way she held herself that caught Mursili’s attention, not the fineness of her attire. She looks like a queen, he thought, but this could not be Hecuba; the high lady of Troy was decades older than this woman. The crowd was going crazy, screaming and throwing seeds of wheat into the air. Mursili couldn’t make out what they were chanting.

  “Who is she?” he shouted to Phereclus.

  “Andromache,” the other man answered. “She’s to be the bride of Hector.”

  That name he knew, of course.

  The great King called on warriors from all his subject cities, when he had need. Which he did often these days, with the Assyrians probing persistently up from the heartland of their plain, and the Egyptians having rediscovered some of their ancient martial pride. Subject warriors were formed into ancillary companies, sometimes used to support the Hittite spears, otherwise sent ahead to soften an enemy before the main strike. If he was exceptionally good, a subject might be allowed to fight with the Golden Spears, the Hittite elites.

  Hector was allowed to fight with the chariots. The best of the best, finest drivers and spearmen in the world. Mursili had never heard of any other outsider given that honour.

  At Emar, the mighty battle last summer against the invading Assyrians, Hector had actually commanded one of the two chariot division. An outlander, captain of chariots! It was astonishing. But then Hector sometimes seemed more than just a man, more than mortal. Soldiers said that at Emar he killed twenty enemy spearmen just in the first charge, and splintered their left just when the battle had been turning the Assyrians’ way.

  When Mursili had been told he was going west, with Hector, he’d expected to find the man full of boasts and bluster, a fighting man who took pride only in warfare and his own skill. Hector had surprised him. The Trojan was a thoughtful, considerate man, easy to trust, and a good companion on the long journey west. Mursili liked him, and that was a thing he’d never expected to think of a royal, of any city.

  So the beautiful woman in the chariot would be queen of Troy one day. She knew how to look like one already, that was for sure.

  “I must get back,” he said to the stranger. Phereclus, he remembered. “I have work to do.”

  “At the smithy?”

  That stopped him, and he gave the man a frown. “How do you know that?”

  “I followed you most of the way down from there,” Phereclus said. “Ucalegon asked me to find you. He seemed to think you were having trouble making yourself understood.”

  “Ucalegon sent you?”

  “He asked me,” the other man repeated. “Hardly anyone in Troy speaks your language, you know. Hector does, and his brother Lycaon has a few words – not surprising, given that he’s married to –”

  “Eshan of Hattusa,” Mursili broke in. “I remember when he came to the city for the wedding. A great honour for Troy.”

  “And for Hattusa too,” Phereclus said, almost absently. “In my home we know both cities equally, as places of legend.”

  “Your home?”

  “I’m from Colchis,” Phereclus said.

  Mursili knew that name too. Surprise upon surprise, he thought to himself. Colchis was a place of myth itself, a country where the rivers were laced with gold and precious stones washed up on the strands after a storm. A sheep’s fleece hung in the
water for a season would glitter with gold when it was drawn back out again. It would be a target for every greedy king in the world, except that the Colchian navy dominated the Euxine Sea and the land itself was ringed by high mountains. There was a tale, probably untrue, of a Greek adventurer who had stolen one of those fleeces, a generation ago or so.

  More believable were the stories of armies which had vanished in Colchis, or been eaten by creatures which dwelt in the clouds which wreathed those peaks. One Hittite tale spoke of a hero who battled living trees and the spirits of forest glades, fought off mountain spirits, and came home with only a torn-off scrap of fleece to show for his efforts.

  He looked at Phereclus, considering his words, and then gave a mental shrug and said, “You’re a shipbuilder.”

  “That’s right,” Phereclus admitted cheerfully. “Though my pride leads me to insist that I’m a master shipbuilder. I wanted to see some of the fabled places of the world, king Priam wanted an expert shipbuilder, and so here I am.” He spread his hands. “A common artisan far from my home, just like you.”

  “I am not,” Mursili said stiffly, “a common artisan.”

  “Ah,” Phereclus said. His smile faded. “I see. You really are just like me, and just as proud in your own work.”

  Mursili shrugged. “Work is all I have.”

  “We can find you something more, here in Troy.”

  He grimaced. “Your women are so tall it unnerves me.”

  “Tall, perhaps, but between the legs they’re the same as any other women. Just a bit higher up.”

  Surprised, Mursili was laughing before he realised it. Phereclus had an ease about him that was reminiscent of Hector, though the two men were utterly different in every other way. Phereclus was balding and boasted a slight paunch, hardly the characteristics of a warrior lord. Still, Mursili thought he might be able to like him. It would be pleasant to have a friend in this new city.

  “All right, then,” Phereclus said presently. “What’s got you so angry about your new smithy?”

  Mursili drew a breath.

  “The forge pit is on the far wall from the slack tub,” he said. “How does that make sense? I need to be able to turn from the forge to cool metal quickly, at once, not waste seconds striding across the room. Then the work tables are less than two yards from the forge pit, and they’re made of wood. Iron requires a great deal of heat and those tables will catch fire. The heat also needs to be vented, but there are no windows above the forge pit, none at all. The tool rack needs to be –”

  “Stop!” Phereclus said, holding his hands up as though in surrender. “Enough, my new friend. I can see you know what you need. I’ll arrange for you to talk with Ucalegon. Actually,” he added, “I’d better be there too, since the Councillor doesn’t speak nešili.”

  “He can arrange for this to be done?”

  “Yes. I’d rather deal with Antenor – that’s the man to go to if you ever want something done, I swear the man never sleeps. But he’s not in the city just now, and Ucalegon is a good enough sort. He did send me to see if I could help you out, after all.”

  “Thank you,” Mursili said.

  “And after that, I can start teaching you to speak Trojan,” Phereclus said. “You’ll pick it up in no time. Meanwhile I think I’ll show you one or two of the more… intriguing parts of the city.”

  Mursili looked at him. “Intriguing?”

  “We’re back to talking about women again,” Phereclus said. “But with these girls, trust me, height is not going to be a problem.”

  He didn’t understand that at first, but then he caught Phereclus’ wicked smile and rather thought he did. The smile came back to his lips again. He really did think he could like this man.