Troy: A Brand of Fire
Page 30
Chapter Eleven
Wild and Fierce
Cape Sigeum thrust out into the sea pointing north, a finger made of mud and sandy dunes. The three galleys rounded it together, oarsmen straining against a moderate northerly wind.
The Bay of Troy opened up before them, filled with ships coming and going from the strand at the southern end, a mile or more away. Those heading in had their sails raised, those emerging did not, and men worked hard at their oars as they struggled against the wind. Nestor counted thirty vessels and then stopped. There were a lot, as always. Troy had not suffered as Greece had, this past year.
The rowers pulled in their oars as the sail was raised. The wind was behind the ships now, as they turned south into the Bay. It freed men to stare in awe at the sight before them.
To the left was a town with a wooden palisade, set back from the shore of the Bay. That was Bunarbi, Nestor remembered, though it had doubled in size since he was last in these waters. Behind it hills rose, carpeted with bushes and trees, a blaze of fertility unmatched in Greece. Southward, his ageing eyes could just make out the gorge from which the Scamander emerged to water the Plain of Troy, there beyond the beached ships.
He looked across to the ship which carried Menelaus, to see the king of Sparta staring with his mouth open. He wasn’t looking at the river or the hills, but at the city which waited before them.
Troy.
It was still a mile distant, just to the east of the strand where ships unloaded their cargoes. But it towered over everything. The base of its walls stood a hundred feet above the ships, and its towers reached fifty feet above that. Mighty Mycenae’s walls only rose twenty feet, and like all Greeks Menelaus had been raised to think that was awesome, a feat achieved by an army of Cyclops in the days before Men came to live there. It might even be true.
Troy made Mycenae look like a cave, cut into a cliff by generations of men with stone hammers. It was a palace alongside a hut, an ocean shining beside a pond choked with weeds.
Nestor thought it had grown, actually. The west wall looked to have been extended, so it reached a little further down the slope of the ridge on which the city was built. Nestor hadn’t heard about that. He knew Troy’s outlying towns were expanding though; Leris. Zeleia, Bunarbi to the north. The kingdom was doing well, gaining in numbers and wealth, and so too in power. Given another generation it might be able to found an empire.
There were rumours coming out of the Hittite kingdom these days, whispers of woe and looming disaster. It might be that Troy found herself able to build an empire just when a gap opened up for one. In fifty years the whole coast of Anatolia might be under Trojan rule, one great homogenous realm blocking access to the riches of the interior.
That wasn’t a comfortable thought. Troy had sent half of Greece into penury by closing a single road. A coastal Trojan empire might be able to destroy cities from Sparta to Meliboea just by raising prices.
He made a mental note of that thought, storing it away for reference against what Priam might say when the three kings reached the city. The invitation had implied an effort to resolve the problems of Hesione and high taxes, mentioning them together in an effort to link them in the minds of the Greek kings. Nothing had been made explicit, though. For all Nestor knew, he and his peers had been brought here for a tongue-lashing.
And something didn’t feel right. On the surface Priam’s offer seemed fair: more than generous, in fact. But still… why these three kings? He’d invited Nestor, Menelaus and Menestheus, but why them, and not others? Agamemnon would not have come, of course. But Diomedes of Argolis would, or Thalpius of Elis. Agapenor, Peleus, Leonteus, even Odysseus from western Ithaca, if they’d been asked. So why hadn’t they been?
Dust had begun to rise from the road leading down from the western wall of Troy. Quite a lot of it, in fact, as though many vehicles were moving rapidly down the slope. Nestor watched it as his ship drew closer to the strand, pulling ahead of Menelaus’ and Menestheus’ vessels now, its sail opening to catch the steady north wind.